Famously, this is the first Doctor Who novel of any kind, a novelisation of the first Dalek story (which pedants know as The Mutants but most modern viewers call The Daleks), released on the eve of the Daleks' return to television in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Since it was not seen as the first of a range of tie-ins, but rather as a standalone novel, it was designed to work on its own. Story editor David Whitaker took Terry Nation's script and appended a couple chapters on the front explaining how the Doctor, Susan, Ian, and Barbara all ended up journeying to Skaro together—in a way not at all consistent with An Unearthly Child—and also added a short chapter at the end where the characters decide to continue to adventure together. You could take this book and hand it to someone claiming it was the first Doctor Who story and they would totally believe you. (Maybe I will try this on my kids someday.) In addition, it's designed to work as a book: Whitaker novelizes the story in the first person from Ian's perspective, so it doesn't read as a tv tie-in, but a proper adventure novel.

Anyway, it's a really strong read. The opening chapters are intense and atmospheric, Whitaker really capturing Ian's disorientation and fear. This is a much more forbidding introduction to the Doctor than we got on screen, but it works well as a lead-in to an intense story. I am not a big fan of the original Dalek story, but telling it in the first person makes it creepy and unsettling. When you encounter it for the first time, a Dalek isn't an outer-space robot monster, but an inscrutable alien—this is true of their first story and no other, and the novelisation captures that fairly well. The description of the Dalek mutant is unsettling, and the glass Dalek at the story's climax is amazing.

In prose, a lot of the story is streamlined to positive effect; we don't spend twenty-five minutes with various characters jumping across a chasm, and the tight focus on Ian means some of the story gets related secondhand, which usually works well. I was surprised that this takes out all the references to radiation from the tv story; it's just vague "poison," even though the weapon used in the past is eventually established as an atomic bomb.

Ian of course is the star here. He's always been one of my favorites, and I'd love to hear William Russell's audiobook version of this story. (I once got it from the library but had to return it before I finished the first chapter, I think!) The book also does well by the Doctor, working in a nicely done character arc across the story about him and Ian coming to trust each other. I think Susan comes across better here than she does on screen; divorced from Carole Ann Ford's somewhat histrionic performance, she's more of a cool, collected, mysterious girl. The one regular the story does poorly by is Barbara, who mostly comes across as Ian's love interest, and only because she's the girl one. I think Jacqueline Hill's performance did a lot for the character in her early days.

I read the 2011 reprint, which has a new introduction by Neil Gaiman, the original illustrations by Arnold Schwartzman, and an afterword by Steve Tribe. The Gaiman intro is all right, and the Schwartzman pictures are nothing to write home about; he picks a surprising number of banal moments where the regulars are standing around to illustrate. Whitaker gives great descriptions of the Dalek city and its environments, but Schwartzman doesn't bother to illustrate that! The afterword by Steve Tribe does a great job of giving historical context for the book, but as an American, I found the pedantic explanation of what "feet" and "inches" were hilarious. The thing I needed explained was the oft-used term "gasometer"!

As a Doctor Who fan, this was a must have book. I've seen the first season of the Classic Who so Ian and Barbara are familiar for me as companions.
It was interesting to read a book through Ian's POV. Ian is well developed character and the Doctor seems much better character in the book.
I feel like the book was much stronger than TV story. ( )

This is a mostly faithful novelization of the second Doctor Who serial, The Daleks. The biggest change comes about because there is no novelization of the first serial, and so the story of how Ian and Barbara first met the Doctor, and his kidnapping them, is instead adapted and crammed into the first couple of chapters here. The other alterations are mostly small omissions as a result of the story being told from Ian's perspective rather than the shifting perspective of the show.

