A novel of the seventh doctor. This one brings the doctor back to the alternate Earth where he left his grand-daughter, Susan. It is 30 years after the great Dalek war and England is divided between warring Lords who control the only remaining power generation. Of course, there is alien interference with local events- not just by the Doctor, and the Doctor is forced to intervene.
It has a nice premise and occasionally sparks some interest but the story-line wanders and gets lost. On the whole it does not live up to its initial promise.

re-read 7/9/2023 ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1401314.html

I very much enjoyed Peel's novelisations of black-and-white era Dalek stories, where he managed to inject a bit more sense and continuity than was to be found in the originals; here he writes a fun Eighth Doctor story which is very much in the tradition of the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors' televised encounters with the spawn of Skaro, including lots of thrilling elements such as Thal commandos, Davros on trial and yet leading a faction in a Dalek civil war, and the twisted and complex plans of the anti-Davros leader (here dubbed the Dalek Prime). There is even a pleasing nod to The Power of the Daleks towards the end. Sam is now going all gooey-eyed at the Doctor, a foreshadowing of things to come (and I wonder how they will keep that up in future books). ( )

Retcon: A deliberate changing of previously established events in a serialised fiction.

This novel is one massive retcon, basically if you’re looking at the ‘Dalek’ TV stories and go back to the fourth Doctor story ‘Destiny of the Daleks’ and say that and every story after it is negated, that’s what this novel does.

This novel has been retconned itself by Big Finish’s audio drama ‘Terra Firma’. Which incidentally makes the TV stories stand as they did (and ignores this novel).

War of the Daleks treads back not so faithfully over every Dalek story in the ‘classic series’, in fact you can actually go through and find a reference to every Dalek story.

This could have been called ‘The Trial of Davros’, except that would have made it sound like a vaguely interesting Dalek political drama-thriller, but it’s not.

Nothing happens for three quarters of the book, and then at the end there’s a bit of action, which on the whole isn’t very interesting.

This novel is a bit like a big American action movie, lots of explosions, lots of scenes that would have been served well by a big CGI budget and a clichéd dialogue and some big expositions scenes when the action runs out of ‘big scenes’ and need to insert some story to keep everything moving.

The interludes are quite alright and rather interesting, but they don’t make up for the rest of the novel.
This novel doesn’t even need the Doctor in it, the head Dalek the ‘Dalek Prime’ even says as much. This novel feels like it wanted to be a stand alone movie, without the Doctor and lots and lots of Daleks.

There are better novels from around this same era of Doctor Who publishing that utilise the Daleks in a better way, usually when constrained by licensing or other elements that means they must be used in a more intelligent way than they’re used here. ( )