'Doctor Who and the Destiny of the Daleks' – Terrance Dicks (Target Books)

I've had to change my reading plans a little, this week, as as my daughters are both on their half term break and I've had to take a little time off so they're not left on their own (because god no-one wants that). Not a lot of time for reading then and that's before I go back to work tomorrow on what is going to be a particularly busy day (I can't wait for that one...)

So, 'The Justice of Kings' is very much still on my radar then (it's brilliant, that's why) but I've got no time, right now, to stick with a thick book like that... What is a Graeme to do...? Read something tiny, that's what... ;o)

Before I tell you all about 'Destiny of the Daleks' though, lets take a second to admire the staying power of a physical book that's more sellotape than paper. This edition was published in 1979 and it's clear that the book has either been much loved or just really unlucky. The state of the pages suggests an almost fatal encounter with a full bath... 'Destiny of the Daleks' made it through another read but it's clearly been through a lot so I'm going to do the 'book equivalent of putting it out to pasture ;o)

Before I do though...

Landing on an apparently devastated planet, the Doctor and Romana make a horrifying discovery. This planet is none other than Skaro, home world of the Daleks.

The Daleks are excavating in order to find Davros; the mad, crippled, scientific genius who first created them. They hope that he will give them the scientific superiority to break the deadlock with their Movellan enemies.

Faced once more with the deadly and seemingly indestructible Daleks, the Doctor's wits and strength are tested to their very limits...

You already know that I have a real soft spot for this story, as a TV show, and when I saw this copy in 'Brockley Books', I wondered how it would hold up as a book. I was also wondering how this book was still in one piece but... you know what I mean ;o) The answer is... Better than you'd think.

I say 'better than you'd think' as 'Destiny of the Daleks' is only a hundred and ten pages long which you would think doesn't give it a lot of time and room to be much more than a basic retelling of what you see on the screen. And that's true to an extent but at the same time, Douglas Adams originally wrote the story and Terrance Dicks takes the opportunity to highlight those little bits of Adams' humour that were there to start off with. The result is a novelisation that has a little more sparkle than normal. There's no getting around the fact that you know what's going to happen (and Dicks lays it all out in the same way that he normally does) but that's almost besides the point. If you're reading this book, the odds are that you've already seen it on TV. It makes a real change though to read a Doctor Who novelisation that's a little wry in places and that's what I got here. There's also nods to that Dalek fanaticism that will see Daleks happily turn themselves into suicide bombers if it means that the Daleks, as a whole, will conquer the galaxy. It's just as chilling on the page as it is on the screen.

I'm going to stop here as the book is only a hundred and ten pages long and there's only so much that you can say about a book that length, I'm not going to push it ;o) What I will say though is that 'Destiny of the Daleks' is just a little bit more than your average 'Doctor Who' Target novelisation and I really appreciated that. Now my copy can finally retire before it completely falls apart...