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Doctor Who Target Books (Numerical Order) #145
Doctor Who: Planet of Giants
The Doctor is feeling confident: this time the TARDIS has landed on Earth; in England; in 1963. But when he and his companions venture outside, they are soon lost in a maze of ravines and menaced by gigantic insects. And the insects are dying-every living thing is dying…
Meanwhile, in a cottage garden on a perfect summer’s day, the man from the Ministry arrives to put a stop to the production of DN6, a pesticide with the power to destroy all life-forms. But the men who invented DN6 will stop at nothing-not even murder-in their desire to see DN6 succeed.
Can the one-inch-tall Doctor foil their plans?
Meanwhile, in a cottage garden on a perfect summer’s day, the man from the Ministry arrives to put a stop to the production of DN6, a pesticide with the power to destroy all life-forms. But the men who invented DN6 will stop at nothing-not even murder-in their desire to see DN6 succeed.
Can the one-inch-tall Doctor foil their plans?
112 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published April 18, 1990
1 person is currently reading
202 people want to read
About the author
Terrance Dicks
281 books220 followersTerrance Dicks was an English author, screenwriter, script editor, and producer best known for his extensive contributions to Doctor Who. Serving as the show's script editor from 1968 to 1974, he helped shape many core elements of the series, including the concept of regeneration, the development of the Time Lords, and the naming of the Doctor’s home planet, Gallifrey. His tenure coincided with major thematic expansions, and he worked closely with producer Barry Letts to bring a socially aware tone to the show. Dicks later wrote several Doctor Who serials, including Robot, Horror of Fang Rock, and The Five Doctors, the 20th-anniversary special.
In parallel with his television work, Dicks became one of the most prolific writers of Doctor Who novelisations for Target Books, authoring over 60 titles and serving as the de facto editor of the range. These adaptations introduced a generation of young readers to the franchise. Beyond Doctor Who, he also wrote original novels, including children’s horror and adventure series such as The Baker Street Irregulars, Star Quest, and The Adventures of Goliath.
Dicks also worked on other television programmes including The Avengers, Moonbase 3, and various BBC literary adaptations. His later work included audio dramas and novels tied to Doctor Who. Widely respected for his clarity, imagination, and dedication to storytelling, he remained a central figure in Doctor Who fandom until his death in 2019, leaving behind a vast legacy in television and children's literature.
In parallel with his television work, Dicks became one of the most prolific writers of Doctor Who novelisations for Target Books, authoring over 60 titles and serving as the de facto editor of the range. These adaptations introduced a generation of young readers to the franchise. Beyond Doctor Who, he also wrote original novels, including children’s horror and adventure series such as The Baker Street Irregulars, Star Quest, and The Adventures of Goliath.
Dicks also worked on other television programmes including The Avengers, Moonbase 3, and various BBC literary adaptations. His later work included audio dramas and novels tied to Doctor Who. Widely respected for his clarity, imagination, and dedication to storytelling, he remained a central figure in Doctor Who fandom until his death in 2019, leaving behind a vast legacy in television and children's literature.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
July 22, 2018
It seems quite fitting that a story where the TARDIS team shrink to an inch, is one of the shortest Target novelisations in the series.
I’ve always liked this story, it’s a certain Sci-Fi trope that has been done successfully on many occasions.
I feel that this original TARDIS team fitted perfectly with this type of story.
As I’m reading these in televised story order I really appreciate the various stories that had previously happened getting mentioned in the first chapter.
But more excitedly what’s next after that great tease of a paragraph right at the end...
I’ve always liked this story, it’s a certain Sci-Fi trope that has been done successfully on many occasions.
I feel that this original TARDIS team fitted perfectly with this type of story.
As I’m reading these in televised story order I really appreciate the various stories that had previously happened getting mentioned in the first chapter.
But more excitedly what’s next after that great tease of a paragraph right at the end...
March 5, 2019
A straight-forward adaptation of the 3 part Hartnell story, with no embellishments. An enjoyable book, but by no means the best of the Target range.
