Doctor Who: The Reign of Terror

Doctor Who Target Books (Numerical Order) #119

by Ian Marter

It is 1794 and the TARDIS materialises some distance away from Paris during the French Revolution — the infamous Reign of Terror.

Soon the TARDIS crew find themselves caught up in the tangled web of historical events. Imprisoned in a dank dungeon, Ian is entrusted with delivering a message to master-spy James Stirling.

Who is James Stirling? What world-shattering events are being discussed in a deserted inn off the Calais road? And can the Doctor and his friends escape a violent and bloody death at the dreaded guillotine?

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Time Travel, Ebooks, Historical

160 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Ian Don Marter was born at Alcock Hospital in Keresley, near Coventry, on the 28th of October 1944. His father, Donald Herbert, was an RAF sergeant and electrician by trade, and his mother was Helen, nee Donaldson.

He was, among other things, a teacher and a milkman.
He became an actor after graduating from Oxford University, and appeared in Repertory and West End productions and on television. He trained at the Bristol Old Vic. He was best known for playing Harry Sullivan in the BBC Television series Doctor Who from 1974 to 1975, alongside Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen. He had already appeared in the show as Lieutenant John Andrews in the Jon Pertwee serial Carnival of Monsters. He had numerous TV roles including appearances in Crown Court and Bergerac (Return of the Ice Maiden, 1985, opposite Louise Jameson).

Marter got into writing the novelisations following a dinner conversation. He went on to adapt 9 scripts over ten years. He started with The Ark in Space, the TV version of which he'd actually appeared in as companion Harry Sullivan. In the end he adapted more serials than he appeared in (7 appearances, 9 novelisations), and wrote one of the Companions series, telling of the post-Doctor adventures of Harry in Harry Sullivan's War. Shortly before his death he was discussing, with series editor Nigel Robinson, the possibility of adapting his unused movie script Doctor Who Meets Scratchman (co-written with Tom Baker) into a novel.

Reviews

[Alejandro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite enjoyable but it could be better.


This is a novelization of the serial of the same general title, that it’s a good option to read it since this serial missed two episodes (4 & 5) that while DVDs collection did a “restauration” process making a crude animation sequence of the episodes, definitely it’s not the same than watching the entire serial in its original live action presentation. So, the novelization allows to get the story without sensing any missing part.


WHO

The Doctor:

The First Doctor

Companions:

Susan Foreman, Barbara Wright & Ian Chesterton


WHERE & WHEN

Paris, France. July, 1794.


WHAT

In France, now there are two sides only and you are either with us or against us.

The Doctor is trying to get back Ian and Barbara to their native England, on their proper time (1963), but he missed it by a “little”...

...They landed in France, in the middle of the French Revolution!

One very odd thing is that they struggled to understand the French language, as the same to put an effort in pronounce the mentioned language. This is odd since the TARDIS has a “telepathic circuit” allowing to them to understand and being understood in any language (of the universe!). I know that French people are quite adamant about the way of being pronounced their language, but that’s the very last straw! But seriously (well, as seriously as we can be in Doctor Who), it’s illogical their linguistic troubles in the story. Maybe when they were moved to Paris, they could get too far from the action range of the TARDIS’ telepathic circuit, but the issues of understanding and getting understood in French language start when they are still fairly near of the TARDIS.

Escape isn´t completely impossible, and you need a doctor.

The French Revolution is supposed to be the “favorite” time period of the Doctor, maybe since it’s supposed to be the first place on Earth that he visited along with Susan (mentioned in the novel Just War, so its canonicity is a gray area), but on the first serial An Unearthly Child, Susan showed how well she managed details about that time period. In any case, while the Doctor and Susan seem to be familiarized with the time period, their usefulness in the story is quite limited.

Susan basically doesn’t do anything useful at all besides being ill or imprisoned (or both!) most of the time.

And while the Doctor tries his best, remember that writers keep to forget (in the early days of the TV series) that he is an alien, and since he is shown as a fragile old man, he is treated in that way in the dynamics of the story.

Nevertheless, the Doctor helps in a couple of key moments, but basically, the companions are insanely lucky to be helped by different people in the nick of time, even the Doctor is helped too.

Definitely in most cases, luck plays a key role to make them to get out alive of this adventure, in the middle of one of the bloodiest time periods in Earth’s history.

