Other than its rather
striking cover art showing a Roboman which seems to be inspired by Nazi imagery
and the screw up on the Dalek’s plunger and gun stick, Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth is a boring affair. The only important factor of note is that it
was one of very few Hartnell stories to be novelized before the 1980s when
episodes were being sent back to the BBC.
The only other two outside of the original three 1960s novels were The Tenth Planet and The Keys of Marinus so the smattering of
William Hartnell stories were very slim.
Terrance Dicks was in a pickle as he only had Terry Nation’s notes and
memories of the episode to go on when writing this book but that really didn’t
matter as just about everything from the story makes it in. The plot stays the same, but here the
supporting characters are able to be told apart from one another because their
names are given with so and so said followed by a line of dialogue. One criticism however is that the speech the
Doctor gives to Susan is changed and while Dicks does his best to have a good
speech written in, it isn’t nearly as good as the speech Hartnell gave on
television.
To summarize, Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth
is the equivalent of its television counterpart down to the tee. There isn’t enough changed to really account
for any more detail on what the story has to do. 85/100
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