December 20, 2024
So, here we are at the end of the road. Published in 1990 this was one of the last two Doctor Who stories to be novelised by Dicks as the Target Books range was coming to a close having been bought out by Virgin Books who, with the sad news of the show’s cancellation, were slowly making the transition towards original novels rather than simply reprinting their vast library of previously published novelisations.
I feel like 'Planet of Giants' always drew the short straw when it came to commercial releases. It was the last First Doctor story to be novelised; coming as something of a damp squib along with 'The Smugglers' from the previous year at the end of what was a renaissance of First Doctor adaptations that brushed through the doors of Target during the late 80s when the firm was running low on fresh stories to adapt. The added bonus was that many of these older stories were novelised by several of the original authors themselves leaving Dicks with very little work to do. It was the last one released on VHS in 2002 when DVDs were starting to take off. And it was the last one to be released on DVD in 2012 by which time the original producer, directors, script editor, crew members, supporting cast as well as half of the original regulars were no longer alive and able to provide their insights and recollections for the DVD extras.
The background of 'Planet of Giants' was that it had originally been submitted and slated as the first script of the first season. But Sydney Newman, the show's progenitor, had found that as well as being too expensive a concept to realise straight out of the gate it was also a little too wide off the mark of what he wanted for his high-brow educational kids show. But not wanting to waste a good idea the show's original script editor and writing guru David Whitaker decided to keep the idea back before finally commissioning script stalwart Louis Marks to give it a go at the tail end of the season 1 production block which was then held over for the following season to give the actors a break between seasons.
Despite being a highly rated story at the time, scoring a strong average of eight million viewers across its run, it has since been re-evaluated by fans as being one of the worst stories from this era, an opinion that was later borne out when it was subsequently discovered that the original story was supposed to be four episodes long but was cut down to three upon broadcast as it was felt the pace of the last two episodes was just too slow.
At its best the story never comes anywhere close to the fraught tension of Richard Matheson's The Incredible Shrinking Man or the fun and adventure of the subsequent 80s romp 'Honey, I Shrunk the Kids'. The problem lies in the blend of both strong and pulp sci-fi concepts which are at the core of the story. You have on the one hand the problem of DN6, a dangerous pesticide capable of wiping out both harmful pests and viable insects crucial to the maintaining of Earth’s fragile ecosystem, an element taken straight out of Mark’s reading of Rachel Carson’s early environmental text ‘Silent Spring’ which was fast becoming topical in the early sixties. And on the other hand you have the problem of the Doctor and his companions being reduced in size to little more than an inch due to an accident during the materialisation of the TARDIS, an element taken straight out of pulp sci-fi novels like Richard Matheson’s ‘The Shrinking Man’. The fact that neither story has much bearing or connection with the other beyond simply happening to take place in the same location also doesn’t help much with making this into a viable or exciting story. It doesn’t quite fit into either mode the show was doing at the time which was either straight up historical narratives or sci-fi adventures.
Although Louis Marks was a stalwart contributor to British TV at this time his contributions to Doctor Who were extremely sporadic. After ‘Planet of Giants’ in 1964 his next script for Doctor Who wasn’t until 1972, eight years later, the hastily rewritten ‘Day of the Daleks’ which suddenly needed to accommodate their namesakes due to the falling through of another script. After that he would write two more stories for the early Tom Baker seasons, ‘Planet of Evil’ (1975) and ‘The Masque of Mandragora’ (1976) and it’s in these scripts that Marks seems to have put his mark on the show. But here he seems to struggle to come up with a formula that could work for Doctor Who (you have to remember that this was in the show’s first year when writers weren’t as familiar with the problem of writing for the show as they are now). Here Marks seems to have written a dual script, with one half being a bland Lewis Carrol type children’s adventure encompassing the Doctor and his companions, whilst the other half seems to serve as a spoof on an early Avengers spy-fi script encompassing the rest of the one-dimensional cast of characters.
