User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Reference Desk/@comment-4139960-20130910212758/@comment-188432-20130911155910
I've done a more complete check of Doctor Who and the Zarbi. Yes, it's called the Centre, but it's also more simply called Zarbi Headquarters. As you may know the earliest novelisations took far more liberties with the script than the usual Terrance Dicks Target house style. So you have to really do some digging to find comparable scenes.
There are two major scenes where the Carsinome is discussed in the TV version: one where Vrestin explains it to Ian in episode three and one where Hrostar gives a different account to Barbara in "Crater of Needles". I honestly had a problem finding the comparable Ian/Vrestin scene in the book, but the Hrostar/Barbara scene shows how the book simply ignores the Carsinome:
| TV | Book |
|---|---|
| Barbara: Why do they make us heap this vegetation into the acid streams?
Hrostar: It is the raw material for the Carsinome, where the Zarbi live. Fed into these pools, it is drawn to the centre through underground streams, and as we pour it in, the Carsinome grows and reaches out across Vortis. Barbara: Well, what lies at the centre? Hrostar: None of us have ever seen it and lived, but we call it the Animus. |
‘Hrostar – what is this work we are doing for?’
Hrostar held up a spar. ‘Raw materials for the Zarbi buildings.’ He tossed an armful of spars into the acid pool and watched the smoke rise. ‘These are drawn into the centre, through underground streams. As we load them in – the building reaches out across Vortis.’ ‘This centre – this... building – that’s where the Doctor will be,’ Barbara mused. ‘I’m sure of it.’ ‘At the Zarbi Headquarters?’ |
The whole concept of this living thing that encircles Vortis and forced the Vrestin and his lot to leave the plant and settle on a moon is simply absent from the book. In fact the word moon doesn't appear at all in the book, despite being a fairly integral part of Vrestin's backstory in the serial.
So wherever this alternate spelling of Carsinome is coming from, it's definitely not the novelisation.
