Resurrection of the Daleks by: Eric Saward

 

Resurrection of the Daleks was written by Eric Saward from his television story of the same name.  It was the 172^nd story to be novelized by BBC Books.

 

Resurrection of the Daleks is a genuinely good Doctor Who story on television bringing back the Daleks after five years away from the show as well as Davros, writing out long time companion Tegan Jovanka after three years on the show, and bringing in a level of violence that makes for a shocking experience.  What it lacks in plot it makes up for in the fact that the cast is all brilliant and the Daleks are on top form.  Sadly, in the original run it would be one of five stories, along with The Pirate Planet, City of Death, Shada, and Revelation of the Daleks, to not be novelized by Target books.  The three Douglas Adams stories would get expanded novelizations from Gareth Roberts and James Goss, but it wouldn’t be until 2019 when original author Eric Saward would adapt Resurrection of the Daleks and Revelation of the Daleks.  While Revelation of the Daleks will get its day, this review is of Resurrection of the Daleks, which is terrible.  No, seriously.

 

This is the worst book I have read thus far this year and it all comes down to Eric Saward being unable to write an engaging adaptation of an engaging script.  The events of the story are there, but it reads like Saward is going off vague memories of the story instead of going back to actually rewatch it ripping away any sense of character.  The Doctor is bland, which would be fine if this were practically any other Peter Davison story, but Resurrection of the Daleks is one where he is a desperate man and almost driven to kill.  The Doctor is tortured by the Daleks in this story and that is reduced to merely a cutaway almost like a gag.  The confrontation scene between the Doctor and Davros as adapted just feels like this happens now.  That’s it, that is how this story goes.  This causes moments like Tegan’s exit right at the end of the novel loses any impact that Janet Fielding injected, not even mentioning the reasons as there is little time to focus her, less even than was on television.

 

The saving grace of this novel is that it is short.  Unlike Shada, City of Death, and The Pirate Planet, Resurrection of the Daleks is under 200 pages, which while longer than the typical Target novel in page count, due to formatting feels like it is just that length.  This was a book that I was able to get through in a day because the text is quite large and easy to read and the page count is low.  While the experience was not fun, it at least didn’t take long.  There’s also this obsession with referencing Saward’s other stories, mainly The Visitation and I swear there was a reference to Slipback slipped in which hadn’t happened at this point in the Doctor’s life.  Saward also insists on injecting humor into the prose itself with so many asides that somehow compress the events of the novel even more, taking them out I could estimate the page count would reduce by a further twenty pages at least, if not more.  The humor also feels like Saward is “homaging” Douglas Adams, probably because the last three novelizations of classic serials were Douglas Adams serials written in the style of Adams.  Eric Saward is not Douglas Adams.

 

Overall, Resurrection of the Daleks feels like a book written out of obligation without any passion for the story it was trying to tell.  The best thing I can say about it is that it was short and only took me a day to read.  Saward’s prose is a contradiction of overwriting diversions but underwriting the actual events of the story that is being told with several unnecessary references.  The characters have no characterization and it makes a genuinely great Doctor Who story terrible. 2/10.