This makes ‘Planet of Giants’ feel very remote from its contemporaries in style and tone, a remoteness which is plainly on display with Dicks novelisation. By this time sadly the quality of Dicks writing and the amount of effort he put into these last few novelisations was a far cry even from the slim novelisations he was writing during his heyday in the late 70s when he was churning them out at the rate of almost eight per year. Here we find him adapting a script from an era long before his time on the show which he was only vaguely familiar with because he had novelised a couple of scripts from the same period almost fifteen and ten years prior to this – ‘Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth’ (1976) and ‘Doctor Who and an Unearthly Child’ (1981) respectively – from a period that most readers would have been unfamiliar with and from a writer whose involvement in the show itself was extremely infrequent.
A writer with more skin in the game might have ventured to have done what Gary Russell and the restoration team eventually did on the DVD release of the show which was to try and restore the lost material removed from the end of the story to cut it down to three episodes instead of four. But Dicks sadly doesn’t do that, he barely even bothers with any characterisation for the companions themselves. The secondary characters stay as the bland cardboard cutouts that they were in the original script. Dicks gives us little to no backstory for any of them except the weak-willed but well-meaning scientist Smithers of whose motivations we are given a brief glimpse when he relates his experiences of famine in Africa. But that’s all.
There’s even a moment where I was sure that Dicks had recycled the same adjectives of ‘the terrifying form of…’ to describe whenever giant insects make their entrance into the story during those climactic cliffhanger moments between chapters. Only when I later checked did I realise he did in fact substitute the word ‘form’ for ‘shape’ in the subsequent cliffhanger. But that’s how bland it was. The only context and background that Dicks ends up giving us is right at the very end of the story which leads straight into the next serial: ‘The Dalek Invasion of Earth’ a story which Dicks also novelised. But I guarantee that if you should ever read these two books chronologically you wouldn’t be hard pressed to notice the staggering difference in quality between them. It seems a shame for Dicks to end his long and lucrative career of Who novelisations with such a bland effort.
I feel like 'Planet of Giants' always drew the short straw when it came to commercial releases. It was the last First Doctor story to be novelised; coming as something of a damp squib along with 'The Smugglers' from the previous year at the end of what was a renaissance of First Doctor adaptations that brushed through the doors of Target during the late 80s when the firm was running low on fresh stories to adapt. The added bonus was that many of these older stories were novelised by several of the original authors themselves leaving Dicks with very little work to do. It was the last one released on VHS in 2002 when DVDs were starting to take off. And it was the last one to be released on DVD in 2012 by which time the original producer, directors, script editor, crew members, supporting cast as well as half of the original regulars were no longer alive and able to provide their insights and recollections for the DVD extras.
The background of 'Planet of Giants' was that it had originally been submitted and slated as the first script of the first season. But Sydney Newman, the show's progenitor, had found that as well as being too expensive a concept to realise straight out of the gate it was also a little too wide off the mark of what he wanted for his high-brow educational kids show. But not wanting to waste a good idea the show's original script editor and writing guru David Whitaker decided to keep the idea back before finally commissioning script stalwart Louis Marks to give it a go at the tail end of the season 1 production block which was then held over for the following season to give the actors a break between seasons.
Despite being a highly rated story at the time, scoring a strong average of eight million viewers across its run, it has since been re-evaluated by fans as being one of the worst stories from this era, an opinion that was later borne out when it was subsequently discovered that the original story was supposed to be four episodes long but was cut down to three upon broadcast as it was felt the pace of the last two episodes was just too slow.
At its best the story never comes anywhere close to the fraught tension of Richard Matheson's The Incredible Shrinking Man or the fun and adventure of the subsequent 80s romp 'Honey, I Shrunk the Kids'. The problem lies in the blend of both strong and pulp sci-fi concepts which are at the core of the story. You have on the one hand the problem of DN6, a dangerous pesticide capable of wiping out both harmful pests and viable insects crucial to the maintaining of Earth’s fragile ecosystem, an element taken straight out of Mark’s reading of Rachel Carson’s early environmental text ‘Silent Spring’ which was fast becoming topical in the early sixties. And on the other hand you have the problem of the Doctor and his companions being reduced in size to little more than an inch due to an accident during the materialisation of the TARDIS, an element taken straight out of pulp sci-fi novels like Richard Matheson’s ‘The Shrinking Man’. The fact that neither story has much bearing or connection with the other beyond simply happening to take place in the same location also doesn’t help much with making this into a viable or exciting story. It doesn’t quite fit into either mode the show was doing at the time which was either straight up historical narratives or sci-fi adventures.
