Doctor Who review: Tom Baker’s Scratchman is a novel of two distinct halves
By James Aggas
We take a look at the Doctor Who novel Scratchman and ask ourselves: just how bonkers can a Fourth Doctor novel written by Tom Baker himself be? Pretty bonkers, as it turns out…
Scratchman was a story that many fans, including myself, had been looking forward to reading. Not only was it written by the Fourth Doctor himself, Tom Baker (with James Goss co-writing it). It was also based on an unmade film, Doctor Who meets Scratchman, the script of which Baker had written with Ian Marter, who had played his companion Harry Sullivan.
This was a story that had intrigued fans for years. Doctor Who Magazine once ran an extensive feature on it that gave us a good idea of what the film would’ve been like. Still, it wasn’t quite as satisfying as fully experiencing the story properly.
So when the novel was announced, fans of the Fourth Doctor were extremely excited. It may not have been the same as a film, but a novel was arguably the best way to experience this story in full. After years of hype and rumor, did the novel live up to expectations?
Featuring the iconic team of the Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry, Scratchman’s first half is wonderfully pure nostalgia.
(Image credit: Doctor Who/BBC.
Image obtained from: official Doctor Who website.)
Pure nostalgic horror
When it comes to great novels, two things can happen. Either I devour them very quickly, completely unable to put them down, or I read them slowly, picking them up and putting them back down every so often. Not that they’re bad, just that they don’t have that special element to keep me reading constantly.
Scratchman is a strange mix of both. Mainly because of its two very different halves.
The first half is pure Philip Hinchcliffe/Robert Holmes era Doctor Who. The Fourth Doctor, Harry and Sarah arrive in a Scottish village. The village is under attack by horrifying scarecrows, and the Doctor does his best to protect them.
As someone who adored Tom Baker’s first three seasons of dark and stylish horror, this portion of the story is a wonderful piece of nostalgia. It so clearly emulates the best of those classic stories, while also being its own thing.
What really makes the story work is that there are a great mix of characters in this portion of the story. Characters that you sympathise with, characters that you like immediately, and characters that you loathe. The last example isn’t because they’re evil, they’re just nasty and petty. They make this village come to life, and the fact that there is that distinctive mix there makes them feel that much more believable.
So overall, the first half is fantastic, to the point where I read it over a couple of days. But for the second half, the story radically changes direction…
The Doctor goes to Hell
That’s the best way that I can describe the second half of the novel. And honestly, it’s exactly as strange as it sounds. No, actually, I tell a lie: it’s even stranger.
The Doctor meets Scratchman, a being who is in essence the Devil himself. Scratchman wants to know what the Doctor is afraid of, and so, sends monsters and creatures to scare him and his companions. The Doctor and his friends find themselves in extremely surreal situations, including a masquerade party, a giant pinball game, and I swear I’m not making this up!
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The second half of Scratchman is just so incredibly surreal to read, at times. It’s not that it isn’t enjoyable at all. On the contrary, the dark tone of the story suits this TARDIS team extremely well. But it has to be said that, for this particular fan, at least, it doesn’t quite live up to the highs of the first half. While the first half captured an era so beautifully and so perfectly, the second half is very much its own thing. I suspect that there’ll be fans who prefer the second half because it’s so new and so different.
Lastly, one of the biggest joys of reading Scratchman was finally getting a new Doctor Who story with the Season Twelve team of the Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry. It’s actually rarer to get stories of these three together than you think, so reading a story featuring these wonderful characters was just a joy. The novel captures them all perfectly. Especially the ever optimistic and old-fashioned Harry. It’s clear that his character at least has been written with a lot of love.
Scratchman is one of the strangest Doctor Who novels out there. If you’re looking for something that captures the era of Tom Baker’s earlier seasons, you’ll get that. But you’ll also get something else. An enjoyable novel, but with one half standing out more than the other.
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Have you read Scratchman? What did you think of it? Did it live up to your expectations of what a novel by Tom Baker would be like? Let us know in the comments below.