PLOTLINE - EXTRACT

'Look, Brigadier! It's growing!' screamed Sarah. The Brigadier stared in amazement as the Robot began to grow...and grow...swelling to the size of a giant! Slowly the metal colossus, casting its enormous shadow upon the surrounding trees and buildings, began to stride towards the Brigadier. A giant metal hand reached down to grasp him...Can Doctor Who defeat the evil forces controlling the Robot before they execute their plans to blackmail - or destroy - the world?

COMMENT - SPOILERS AHEAD - PENDING SUBMISSION

This unabridged reading of Tom's debut story by the man himself should be a strong seller for two reasons: (a) it's Tom reading his first Who story (and so a key moment in the history of the renaissance of the show) and (b) it's a damn sight better in prose form than it was on the telly because the low budget, despite the drag factor of Terrance Dicks adapting his own mediocre script, is not a problem. Dicks is not a bad writer from a commercial standpoint because he can crank out literate pages on time; but from a creative standpoint, he is embarrassingly ordinary.

The plot for ROBOT (re-titled THE GIANT ROBOT for the novelisation, presumably to snag the attention of a young audience) is a collection of sci-fi standards that still astound when one considers that this was the first show in a brand new season with a brand new Doctor.

Forget the telly version: the audio edition is a much more agreeable experience (it's not good , though; just less bad ). It's just you the listener and Tom hamming it up; and as a result it's great stuff. You will miss the contributions of Ian Marter, Elizabeth Sladen and Nick Courtney but then the robot in this version can be built in the minds eye as an effective threat (with working hands and non-comedy feet - remember those awful, clunky 'metal' boots and the limp wristed pincers waggling away?).

The mad-but-well-meaning scientist and the robot struggling to reconcile its lethal instructions with its prime directives (Dicks actually uses this phrase) so that it goes batty are so familiar that they could only work as characters (rather than mere plot devices) in the hands of an original thinker with a satirical edge to their writing like Robert Holmes. And using the phrase "disintegrator gun" without tongue wedged in cheek takes us into sci-fi pulps territory.

CLASSIC WHO has a history of great pastiche but it takes serious literary skill to ensure that the material works in its own right . And the news that the mad scientist built his robot out of "living metal" while creating a virus that attacks metal is one plot device too many for me.

Inevitably, there are a few classic moments and quotables. We get to hear Tom say for the very first time , "Cheer up! Have a jelly baby". We get to enjoy the Doctor in satirical mode, given his reaction to the Brigadier's news that the launch codes for the worlds nuclear arsenal(s) are stored in the UK: "The rest are all foreigners!" Dicks really lets himself go with the line, "The thought of Miss Winters in handcuffs gave Sarah considerable pleasure".

Indeed, Dicks repeated references to the robots' "fingers" and "thumb(s)" is either just sloppy (the robot had pincer grips for hands) or a satirical jab at the failure of the robot prop. The Doctors reaction to a hole in the ground: "There seems to be a large rat about, Brigadier!" And at one point, the Doctor uses his hat to blind the robot (and we will definitely see him do this again!). But Dicks is no ones' idea of an innovator. When the Doctor jumps out of bed, he does so "like a jack-in-the-box".

A weak story saved by the Olympian presence of Tom. Hence the rating.