Although Louis Marks was a stalwart contributor to British TV at this time his contributions to Doctor Who were extremely sporadic. After ‘Planet of Giants’ in 1964 his next script for Doctor Who wasn’t until 1972, eight years later, the hastily rewritten ‘Day of the Daleks’ which suddenly needed to accommodate their namesakes due to the falling through of another script. After that he would write two more stories for the early Tom Baker seasons, ‘Planet of Evil’ (1975) and ‘The Masque of Mandragora’ (1976) and it’s in these scripts that Marks seems to have put his mark on the show. But here he seems to struggle to come up with a formula that could work for Doctor Who (you have to remember that this was in the show’s first year when writers weren’t as familiar with the problem of writing for the show as they are now). Here Marks seems to have written a dual script, with one half being a bland Lewis Carrol type children’s adventure encompassing the Doctor and his companions, whilst the other half seems to serve as a spoof on an early Avengers spy-fi script encompassing the rest of the one-dimensional cast of characters.
This makes ‘Planet of Giants’ feel very remote from its contemporaries in style and tone, a remoteness which is plainly on display with Dicks novelisation. By this time sadly the quality of Dicks writing and the amount of effort he put into these last few novelisations was a far cry even from the slim novelisations he was writing during his heyday in the late 70s when he was churning them out at the rate of almost eight per year. Here we find him adapting a script from an era long before his time on the show which he was only vaguely familiar with because he had novelised a couple of scripts from the same period almost fifteen and ten years prior to this – ‘Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth’ (1976) and ‘Doctor Who and an Unearthly Child’ (1981) respectively – from a period that most readers would have been unfamiliar with and from a writer whose involvement in the show itself was extremely infrequent.
A writer with more skin in the game might have ventured to have done what Gary Russell and the restoration team eventually did on the DVD release of the show which was to try and restore the lost material removed from the end of the story to cut it down to three episodes instead of four. But Dicks sadly doesn’t do that, he barely even bothers with any characterisation for the companions themselves. The secondary characters stay as the bland cardboard cutouts that they were in the original script. Dicks gives us little to no backstory for any of them except the weak-willed but well-meaning scientist Smithers of whose motivations we are given a brief glimpse when he relates his experiences of famine in Africa. But that’s all.
There’s even a moment where I was sure that Dicks had recycled the same adjectives of ‘the terrifying form of…’ to describe whenever giant insects make their entrance into the story during those climactic cliffhanger moments between chapters. Only when I later checked did I realise he did in fact substitute the word ‘form’ for ‘shape’ in the subsequent cliffhanger. But that’s how bland it was. The only context and background that Dicks ends up giving us is right at the very end of the story which leads straight into the next serial: ‘The Dalek Invasion of Earth’ a story which Dicks also novelised. But I guarantee that if you should ever read these two books chronologically you wouldn’t be hard pressed to notice the staggering difference in quality between them. It seems a shame for Dicks to end his long and lucrative career of Who novelisations with such a bland effort.
June 6, 2017
This 1990 novelisation of a 1964 TV story is a load of light fun. After an accident in transit, the time travellers find themselves shrunk to insectile proportions and stranded in the garden of a pleasant country house (OF DEATH – I almost feel obliged to add).
I mentioned in my review of Doctor Who: Evening's Empire that the series is a bit of a cultural sponge, and here the influences are fabulously early 60s: The Incredible Shrinking Man, Dixon of Dock Green. The plot about a ruthless businessman and his deadly insecticide wouldn't seem out of place in early era Avengers.
There's a joy to that clash of ideas, even if the story doesn't really explore its more interesting character angles; none of the regulars are that bothered by their reduction in size (they share the audience's assurance they'll be back to normal before the next adventure) and surprisingly little is made of the brilliantly conceived irony that the Doctor has finally got Ian and Barbara back to present day Earth only at the wrong size!
