War of the Daleks (Dr. Who Series)

Rating:
Summary: "exterminate"
Review: I enjoyed this book.I do not understand why it got such bad reviews.The only problem I had was that he mixed up the dalek types.

Rating:
Summary: I hate Dalek stories...
Review: I hate Dalek stories as all they do is kill and subjugate. This story is no different in that respect, but it reveals a lot and offers a humdinger of a surprise.

It is no surprise that Davros lives. He's like a cockroach - you think you've got it but in the end the legs are still twitching. Yuck!

The character of the Eighth Doctor is perfect. It is fun to watch Sam's reactions to every woman she and the Doctor come across. Sam is only 17 and not really grown yet but she is like all of we human women who have come under the Romance Spell of the Doctor. All his incarnations have had it to some degree, but #8 is one big WOW! She wants the Doctor all to herself, and one suspects sometimes she has rather adult fantasies of them together in the Tardis, but....

Anyway, this is a good Dalek story for those who like planetery takeovers, killing, destruction and edge of your seat suspense. You keep asking yourself When Is This Going To End? But, when it comes to the Daleks, does it really ever end?

Rating:
Summary: Juvenile, badly flawed, but still fun
Review: I have seriously mixed feelings about "War of the Daleks". Despite it being clunky, juvenile and containing the most pointless continuity rewrite in the history of science fiction, it's still the only BBC Doctor Who novel (with the exception of "The Infinity Doctors") that I've read more than once. It's a guilty pleasure, like Godzilla movies. Reading it, you know that it's dumb, but you just can't stop. At least, I can't.

Throughout the novel, John Peel does a great job of showing us how good it could have been, as he breaks up the main plot with small vignettes from the greater galaxy as it grapples with the Dalek threat. These are gripping stuff indeed, epic adventure against an implacable and ruthless foe. The books opening scene, a vast battle between the Daleks and Thal special forces, is equally gripping and for some reason reminds me of many of the scenes in Heinlein's "Starship Troopers". If the book had continued along those lines, it would have been superb; miltary SF in the Doctor Who universe is something we haven't seen before, and Peel infuses the battle scenes with great tension and drama, whether they be between the Daleks and lone secuirty agents, custodial robots or Draconian starships. He proves that he certainly has the ability to write this kind of stuff well, which is why the direction he takes with the rest of the novel is so irritating.

In between the battle scenes, Peel manages to create some very interesting characters and then give them very little to do. The Doctor, supposedly the hero of the story, literally does nothing to affect the plot at all throughout the entire book. Yes,he gets to solve problems, but it is plain that those problems are largely of no consequence and that most of the events of the novel would have occurred exactly the same way where he present or not. Given that Peel's characterisation of the Doctor is extremely generic, I'm convinced the book would have been far better had it been written as a standalone book without the Doctor in it at all.

The biggest problem with the book occurs when the plot moves to Skaro, the Dalek homeworld. Since the Doctor blew it up in the last Dalek TV appearence, the fact that it still exists drives what is left of the plot. It's at this point that pretty much all the characters switch their brains off and Peel reveals the real reason the book was written in the first place; to undo the destruction of Skaro as seen in "Rememberance of the Daleks". Apparently the creator of the Daleks, Terry Nation, objected to the destruction of the Daleks homeworld, despite okaying it for broadcast (he had script approval and the ability to veto anything he didn't like), and Peel took it upon himself to "undo" that event. To do so, he concocts the most bizarre, convoluted, risky and ultimately pointless conspiracy I've ever come across, rewrites over a decade of Doctor Who history and makes both the Doctor and Davros (the mad scientist who engineered the Daleks) look like complete idiots. When the book was first published, the sound of Dalek fans all over the world going "huh?" was almost deafening. After waiting years for a new Dalek adventure, to be presented with something so mediocre that showed the skeleton of the classic it could have been was almost too much to take.

And yet I keep re-reading it, almost as if I keep hoping that since the last time it'll have metamorphosed into the book it should have been. It's the literary equivalent of a dumb popcorn movie, complete with spectacular set pieces, implausible plot and dodgy acting. If I can keep my brain stunned into silence for the duration, I enjoy it. It's only when I start asking questions that I realise how bad this thing is. Still, if you - like me - love the Daleks and have been starved of new adventures for years, you could do worse than pick this up. Just don't say I didn't warn you.

Rating:
Summary: A good action Who read
Review: I know it's been a while since War came out, but given it's reputation I skipped reading it for a while.

The action starts out in the midst of a Thal/Dalek battle. The book follows some of the Thals from the battle and onto a scavenger frieghter. The frieghter has just picked up some debris which happened to contain Davros's escape pod. The Doctor and Sam are also picked up by the frieghter. The Thals attack the frieghter and awaken Davros.

The action is very well done. Mr. Peel manages to write a pretty good action novel which fleshes out the battles to a greater extent than he was allowed to in his short 80's Target novelizations.

