Survival (novelisation)

Ace had wanted her homecoming to be spectacular. She had imagined the amazed greetings of her old friends, the gasps of surprise as she recounted her time-travelling adventures.

But Perivale on a summer Sunday seems the least lively place in the universe. The members of Ace's old gang have gone away — disappeared.

The Doctor has other things on his mind. What is killing the domestic pets of Perivale? Who are the horsemen whose hoofprints scar the recreation ground? Where have the missing persons been taken? Is the Doctor stepping into a well-prepared trap? And if so, can it be the work of the Doctor's old adversary the Master?

As Harvey the grocer said to his partner Len: "I'm telling you, you put a catflap in and you get just anything coming into your house."

SURVIVAL was the last of the four adventures broadcast in the 1989 Doctor Who season on BBC television.

2017 BBC Audio edition[[edit] | [edit source]]

The Doctor brings Ace home - but on a summer Sunday it seems the least lively place in the universe. All the members of Ace's old gang have gone away — all disappeared. What is killing the domestic pets of Perivale?

Who are the horsemen whose hoofprints scar the recreation ground? Where have the missing persons been taken? Is the Doctor stepping into a well-prepared trap? And if so, can it be the work of the Doctor's old adversary, the Master?

Deviations from televised story[[edit] | [edit source]]

The Doctor's concluding monologue from the final episode is not included. Instead, it is replaced by Ace's ruminations on the events on PROSE: The Curse of Fenric.
Paterson is a police sergeant as opposed to being a Territorial Army sergeant.
Derek is killed by Midge under Cheetah Person control after he gets off the Cheetah World.
Harvey and Len are taken to the Cheetah World by the Tremas Master.
Ace burns Karra's body on a funeral pyre made up of the two wrecked motorbikes, instead of a Cheetah Person on horseback appearing and taking the body away as in the televised version.

Writing and publishing notes[[edit] | [edit source]]

Alister Pearson's original cover art featured the Master's face in the Kitling design, but this was dropped from the final cover design.
The claw-marks on the cover design are not painted elements: Alister Pearson actually slashed the canvas to achieve the effect.
Included at the back is a full page advert for subscription to Doctor Who Magazine.
A postscript by Peter Darvill-Evans, Editor of W H Allen's Doctor Who books, states that for the first time the BBC have not announced the production plans for further seasons of Doctor Who. From the second half of 1991, however, new, completely original Doctor Who novels will be published with the adventures continuing from the end of Survival. He also writes that, at that time, three additional Target novelisations were in preparation (presumably referring to the remaining Season 26 stories that had yet to be adapted).
This was only the second Doctor Who novelisation to be written by a solo female writer, after Barbara Clegg's Enlightenment (other women, particularly Jane Baker, had been involved in other books, but always in a co-writing capacity). The next would not be for another 28 years, when Jenny T. Colgan would write The Christmas Invasion.

British publication history[[edit] | [edit source]]

One single paperback edition, priced £2.50 (UK), estimated print run: 25,000 copies.

Audiobook[[edit] | [edit source]]

This Target Book was released as an audiobook on 7 September 2017 complete and unabridged by BBC Audio and read by Lisa Bowerman.

The cover blurb and thumbnail illustrations were retained in the accompanying booklet with sleevenotes by David J. Howe. Music and sound effects by Simon Power.

Audiobook cover

External links[[edit] | [edit source]]

to be added