Still, it's a very light book (I got through it in more or less one sitting) and delivers you a happy shot of early 60s adventure for that. Fun and fittingly small.
I mentioned in my review of Doctor Who: Evening's Empire that the series is a bit of a cultural sponge, and here the influences are fabulously early 60s: The Incredible Shrinking Man, Dixon of Dock Green. The plot about a ruthless businessman and his deadly insecticide wouldn't seem out of place in early era Avengers.
There's a joy to that clash of ideas, even if the story doesn't really explore its more interesting character angles; none of the regulars are that bothered by their reduction in size (they share the audience's assurance they'll be back to normal before the next adventure) and surprisingly little is made of the brilliantly conceived irony that the Doctor has finally got Ian and Barbara back to present day Earth only at the wrong size!
Still, it's a very light book (I got through it in more or less one sitting) and delivers you a happy shot of early 60s adventure for that. Fun and fittingly small.
January 19, 2016
Definitely not one of my favorite novels in the series. This seems like it was written quickly and just put into circulation. It's very short and not many details are added to the original script, so it seems very bland and lifeless.
Although Irwin Allen wouldn't get "The Land of the Giants" TV show onto American television for another four years, this has the feel of that kind of story. The TARDIS malfunctions, shrinking itself and the crew as a protective measure. And the Doctor and his companions find themselves in a yard where a deadly insecticide has been tested.
Not only must the tiny crew get back to the ship unharmed, but they decide to stop the production of the poison as well. The main thrust of this story is in the last few chapters - and that amounts to about 30 brief pages.
Not a great story, but if you don't have access to the original episode, reading this will probably take less time than watching it!
Although Irwin Allen wouldn't get "The Land of the Giants" TV show onto American television for another four years, this has the feel of that kind of story. The TARDIS malfunctions, shrinking itself and the crew as a protective measure. And the Doctor and his companions find themselves in a yard where a deadly insecticide has been tested.
Not only must the tiny crew get back to the ship unharmed, but they decide to stop the production of the poison as well. The main thrust of this story is in the last few chapters - and that amounts to about 30 brief pages.
Not a great story, but if you don't have access to the original episode, reading this will probably take less time than watching it!
December 30, 2025
The Doctor is Very Small
29 December 2025
Well, it has been a while since I have read a Doctor Who book, so I guess it was time to move onto the next one, what happened to be this one. Actually, it was the first series of season 2, and it sounds like they landed on an alien planet, but it quickly turns out that they haven’t. Basically, the Tardis malfunctions (as it has a habit of doing, especially in these early episodes) and they land up in what appears to be a canyon, and there are a lot of dead giant insects around.
Anyway, after a bit of exploring they discover that they are actually on Earth and that they are only an inch or so high, and the canyon that they are wandering through is actually paving for a garden path. However, there is still the issue of all the dead insects around.
As is expected in a Doctor Who story, there is something else going on, and it happens to involve a business wanted to make sure that all of the money that they have invested into a product hasn’t gone to waste, and they want to release the product whether it works or not. In this case it happens to be an insecticide.
The thing is back then it seemed like the world was a different place, and we didn’t have to worry about business people forcing stuff on us that we don’t want. However, this seems to have changed a lot, especially with things like AI, and like autonomous vehicles. In fact so much money is being funnelled into these things that companies are wanting to make sure that they get a return for their investment.
Yes, a lot has changed since the days where the local police officer could go and arrest the dodgy business man who is willing to kill to make sure his product gets to market. It seems these days its the dodgy businessmen who are calling the shots, and we are being dumped with stuff that we don’t want. Well, only to an extent – we are so lazy that we will literally burn the world to the ground just so that we can get AI to tell us what to wear today, and whether a pair of sunglasses looks good on us.
29 December 2025
Well, it has been a while since I have read a Doctor Who book, so I guess it was time to move onto the next one, what happened to be this one. Actually, it was the first series of season 2, and it sounds like they landed on an alien planet, but it quickly turns out that they haven’t. Basically, the Tardis malfunctions (as it has a habit of doing, especially in these early episodes) and they land up in what appears to be a canyon, and there are a lot of dead giant insects around.