Barbara learned her lesson during the serial The Aztecs and now she is wiser to try to change history.

Ian gets key information in certain moment making him a valuable character serving as “engine” to the story and keeps it in motion.

The story has several characters, a lot of intrigue, one twist here and there, a participation of the infamous First Deputy Maximilien Robespierre, and even some surprising historical cameo.

It’s a good story but the involment of the Doctor and his companions to impact in the story itself is very limited, even in some moments instead of helping but complicating the things, and in a general sense, making almost possible that the story could goes on with or without them on it.

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve always liked the historical’s during the Hartnell era, but for some reason The Reign of Terror never really resonates with me.

I do like the opening as the TARDIS team arrive at their latest destination, only to discover that they’re in revolutionary France.
I also like how the team get separated and following their various journeys in an attempt to be reunited again.

The writing in this book is wonderful and helped make me enjoy this story more.
I know Marter’s Target books are highly regarded and I firmly agree.
As I’m reading the stories in televised order, this my first introduction to he’s novels in the series.

[Ian Banks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ian Marter does such a great job on this novelisation that you barely even notice that there are only 5 or 6 locations. He also handles the multiple prison break/capture scenes terrifically well, also, making each one feel different to the last and not like padding at all. Well-written and exciting.

[David Sarkies]

A Not Very Glamerous French Revolution
2 August 2025

So, at the start of this story we are told that the French Revolution is the Doctor’s favourite era, though I kind of wonder whether, after this adventure, if it will still be. Basically, they arrive on Earth, and he is about to dump Ian and Barbara and nick off, but they convince him to hang around, despite the fact that he does not accept the fact that his Tardis is incredibly temperamental.

As you can probably guess, if you are up on your history of France during the revolution, that this is set during the reign of Robespierre. It is the idea of fighting for freedom, but the thing is that everybody who thinks differently from you is an enemy and must be silenced. Sure, at the time there was a push from some quarters to restore the monarchy (which is why the king and queen were guillotined), but the problem was that it just went way overboard, to the point that Robespierre ended up in the guillotine himself.

Well, it turns out that the Doctor and his companions get caught up in the mess, and because they are familiar with the period, there is a constant reminder that they are not allowed to interfere. Mind you, nobody actually would believe you that a Corsican would end up becoming emperor, so yeah, if you tried telling them, you would end up sounding like Cassandra.

One of the interesting things is that we are constantly told that the Tardis translates for the Doctor’s companions, though it turns out that it will translate basically every language except for French. Yeah, this is the first adventure that I have encountered where they have to speak another language (though it turns out that they all speak French anyway, well everybody except for Ian, who probably didn’t pay all that much attention during French class, or just didn’t travel to France all that often).

Well, it turns out that this is the last adventure of the first season (not that that means all that much when it comes to the books) so I guess that is why there was a suggestion that Ian and Barbara were going to leave, and Ian does correctly indicate that this is the closest that the Doctor has managed to come to their home, though unfortunately he was off by about 150 years. Still, it wasn’t bad, and I guess at the time it was fulfilling the roles of being a TV show that taught children about history, though I have discovered that apparently educational shows were looked upon more favourably by the BBC, so I guess a time-travelling alien sort of fulfils that role.

[Octavia Cade · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a very basic adaptation of the first season serial "The Reign of Terror." In fairness to the author, it was a particularly underwhelming set of episodes that weren't that entertaining to watch, so he's hampered by the source material (Susan, especially, was dire). On the other hand, in fairness to me, the reader, Marter does absolutely nothing to improve the dismally repetitive nature of the storyline. In fact, his adaptation is mostly notable for the many detailed description of the clothes.

I suppose I can't really blame him. Under the circumstances, better clothes than plot.

[Warren Fournier · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like William Hartnell's Doctor, I am fascinated with the French Revolution and so I thought this tale from my favorite TV program featuring one of my favorite Doctors from one of my favorite periods in history would be... well, one of my favorite episodes of the long-running scifi extravaganza that is Doctor Who. But I was wrong, and even talented writer and Who veteran Ian Marter could not redeem this lackluster entry.

"The Reign of Terror" is a partly missing serial from the first season of classic Who, containing two episodes that have had to be recreated via animation for the DVD release as the original broadcast recordings were wiped. This is part of my ongoing series of reviews of novelizations of incomplete or "lost" episodes from Doctor Who history.

