I'm watching Doctor Who from the beginning, reading the novelisations as I go, and to be honest they're just not very good. Which is a particular shame for this story, as I found the episodes of "The Keys of Marinus" to be really enjoyable (certainly more so than the horribly tedious "Marco Polo", which preceded it). But as with the other novelisations, this is very short and very thin. Like the others, it does get points for pacing - there's no room for the slightest waffle - but I struggle to see the point of going to all the effort of novelisation if it's just going to be a flat copy. Admittedly, there do exist some very minor changes here, however, and one of them is deeply annoying. There's just no reason to add a scene of Ian slapping Barbara across the face, as he certainly doesn't in the episode (and never would). If Hinchcliffe was going to change anything about the original, he would have done far better to paper over that plot hole of Ian, Barbara, and Altos leaving their transporter devices behind in the snow hut when they went looking for the third key. Ridiculously stupid.