Anyway, after a bit of exploring they discover that they are actually on Earth and that they are only an inch or so high, and the canyon that they are wandering through is actually paving for a garden path. However, there is still the issue of all the dead insects around.
As is expected in a Doctor Who story, there is something else going on, and it happens to involve a business wanted to make sure that all of the money that they have invested into a product hasn’t gone to waste, and they want to release the product whether it works or not. In this case it happens to be an insecticide.
The thing is back then it seemed like the world was a different place, and we didn’t have to worry about business people forcing stuff on us that we don’t want. However, this seems to have changed a lot, especially with things like AI, and like autonomous vehicles. In fact so much money is being funnelled into these things that companies are wanting to make sure that they get a return for their investment.
Yes, a lot has changed since the days where the local police officer could go and arrest the dodgy business man who is willing to kill to make sure his product gets to market. It seems these days its the dodgy businessmen who are calling the shots, and we are being dumped with stuff that we don’t want. Well, only to an extent – we are so lazy that we will literally burn the world to the ground just so that we can get AI to tell us what to wear today, and whether a pair of sunglasses looks good on us.
December 6, 2024
If it's not the shortest Target novelisation, Planet of Giants is surely in the running - even WITH Terrence Dicks restoring scenes from when this three-parter was a four-parter (that poor cat). Uncle Terry is known for knocking these out at record speeds, and he does this by sticking to the episodes as aired, or at least as scripted. This one... could have done with embellishments (like Nigel Robinson's The Edge of Destruction), perhaps Ian fighting with a bug or the cat not simply leaving after its cliffhanger. Maybe the return trip through the garden could have been added. That said, the full-sized action feels more relevant and interesting in Dicks' hands, probably because we get more psychology out of the characters. The policeman has a better reason to check out the cabin, and so on. The prose is good, but it never tries to improve on an, at-best, middling serial.
January 8, 2023
Doctor Who : Planet of the Giants (1990) by Terrance Dicks is the novelisation of the first serial of the second season of Doctor Who. The companions are Susan, Barbara and Ian. The TV serial was screened in 1964.
This serial uses the miniaturisation idea that stories from Gulliver’s Travels onwards would use. It must have been fun to watch on TV. The Doctor and crew appear in a garden where a new insecticide is being prepared. This new insecticide is too powerful however and will kill everything. So, combining tiny people with Silent Spring which was published in 1962 is what drives this story.
Planet of the Giants would have worked better on TV. It’s a surprising mish-mash of ideas though.
This serial uses the miniaturisation idea that stories from Gulliver’s Travels onwards would use. It must have been fun to watch on TV. The Doctor and crew appear in a garden where a new insecticide is being prepared. This new insecticide is too powerful however and will kill everything. So, combining tiny people with Silent Spring which was published in 1962 is what drives this story.
Planet of the Giants would have worked better on TV. It’s a surprising mish-mash of ideas though.
November 13, 2025
‘Doctor Who: Planets Of The Giants’ by Terrance Dicks was written in 1990 and is the novelisation of the 1st Doctor Who television serial from the 2nd Series of Doctor Who featuring William Hartnell as Doctor Who.
This book is now out of print so I listened to the audiobook which was narrated by Carol Ann Ford who played the role of Doctor Who’s granddaughter (Susan) in Doctor Who. The audiobook also contains the companions (Ian and Barbara)
This is a good listen to, on audiobooks it is just over two hours long. The story is really good and stays really faithful to the television series. A good read for a Doctor who fan.
This book is now out of print so I listened to the audiobook which was narrated by Carol Ann Ford who played the role of Doctor Who’s granddaughter (Susan) in Doctor Who. The audiobook also contains the companions (Ian and Barbara)
This is a good listen to, on audiobooks it is just over two hours long. The story is really good and stays really faithful to the television series. A good read for a Doctor who fan.
