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Doctor Who Target Books (Numerical Order) #Unnumbered
Doctor Who: Slipback
The TARDIS materialises on board the Vipod Mor, a galactic survey ship captained by the repulsive Orlous Moston Slarn.
Things are not going too well on board the spacecraft: a mysterious killer stalks the ship's infrastructure; a junior officer, whose body is four years older than his brain, commands its bridge; the craft's computer seems to be developing its own distinctive personality; and Slarn threatens to vent his vindictive anger on his crew.
Soon the Doctor and Peri stumble upon a shocking secret, a secret upon which depends the fate of the entire Universe...
The novelisation of the Radio 4 Doctor Who story.
Things are not going too well on board the spacecraft: a mysterious killer stalks the ship's infrastructure; a junior officer, whose body is four years older than his brain, commands its bridge; the craft's computer seems to be developing its own distinctive personality; and Slarn threatens to vent his vindictive anger on his crew.
Soon the Doctor and Peri stumble upon a shocking secret, a secret upon which depends the fate of the entire Universe...
The novelisation of the Radio 4 Doctor Who story.
144 pages, Hardcover
First published August 14, 1986
70 people want to read
About the author
Eric Saward
24 books5 followersEric Saward worked as a writer and later script editor for Doctor Who during the 1980s.
Saward had a particular fondness for the Cybermen. He wrote stories with good action throughout them and stories that connected the Doctor to important events in Earth's history.
He also wrote the short story Birth of a Renegade and the radio play Slipback.
He served as script editor from Time-Flight, the last episode of season 19, to the penultimate episode of season 23 (The Ultimate Foe episode 1). He resigned his position due to a disagreement with producer John Nathan-Turner over the storyline (and particularly the ending) of episode 2 of The Ultimate Foe. Afterwards, he gave a notably scathing interview to Starburst magazine over his falling out with Nathan-Turner, and he became vocal in his criticism of Colin Baker's appointment as the Sixth Doctor.
Target Books failed to secure an agreement that would have seen Saward's two Daleks serials novelised either by Saward himself or by others, with Saward only novelising both of his Dalek stories in 2019. The 1989 publication of Saward's adaptation of Attack of the Cybermen actually post-dated his falling out with the Doctor Who production team by several years. His favourite snack is a chocolate hobnob
Saward had a particular fondness for the Cybermen. He wrote stories with good action throughout them and stories that connected the Doctor to important events in Earth's history.
He also wrote the short story Birth of a Renegade and the radio play Slipback.
He served as script editor from Time-Flight, the last episode of season 19, to the penultimate episode of season 23 (The Ultimate Foe episode 1). He resigned his position due to a disagreement with producer John Nathan-Turner over the storyline (and particularly the ending) of episode 2 of The Ultimate Foe. Afterwards, he gave a notably scathing interview to Starburst magazine over his falling out with Nathan-Turner, and he became vocal in his criticism of Colin Baker's appointment as the Sixth Doctor.
Target Books failed to secure an agreement that would have seen Saward's two Daleks serials novelised either by Saward himself or by others, with Saward only novelising both of his Dalek stories in 2019. The 1989 publication of Saward's adaptation of Attack of the Cybermen actually post-dated his falling out with the Doctor Who production team by several years. His favourite snack is a chocolate hobnob
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
May 28, 2015
Now you can see why Doctor Who was cancelled. Absolute trash, a poorly acted radio play and an even worse book. Now lets see how the monkeys do when they have finished the Shakespeare experiment....... Probably ten times better methinks.
July 2, 2023
Saward wrote a number of very good serials during the classic Doctor Who period, but this story falls short of his work on the television series. The original radio drama is very confusing and feels incomplete. The novelization fills in a lot of back story and adds a coherency originally absent, but there are still a few holes left unpatched. The first half of the book is very obviously an imitation of Douglas Adams' writing style, and although anyone familiar with the original Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series will undoubtedly hear Peter Jones reading these chapters in their minds, Saward simply isn't the sharp wit Adams was.
Saward's time as a writer and script editor for the television series was marred by controversy for his inclusion of graphic violence, which he has defended as a criticism of real world violence. In one scene of this book (I don't recall if it is included in the radio play), he has a policeman slapping the Doctor's companion Peri. It is completely unnecessary to plot or characterization, and rather than a critique of violence it just comes across as misogynistic. So while this is not the best Doctor Who story, despite its shortcomings it is still quite a good Doctor Who story.
