#10
Legacy Of The Daleks
By John Peel
So. Daleks again.
That’s nice, obviously, and we are lucky to have got two novels featuring the most famous monsters in Doctor Who.
But… gratitude aside (and I promise, I’m grateful!) all that they’ve really achieved is to underline how Doctor Who print fiction was, if not better off, at least doing fine without them. Which is also sort of nice, when you think about it?
This is largely thanks to the Nation Estate, whose “punishing terms” (as per Stephen Cole) meant it wasn’t worth doing a lot with them, and meant that the best author for the job was John Peel. That’s not bad news in itself, as he has handled Daleks very well in print: his novelisations are good and his previous novel, War Of The Daleks, at times cleverly underlined the menace of these monsters by limiting their appearances. But Peel’s original fiction tends to be a bit rudderless, the writing set in a sort of grottier Terry Nation style, added to which is a strange need to tick continuity boxes. War Of The Daleks was a case of diminishing returns as the book went along, and sadly Legacy Of The Daleks is not an improvement.
It’s at least a very different setup for a story, which is something I appreciate. Rather than another space-faring adventure we’re checking in on Earth after the Dalek invasion. The Daleks are ostensibly wiped out, which again allows Peel to limit their appearances. (You do begin to wonder if the Nation Estate charges by the page.) The people are rebuilding, albeit slowly, and it’s in this crucible that the story is told. The Doctor receives a distress call from Susan; already on the lookout for Sam, he decides to kill two birds with one stone by visiting Earth.
A couple of nitpicks already with this setup. One: I’m not sure the dates line up for Sam to even be here post-Longest Day — all we’re told is “In Thannos time it had been 3177, so allowing for that…” — and a ravaged, decimated Earth seems like a very messy information point for a galactic search. Two: Susan’s message wasn’t from Earth. He’s deliberately going to see her before she left Earth and sent the message from somewhere else, partly so he can find out more (which, if she hasn’t sent it yet, he probably won’t…?) and partly to stop whatever it was from happening in the first place, reasoning “it would be tweaking the laws of Time, and he would no doubt get a slap on the wrist the next time he visited Gallifrey. But what did that matter, compared to all of the complaints they undoubtedly had against him already?” Which, I mean, I suppose he might come up with that excuse, but why is he fine with it now but not the many other times he didn’t want to change history, despite it being in his best interest? And of course, changing this would create an immediate and obvious paradox, with him now not needing to go back and change it. The character setup is a bit of a wash to put it mildly — no doubt because Peel wasn’t enamoured with the Where Is Sam? arc — but the rest of the book brushes it off anyway, so never mind, I guess?
Anyway, The Dalek Invasion Of Earth is a fan-favourite for a bunch of reasons, so it’s reasonable to assume this will be an interesting time and place to revisit. What does Earth look like now? The first chapter sets out its stall: a young girl growing up on a farm needs kittens to keep down the rat population, so she follows a friendly, pregnant stray to her hideout. She is soon ambushed by a leftover Slyther — everyone’s favourite rubbish monster on screen, which is luckily more menacing on paper — which is then defeated by a knight on horseback. Immediately we can see that there are some very unusual mixtures going on, almost with different eras combined. And even more offbeat, the knight is a woman named Donna. This is all good stuff, and it’s an effective start, the plucky adventure of Becca (perhaps a nod to one of Terry’s favourite names?) setting a likeable template.
The drop-off happens almost immediately. We don’t see Becca again for most of the book, following Donna instead. She’s a perpetually angry character, for good reason at least, and most of her dialogue is her lamely snapping at people. Besides her we follow the power struggles of Lord Haldoran. Already in control of one of Britain’s domains, he wants the rest of it courtesy of a defeated Lord London. Haldoran is a nasty piece of work, but not in an interesting way where there are layers to peel back; he’s just a vicious, brutal dictator, and he’s having a splendid time with all of that. (Some sadistic sexual habits are also hinted at for extra yuck points.) His lieutenants are variously terrible as well, with their own internecine squabbles and a general wish to depose Haldoran. When we briefly see Lord London and his lot they don’t seem much better. Haldoran, though, has the added bonus of a special adviser: Estro, a small mysterious man with a pointed beard, sunken eyes, a black suit, powers of hypnosis and a special gun that shrinks people to death. And that’s all the clues you’re getting.