The main reasons this story does not work well for me is because it is 1) ridiculously repetitive 2) terribly contrived and 3) contains some of the silliest dialogue ever attributed to Doctor Who characters.

The whole story largely centers around a single dungeon in Paris during the Revolution, hardly representative of the grand scale of the Reign of Terror, which serves largely as a mere backdrop setting for the action. The Doctor's companions get thrown in the dungeon, escape, get thrown back in the dungeon, escape, and get thrown back in the dungeon and escape again. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever why anyone during this period of history should give two figs for the Doctor and his crew, yet they quickly seem to be the only thing people during the Revolution had to think about those days. What nonsense! Random citizens like a tailor and a physician tattle on them to the Revolutionary authorities for no reason whatsoever. For example, the physician turns in Barbara and Susan as suspicious because Susan has blisters on her hands. Obviously the first thing a physician thinks of when seeing blisters is that someone must have been digging their way out of a jail cell! The authorities, in the meantime, act like these are the most wanted and important group of criminals in all of France and spend a hell of a lot of effort trying to entrap the travelers. In turn, the Royalists go through equally as much trouble rescuing and aiding our perpetually unlucky heroes. The Doctor and company should be nobodies in 17th Century Paris and thus unimportant to anyone, but the writer keeps contriving magical plot devices to enmesh them into the lives of disconnected characters. Yes, I know this is pretty much par for the course in a lot of Doctor Who, but it seems particularly egregious here.

It doesn't help that the protagonists are always doing and saying things to bring dangerous attention on themselves. The Doctor, for example, while supposedly in the middle of a desperate search for his kidnapped granddaughter and friends, decides to plop himself next to an obviously choleric foreman and proceeds to insult him until the man gets aggravated enough to ask the Doctor for identification. This puts the Doctor into some hot water, but instead of rooting for our favorite time traveler, I kept thinking, "Well, he had it coming to him! What did he think would happen?" In other words, if the Doctor had not purposefully engaged a complete stranger for no reason in a pissing contest, there would have been no peril to read about. That's what I mean when I say this story is horribly contrived.

Speaking of saying stupid things, Susan is absolutely a surplus to requirement in this story--even more so than she often is. It is truly a shame that as the supposed otherwordly blood relative of this mysterious man in a flying police box she was never written with more intelligence or depth. In this story, she acts like an annoying contrarian. One minute, she is scolding Barbara while they are locked in the dungeon for not having faith in her grandfather who would rescue them. As a result, Barabara starts to become optimistic about the outcome of their plight. The next minute, Susan promptly scolds her for being such a Pollyanna! For the rest of the story, Susan only whines and cries, "Oh, Barbara! Oh, Grandfather!" She should never have been written into the show if no one knew what to do with her, and Marter's treatment of the character in this book makes no attempt to make her inclusion any less meaningless.

But Barbara is actually much worse here. When she and her friends are being sentenced to the guillotine, she smirks and says, "I feel like Marie Antoinette!" This lame quip is not in keeping with the tone of the character, who is normally played straight. But unforgivably, she also has an explosive outburst when told by a Royalist who saved her butt numerous times that a revolutionary she had a crush on was killed because he had tried to kill her fellow companion and friend Ian. She starts rambling about how the Revolution was so wonderful and changed the course of history to her Royalist benefactor. Not the brightest move. All throughout this book, I was cringing and praying our heroes would just shut the hell up. I couldn't figure out why the characters would purposefully be written to be this dumb unless it was due to sheer incompetence by the screenwriter. But if that were the case, Ian Marter could have corrected this with a few minor liberties in his novelization. Unfortunately, he did not put out the effort or had been instructed in his commission not to mess much with the story as broadcasted.

And while I am picking on poor Ian Marter, I really like his writing style. There are some great examples of well-crafted word-smithing especially in the first few chapters. But there is one final irksome element in the novel that would normally be an issue for only Doctor Who nerds like me, but in this case, it serves as another reminder that Mr. Marter put little care into this adaptation. I am talking about the use of foreign languages in the series.