Saward's time as a writer and script editor for the television series was marred by controversy for his inclusion of graphic violence, which he has defended as a criticism of real world violence. In one scene of this book (I don't recall if it is included in the radio play), he has a policeman slapping the Doctor's companion Peri. It is completely unnecessary to plot or characterization, and rather than a critique of violence it just comes across as misogynistic. So while this is not the best Doctor Who story, despite its shortcomings it is still quite a good Doctor Who story.
February 19, 2025
A Doctor Who story trying desperately to be absolutely anything else. Taking every possible opportunity to move away from the story and go on a tangent explaining things that have little to no relevance beyond adding some negligible amounts of flavour and background to what’s happening. Eric Saward desperately wants to evoke the writing styles of much better sci-fi authors by writing conversationally and whimsically but when you have nothing interesting to say, that simply doesn’t work.
March 28, 2023
I probably have a better view of Slipback's novelization than most people on Goodreads. Though Saward definetly riffs on Douglas Adams for his novelizations he does do a passable job of recreating Saward's style. The problem with Slipback is that it is rather confusing. The novelization ends with a loose end. Just like this review which ends right before I can actually describe the book!
December 12, 2021
Very unpleasant. Eric Saward trying and failing to imitate Douglas Adams but with all the things that made his era of the show bad. Total waste of time, if it had been any longer I wouldn't have bothered finishing it.
There is one scene where the Doctor accidentally gets completely trashed drunk in a bar and Peri has to carry him back to the TARDIS which I thought was funny. You can't do that in a BBC licensed book nowadays!
There is one scene where the Doctor accidentally gets completely trashed drunk in a bar and Peri has to carry him back to the TARDIS which I thought was funny. You can't do that in a BBC licensed book nowadays!
February 22, 2020
Eric Saward's novelization of his radio script for Doctor 6 and Peri corrects many of the problems in the radio version, but adds a few new ones. The original is almost universally regarded as awful, mainly because it seemed to be written entirely as a sendup without any regard for story sense. Here, Saward uses the opportunity of exposition inherent in the novel format to fill in many gaps. Saward's exposition style, as shown in his other novelizations, can best be described as imitation Douglas Adams. Sometimes it works. There are some genuinely funny passages. Sometimes it doesn't. On the whole, it makes the novel a more enjoyable read than the radio version is a listen. Still, there is not much here that makes sense in terms of unified plot. It has various characters, but their motivations and presence in the story do not match up with each other. For instance, the character of Shellingborne Grant, who would seemingly connect all the various pieces, being the only character to interact with all the other major characters, does not bring together the various plot elements. That he is an art thief serves only to justify the presence of the two policemen, who themselves do not interact with either the captain or the computer, and thus have no relationship to the central problem of the plot. Similarly, large plot holes are left unfilled. How does the computer know a) what a Time Lord is, b) where one can be found, and c) how to project its thoughts into the mind of Time Lord inside a TARDIS mid-flight? Not one of these questions is answered in either version. A problem unique to Saward's novel version is that the brief on the Target novelizations was to be brief. Therefore, Saward gets about 3/4 of the way through the plot of the radio version and realized that he has just about reached the word limit Target specified, and so in the last 15 pages he condenses large amounts of dialog and plot into clumsy 2-3 sentence exposition. In sum, the novel is more entertaining than the original, funny in places, but ultimately unsatisfying.
September 7, 2021
I'm sad to say that this book did not live up to my expectations. Saward's novelization of The Twin Dilemma was absolutely fantastic and I had hoped this would be as well, redeeming another story widely hated by the Doctor Who Fandom, but that is sadly not the case here.
First, the Doctor doesn't appear for the first 50 pages. Instead, Saward fills this with backstop and social commentary. Unfortunately, this was the best part of the book. I tremendously enjoyed the early chapters and found myself laughing and thinking that this was one of the best Doctor Who books I read. Once the Doctor comes in however, things start to fall apart.
The Doctor is first presented to us drunk and then hungover, the exact opposite of what we expect our heroes to be, and everything that the Doctor was not in the original series. It doesn't feel like the Doctor at all because the Doctor has virtually never been hungover in a story and it isn't presented the best. While this left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, I'm afraid the rest of the book was worse.
