Running Time: Approx. 519 minutes. Written by: James Goss, Tom Baker. Based on a treatment by: Tom Baker, Ian Marter. Performed by: Tom Baker, Nicholas Briggs.
THE PLOT:
Materializing on a small island, The Doctor, Sarah Jane, and Harry decide to relax with a picnic and a beachside game of rounders. Their fun doesn't last long. The island's population is living in fear, besieged by living scarecrows who are the transformed remains of friends and family. As the survivors take refuge in the town church, the Doctor sets to work to try to defeat their straw enemies. He succeeds, but at a steep price.
That's when the true enemy appears: Scratchman, a being from another dimension who presents himself as the Biblical devil. Having devoured his own universe, Scratchman now wants to gain dominion over ours. He can only do so by luring the Doctor into his own realm, and he has the perfect bait - Sarah and Harry!
Leaving the Doctor to make a desperate attempt to rescue his friends and the universe itself by making a literal journey into Hell...
CHARACTERS:
The Doctor: The trials he faces in Scratchman's domain are all about his fears. These are superficial at first: boredom, which he overcomes easily; then the prospect of being irrelevant, which stings more deeply. The most interesting moment comes when he's confronted by victims he failed to save. He's accused of forgetting them, with a dead villager demanding to know if he remembers his name. The Doctor replies with equal parts confidence and sadness that he doesn't recall the man's name, but he remembers everything else about him, detailing their single interaction and extrapolating a full life from his observations. He adds that Scratchman is wrong to consider this as a fear, instead describing his failure to save these people as his "shame."
Sarah Jane Smith: She gets a strong role in the story's first half. She quickly notices that something is wrong on the island, even when the Doctor is still pretending to just be enjoying a picnic. Her strongest scene comes when she goes to the TARDIS to retrieve equipment, only to be pursued by one of the scarecrows. In one chamber, she sees pieces of her life, both past and future. When the scarecrow follows her, pieces of the person that it had been are also displayed, with Sarah reacting with compassion and horror even as she continues to defend herself. Sadly, her role in the second half is much weaker, though her sibling-like relationship with Harry is well-portrayed throughout.
Harry Sullivan: He's thoroughly and absolutely decent, but he also wanders around in a near constant state of befuddlement, a trait that's heavily exaggerated from his television stories (where he was, contrary to fan myth, usually competent). There's a funny, vaguely Inspector Clouseau-like scene in the first half in which a clueless Harry destroys multiple scarecrows without ever realizing that they're even there. The others tease him for a lack of imagination... only for it to be his imagination that conjures the biggest Trial they face when fighting Scratchman. The story is framed by the Doctor telling his tale to an audience of Time Lords; at one point, when Harry appears to have been killed, they react with outrage, the only time that they show any trace of empathy.
Mavis Tulloch: The most loathsome creature in this novel is not the Cybermen, the denizens of Scratchman's lair, nor even Scratchman himself, but instead town busybody Mavis Tulloch. She takes against the Doctor immediately, dismissing his efforts to battle the scarecrows as nonsensical and trying to stir up the others against him. She flees or hides when people are in danger, only to dismiss those who fall to the monsters as "weak." She's introduced through her voice, "sharp as mustard and just as strong," and she has a physical presence to match: "She had a know-nothing, do-nothing face. Her little black eyes had spent a lifetime squinting in disapproval." I won't spoil her ultimate fate, except to say that it's perfectly judged and extremely satisfying.
Past and Future Doctors: While in Scratchman's domain, the Doctor sees visions of the Tenth Doctor while facing his fear of irrelevance - essentially being confronted with the knowledge that he can and will be replaced. When he comes close to giving into despair, he's visited by the Thirteenth Doctor, who helps him to recover his sense of self and who tells him that there's a lot of his personality in hers. Scratchman also confronts him with the ghosts of his first three selves, who regard him with disapproval. Despite being Scratchman's creations, the three end up carrying a little too much of the incarnations they're impersonating, making for a memorable moment between them and the devil. While Tom Baker's voice is too distinctive for effective impressions, I found his Hartnell to be surprisingly good.
Cybermen: They make a deal with Scratchman that ties in with the horrors on the island, but their strongest material is saved for the second half. In Scratchman's realm, they find themselves tormented by the echoes of their long-lost humanity. While Tom Baker reads everything else, Nicholas Briggs provides the voice of the Cybermen. This is a good choice. It helps to bring the Cybermen to life, and their (sadly small) handful of scenes benefits from the presence of a second voice.
Scratchman: An extra-dimensional being who introduces himself as the devil. He's really akin to a parasite, feeding on the imagination and fear of his victims until there's nothing left, at which point they are unceremoniously discarded. He presents himself as a polite gentleman conducting business. When he talks to the Doctor, it's in a boardroom surrounded by copies of himself. He calmly tells the Doctor that he's doomed to fail when fighting him, but he's engineered the situation so that the Doctor has no choice but to fight anyway.