By the time Ian Marter wrote this book, the show had explained away why our time traveling friends can always communicate with various races. The Tardis evidently has a universal language translator that gets programmed into the brains of those who travel in it, equivalent to Douglas Adams' babelfish in "The Hitchhiker's Guide." But either the author was not aware of this or forgot. Therefore, he repeatedly points out that the protagonists have to struggle to remember their French lessons in order to talk with the locals of this time period. OK, fine. But then sometimes he has characters like Ian Chesterton, who speaks poor broken French at best, communicate quite fluently. Now we have a glaring mistake that takes away from the reader's further suspension of disbelief. In contrast, take another Hartnell episode like "The Web Planet." No attempt was made to explain how Chesterton could speak with the insectoid aliens in that adventure. Surely the giant butterflies and grubs from another solar system did not speak English (or broken French)! But because attention was not drawn to the language barrier, one does not concern themselves with this problem, whether or not the fan is aware of the retconned translating system. But in "Reign of Terror," the singular point is made that travelers and locals speak differently, so that when this issue is largely forgotten by the author during interactions later in the book, the mistake becomes glaringly obvious. It seems a minor point, but it is another example of how slipshod and rushed this book feels.

The end result is a boring and repetitive mess of a story that could have been very exciting and insightful. There were some hints to the potential of the story, such as the balanced portrayal of Robespierre as an ugly narcissist who ruthlessly ordered the death of thousands of his countrymen, but who had started the Revolution because he genuinely felt the royal elite had been parasitic off the citizens for too long. He seems to desperately want the killing to stop, but it has spun out of control as the plotting and conspiring once designed to oust a monarchy starts taking on a life of it's own. Mass hysterics and lust for power have usurped a noble cause, and now everyone is a target, even Robespierre himself. This kind of thing would have been more interesting to explore in detail. But instead, we just get to watch our main heroes get thrown in and out of captivity by wooden and unappealing characters in a simplified plot that fails to engage or maintain interest.

What a disappointment for one of the most promising stories of the early years of classic Doctor Who. Neither the original TV serial nor this novelization are representative of the genius that can be the Hartnell era, and thus, neither are recommended.

[stormhawk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of the early Doctor Who episodes, this is one of the more complexly plotted. There are various elements of danger and excitement, as would be expected from falling into the French Revolution. Brushes with death are the order of the day for The Doctor and each of his companions, with several interesting historical cameos added for flavoring.

[Michel Siskoid Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ian Marter, in addition to playing Harry Sullivan opposite the Fourth Doctor and passing away way too soon, is known as a good writer. And his posthumous Target novelisation of Doctor Who (and) The Reign of Terror shows that last statement to be true. Very good prose enlivens what on television wasn't the best historical story. This is a serial that shuffles characters in and out of captivity from episode to episode and calls it a plot, and too often takes the leads' agency away, getting them out of trouble through luck and ancillary characters. The twists are almost Dickensian, and if A Tale of Two Cities is part of the source material, that could make sense. You don't feel it in the original serial, but Marter's writing pushes it in that direction. He also improves a few moments, especially when the characters DO have some agency. For all the serial's faults, the Doctor shines thanks to some ace fast talking. I also like how there's no translation circuit in the book and the characters have to switch between French and English, which actually motivates some of the misunderstandings in the original episodes. One of the books in the line that improves the television experience!

[Gareth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good, if bleak book this one, covering some dark events in Earth's history. While perhaps a bit one sided for the most part, not capturing well outside of some short dialogue the reasons for the revolution, it does I think capture well the fear, distrust and how simply bloody the Reign of Terror as such was.
Is interesting, as in some ways the Aztecs also covers quite bloody material as well, but doesn't come across as dark, potentially as the death count isn't as high, and we don't necessarily see as much out and out violence as we do in this story.
Plays a bit with historical accuracy towards the end, but that allows a bit of a lightening in mood, and a glimpse of another famous character, so I think can be forgiven.
Compared to the Sensorites, I think a lot more of the characters are fleshed out here, making for some interesting protagonists, antagonists and those in between. There was a bit of confusion at the end for me, with Iain referring to dialogue that didn't seem to have occurred, but outside of that I think all round a good story

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since this is based on one of the partially-lost Doctor Who stories from the early years, it was fun to read this novelization, partly because Ian Marter did a very good job with, frankly, an iffy story. There were still rough spots, like Barbara's weirdly changing attitudes toward one of the French characters, ranging from antagonistic to apparently somewhat attracted.
The fact that The Doctor was the one of their party most fluent in 18th century French was interesting, but Susan had mentioned that this was one of his favorite historical periods, a thing never really explained in the story, but still believable. Still, for 20th century British humans and a pair of Gallifreyans to have to deal with Robespierre and others of that ilk was interesting.
The gaoler reminded me of a sadistic version of the sergeant from the old Zorro TV show.
Anyway, the above average writing combined with an interesting attempt at a historical story made this one worth reading.