September 11, 2022
After a couple weeks without reading anything, I decided to choose a short, easy book to slowly get myself back into the habit. Boy, did I choose the right book! Planet of Giants is a criminally underrated Doctor Who story, my personal favourite Hartnell. This book was a recent addition to my Target collection and, seeing as I enjoyed the TV story so much, I decided to read it. This book does not let the TV story down, that's for certain. This was a fun, gripping read all the way through, a perfect adaptation of a perfect story. 10/10 I recommend.
January 19, 2021
Somewhere between a 3 and a 4 for me. An interesting idea in respect to what the Doctor and the Companions face here, making for quite a different story and different challenges. It does seem quite a short, contained story, the novel at least making it feel shorter than Edge of Destruction, even though latter had less episodes on TV than Planet of the Giants.
But outside of that, was a fun story reasonably quickly wrapped up.
But outside of that, was a fun story reasonably quickly wrapped up.
October 4, 2021
A short but very enjoyable Doctor Who adventure, mixing sci-fi and mystery/thriller elements most effectively. Dicks' writing was terrific, really drawing me into the story.
The presence of the First Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan helped me to enjoy the book even more as they are one of my favourite TARDIS team. I would highly recommend to Who fans who have some knowledge of the early days of the series.
The presence of the First Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan helped me to enjoy the book even more as they are one of my favourite TARDIS team. I would highly recommend to Who fans who have some knowledge of the early days of the series.
February 5, 2017
Not the best book in the series. In fact, the Doctor and his companions barely do anything to move the plot. It would have gone about the same if they weren't there. I'm reading the books to find out about all the old episodes of the Doctor, so it was a bonus that it was a quick read and I was able to get through it quickly.
May 29, 2018
Although a little disappointing in it's brevity compared to other Who novelizations it is a decent wee book. For me personally the TV story on which it was based was pretty slow moving anyway so I did appreciate that it was sped-up though perhaps a little too much. Uncle Terrance on autopilot (à la Wheel in Space) but even Uncle Terrance on autopilot is still eminently readable and uncluttered.
June 12, 2022
pdf - 84 pages
Without the visual fun of giant props this might have been a dreary version of a story that the production team obviously felt a bit lightweight, editing the final two episodes together to make a three part story. It reads well (one of Dicks' better efforts, I feel) - and is a timely commentary on pesticide risks (Silent Spring was published in 1962).
Without the visual fun of giant props this might have been a dreary version of a story that the production team obviously felt a bit lightweight, editing the final two episodes together to make a three part story. It reads well (one of Dicks' better efforts, I feel) - and is a timely commentary on pesticide risks (Silent Spring was published in 1962).
September 25, 2023
My 60th anniversary tour continues. However, I remembered not caring for this one. It’s rather boring to me both the episodes and the book. However the book is blessedly short, and I appreciate it for what it is. Next up, Target #17: The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
January 15, 2025
I really enjoyed the whole concept of the Tardis crew shrinking and having to deal with being smaller than ants. I've never seen this episode before but now I really want to as it sounds like a lot of fun.
August 26, 2020
Very quickly read, the first few pages are about the previous stories and my only gripe is that they kept describing the police officer with his full title.
December 25, 2020
Quite a slim throwaway one. Possibly OK as a starter reader with a bit of ecology interest or to imagine what it might have looked like delivered visually with some early 60s TV special fx.
April 19, 2021
Competent novelisation of a middling story - definitely an improvement on the last Dicks novelisation I read, and I suspect that has something to do with a lighter workload for these in 1990.
March 26, 2023
More of a novella than a novel, but a pretty faithful and straightforward adaptation of the three-part adventure.
November 13, 2023
It was a great science fiction story with a murder mystery, surprised they haven’t had the Doctor shrunk down more often, great book and Me Forester is a good villain
May 17, 2024
This has got to be one of the shortest Targets. I read the entire book in about the same time as it takes to watch the TV version. There's only 112 pages and when I opened the book I was suprised by how large the text font was as well.
Its difficult to know if this is a good book or if it's my recollections of the TV episodes that make it work. The broadcast version is very visual with lots of oversized props. I enjoyed the book with its descriptions of the giant matches and the plug chain in the sink, and all the other big things. But is this because they were good descriptions or because I've seen the TV version countless times?
