Reading Doctor Who

When I was a kid, I once spent an afternoon reading a book under an umbrella, alongside a pond. It was a slim volume, An Unearthly Child, a novelization of the very first Doctor Who story. The author was Terrance Dicks. The surroundings were lush and green. The pond was still. It made for a pleasant afternoon.

Mom and I had traveled to visit an old college friend of hers. I forget where we went exactly, or who the friend was. What sticks in the memory is that she lived in a house by a pond. As the two adults began to talk in earnest, catching-up on life and what not, I had no desire to listen to them talk. The book mom had recently purchased for me was calling my name. A huge fan of the Doctor Who television program, I'd never seen the original first few episodes, and this book was the closest I had to experiencing it.

Soon, I voiced my desire to exit the presence of the adults. Mom's friend was very nice. She suggested the pond area as a reading ground. It struck me as odd, but I was also curious. She said it had been raining earlier, and could possibly rain again, so she provided me with a towel to sit upon, and an umbrella to keep-off any potential rain drops. With that, I made my way the 30-or-so feet to the gently sloping bank, and there I sat for the entire afternoon, voraciously reading about the Doctor and his companions and their adventures.

There was another occasion, this time when mom and I went to the local mall, and we stopped at the Waldenbooks there, as we often did, and she got me another Doctor Who novelization, The Destiny of the Daleks. Barely-crossing the 100-page threshold, it was an even slimmer volume than An Unearthly Child. With a new Doctor Who book in hand, and food from the mall’s Hardee's in my belly, I let it be known to mom (who had more shopping to do) that I would be in the general seating area in the middle of the mall, reading my book. She nodded her approval, and left me to my devices. By the time she caught-up with me later and it was time to go, I'd finished the book -- devoured it, really. Another wonderful exploit of the time traveler and his crew.

Both of the aforementioned novelizations were written by Terrance Dicks. He had a long literary and television career, though I will always know him best from his association with Doctor Who. He served as script editor for the program during its heyday in the 1970s. Doctor Who was known for novelizing many of its episodes, and Dicks wrote many of those novels. Back then, with television not being as immediate as it is today, it was sometimes the only way to experience some of the stories.

While other authors wrote novelizations of Who episodes, Terrance (or 'Uncle Tewwance,' as he was affectionately known by fans) was the best at it. He wrote simply, though not unintelligently so. He was, to my estimation, the perfect person to write book versions of a children's science fiction show. Some were also good at it. John Lucarotti's novelization of the Doctor Who story Marco Polo was a pleasant read. I found Donald Cotton's novelization of The Myth Makers to be dense and impenetrable. But with Terrance, you were always in for a treat. I wasn't surprised to learn recently that he'd also written several children's novels.

Collecting the Doctor Who books seemed like a big part of my 1980s upbringing. I'd get them wherever they could be found, often along with my friend Xian, where we'd procure them whenever his dad would take us over to the old Illini Union Bookstore. An entire revolving shelf there was devoted to Doctor Who novelizations. For geeky kids like Xian and I, it was nirvana. Truth be told, he probably read more of them than I did. Regardless, I still have them all (the ones I got), in a bookcase upstairs.

Terrance Dicks died last month. While death at age 84 isn't necessarily unexpected, it nevertheless made me a little sad. I enjoyed watching him being interviewed for the special features section of the  Doctor Who DVD releases. There he was, amiably chatting away about his time on the program. He was a link to my childhood, most certainly a special part of my early, unattended reading days. And now he's gone. I didn't know him, but I will miss him. At least I still have his stories.