The Vulpine Vicissitudes Of Varos

Speaking of Doctor Who (as I do)... I've been reading a bunch of these old episode novelizations lately. They're kind of fun for when I want a break between "real" books, and some of them aren't bad. Then again, boy howdy, some of them are.

Currently I'm reading the novelization of "Vengeance on Varos", an episode of debatable quality to begin with, although I personally think it does some fairly decent satirical things. But man is the book version bad. A little while back, Fred over at Occasional Fish posted a quote from Jane Espenson about the value to writers of reading bad writing, if only for the sake of encouragement. I totally think Espenson should read this one. It certainly makes me feel pretty good about my own chances of getting published if, you know, I ever actually wrote anything publishable. (Man, I could novelize Doctor Who episodes! I totally could! I'd be way better than this guy!) It also makes me realize that scriptwriting and prose writing clearly do not involve exactly the same skill set, because the guy who wrote the novelization also did the original script.

Here, check this out. It is very possibly the most amusingly awful passage I've read in ages. The setup (which is goofy enough in its own right, although perhaps not unusually so for Doctor Who) is that a couple of women have been captured by a mad scientist who is using some kind of experimental ray to turn them into... Well, I have no idea what, actually, and neither does he. But, here:

'I just won't look!' Peri said, clenching her eyes shut but feeling the stiff vulpine feathers that had now emerged almost fully all over her arms. Peri began to bear less and less resemblance to the attractive girl who, despite all her vicissitudes, had always retained a physical bloom of health. Now she had begun to resemble an ugly vulture-like bird with glossy black feathers that grew longer and longer as she approached final disfigurement.

Areta was a trifle more fortunate than Peri for she retained much of her original body shape though the texture of her skin had turned completely into a lizard-like scale of apple-green.

Dude, if you posted that as fan fiction, people would mock you. And who knew foxes had feathers? They must be mutant space-foxes!

Can't... stop... giggling...