[Pete · Rating 3 out of 5]

Doctor Who : The Reign of Terror (1987) by Ian Marter is the novelisation of the eighth and final serial of the first season of Doctor Who. Susan, Ian and Barbara are the Doctor’s companions.

The Reign of Terror is set during the French revolution. As usual for the first season the crew depart to have a look at what is going on, things go awry and before long they are trying to get back to the TARDIS. Along the way Robespierre, Napoleon and others cross their path.

The story also has more about how time can’t be changed.

The Reign of Terror is a good end to the first season of Doctor Who.

[Keith Tooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Doctor Who: The Reign Of Terror’ by Ian Marter was written in 1987 and is the tv tie in book of the eighth doctor who serial from the classic era featuring the first doctor and his companions Susan, Barbara and Ian. The tv serial was the last Doctor Who tv serial of the very first series. The story/serial is a historical story set during the French Revolution in France and features some well known people.

Now out of print although still available as a audiobook, I picked up this book on Amazon. It’s a really good Doctor who book and follows the tv serial very well. For a Doctor Who fan especially of the classic series, I recommend this book.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part of my 60th Anniversary read through. This is the final story from season 1, and it is a good one. They are caught up in history and are struggling to keep from getting swept away in it. Well done. Also, this was written by Ian Marter, who was one of Tom Baker’s first companions, and who later became a pretty good writer and made several written contributions to the Target series. He died way too young, and was a valuable part of Doctor who. This is one of the better Target stories.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent novelisation of the First Doctor serial. I throughly enjoyed this, due to the historical aspects, the combination of the First Doctor, Barbara, Ian and Susan who are my favourite TARDIS team from that era.

Ian Marter's writing was excellent and really helped me to visualise the events that were occuring, making me feel as if I were there.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

Marter's a strong writer, so I did like this one. It doesn't change much from the original serial and I'm not super fond of The Reign of Terror in the first place but it did also make some aspects easier to follow than on-screen (which I think may be partially because the animation isn't 100% clear at points).

[Ivana Richards · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent novelisation of the William Hartnell story.

[Nobi Nobes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting history!

[josephsbookcorner · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Julian White · Rating 3 out of 5]

pdf; 190 pages

Pretty ok novelisaton but I'm not a fan of the original and this rather drags out an overlong story even more, to my mind. The series developed along the way and this late entry into the novels uses some of the later 'facts' about Time Lords while ignoring others (but I'm not sure when the TARDIS translation for companions was introduced so I may be wrong here).

It took me a long time to get into this!

[Jason Bleckly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Number 119 in the Target catalogue based on a 6 episode script by Dennis Spooner. The book cover art is by Tony Masero. Visual recordings are still missing for episodes 4 and 5, but they have been animated for the DVD. Ian played the role of Harry Sullivan in the early T Baker stories, and Lt John Andrews in Pertwee’s ‘Carnival of Monsters’.

Now I’ll be honest, this isn’t a favourite story. It’s not that there is anything wrong with it, or with Ian’s novelisation. It’s just that it’s the French Revolution which doesn’t hold any real interest to me. In fact most of my knowledge of the French Revolution can be attributed to this story.

I was looking forward to reading this because, well Harry. But the opening page was a worry. He laid on the description with a trowel. Fortunately once we get inside the TARDIS they writing style calmed down, and maintained a light and enjoyable style for the rest of the book.

I don’t recall any major variations to the broadcast version, but it’s been a few months since I last watched it. One feature of the book I did find curious was using both French and English. Marter gives Chesterton passable French, Barbara good French, and the Doctor immaculate French. But they wouldn’t have needed to know any French. The TARDIS translation circuit is a well established concept by the time this book is written, and they’ve already been to completely alien worlds and had no problem understanding and speaking the local lingo. It just seems a really curious addition to this novelisation.

While this will never be a favourite I did still enjoy it. The pacing is better than the broadcast version. I find a lot of season one drags as the stories are 6 or more episodes. I’m guessing this is why 4 episodes became the standard.

