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A review by saroz162
Doctor Who And The Daleks by David Whitaker
5.0
I think everybody knows at this point that Whitaker's two Doctor Who novels are a step above, and written to a older child, than the book series begun by Terrance Dicks a decade later. They feel as if they belong to a different, more literate reality, before there was a TV in every home; while they're clearly written as "boy's own" adventure stories, there's nothing terribly childish about them, and in this one, particularly, the first-person perspective of Ian as narrator keeps the tone rooted in the tradition of an Edwardian adventure on land or sea. That fits the story, too: an atomic-age boiled-down version of H. G. Wells' The Time Machine (with some significant borrowing from the George Pal film version), reconstituted for the atomic age and with a new prologue seemingly ripped from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. None of it's groundbreaking, but the specific combination is really entertaining - the sort of thing to make 12-year-old boys' imaginations buzz.
It's very much of its time, of course, with the slightly formalistic language that I actually miss in books - and an attitude toward women that I don't. (The reduction of Barbara's agency in the second half, while allowing for some sweet proto-romantic exchanges, is the weakest change from TV to book by far.) The best part of the whole narrative is how enthused Whitaker seems to be over sheer alienness: the vast unknown of the Doctor's craft, TARDIS; the petrified forest outside the Dalek city; the static electricity that keeps the Daleks' hearts beating; the inhuman glass Dalek that has been introduced into the final scenes. It's good stuff - pacey, exciting, very visual, very crisp. A really engaging slice of early 1960s pulp and well worth the read. Better still if you can find the audiobook narrated by William Russell, who's got exactly the right sound for the material - he is Ian Chesterton, after all.
It's very much of its time, of course, with the slightly formalistic language that I actually miss in books - and an attitude toward women that I don't. (The reduction of Barbara's agency in the second half, while allowing for some sweet proto-romantic exchanges, is the weakest change from TV to book by far.) The best part of the whole narrative is how enthused Whitaker seems to be over sheer alienness: the vast unknown of the Doctor's craft, TARDIS; the petrified forest outside the Dalek city; the static electricity that keeps the Daleks' hearts beating; the inhuman glass Dalek that has been introduced into the final scenes. It's good stuff - pacey, exciting, very visual, very crisp. A really engaging slice of early 1960s pulp and well worth the read. Better still if you can find the audiobook narrated by William Russell, who's got exactly the right sound for the material - he is Ian Chesterton, after all.