There are several lines that rubbed me the wrong way, most notably when a joke is made about a policeman molesting a girl while searching her for illicit materials. It felt like Saward was trying too hard to be funny with the police officers and in doing so, they weren't funny. This seems to be a consistent problem throughout the latter half of the book.
Finally, I felt like the ending was extremely rushed. Characters disappeared from the plot with no explanation and plot lines were left loose, leaving it with an unsatisfactory ending that is all too common in the Target range.
Overall, while I enjoyed the beginning of the story, this was not my favorite Doctor Who story but I am glad I read it since it was another adventure of one of my favorite Doctor's that I may not have otherwise gotten a chance to see.
First, the Doctor doesn't appear for the first 50 pages. Instead, Saward fills this with backstop and social commentary. Unfortunately, this was the best part of the book. I tremendously enjoyed the early chapters and found myself laughing and thinking that this was one of the best Doctor Who books I read. Once the Doctor comes in however, things start to fall apart.
The Doctor is first presented to us drunk and then hungover, the exact opposite of what we expect our heroes to be, and everything that the Doctor was not in the original series. It doesn't feel like the Doctor at all because the Doctor has virtually never been hungover in a story and it isn't presented the best. While this left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, I'm afraid the rest of the book was worse.
There are several lines that rubbed me the wrong way, most notably when a joke is made about a policeman molesting a girl while searching her for illicit materials. It felt like Saward was trying too hard to be funny with the police officers and in doing so, they weren't funny. This seems to be a consistent problem throughout the latter half of the book.
Finally, I felt like the ending was extremely rushed. Characters disappeared from the plot with no explanation and plot lines were left loose, leaving it with an unsatisfactory ending that is all too common in the Target range.
Overall, while I enjoyed the beginning of the story, this was not my favorite Doctor Who story but I am glad I read it since it was another adventure of one of my favorite Doctor's that I may not have otherwise gotten a chance to see.
September 8, 2019
Rating between 2 and 2.5
Generally due to the simplified rating system on Goodreads I only rate books 2 stars if it took several attempts to finish them and I still thought they were below average.
In this case i didn't find the adaptation of the radio drama difficult to read it was simply not very good. It is very surprising that this was written by the script editor of the show at the time, and is so poor even when compared to the quality of the tv shows written for the 6th doctor. although several decades since i last heard the radio drama, i would guess that the only reason for listening would be colin baker and nicola bryant giving their usual top quality performances in the lead roles.
the writing style was trying to mix doctor who + science fiction + humor and for me at least missed in all areas. the 6th doctor did not behave like the character seen in the tv shows, peri might as well have been absent and a single story npc used instead (although perhaps contracts meant she had to be used). the appearance of another renegade time lord was both cliched and somehow pointless at the same time. the climax with the ship heading back through time to a certain event didn't work and must have made me think upon first listen/read (as it did this time) that it is at least the 3rd time the doctor has been heading there accidentally.
overall just a very poor adaptation of the writers own radio drama.
difficult to recommend this to any doctor who fan really unless they wish to complete their collection of original target novels.
Generally due to the simplified rating system on Goodreads I only rate books 2 stars if it took several attempts to finish them and I still thought they were below average.
In this case i didn't find the adaptation of the radio drama difficult to read it was simply not very good. It is very surprising that this was written by the script editor of the show at the time, and is so poor even when compared to the quality of the tv shows written for the 6th doctor. although several decades since i last heard the radio drama, i would guess that the only reason for listening would be colin baker and nicola bryant giving their usual top quality performances in the lead roles.
the writing style was trying to mix doctor who + science fiction + humor and for me at least missed in all areas. the 6th doctor did not behave like the character seen in the tv shows, peri might as well have been absent and a single story npc used instead (although perhaps contracts meant she had to be used). the appearance of another renegade time lord was both cliched and somehow pointless at the same time. the climax with the ship heading back through time to a certain event didn't work and must have made me think upon first listen/read (as it did this time) that it is at least the 3rd time the doctor has been heading there accidentally.
overall just a very poor adaptation of the writers own radio drama.
difficult to recommend this to any doctor who fan really unless they wish to complete their collection of original target novels.
May 20, 2012
Slipback is the novelisation of the pirate radio 4 broadcast that was made during the hiatus between series 22 and 23. The radio story itself was very much a run around set on board the spaceship Vipod Mor with not a great deal of action if we are being honest.