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here we have another historical adventure with the Doctor and his companions - this time in late 18th Century France at the end of the French Revolution. Unfortunately, the characters spend most of the book running between one form of captivity or another and don't really interact with historical events or people until the end of the novel.

We do get some discussion of the nature of time travel in this story which reiterates what was said in The Aztecs - time is immutable and can't be changed by the TARDIS crew to suit their desires. Similarly, the Doctor finally admits that he really has no idea where they're headed and doesn't really have control of the TARDIS despite continued promises to get Ian and Barbara home. Although, they do state multiple times their desire to see London in 1963 again, the teachers have settled into their routine with the Doctor and have started to enjoy it.

The most unsettling thing about the book is the author (Ian Marter - himself an actor in the show in the 1970's) uses details that haven't been revealed in the ongoing text of the series. He often refers to the Doctor as a Time Lord, although at this point that hasn't been revealed. Likewise, the fact that Time Lords have two hearts is discussed when Susan is examined by a physician, and couple of other instances that sort of ruin the text of these early adventures. Not a big thing, but it did take me out of the time frame a bit.

Although its not my favorite historical, there were some fun moments in this story that keep the reader happy, and it definitely has more development of the characters than most of the stories up til now. For this reason I think a lot of fans will enjoy the story, as the characters become more familiar with each other and their situations, they begin to grow, stretch and change a bit. Nice to see!

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/763482.html[return][return]A good novelisation of the six-part story which ended the very first season of Doctor Who back in 1964. It features gruesome implied violence - which Marter is quite subdued in writing up, apart from the historically accurate detail of Robespierre having his jaw blown off just before the end of the story. The whole atmosphere of a Paris living under horrible oppression is well conveyed; as with any Doctor Who story, the main characters get split up to follow different bits of the action, but Marter conveys very well their panic and disorientation in this dangerous environment. Purists will feel robbed that the Doctor's speech about destiny at the end of the last scene has been replaced with some banter between him and Ian Chesterton, but I suspect this may one of those cases where what worked on the screen would not have worked so well on the page. It also has a great cover.

[Steven Poore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is it just me, or do the straight historicals of the first season fare much better than the SF tales when it comes to their novelisations? The Reign of Terror is basically a very good depiction of what life in Revolutionary France would have been like, following almost exactly the original remit for the show (to be educational, natch). Along with The Aztecs, it's also a very good template for the historical adventures, in that the Tardis crew have no direct bearing on the events that must surely follow; instead, they must do their very best just to survive them.
The writing adds enough detail to keep the novelisation from being a skimpy adaptation of the script, and all of the main characters are well fleshed out.

#9 in the series.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Tardis crew land in France right in the middle of the French Revolution and they spend most of the book seperated from each other, trying to stay out of jail and finding their way back to the Tardis.
Of course, they end up crossing paths with several famous people and being witnesses to big moments in history.

Fun in that they really don't influence events very much, just keep stumbling into historical events and would be quite happy to avoid it all together and go home.

A nice blend of humor and historical adventure. Shame that after the second Doctor they stopped doing straight historical stories as they were a lot of fun.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been a Dr Who fan for many years. I had not heard this Dr Who before listening to this book. The Tardis lands into the French Revolution. Dr. Who's rules are, that he can't do anything to change history. Dr. Who's companions are arrested and sent to prison to be beheaded. Of course Dr Who saves the day, and revolutionists also help to save them. This is only a two CD set of TV shows.

[Leah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I do not like Ian Marter as a writer. He tries to convey emotion and it just comes off flat and monotone. The action has no pacing and is sometimes plain boring. I felt like his vocabulary came off as arrogant and condecending. I was however fascinated by the historically content about the French Revolution. The Reign of Terror was a horrifying time in history. I was shocked.

[Nicholas Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

The historical tales really benefit from the novelization process, in which layers of detail are added and atmosphere is built in a way that the 1960's tv budget struggled with. This is a great romp and a fine use of the original characters to further the plot. Nice addition to the range and would recommend.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hands down one of the best 1st Doctor novelizations. Ian Marter demonstrates right from the start that he "gets" the Hartnell Doctor, and his aggressive writing style suits the violence of the revolution perfectly. The actual TV episodes are almost tame by comparison.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marter's descriptions can get a bit purple and perhaps he overdoes the details. But it's still a great story.

[Nathalie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh. Not nearly as enjoyable as the show, and not terribly well-written. Still, alright for a quick read.