By James Goss

BBC Books, out now

While enjoying a break in 1979 Paris, the Doctor and Romana become embroiled in a plot to mass produce the Mona Lisa, while trying to stop the plans of Scaroth, last of the Jagaroth, to save his race and thus prevent the birth of mankind.

By rights, City of Death should be a mess. Originally written by David Fisher as A Gamble With Time, it was massively changed by script editor Douglas Adams and producer Graham Williams, finally arriving with a writer’s credit of David Agnew. Maybe it was the foreign locale, the captive audience (ITV was on strike) or the witty script – possibly all three – but it has rightly become a fan favourite. However, due to Target’s modest one-off fee that they offered writers to novelise their stories, best-selling author Adams declined the offer to adapt this, The Pirate Planet or Shada.

Following Gareth Roberts’ successful adaptation of Shada, BBC Books invited James Goss to perform the same duties on City of Death, and he did such a great job that he also wrote The Pirate Planet and The Krikkitmen from Adams’ scripts and notes. Which brings us to this new version of City of Death for BBC Books’ new set of five Target books, designed to sit alongside the existing series of books. So, just to be clear, the previous Adams adaptations aren’t Target books because they are too long, with possibly an older reader demographic than Target’s younger… ahem, target age range.

And so we have this curio, an adaptation by James Goss of his own 2015 book – a younger readers edition if you like, immediately making me think of the junior versions of The Giant Robot and The Brain of Morbius.

In addition to the note inside the cover telling us that The Changing Face of Doctor Who features the Fourth Doctor, we’re also informed about The Changing face of Scaroth, and that the book portrays the twelfth and final incarnation of Scaroth of Jagaroth. Did you know that?

Featuring a cover style similar to those of Chris Achilleos’ Targets in the 70s, and the same cream faux-weathered finish of the 2011, 2012 and 2016 reissues, this feels every inch an authentic Target book, right down to prologue title – Escapes to Dangers – and 185 pages. The 12 chapters neatly take three chapters per episode, with 3, 6 and 9 finishing on a cliffhanger. This compares with the 19 chapters, 305 pages and smaller writing in Goss’ original, and I’d conservatively say that the book is half its original word count.

One of my original issues with the story is the cliffhanger at the end of Part One where Count Scarlioni removes his human mask for no real reason other than to act as a monster reveal (as happens with Sontarans Linx in The Time Warrior and Styre in The Sontaran Experiment when removing helmets for the same purpose). Except that Scarlioni does this for a reason now; he has an itch and discovers that the skin comes away – he’s as surprised as we are with what’s beneath the mask!

The writer has clearly put a lot of effort into creating this ‘Reader’s Digest Condensed Books’ abridgement, and it totally fits the criteria and ethos of the Target range. X-ray the cover, and while it might say ‘This is a fake’, there may be an arrow pointing to a bigger, better version already available. Best case scenario, a younger reader starts here and in time progresses to the full-fat Adams-packed version.

Verdict: Buy it to support the Target range and to fill the slender City of Death gap in your collection between Destiny of the Daleks and Creature from the Pit. But if you’re old enough to handle Goss’ more sophisticated 2015 version, that’s a far superior read. 7/10

Nick Joy

Click here to buy City of Death from Amazon.co.uk