#5
War Of The Daleks
By John Peel
Daleks! For real this time, sink plunger and everything, DALEKS!
Say what you will about this one, but this is a big deal and quite an exciting shot fired from BBC Books. Sure, they may have copied Virgin Publishing’s homework in general, but those guys never had the license for the most famous Doctor Who baddie of them all. While I would argue that they didn’t suffer for it (they were all about New things after all), sometimes it’s just plain nice to go Doctor Who = Daleks.
Of course, it’s one thing to wheedle a license out of the Nation estate. You’ve then got to actually do something with all those pepperpots. What does that look like in print? Daleks aren’t exactly famed conversationalists; often the worst bit of a Dalek story IS-WHEN-THEY-ARE-GI-VEN-TOO-MUCH-DI-A-LOGUE.
John Peel — known for, among other things, his Dalek Masterplan novelisations — makes some choices in this regard, and some of them are good. War Of The Daleks is not all Daleks, all the time. They are very much kept in the background for the first 150 pages or so, an implacable force of nature that the plot and characters must work around in order to survive. This might seem odd when not showing Daleks was already our default setting, but there’s a lot to be said for atmosphere. Look at the Borg: were they ever better than in The Best Of Both Worlds Part 1, which is mostly just the Enterprise crew bricking it?
Don’t panic, though, Dalek fans: they’re still here, just a bit off to the side. There are several interludes that show Dalek combat in various forms, and never from their POV. We see a Space Security Service agent working a bit of subterfuge against them on an aquatic world; Draconians in a death-or-glory fight in an asteroid belt; Mechonoids, forced to take a break from their daily routine, attempting to keep them away from their never-to-arrive human settlers. (Possibly my favourite bit in the book is a dying Mechonoid’s final report “to Central Computer, to inform it that another Mechon unit would have to be assigned to check on the insect infestation on the geraniums tomorrow.”) There’s good variety here, with some scenarios playing out how the “good guys” hoped, others going in the Daleks’ favour. It paints a picture of an entire way of life spent fighting these things, which can take as many forms as you care to list. As well as giving a good example to any readers who are (god forbid) unfamiliar with what Daleks are all about, it’s using Daleks as more of a narrative way in than as the whole narrative, and as you can see in stories like Power or Evil Of The Daleks (Peel novelised both) that approach can be a great starting point.
We open with probably the most interesting interlude featuring the oldest Dalek enemy, Thals, in the heat of battle. This is likely just what you want when you pick up a doggarn Dalek book at last: loads of action, new and different types of Dalek, even the first word of the book is “Exterminate!” More interesting still is what it says about the Thals: dropping a nuke to wipe out the nearest attack wave also obliterates a primitive settlement nearby, much to the chagrin of Ayaka, the soldier with the biggest conscience. Immediately after that the entire planet is destroyed; unbeknownst to Ayaka their mission was simply a trap to lure some Daleks to their deaths. The entire planetary population are just collateral damage. It’s genuinely a bit of a swing to open your Dalek novel by asking if we can trust the Thals.
Unfortunately, just as getting the Dalek license doesn’t do everything for you in one go, it’s one thing to set up a conflict — it’s another to make a satisfying story out of it. War Of The Daleks asks these questions about the Thals but then follows them to their most literal conclusions. Delani, their leader, has a plan to capture Davros and — rather than put him on trial or kill him — put him to work. Doing what, you ask? Why, genetically modifying the Thals, of course! Because in order to defeat Daleks, y’see, he is willing to turn his people into Daleks and oh god, the obviousness, it’s giving me a rash. This storyline doesn’t have anywhere else to go once we’ve gazed into Nietzsche’s abyss: it’s evil and wrong, we can see that. So things promptly change afterwards and the power is taken away from Delani, leaving the whole genetically-engineered-Thals thing a bit of an “aaaaaanyway.”
And yeah, Davros is here. That should probably be a spoiler since he’s not on the cover, but the blurb happily gives it away, and besides, did you think we could possibly avoid him? Ever since he first appeared, Daleks and Davros have been like a dinner party with Frasier and Niles: you get the one, you get that other one. Davros is an interesting character in his own right, but he tends to diminish the Daleks — and vice versa. Having him here just feels like we looked at the trajectory of Dalek stories in the 1980s, which all do it like this, and genuinely could not imagine a different approach for the next one.