A NOTE ON PLACEMENT:
Scratchman defies proper placement. It features the 4th Doctor-Sarah-Harry team traveling in the TARDIS, which seems to firmly place it between Revenge of the Cybermen and Terror of the Zygons, yet it also features multiple references to enemies introduced after Harry had already returned home.
A couple decades ago, when I was much more serious (too serious) about Doctor Who, this would have bothered me. For those inclined to be bothered, I'd point out that this book is framed as the Doctor telling the story an unspecified length of time after the fact. This grants a simple solution: Place the story in the obvious gap, then assume that any discrepancies are down to the Fourth Doctor whimsically weaving in later memories while recounting his tale.
The only other option is to create an unnecessarily complicated "Season 13-B" with Harry rejoining the Doctor and Sarah, and I personally don't think the odd reference to mummies or the Loch Ness monster is worth the mental gymnastics.
THOUGHTS:
Scratchman is almost two novels in one, with the two halves telling distinct, albeit linked, stories.
The first half, set on the Scottish island, is the type of creepy monster fare that was often Doctor Who's bread and butter. There's a base under siege, with the Doctor, his companions, and the surviving villagers taking refuge in the town church. The Doctor gains an ally in the bright and compassionate Sophonisba Mowat and an enemy in the malignant Mavis Tulloch. There's even a strong element of body horror, with the victims not just killed but transformed into the very monsters attacking them.
This is the stronger half. The island and its township are beautifully described and easy to visualize. The conflict with the scarecrows is well structured, creating a growing sense of unease before properly unleashing the horror. The regulars try to relax, but both the Doctor and Sarah sense something amiss. The three friends play rounders on the beach, with the first scarecrow introduced when the Doctor has just a little too much difficulty extricating their ball from it. They find their picnic table vandalized. They encounter more scarecrows, which become increasingly intimidating figures. Then they discover a farm, and the first scarecrow attack establishes both the nature and horror of the threat.
The writing is quite good, with evocative descriptions. The church that becomes the first half's main setting is introduced as having been "built out of sobriety and slate," a quick and witty description that raises a chuckle while also establishing that this is a solid building suitable for waiting out a siege. An early chapter details the scarecrows' movements: "Twitching jerks, each one accompanied by a horrific knuckle-crack of bone." Their breathing is a mockery: "Sucking at the air, plucking at it with whatever mouths they had, be it a tear in an old football, a maggot-gash in a turnip, or the slack dribbling maw of a carved pumpkin." All of this pulls the listener/reader into the story, making the monsters tangible and fully realized.
The scarecrow/island story resolves around the midpoint. At this point, Scratchman is introduced, kidnapping Sarah and Harry to compel the Doctor to pursue. The second half then becomes the Doctor's journey through Scratchman's Inferno.
It's here that the book's grip loosens a bit. The descriptions remain vivid, but I just wasn't as invested in the fantastical setting as I had been in the village. The Doctor's mini-"Trials" are interesting set pieces, and they do serve to build the theme about fear. However, each bit more or less exists in itself, with the story's previous momentum stalling. I'll admit that my attention started to wander when the Doctor found himself trying to attract attention from masked people at a party, not because the scene wasn't good (it was), but because I no longer felt like events were going anywhere.
The story comes back to life once the Doctor comes face-to-face with Scratchman and is reunited with Sarah and Harry. The major set piece is a peculiar cross between pinball and chess, with the characters dodging giant pinballs while contending with giant chess pieces. The visual descriptions are wonderfully chaotic, and Tom Baker's reading balances both the light and dark sides of his Doctor.
OVERALL:
I'm not a fan of the framing device, in which the Doctor narrates the story to an audience of Time Lords. There are far too many cutaways, and these scenes rapidly become repetitive: The Time Lords interrupt the Doctor's story to protest one element or another, they threaten the Doctor, abd he throws some piece of their hypocrisy in their faces before continuing his story. Rinse and repeat. I grew bored with it long before Scratchman was even introduced as a character!
Aside from this and some slack pacing when the Doctor reaches Scratchman's lair, I enjoyed this book. Tom Baker and writer James Goss have managed to take the various set pieces and fit (most of) them into a structure that works. The prose is well above average for a Who novel, stuffed with descriptions that are clever and evocative.
I've often found Doctor Who novels to be a mixed bag. Scratchman is one that I'd rate highly, both as a story and as a celebration of Tom Baker's Doctor, and the audio performance by Tom Baker makes for a particularly good way to experience it.
Overall Rating: 8/10.
Set during: Season 13 (probably)
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