A review by brnineworms
Doctor Who: Timewyrm: Exodus by Terrance Dicks

dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

3.5

Much stronger than Genesys. It takes a while to get going, but it eventually settles into its medium. Part One especially feels more suited to a TV script; Dicks relies too heavily on imagery (like the swastika-decorated Festival of Britain, and the sadistic Nazi with a riding crop) which doesn’t quite come across or hit the same way when read vs when seen. But it still kind of works.

In many ways it’s exactly what you’d hope for from a Doctor who novel following on from series 26: recognisable characters and a similar vibe, yet its scope and style are not something that could have been produced for TV.

The central premise is that classic alternate history trope: what if the Nazis won WWII/successfully invaded Britain?

The War Lords

are present to facilitate this story. The Timewyrm is tacked on as a contractually obliged afterthought.

The Timewyrm is trapped in Hitler’s mind. She’s given some personality in the prologue, then she’s out of action for the entire story, existing only as a minor plot point. She is released at the very end, giving some generic “I shall be the supreme power in the universe!” rant, then she’s gone and that’s that.

This may be a decent story, but it’s not a good Timewyrm story. Then again, Genesys was neither.

The War Lords

are... fine? They’re kind of boring, actually. But like I say, they’re just there to make the alternate history thing possible.

Their leader, Kriegslieter, is revealed to be significantly deformed. This serves no purpose other than to be horrifying and, I guess, to underscore how evil and/or alien he is. In conjunction with other somewhat ableist attempts in this book to paint Nazi officials as weak and sickly, it’s a bit disappointing.

I liked that the book touched on Nazi mysticism

and I thought it was interesting how “corpse discipline” was realised as an SS zombie horde – again, an intertwining of fascism and the body.

I only wish there was more of it. It only comes up towards the end of the book so there isn’t enough time to truly delve into its implications.

There is one unfortunate implication that I’ve seen other reviewers comment on:

the matter of agency and culpability. This relates to the undead soldiers, yes, but also the wider story with aliens interfering in Nazi affairs, manipulating history and ensuring that Hitler rises to power. Does the presence of these actors not in some way excuse the Nazis and even Hitler himself? After all, someone else was pulling the strings. Well... to his credit, Dicks does address this. The War Lords and the Timewyrm only “boosted” Hitler’s oratory powers and capitalised upon the infrastructure the Nazis had already built. The Nazis were already doing their thing, but with the War Lords’ help they were able to – in a timeline that never came to be – conquer Britain and declare victory over Europe. Okay, sure. I’ll take that.

I want to talk a bit about Ace’s characterisation.

In some ways she was reduced to a generic damsel-in-distress companion – wandering into obvious traps, screaming, fainting, then waiting for the Doctor to save her. When she isn’t captured, she’s just following the Doctor around and occasionally asking a question. She’s not completely unrecognisable, but she’s noticeably softened. It’s strange. Sometimes she acts as you’d expect, chucking Nitro-9 or having to be physically restrained from punching a Nazi, but at other times she’s kicking back and enjoying a glass of champagne. I was intrigued by what seemed to be the setup for an arc where she gets too comfortable with violence – eager to enact violence, even, and looking for excuses to do so – but that’s nipped in the bud and goes nowhere. Actually, she does take a gun from the Doctor because she knows he’d never use it, and shoots a Nazi (presumably killing him) towards the end of the novel. This isn’t commented on. But the Doctor does have this to say when Ace is chastising herself for panicking when held at knifepoint: “You’ve got to stop clinging to this macho image.” I know he’s saying that to reassure her it’s okay to be afraid, but then again... it’s like the default for her (for her) is assumed to be screaming and fainting (all the cliché companion stuff) and anything she does that subverts that must be part of some performance – a performance of masculinity, no less. There’s some gender going on here. Still, any sexism baked into Ace’s characterisation in Exodus is nothing compared to whatever the fuck was going on in Genesys.

I don’t have much to say about the Doctor. I did tire of the his bluffing and bluster after a while because it was the same thing over and over, but I liked how it was linked to ersatz goods – I thought that was cute. I also appreciated the scene after the climax where the Doctor was wondering whether he did the right thing,

restoring history to how it supposedly ought to be and freeing the Timewyrm in the process.

Again, I wish there was more of that.

Timewyrm: Exodus is a definite step-up from the previous novel but it’s by no means perfect. As a story about fascism, it’s not particularly deep. As a story about history and fixed events, it works fairly well. It’s a bit cheesy, but it’s sound. I would have given it four stars if the ending had been more satisfying.

CONTENT WARNINGS:

fascism, antisemitism, racism, ableism, violence, war, occupation, death, undeath, references to slavery and concentration camps