‘Doctor Who: Dalek’ – Robert Shearman (BBC Books)


Page Count: 186 pages.

As happy as I was to see ‘Doctor Who’ finally return to the BBC, what I was really excited about (along with many others I suspect) was seeing the Daleks back on the telly. Even if it was just one Dalek to be honest; when you’ve spent years without any Daleks at all, even just the one will do very nicely thank you :o)

I’m not going to go into the TV episode too much. Suffice it to say that if you haven’t watched ‘Dalek’ then you really should do something about that. And if you have seen, you know full well that you’re way past due a rewatch. You know I’m right.

Nope, what I’m all about here is Robert Shearman’s novelisation of ‘Dalek’ and how yesterday, it became pretty much the perfect ‘bus read’ for my trip into work. I didn’t get my phone out once, just read ‘Dalek’ all the way to work and all the way back again. And it was great, let me tell you about it. And I know it’s becoming a bit of a habit here but we’re talking quick thoughts again. I got about three hours sleep last night and I really want to see if I can do better tonight...

‘The entire Dalek race, wiped out in one second. I watched it happen. I made it happen!’

The Doctor and Rose arrive in an underground vault in Utah in the near future. The vault is filled with alien artefacts. Its billionaire owner, Henry van Statten, even has possession of a living alien creature, a mechanical monster in chains that he has named a Metaltron.

Seeking to help the Metaltron, the Doctor is appalled to find it is in fact a Dalek – one that has survived the horrors of the Time War just as he has. And as the Dalek breaks loose, the Doctor is brought back to the brutality and desperation of his darkest hours spent fighting the creatures of Skaro… this time with the Earth as their battlefield.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while then thank you (!) and you know my feelings on the old Terrance Dicks Target novelisations. Absolutely great at capturing exactly what happened, in a given story, but … that’s all they did. And maybe that’s all they needed to do (a discussion for another day) but the upshot is that I always appreciate a ‘Doctor Who’ novelisation (as oppose to original stories) that seeks to go a little further than just a straight retelling of what happened on the telly. ‘ Dalek’ is definitely one of those stories and ended up being a read that I couldn’t put down, even though I knew where it was going.

Shearman lays the foundations by doing the basics very well, everything takes place pretty much exactly as it did on the screen and he captures the pace of the story pretty much perfectly. Just like on the TV, ‘Dalek’ is very easy to pick up and just get straight into the flow of the story.

Where Shearman really excels for me though is in how he takes a little time to really dig deep into the backstories of the supporting cast. You’d think that maybe this was an unnecessary step to take, given that Doctor Who books are short and snappy by nature, but it really works here. Not only does it make the cast more relatable (some of them anyway, the rest are just plain unlikeable), especially the Dalek itself, but the secrets we learn cast whole chunks of story in a whole new light and make the whole book a compelling read. I’m thinking of one character’s backstory in particular which would make a pretty gory thriller all by itself, that was very unsettling to say the least.

‘Dalek’ ended up being just the book I needed then, both for the commute and just in general really. It did it’s job very well and then decided to go a step further and do that brilliantly too. You can’t complain really ;o)

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