Written by Colin Brake
Oh dear…
By far the most disappointing novel in this batch. The main problem here is that, after six consecutive books that were challenging, absorbing, and compelling…what we have here is nothing more than children’s entertainment. It’s space-opera-meets Veronica-Mars: exceptionally simple and linear, not particularly challenging, and full of too many passages that tend to TELL, not SHOW. In short, anyone under age 12 will love it…but everyone else will be left out in the cold.
To be fair, it’s never less than entertaining, it moves fast, and offers some delightful insight (and great moments of physical comedy) into the mind of a Judoon officer. I’m all for exploring the inner depths of everyone’s favourite space rhinos…but couldn’t we get a novel where that kind of depth is par for the course, not offered in fleeting moments? Everyone else (even the Doctor), is pretty much a dull, uninspired caricature.
Ah well…I suppose you can’t win them all. A quick & inoffensive read…but it’s definitely a novel that won’t be reading a second time.
4
Written by Simon Guerrier
Better than the previous novel, but still flawed. Guerrier has a superb track record: a debut novel with the 1st Doctor (The Time Travellers) that alternates between mind-shredding temporal physics AND gorgeous character development; a 10th Doctor outing (The Pirate Loop) that takes the same material, but gives it a loopy, comic turn that would impress even Tom Baker at the height of his powers. But his third novel doesn’t live up to the standard of these previous works.
Mind you, it tries really hard…and on numerous occasions, Guerrier crafts beautiful set pieces, and thrilling moments of action & adventure. He also creates some wonderful personalities for the newly introduced members of the Slitheen family. He even manages to create a generic girl-sidekick that could have worked as a long-term book companion…no easy feat. The trick is to fashion a template, then sketch out the character enough so that the audience can have fun filling in blank spots for themselves. Guerrier hits the bullseye with the introduction of June.
Unfortunately, that’s only half the book. The other half suffers from Judgement of the Judoon-style oversimplicity & caricature overload. Just when you think you’re really getting to the heart of a character or a situation, the prose suddenly switches to autopilot, and the reader is forced to tread water, with only the teensy-little-bits shared by the author up to that point as an anchor. It’s uneventful, minor league filler, sandwiched between moments of joy and excitement.
Still, the overall work is far more gripping, and far more satisfying, than Colin Brake’s latest attempt at a Doctor Who novel. For that alone it’s worth a…
6
Written by Trevor Baxendale
Now this is more like it. This isn’t the Trevor Baxendale who gave us the bland, unremarkable Wishing Well. This is the Trevor Baxendale of The Janus Conjunction, Eater of Wasps and Fear of the Dark. A solid, meaty space thriller, with everyone’s favourite arch enemies along for the ride. This is a gourmet feast after the previous two fluffy appetizers.
It’s only real drawback is that it’s hardly original. The classic Doctor Who Magazine comics, Absolom Daak-Dalek Killer, the Virgin Publishing Doctor Who New Adventures…all three covered most of the ground presented to us here. Futuristic humans vs the ever-expanding Dalek empire, long before the Time War. The continuity is handled simply yet entertainingly, and the end result becomes a classic (in every sense of the word) Dalek tale, with a few surprises thrown into the mix.
Watch as we’re introduced to a lovely proto-companion in the making…only to have her exterminated in the first quarter of the novel! Revel in the delicious black humour of the Dalek bounty hunters: hard cases on the outside…tired, frightened human beings on the inside. Luxuriate in classic Dalek dialogue: dripping with evil, and followed up with lots of loud, planet-shredding battle action. We even get slave camps, prisoner torture, and prose written in classic, jagged Dalek Annual fonts. It’s as if someone decided to take classic 70s Dalek stories, mix in a dash of Blake’s 7…then add a squeeze of hardcore Torchwood style to spice everything up.
We also get some lovely new additions to the canon: a brutal & disturbing explanation for the skeletal extermination effect, the introduction of the grand inquisitor, Dalek X (what a ridiculously WONDERFUL Terry Nation-style name), and delicious hints of the path the Daleks will travel to transform into the Time War terrors we now know they become…
…and above all, a Doctor who is terrified, grim, determined, exasperated, melancholy, and, ultimately, triumphant. This is the Doctor of the series four episode Midnight: shouting at the rain, to very little effect. Without close friends or allies, pushed aside and treated like dirt, desperate to salvage the situation, the Doctor is brought into sharp, dramatic relief by the events of this novel. In Baxendale’s hands, the Tennant incarnation is never less than compelling on each and every page.
Prisoner of the Daleks is head and shoulders above its companion novels…and it definitely IS worth re-reading. But be warned…it’s not likely to leave you with a cheery disposition.
9