Setting aside for a moment the elephant in the Nehru suit, these people just aren’t interesting. I longed for the relative moral complexity of War Of The Daleks, with its variously trustworthy and untrustworthy Thals. It could be argued that the lack of sympathetic characters in Legacy is a nod to its setting, but if so, it’s a far from perfect translation. The Dalek Invasion Of Earth showed a cross section of humanity. You had good people, but also a deluded resistance leader, some downright unhelpful resistance people, self-serving survivors living on the outskirts as well as outright collaborators. It was a believably fractured response to something as dreadful as a Dalek occupation with (impressively) no rose-tinted Blitz spirit to unite them. Now compare that to Legacy Of The Daleks in which every character is horrible or miserable or both. I just wanted to not be in their company. The incongruity of a future world with knights on horseback is certainly interesting, but it doesn’t get a chance to add anything beyond that, and the post-Dalek Invasion setting quickly stops mattering in a literal sense — we don’t see anything like the Slyther again. Was there really nothing else he could do with that landscape? All we’ve got, until things heat up later on (see: Nehru suit), are power struggles between awful people. They’re not even awful because of Daleks, which is normally the inspiration behind this sort of thing; most of them seem not to remember the pepperpots. They’re just awful because there happens to be a power vacuum, which makes it awkwardly possible to tell this story in places that aren’t specific to this time period. I was increasingly keen for some Daleks to turn up and kill everybody.
Donna is the most likeable one here, and she can generally be found biting the Doctor’s head off. We also have Susan and David, but they’re mostly pootling along in the background, in Susan’s case largely separate from everyone else. Susan at least automatically earns our sympathy because we know her, but she’s also having a worse time than you might have hoped. Her alien metabolism has meant she still looks eighteen while her husband ages normally, which is causing tension in both directions. Also, they can’t conceive. (Peel includes the suggestion that Susan dresses up in ways that capitalise on her young appearance in order to appease David sexually and, you know what John, we’re good, we maybe didn’t need that bit thanks.) Peel, in the Pieces Of Eighth podcast, seemed keen to pursue this doomed relationship as dramatic fodder. But it doesn’t really pay off, since his main insight into what would happen if Susan stayed in a relationship which has fundamental problems is, there would be fundamental problems. Where else is there to go? (He also says the characters “hadn’t thought it through” to begin with, but that seems a bit unfair since Time Lord metabolisms didn’t exist in 1964.)
It’s all a bit grim, but on the plus side there’s a reunion to look forward to. Right? That’s surely a major selling point of bringing her back. But, whether he deliberately chose to avoid the obvious or he just missed a trick, Peel holds back on that for most of the novel, with Susan and the Doctor separately investigating the Dalek artefact Lord Haldoran is after. This has the effect of making the reader go “Oh right, yeah” every time we cut back to Susan, which strikes me as a strange way to utilise her. But not as strange as the punchline: besides a violent crossfire that leaves Susan thinking he’s dead, there is no reunion. The Doctor then makes some very tenuous assumptions about Susan being fine after all and just leaves her to it. Susan, at least, is set up to have the book equivalent of a Big Finish spin-off. I have no idea if any authors ran with that, but given that she spends most of Legacy Of The Daleks either depressed, sneaking around behind a Dalek or being taken hostage, I wouldn’t expect much of a queue to form.
