The Daleks
is the single most important Doctor Who story as it was the story to allow
Doctor Who to actually keep the series going past the initial thirteen
episodes. You also may think that the
practice of milking a story for all its worth was something recent, but one
year after the completion of the serial Frederick Mueller publishing had David
Whitaker write a novelization as one of three Doctor Who novels they would
publish as a precursor to Target Books.
David Whitaker didn’t do the traditional turning the script into a book,
but novelized the story before adding on a beginning and ending chapter that
actually introduces us to the characters.
Instead of recounting the story at Totter’s Lane, Whitaker has Barbara
be a tutor for Susan who gets in a car crash on Barnes Commons where we get a
similar situation as to in An Unearthly
Child, while Ian is a science teacher who happens to be there before
breaking into the TARDIS and promptly passing out. The first two chapters serve as an
introduction to the concepts of Doctor Who which changes a lot of the
characters. First the Doctor is a lot
closer to his character post The Edge of
Destruction. Yes he still causes the
problems for the others by removing the fluid link, but he is much calmer to
Barbara and Ian. Ian remains unchanged
except for the fact that he is a smoker and actually serves as the narrator for
the novel which is really interesting.
As he is the narrator this allows us to get a quick summary of Part
Three “The Escape” which is interesting.
Barbara, like Ian, isn’t changed but as The Daleks really isn’t a story for Barbara. Susan also is treated the same as she is in
the television series. This novel is
slightly better than the televised story in one regard which is that the
pacifism of the Thals is played off much more than it is on television. Ian actually questions why they just walked
into the Dalek city and initially tries to teach them boxing before having to
resort to violence to get them to go with their plan for invading the Dalek
city.
To summarize, Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the
Daleks or Doctor Who and the Daleks
is a good example of just how movies and television were adapted to a novel and
actually adds a bit of depth to the original story. It’s the novel that has been republished the
most and is one of those readily available for purchase and with good reason as
it somehow manages to be slightly more engaging than the television story it
was based on. David Whitaker is great at
bringing the characters to life, but it is still a little bit padded. 80/100
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