The only problem arises when the infamous retconn issue rears it's ugly head. He spends four or five pages explaining a confusing fanwanky theory about how Davros destroyed the wrong planet. He even goes as far as to retconn the Movellan Dalek war in order to support his theory. It feels like he was forced to incorporate a silly theory ontop of an action novel. It just doesn't work and really doesn't advance the story that much.

The story gets a little too obsessed after the Dalek Prime's long winded retconn and starts to feel too much like a dollar bin sci-fi action novel. It's a bit disappointing after the good beginning.

Mr. Peel does still mange to develop the charecters of Sam and the Doctor, as well as some of the peripheral charecters, despite the high action level. Sam suffers from a mild case of shell shock and goes from navite concerning the horrors of fighting a war, to understanding the Thal's motivations a bit better. The Doctor is the 8th Doctor in this book, a rare occurance for any books placed this early in the series, and a welcome suprise after his missing the mark on the 7th Doctor's charecter in Timewyrm:Genesis.

All in all, not a bad read. I think the retconn backlash has tainted the book and the author's reputation a bit too much. Yeah the retconn is silly, and it's certainly not Peel's best work. But for a fun story that doesn't require too much thought, it's worth it.

Rating:
Summary: Pathetic, breaks canon and not even self-consistent
Review: Subjective opinion: it's a "fair" piece of writing. Objective opinion: it contradicts Who and contradicts ITSELF. Other people have commented on how it disagrees with things like which Imperial Dalek is which. That could all be explained away with some good retcons and extrapolation (and I have). But the book gives ridiculously contrived explanations as Peel attempts to retcon every story since 1975 and makes a USELESS hash of it; his attempts to take the whole of Who back to what HE considers the Glory Days of the Daleks, furthering his own agenda for the Dalek storyline. Peel says the Doctor gets the wrong planet AND visits Skaro on a "special mission"? Digging up Davros, change his memories to rebury him? Movellans INVENTED by Daleks even though the whole galaxy has heard of the war? That's just in the plot. Contrived, artificial, forced, ridiculous. The writing? The interludes showing Daleks with other species in the Universe - GOOD writing, THAT impressed me. That's why I call it "fair" writing. The ending? "Oh no, another problem." "We've fixed it." "Oh good, there's another problem. Oh, and a third one. Oops, there's a fourth". Rushed, amateurish, implausible, pathetic. John Peel should never have been allowed to write an original Dalek novel. Stick him with the TV novelisations. Peel is still writing Who and Dalek stories for the kiddies. "A kiss on the forehead, for one thing!" The only reason I give this crap one star is because there's no option on the Amazon menu for ZERO stars. I'm about to read his next book "Legacy..." to see how much I have to do to retcon IT. I can't believe anyone gave this 4 or 5 stars and if you want to discuss it with me, go ahead and mail me. Defend this trash of Peel's, I dare you. The facts are against it. I love Who, love the Doctor, love the Daleks, even love Davros... but John Peel is destroying it all.

Rating:
Summary: GRAND IDEAS
Review: This - the fifth book in the Eighth Doctor's adventures - fares better than the fourth, but is still a troubling read. Perhaps the worst of this book is the attempt to somehow join together nearly 30 years of Dalek history into one volume and have it all make sense... it dosen't, it can't, it won't - but that hasn't stopped John Peel from making a go at it. Much of the drama involved with the Daleks here actually reads more like Terry Nations's color weekly comic that was run in the the late 60's and early 70's - which features the Dalek Prime fighting for his right to rule against all comers - and just like the comic, the Daleks are given independent thought, will, voice and emotion - which totally contridicts everything we've come to know and even love about the Daleks from the series. Davros is dragged out once more and is put little or no use here - he is neither given any grand speeches or dramatic confrontations with the Doctor - which lessens both his place in the story and the Doctor's as well - both come across very dull, and these early 8th Doctor adventures still have not found their footing with their hero - coming across more like the 7th mixed with a poet (which is commented on a few times in the course of the book). Perhaps the weakest point in this whole story is Sam's teenage girl crush on the Doctor - it's uncomfortable when Peel relates how she blushes when the Doctor kisses her forehead, or how warm she feels towards him (ick - and if you're like me - then you might agree that the only one true love the Doctor might have ever had was in fact with Tegan - they worked so well together). But all is not lost - there are a few moments that work well, and one INTERLUDE that is just fantastic, well written and so interesting that I wish the entire book had been written in this manner - check out INTERLUDE: HESPERUS (pg: 213) to see what I mean. These early adventures may not be the best - but they are getting harder and harder to find, and always worth picking up as both a fan and a collector. Not perfect, but all is not lost.