The Doctor isn’t having a great time either. Behaving a little strangely from the outset, viz “let’s change history, why not,” he’s then pre-emptively rude to Donna about her personal life, and nastily dismissive of the state of humanity. (He happens to be right about that one, but only because he has the author on his side.) His attitude to violence wobbles throughout, for instance making the usual “no guns” noises, then at one point tossing Donna a gun during a violent confrontation and then being surprised when she shoots their aggressor with it. Later he threatens Estro at gunpoint, and of course, Daleks are his free pass to just blow up the baddies. (You get the general impression Peel would rather he cut the pacifism and just get on with it.) Between a half-hearted search for Sam and a quickly second-tier quest for Susan he doesn’t have much motivation here besides, coo, them Daleks, eh? What a bunch of rotters! (Humans: got my eye on you. Don’t push your luck.)
Thanks to Estro’s misplaced ambitions the Daleks do eventually turn up. Sorry to spoil, but it’s called (something) Of The Daleks, and we all know how that goes. It did occur to me that you could write a story about their legacy and not actually invoke them, but a) that would probably be seen as a waste of the license and b) what we’ve got instead is utterly pedestrian, so bring ‘em on. The human characters are all flat and unpleasant, and their inner voices aren’t much better: everyone, the Doctor included, has this routine of blandly reciting what they’ve learned and then asking rhetorical questions about it. “But how?” “But why?” Etc. The dialogue is mostly just death threats dressed up with weak sarcasm, but there’s a lot of blunt exposition too, with Becca’s dad, Donna, Estro and even the bloody Daleks cheerfully pausing to explain what the world is like/what their evil plan is, muahaha. (This works well when it’s someone telling a story to lay the groundwork for the book, but then the book keeps doing it. Elegant it is not.) In amongst all that, the Daleks are fine, bordering on forgettable, which seems crazy when they’re such a rarity. They just want to do all the normal Dalek stuff, viz make more Daleks and use them to shoot more humans. Where’s the twist? Stephen Cole seemed keen to get to the heart of what makes them scary, and this book is extremely not that, devoting most if its energies to human infighting instead.
Well, not totally human. Is it a spoiler to say that Estro is the Master? Was Peel even going for a surprise reveal here, given that on Page 13 he has Estro say “You will obey me … I am the master [sic]”? The character is recognisably himself, but rather pettier than usual, ostensibly doing all this Evil Vizier stuff with Haldoran just to pass the time. (“I was forced to wait for the implementation of my main scheme, so I dabbled in local politics in the meantime.”) You might expect his reunion with the Doctor to be as worthwhile as the Doctor meeting Susan again, and these two do at least meet with dialogue and everything, but there’s nothing interesting about it besides the Doctor stage whispering that they’ve actually met out of sequence. Oh, how thrilling.
Between Haldoran, his lackeys, Donna, the Doctor and Susan it’s a somewhat cluttered book, and that’s before you bring in the Master. (And that’s before you bring in the Daleks.) You do sort of assume there will be a point to Ol’ Pointy Beard in this. So, about that: you know how the generally agreed upon worst bit of War Of The Daleks was the chapter tying together all the 70s and 80s Dalek stories into one big conspiracy theory? Well Peel’s back, baby, and he’s got a box to tick. Escaping with the Daleks’ secret weapon and a hostage (Susan), the Master goes to Terserus to try it out. But he underestimates his furious captive, who attacks him psychically and then shoots him and his Dalek weapon, scarring him horribly. Yes, we’re really doing “How did the Master end up scarred in The Deadly Assassin” at the end of a story about Daleks and the future of Susan. To call it a gratuitous add-on would be a whimsical understatement. (Yes, this sequence gives Susan something like an empowering end to her story. But what a shame that violence against a person she doesn’t know was the answer, and what a random piece of continuity to get out of mothballs to do it. The whole sequence just doesn’t speak to Susan at all.)
There are good ideas in here. Well, okay, there are germs. Earth post-Dalek Invasion could be interesting. What Susan Did Next could be interesting. What Would Susan And The Doctor Say To Each Other could be interesting. At every turn, though, Legacy Of The Daleks either advances its ideas one faltering step or it just doesn’t do them at all. This was to be the last Dalek novel of the range, but if they were to continue being delivered by the grace of the Nation Estate’s ever tightening monkey’s paw — and by all accounts, they would have been — then that’s probably for the best.
4/10
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