This novelisation by the original plays author Eric Saward works I think a whole lot better as the plot is given time to develop in the novel, and the characters are given more time to breathe and also have back stories which makes them a bit more interesting than they were in the original story but that isn’t really saying much when you consider the source material.
The book is written in a similar style to that of Douglas Adams but more often than not this does fall a bit flat as a lot of it just isn’t as funny as Saward thinks that it is but at least it does make an attempt to be funny and add a bit of colour and depth to the original story which wasn’t really that much cop to begin with, and so is much better than the original story but is not a classic by any means and is not one that I would recommend that you rush out to read.
This novelisation by the original plays author Eric Saward works I think a whole lot better as the plot is given time to develop in the novel, and the characters are given more time to breathe and also have back stories which makes them a bit more interesting than they were in the original story but that isn’t really saying much when you consider the source material.
The book is written in a similar style to that of Douglas Adams but more often than not this does fall a bit flat as a lot of it just isn’t as funny as Saward thinks that it is but at least it does make an attempt to be funny and add a bit of colour and depth to the original story which wasn’t really that much cop to begin with, and so is much better than the original story but is not a classic by any means and is not one that I would recommend that you rush out to read.
April 22, 2020
I would give this an extra half-star if I could, but I just can't bring myself to give it 3. This book was hard-going as a pre-bedtime read. I'd lose the plot easily, and then the words would blur...
The beginning started off (as many other reviews have said) in an almost Douglas Adams sort of style, but it seemed to have very little to do with the rest of the book. I mentioned that the plot was a bit confusing at times, and having 3 or more characters with names starting with "S" for me makes them interchangeable. Still, there were good moments and some interesting characters. Could be better but not completely without merit.
The beginning started off (as many other reviews have said) in an almost Douglas Adams sort of style, but it seemed to have very little to do with the rest of the book. I mentioned that the plot was a bit confusing at times, and having 3 or more characters with names starting with "S" for me makes them interchangeable. Still, there were good moments and some interesting characters. Could be better but not completely without merit.
April 17, 2016
Nobody could claim that Eric Saward was an insightful force behind Doctor Who.
And nobody could read Slipback and find it original or funny or unique.
It's a Douglas Adams knock-off (which is super hypocritical considering how much Saward despised the Williams/Adams era of DW).
BUT it's still an interesting read.
So, to recap:
- Saward is a hack.
- British sci-fi nerds will always pray at the alter of Douglas Adams.
-Slipback is a hypocritical Adams rip-off.
- It's not terrible.
And nobody could read Slipback and find it original or funny or unique.
It's a Douglas Adams knock-off (which is super hypocritical considering how much Saward despised the Williams/Adams era of DW).
BUT it's still an interesting read.
So, to recap:
- Saward is a hack.
- British sci-fi nerds will always pray at the alter of Douglas Adams.
-Slipback is a hypocritical Adams rip-off.
- It's not terrible.
February 11, 2012
The radio play itself is fluffy fun...but the novelization deserves FAR more credit than it gets in fan circles. Fandom rags on Mr. Saward's Douglas-Adams-esque writing, yet seems to readily forgive the same for other "Doctor Who" writers such as Gareth Roberts and Jonathan Morris. Frankly, this quick, sweet & witty read is far more enjoyable than the not-as-good-as-it-thinks-it-is "Festival of Death". Count me an Eric Saward fan any day.
July 4, 2023
Happy to fill in a hole in my collection, but this is not a good story.
Saward wants to make Doctor Who edgy, but at the same time, he wants to be Douglas Adams so badly and the two impulses never mesh.
Saward wants to make Doctor Who edgy, but at the same time, he wants to be Douglas Adams so badly and the two impulses never mesh.
July 8, 2019
This was one of those books I finished for the principle of it. I found myself thinking “I can’t stop now, I’ve come this far.” Experience has taught me that this is never a good reason to stick with a book you’re not enthusiastic about.
June 4, 2013
Quite a run of the mill SF story that is livened up by some very witty writing which reminds the reader of a poor man's Douglas Adams
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March 12, 2015Poor - don't bother with this, even if you are the most rabid Who fan!
March 13, 2017
Poor Eric so clearly wanted to exercise his inner Douglas Adams, but what came out was a mess.
September 1, 2025
Fun and funny. Does a good job expanding on the radio drama on which it's based.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews