![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
turbotThere’s something of the pantomime in the second of the Eight Doctor’s tussles with the Daleks. This is a breezily written, speedily read book that comes with a complete cast of over-the-top villains and noble heroes all acting for purely spurious, if not completely fanciful reasons. While Peel hasn’t tried to produce a comedic book, he has produced an entertainingly shallow one.
Or in other words, pulp.
The book is set in England about thirty years after the “Dalek Invasion Of Earth”. The Doctor arrives after receiving a mental SOS from his grand-daughter Susan. He is also searching for his missing companion Sam, who he decides through a piece of flimsy logic, might also be on Earth. England meanwhile is cut up between feudal lords who are feuding. A thinly veiled Delgado Master arrives in search of a piece of completely ludicrous Dalek technology, and entertains himself by helping Lord Haldoran start a war with Lord London. Meanwhile Susan investigates an old Dalek landmark, uncovers the Master’s plans, only to get captured by some Daleks the Master has inadvertently reactivated.
Into all of this comes the Doctor with pseudo-companion Donna – daughter of Lord London and owner of a rather intense past. They arrive in the action about half-way through the book, and promptly get captured by the Master, escape and go to deal with the Daleks. Like a scary number of Doctor Who books, the Doctor actually doesn’t do much, but given the lightweight nature of this tale, that isn’t a problem. He never really meets the Daleks, instead nipping in through the backdoor and doing a little sabotage. For the first half of the story, the Doctor’s main purpose, and this is a definite plus, is explain everything. With Donna at his side, he gets to explain who the Master is, what the TARDIS is for and all the other foibles of the Who Universe some readers might be unfamiliar with. He therefore acts as a kind of walking footnote for anyone who picked up the book because they liked the amazing cover.
Donna comes with serious baggage. Her infertility and subsequent social isolation at a time when the country is trying to repopulate is well handled, but most of the time she wanders around being sarcastic, angsty or generally angry. Then there is Dave Campbell, Susan’s husband, who is trying to deal with the implications of having been married to a perpetually young and beautiful wife while he and everyone else grow old. While this might be seen as Peel trying to play the age old game of cleaning up history according to the TV series, in this case he has a point – what would Susan have done when David finally dies of old age. Is she destined to spend the next thousand years wandering around Earth hoping that no one notices? Is she still watching Simpson reruns in 3400?
Everything Susan does here is to attempt show a new maturity since we last saw her. While walking alone into a Dalek artefact with no backup might seem immature, it is precisely the sort of thing some Doctor’s would do and thus would probably be called mature for renegade Time Lords and Ladies. The other job of the book is to construct her escape from the planet, but not with out standing up to some very gullible Daleks. She also destroys a Roboman single-handedly, but that is nothing compared what she does to the Master at the end of the book.
For his part, the supposedly Delgado Master actually comes across like a caricature of Ainley’s, all gloating and maniacal. He does get the best scene in the bookis that in which he shrinks a Dalek with his TCE. The matter transmuter he is searching for is a silly piece of technology that Susan eventually zaps him with, triggering his regeneration to the skull-face we see in “The Deadly Assassin”, and the book leads directly to Goth finding him previous to “Deadly Assassin”. I can’t remember reading anything prior to this that Delgado and old skull-face were adjacent incarnations, and I did roll my eyes in irritation when writers stamping such restrictions onto the series timelines. But then you can’t take anything in this book too seriously.
Take the support cast for instance, namely Lord Haldoran and his band of weasels, perverts and nasty-pieces of work. Everyone is over the top, everyone a cliché. Haldoran is bombastic and stupid and plays the sort of blinkered politics you find in pantomimes and third-rate fantasy novels. Don’t take that as a negative, because it is fun in that pantomime kind of way. Of his men, only Barlow is anything other than a caricature as he turns from villain to an anti-hero once the Daleks appear. He is not a nice man, as he himself keeps telling us, but at least does things for some kind of greater good, knows how to runs things, and generally doesn’t want to kill people every few seconds.
And finally the Daleks, who are basically stuck in their bunker and are easily confused. These Daleks are historically accurate to their forbears in the “Dalek Invasion Of Earth”, including the radio dish stuck to their backs to power them. They are supposed to be a secret cache of Daleks frozen in case of resistance on Earth, but they come over as the Daleks the rest thought were too stupid to be left to their own devices. Thankfully the Doctor puts them out of their misery.
In the end, “Legacy of the Daleks” is a fun read. Forget about dense plotting or experimental writing, this one of those books where you turn off your brain and escape. It is a timely reminder that pulp is just as much part of Doctor Who as those deep and meaningful novels scattered throughout the series.
Or in other words, pulp.
The book is set in England about thirty years after the “Dalek Invasion Of Earth”. The Doctor arrives after receiving a mental SOS from his grand-daughter Susan. He is also searching for his missing companion Sam, who he decides through a piece of flimsy logic, might also be on Earth. England meanwhile is cut up between feudal lords who are feuding. A thinly veiled Delgado Master arrives in search of a piece of completely ludicrous Dalek technology, and entertains himself by helping Lord Haldoran start a war with Lord London. Meanwhile Susan investigates an old Dalek landmark, uncovers the Master’s plans, only to get captured by some Daleks the Master has inadvertently reactivated.
Into all of this comes the Doctor with pseudo-companion Donna – daughter of Lord London and owner of a rather intense past. They arrive in the action about half-way through the book, and promptly get captured by the Master, escape and go to deal with the Daleks. Like a scary number of Doctor Who books, the Doctor actually doesn’t do much, but given the lightweight nature of this tale, that isn’t a problem. He never really meets the Daleks, instead nipping in through the backdoor and doing a little sabotage. For the first half of the story, the Doctor’s main purpose, and this is a definite plus, is explain everything. With Donna at his side, he gets to explain who the Master is, what the TARDIS is for and all the other foibles of the Who Universe some readers might be unfamiliar with. He therefore acts as a kind of walking footnote for anyone who picked up the book because they liked the amazing cover.
Donna comes with serious baggage. Her infertility and subsequent social isolation at a time when the country is trying to repopulate is well handled, but most of the time she wanders around being sarcastic, angsty or generally angry. Then there is Dave Campbell, Susan’s husband, who is trying to deal with the implications of having been married to a perpetually young and beautiful wife while he and everyone else grow old. While this might be seen as Peel trying to play the age old game of cleaning up history according to the TV series, in this case he has a point – what would Susan have done when David finally dies of old age. Is she destined to spend the next thousand years wandering around Earth hoping that no one notices? Is she still watching Simpson reruns in 3400?
Everything Susan does here is to attempt show a new maturity since we last saw her. While walking alone into a Dalek artefact with no backup might seem immature, it is precisely the sort of thing some Doctor’s would do and thus would probably be called mature for renegade Time Lords and Ladies. The other job of the book is to construct her escape from the planet, but not with out standing up to some very gullible Daleks. She also destroys a Roboman single-handedly, but that is nothing compared what she does to the Master at the end of the book.
For his part, the supposedly Delgado Master actually comes across like a caricature of Ainley’s, all gloating and maniacal. He does get the best scene in the bookis that in which he shrinks a Dalek with his TCE. The matter transmuter he is searching for is a silly piece of technology that Susan eventually zaps him with, triggering his regeneration to the skull-face we see in “The Deadly Assassin”, and the book leads directly to Goth finding him previous to “Deadly Assassin”. I can’t remember reading anything prior to this that Delgado and old skull-face were adjacent incarnations, and I did roll my eyes in irritation when writers stamping such restrictions onto the series timelines. But then you can’t take anything in this book too seriously.
Take the support cast for instance, namely Lord Haldoran and his band of weasels, perverts and nasty-pieces of work. Everyone is over the top, everyone a cliché. Haldoran is bombastic and stupid and plays the sort of blinkered politics you find in pantomimes and third-rate fantasy novels. Don’t take that as a negative, because it is fun in that pantomime kind of way. Of his men, only Barlow is anything other than a caricature as he turns from villain to an anti-hero once the Daleks appear. He is not a nice man, as he himself keeps telling us, but at least does things for some kind of greater good, knows how to runs things, and generally doesn’t want to kill people every few seconds.
And finally the Daleks, who are basically stuck in their bunker and are easily confused. These Daleks are historically accurate to their forbears in the “Dalek Invasion Of Earth”, including the radio dish stuck to their backs to power them. They are supposed to be a secret cache of Daleks frozen in case of resistance on Earth, but they come over as the Daleks the rest thought were too stupid to be left to their own devices. Thankfully the Doctor puts them out of their misery.
In the end, “Legacy of the Daleks” is a fun read. Forget about dense plotting or experimental writing, this one of those books where you turn off your brain and escape. It is a timely reminder that pulp is just as much part of Doctor Who as those deep and meaningful novels scattered throughout the series.