Doctor Who and the Ice Warriors

The world is in the grip of a second Ice Age. Despite a coordinated global effort, the glaciers still advance. But they are not the only threat to the planet. Buried deep in the ice, scientists at Britannicus Base have discovered an ancient warrior. But this is no simple archaeological find. What they have found is the commander of a spaceship that crashed into the glacier thousands of years ago. Thawed from the ice, and knowing their home planet Mars is now a dead world, the Ice Warriors decide to make Earth their own...Can the Doctor and his friends overcome the warlike Martians and halt the advance of the glaciers?

First thing to say is I was surprised to find that Brian Hayles novelised his own scripts. For some reason I thought Terrance Dicks had done it. Second thing I was surprised about was Hayles seemed confused about which Doctor he was writing for. The Second Doctor has a reputation for being impossible to capture in print, a lot of the success of his characterisation being down (and rightly so!) to Patrick Troughton's performance. In this book he call every second person "old chap" which sound more like something the Pertwee version would say (and indeed the Between the Lines section at the end suggests that may be the case), but constantly calling Jamie "lad?" I don't remember that ever happening?

Otherwise it was a very faithful novelisation of the TV serial. My only complaint is one of the best lines in the serial was cut (the Doctor's reply to Jamie's question about if the Ice Warriors came in a spaceship: "Well, I don't think they came by Shetland pony!"). But the other great line of story still survives (which I had forgotten about until Mark Gatiss - appropriately the introduction for this novel is written by the man who brought the Ice Warriors back recently in Cold War).

'Suddenly, one year...' Clent paused, still remembering the terrible event, '... there was no Spring.'

A more perfect and simple moment of exposition I've yet to find.