The switchboard operator and police constable get some extra details in the book that isn't in the broadcast version, but that's the only difference between the two versions.
Its difficult to know if this is a good book or if it's my recollections of the TV episodes that make it work. The broadcast version is very visual with lots of oversized props. I enjoyed the book with its descriptions of the giant matches and the plug chain in the sink, and all the other big things. But is this because they were good descriptions or because I've seen the TV version countless times?
The switchboard operator and police constable get some extra details in the book that isn't in the broadcast version, but that's the only difference between the two versions.
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April 8, 2009http://nhw.livejournal.com/1019617.html[return][return]I m slightly surprised to report that Doctor Who - Planet of Giants is not bad at all, perhaps because it had only three episodes on TV and therefore Dicks has had to pad rather than summarise; and his own powers of invention, once brought to bear, are helpful. We do miss out on the broadcast story s key selling point, the visual special effects of the Doctor and company miniaturised to an inch in height, but the plot as a whole does hang together, though fans of Barbara will (as usual) complain that Dicks doesn t do her character much justice. And once again, as with Doctor Who and an Unearthly Child, Dicks finishes by telling us that the Daleks are out there waiting to start the next adventure which is a bit tedious second time round..
April 6, 2021
Decent little time waster.
The Hartnell years are fun, because it was building the Doctor Who mythology, so they tried all kinds of stories, as the writers were finding their way and odd stories like this would pop up occasionally.
A fault in the Tardis lands our heroes on Earth 1963, after many tries, except its shrunk down to a couple inches tall.
Dealing with an english law, which is now a forbidding jungle, the time travelers realize that there's more going on than their own predicament.
Would have been nice if Dicks had fleshed this out a little more. It's a light story and results in a thin book.
The Hartnell years are fun, because it was building the Doctor Who mythology, so they tried all kinds of stories, as the writers were finding their way and odd stories like this would pop up occasionally.
A fault in the Tardis lands our heroes on Earth 1963, after many tries, except its shrunk down to a couple inches tall.
Dealing with an english law, which is now a forbidding jungle, the time travelers realize that there's more going on than their own predicament.
Would have been nice if Dicks had fleshed this out a little more. It's a light story and results in a thin book.
January 28, 2011
This story could be called The Doctor meets Silent Spring. The Doctor and his companions spend an afternoon in an English Country Garden, but in true Doctor Who fashion, they've been shrunk to an inch high, there's a massive moggy, and a man drunk with the dream of avarice who fails to listen to reason when confronted about his company's new insecticide which will wreak ecological havoc upon the world, and at an inch high, The Doctor can do little to prevent it ... or can he?
February 9, 2019
The quickest read for a Doctor Who book so far. Not bad, for what feels like just a brief interlude. The plot was interesting, but not too exciting. The writing was simple, with little descriptions of the characters or setting. The most to build upon the characters was brief lines to the previous stories.
Coming off a BBC Past Doctor story and the next story is another Past Doctor story, this was just a short side step. However, it is still better written that the Keys of Marinus. Pretty much standard fare from a Target book. It is enough to get the feel of the episode it was based on.
Coming off a BBC Past Doctor story and the next story is another Past Doctor story, this was just a short side step. However, it is still better written that the Keys of Marinus. Pretty much standard fare from a Target book. It is enough to get the feel of the episode it was based on.
December 7, 2016
I'm afraid this is a rather disappointing effort: the chance to expand upon a small 3-part TV story squandered in favour of a quick & disposable adaptation. I'm also unhappy with some of the prickly nature of the TARDIS crew in the opening chapters, especially the handling of Barbara's character -- it's all rather contrary to the close nature of the time travelers by the start of the second season. This could have been so much more; it's by far Terrance Dicks' most disappointing effort since his novelization of "Kinda".
April 29, 2009
A very very quick read; I read 75% of this book while waiting on an oil change. But for an adaptation of what was in essence 45 to 50 minutes of television, I wouldn't have expected more. It is a story that I've never actually seen, so it was nice to read this adaptation.
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