Thus, if you're particularly fond of the aforementioned serial, or if you've never seen it and want to see how the Dalek story began, then you'll probably enjoy this book. I agree with something Neil Gaiman alludes to in his introduction: that the novel is more interesting from a cultural history perspective than as a story in its own right. Back in 1964 if you missed a show then you had missed the show. There were no second chances. The novelizations, when they began to appear, were the first chance many people had to catch up on missed episodes. In this age of DVD boxsets and iPlayer and Sky and VCRs and the like it's a nice reminder of the impermanence of things. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to the kitchen before my flatmate decides to remind me of the impermanence of cake. ( )

This is a mostly faithful novelization of the second Doctor Who serial, The Daleks. The biggest change comes about because there is no novelization of the first serial, and so the story of how Ian and Barbara first met the Doctor, and his kidnapping them, is instead adapted and crammed into the first couple of chapters here. The other alterations are mostly small omissions as a result of the story being told from Ian's perspective rather than the shifting perspective of the show.

Thus, if you're particularly fond of the aforementioned serial, or if you've never seen it and want to see how the Dalek story began, then you'll probably enjoy this book. I agree with something Neil Gaiman alludes to in his introduction: that the novel is more interesting from a cultural history perspective than as a story in its own right. Back in 1964 if you missed a show then you had missed the show. There were no second chances. The novelizations, when they began to appear, were the first chance many people had to catch up on missed episodes. In this age of DVD boxsets and iPlayer and Sky and VCRs and the like it's a nice reminder of the impermanence of things. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to the kitchen before my flatmate decides to remind me of the impermanence of cake. ( )

David Whitaker’s novel Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks was first published on 12 November 1964 by Frederick Muller, Ltd. before Target Books reprinted it as Doctor Who and the Daleks on 2 May 1973. The novel adapts Terry Nation’s script for The Daleks, the second Doctor Who serial that aired between 21 December 1963 and 1 February 1964, starring the First Doctor (as portrayed by William Hartnell), his granddaughter Susan Foreman (played by Carole Ann Ford), and her schoolteachers, Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton (portrayed by Jacqueline Hill and William Russell, respectively). The story portrays the Doctor and his companions traveling to Skaro, where they encounter the Daleks and their enemies, the Thals.

As the first Doctor Who novel, Whitaker reimagines how Ian and Barbara meet the Doctor in the beginning of the story: Ian encounters Barbara at a car crash in the fog and tries to help her locate her missing student. The Doctor appears and makes Ian suspicious, so he follows him back to a police box, which the Doctor tries to enter without being noticed. Ian forces his way in, discovering the box’s larger interior dimensions before he passes out. In capturing the early era of Doctor Who, the TARDIS’s name alternates between Tardis, like a traditional ship’s name, or characters referring to it as the Ship (pgs. 22, 34). Further, in order to get around the Doctor’s reluctance to discuss personal matters, Ian christens him “Doctor Who” (pg. 52). In another odd change, Whitaker gives Susan’s last name as “English” rather than “Foreman,” thereby departing from the show (pg. 30). While future stories added details and depth and Davros to the Daleks’ origins, the early version of divergent mutation following an atomic blast, causing the Thals to become physically perfect and peaceful as the Daleks grew hideous and hateful, resembles the Morlocks and Eloi in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (pg. 99). Taking advantage of the options available to a novel and not a television series, Whitaker includes a climax involving sea monsters, cave-climbing, and a more dramatic battle that also features a glass Dalek like the one later seen in the 1985 serial, Revelation of the Daleks.

At times, the story betrays its era of origin. Since Whitaker writes in the first person from Ian’s perspective, he occasionally demonstrates the gendered view of the world typical of the early 1960s. The style and content of the book also recalls science-fiction of that era more than later Doctor Who tie-in novels. In this, it serves as an interesting time capsule for Whovians who are interested in mid-century science-fiction. The story also inspired the 1965 film, Dr. Who and the Daleks, in which director Gordon Flemyng adapted Nation’s script for a standalone film not connected to the television series. The film did well enough to earn a sequel in 1966, Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., which adapted another of Nation’s scripts, this time for the second serial of the second season, The Dalek Invasion of Earth. In this edition, BBC books presents the novel in a facsimile of the 1964 edition complete with Arnold Schwartzman’s illustrations. ( )