In Peel’s defence, it matters that we’re picking up Davros’s story after we last saw him, and he is central to the plot. But this is a rather shaky defence because the further you stray into the plot, the more obsessed it is by continuity in place of actual storytelling. Now, to an extent, I think it makes sense to go over some key points about Daleks. Why not? There hadn’t been a TV story about them in nine years, and there were no novels featuring them (apart from novelisations). Some readers genuinely might not know much about Daleks, so having the Doctor, for example, recap the plot of their first adventure might help lay down the ground rules. Having Thals in the mix helps with that theme, continuing the original thread right up to the present. I mean it: not all continuity refs are bad. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
There are harmless little sprinkles here and there, such as references to Marc Cory, Varga plants, the Slyther and “that business with Reginald Styles”. You don’t need to have seen The Chase to enjoy the bit with the Mechonoids, for instance. But the main purpose of picking up the story of Davros, which after that little Nietzsche For Dummies bit with the Thals is all that War Of The Daleks is about, is to reshuffle his previous telly stories in a way that will undo Skaro getting blown up in Remembrance Of The Daleks. Which is… fine, if you happen to care deeply about that, and great if you are in the market for a random conspiracy theory re-reading of some unconnected telly episodes, but it’s not really serving an overall story, is it? Never mind those hypothetical “what are Daleks” readers. After a certain point it ceases to be a novel so much as a paddling pool for big fans of lists. It’s Dalek housekeeping. (And the novel seems aware of that: Sam says the info-dumps are “like Jackanory,” and “coming in at the middle of a film.” Which, I mean, nice lampshade and everything, but…? Maybe don’t do it then?)
War Of The Daleks at least lives up to its name. After the Dalek Prime laboriously fills the Doctor in about their crazy plan to avert the destruction of Skaro (trust me, it’s nuts) he engineers a civil war in order to smoke out Davros’s remaining supporters. And there is a lot of action, which certainly provides some bang for your buck re Daleks. I got a bit bored though, since the whole thing feels like a retread of Evil Of The Daleks anyway. More importantly, who cares? They’re Daleks. We keep cutting back to the fighting as if it intrinsically matters how this side or that side is getting on. Blow up or don’t, guys, just call me when you’re done. (Several of the Thal supporting characters get killed off as well, but most of them never got named in the first place.)
There’s not a lot else going on, since it’s all in service of continuity and the eventual civil war, but it’s worth mentioning that Ayaka is fairly compelling; she shoulders most of the “but at what cost?” war moralising, and does it in a more interesting way than her boss’s mad plan to breed Dalek Thals. It’s not her fault the story just stops finding this stuff interesting. Also good is Chayn, an engineer on the garbage ship that finds Davros’s escape pod. She’s fun, capable and instantly intrigued by the TARDIS, but she conveniently falls in love (more or less) so she won’t be joining the Doctor after all. Boo. She mostly seems to be here just to set off Sam’s jealousy, which is all rather unappealing but certainly on brand for her; where her feelings for the Doctor don’t entirely add up, I suppose we can write them off as belonging to a messy seventeen year old, but her possessiveness and over-eagerness are getting a bit old now. It’s a pity Peel couldn’t work in her guilt from Genocide, especially as there is a brief reference to the aliens from it. There are scenes here of Sam literally carrying a gun and wondering if she can pull the trigger, which practically jump up and down to continue that conversation. Ah well.
(Sidebar: I should probably mention the Doctor as well, so here I am, mentioning him. He’s fine. Bit naive at times, suitably grave at others. His characterisation is at least better than in either of Peel’s Virgin novels, it’s just not especially exciting. Both Doctor and companion are just sort of here, apart from some of Sam’s more annoying habits which are regrettably bang on.)
The final stretch is such an exploding onslaught that I started to forget the stuff I liked. And hey, I like stuff in here. It’s highly readable — genuinely, never something to sniff at. There is some creative context to establish why the Daleks are a big deal, and questions around the morality of fighting against them, which hint more towards one of Terry Nation’s other well known shows. I even empathise a bit with the impulse to write the next chapter in the 80s Davros chronology — since they all followed on from each other already, why break the habit of a lifetime? I just don’t think the answers and ideas he comes up with are as exciting as getting Daleks into a book in the first place, and by the end, despite early promise, this one’s just a lot of noise.
5/10
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