| THE NIGHTMARE FAIR by Graham Williams |
| Story ? Synopsis: The Doctor and Peri arrive in Blackpool by chance, and he takes the opportunity to go to a fairground. But he receives a telepathic call, and tracks it down to an arcade. He and Peri get split up, and he meets his abductor - the Mandarin. Peri trudges through a simulated mine, avoiding the dangers of robot miners. Eventually she joins the Doctor in captivity, then he is taken away to face the Mandarin's Great Game - an arcade machine. He plays it, eventually topping the Mandarin's own High Score, and realises the Mandarin comes from a different universe. When the monster from the machine comes to life, the Doctor has a device built to confuse the Mandarin, and places him in a permanent trap powered by his own mind. He and Peri are then free to return to the fairground. |
| Review:- In 1985, Doctor Who was taken off the air, for myriad reasons. Initial planning for Season 23 went to the wall, but those planned stories eventually turned up as novelisations. This would have been the season-opener from JNT's predecessor as producer, Graham Williams, and ties in a trip to Blackpool with the return of The Celestial Toymaker, from the story of the same name. Blackpool is as good a place as any for a deadly fairground, as some of its residents would tell you, and the Toymaker (renamed the Mandarin for some reason) has turned to arcade games. This has the unfortunate effect of dating this story very badly. Though the subsequent decade saw the rise of domestic computer games and the Internet, the use of arcade thrills seems rather quaint in retrospect. In fact, the theme park section is more timeless, given the persistence of these places to provide excitement. The Doctor starts off making the most of his unplanned trip to Blackpool (which is odd, as legend has it that he would have known full well he was going there at the end of Revelation Of The Daleks), before he starts chasing a voice. Before long, he and Peri have reached what I assume is the Space Invader ride that Colin Baker actually opened in person around the time (unless that was a coincidence), and split up. Peri is then saddled, sorry teamed, with the luckless Scouser Kevin, who has lost a friend at the hands of the Mandarin, and had his reports to the police ignored. He makes for a solid if dull companion, and it's perhaps little wonder that when he is replaced, Peri doesn't notice. As for Peri herself, she gets very little of consequence to do, except traipse around and be threatened by robot miners. As you do. Her role in the conclusion is fairly sparse, too. The conclusion pits the Doctor against the Mandarin, as most readers will have been expecting since about page 1. Disappointingly it's just a simple shoot-em-up for the Doctor, which is rather flat on the printed page. On screen, it may have been exciting, and arguably rather gory, but it's soporific here. Then he thwarts the Mandarin's revenge via the use of technical wizardry, leaving him in a lifelong trap. Which makes the whole "dark Doctor" plot that took place for real a couple of Seasons later look a bit old hat. There's probably no reason not to treat this and the other stories in this abandoned season as proto-Missing Adventures. It's quite a simple story, and at least Blackpool does well out of it. Once known for one of the few significant Dr Who Exhibitions around England (as well as the Tower, the Illuminations, the Golden Mile and so on, obviously), the seaside town's connections with the series were restarted in 2005 when a new Exhibition opened (I've been, it was quite good). This book, though, is long forgotten. |
| Disclaimer: I have a copy. |