Rating:
Summary: Something special
Review: This is the first new Dalek story in ten years, and it puts an entirely new spin on this very old foe. For once, instead of being clownish and incompetent, they are painted as dangerous as they were originally intended to be. While some have complained about retconning in this novel, the new information fits seamlessly with what we knew already and improves Dalek continuity. Bravo!

Unfortunately, the Eighth Doctor is so far just about indistinguishable from the Fifth, and his new companion Sam is jealous and unsympathetic. That is, however, hardly the fault of this novel, and I definitely recommend the book.

Rating:
Summary: "exterminate"
Review: WAR OF THE DALEKS reads more like one of the Target novelisations than as a work of fiction in its own right mostly due to some terribly clichéd characterizations and some very unfortunate prose. While reading, one wonders if this was not originally a "Junior Doctor Who" novel starring the Third Doctor with Jo and then quickly altered at the last moment to accommodate the Eighth Doctor and Sam. It wasn't, of course, as it was the subject of many an argument between the author and fans on the rec.arts.drwho newsgroup for quite a long time before its publication. The object of discussion was the infamous "retcon" that turned all of the post-Genesis stories on their heads. It's this that the book is most infamous for and I'll speak more about this later, but I'd first like to talk about the rest of the book.

There are several ideas present in the book that could, if developed properly, have turned out very well. It would have been interesting to see the Doctor coming to terms with having accidentally wiped out an entire planet with more than just a shrug of his shoulders and a mumbling of, "Oh golly, I feel just awful about those guys." The scenario in which the Thals wished to turn themselves into Dalek-like creatures in order to survive and defeat the Daleks should have been a lot more interesting than it in fact turned out to be. The Doctor merely lectures the Thal leader for a few moments and then the whole matter is dropped from the book without any more expansion. There are some moments of actual interesting interaction that had the potential to develop into intriguing character development. Sam and a Thal war veteran discuss some of the aspects of a race totally dedicated to war with generations upon generations not knowing any other way of life. But instead of the conversations actually going somewhere philosophical or thought provoking, they are resolved with hackneyed dialog and banal observations. Every character is a two-dimensional cliché and each person can be entirely summed up in a word or a short phrase ("greedy", "dedicated, but questioning", "creepy", etc.). Even the Doctor is mostly faceless; the only way we know that it's the Eighth Doctor is that we don't go any more than three pages without being told how good-looking he is. It was certainly a relief when Davros was revived and was one of the only characters not to continually notice how attractive the new Doctor is.

The rest of the book is mostly a confused mess. For example, the water planet on the fringes of the Dalek Empire is given the same name as the world that the Doctor is supposed to have destroyed (the editor should have caught this one). The book is so heavy in continuity references to previous Dalek adventures, that one almost needs some reference material in one hand while reading the book in the other in order to make sense of it. While the continuity points may alienate casual and non-fans, the hardcore fans are most likely annoyed that so many of the points are incorrect. The remains of the Dalek battlecruiser that was destroyed by the Hand of Omega near Earth in REMEMBRANCE OF THE DALEKS are found floating thousands of light-years away in a seldom visited area of space with no explanation. REMEMBRANCE took place in 1963 (at least Peel didn't try to retcon away the year of the adventure), yet "about thirty years" later, Earth is supposed to have a giant space empire spanning a large portion of the galaxy. And worst of all, the Daleks actually find the Doctor's TARDIS unlocked, with all of its time-travel capabilities and other secrets available and the most interesting thing they can do is to plant a bomb inside in hopes of killing the Doctor.

Now, onto the retcon. The only question that I have is: why? The story could have continued on perfectly well without it and would not have been bogged down for several pages while the Dalek Prime has to explain and re-explain the situation to a confused audience. It isn't needed for the story and only succeeds in making the Doctor and Davros look like complete morons for not noticing that a very important base of operations is suddenly a few thousand light-years away from where they thought it was. It really does not seem to have any reason to be in the book at all. It certainly reads as though the retcon was thought up first and then the rest of the book was structured to make it seem plausible. Even with all the thought that obviously went into devising this, it still does not adequately fit into the rest of the story. The jump from action to long, tortured explanation back to action feels very jarring.

The last few chapters of the book are passable if only because at this point one knows to keep one's brain firmly in the locked "off" position. This is not recommended for grown-ups.

Rating:
Summary: "Daleks: conquer and destroy!" Mr. Peel does it again!
Review: Well... I read this one after I took on Peel's incredible "Legacy of the Daleks." Sll I can say is that it is FINALLY nice to see the Daleks portrayed as they were alway talked about on the series: as a warring race that will stop at nothing to exterminate, conquer, enslave the universe. I've been watching the program and reading the novels for years; finally I felt fright! Did Mr. Peel really mess up continuity? Well, that's for you to decide. Just remember: if Who didn't change and evolve over the years there wouldn't still be a book series to speak about, 36 years after the series premiered! Keep them coming , Mr. Peel!