Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

For a certain period of time, it seemed that you could not watch Doctor Who on a Saturday evening, the resolute fan favourite Tom Baker at the helm and controls of the Tardis, without the enormity of having the power of an android on screen, a servant, a slave, an all-powerful machine that would terrorise the thoughts and imagination of younger viewers and seasoned viewers alike.

Perhaps that it was that they looked human, that they were able to pass as human, acted human, but with the ability to be so much more than ourselves; all it took was the right programming and the direction to take over our lives. This robophobia could also be seen as a nudge to the viewer that they were experiencing an aggression fuelled by the media at the time, and by certain distasteful fascist types, an unspeakable fear of all things foreign.

Not every time, but sometimes just the knowledge that underneath the apparent skin of the once thought human, one that was circuits and lights, a mechanic logical brain instead a mind that could feel compassion and pain, as well as joy, fear, and the untidy emotions of despair, unhappiness, rage. It is perhaps quite natural to misjudge the android intention, and yet in the Target novelisation, (for a second time) of David Fisher’s The Androids Of Tara is a direct opposition to the drama of The Android Invasion, a damning indictment in which true fear, true robophobia could be seen equalling that of the smash hit film West World.

The Androids Of Tara could be seen as a gentle read, in Doctor Who parlance anyway, it holds a softness that the reader is pulled into, and even longing for with its generous sense of daring do sword play and adventurism. Underneath the mask of respectable veneer though a darkness takes shape, the calm pleasure hides a waking, exhale of breath that comes from not knowing if you have been replaced, that the possibility is that you would never know, never truly fathom if you are human, or are you an android.

David Fisher’s adaption of his own televised story is one of pleasure, it doesn’t have the creeping drama associated with other novels adapted from the BBC broadcasts, but it does give the late, and much missed Mary Tamm another outing as fellow time lord Romana, even if it is in novel form. 

A stirring, adventurous tale, one that plays well with the ideas and rules of medieval Europe and the combination of modern technology in the wrong hands. The Androids Of Tara is one for the diehards to add to their collection, and new readers to engage with The Doctor in a contented entertaining role.

Ian D. Hall