The Evil of the Daleks (BBC Books novelisation)

The Evil of the Daleks was a novelisation based on the 1967 television serial The Evil of the Daleks ^[+]Loading...["The Evil of the Daleks (TV story)"]. It was written by Frazer Hines and released by BBC Books on 26 October 2023. It was the second such official novelisation following the original and justified itself as, in essence, a novelisation of the 1968 televised repeat of the original TV serial, making use of the framing device of Zoe Heriot being shown the events of the earlier adventure on a mind projector shortly after joining the Doctor's TARDIS.

Publisher's summary

Young astrophysicist Zoe wishes to join Jamie and the Doctor on their travels. To give her fair warning of the dangers she may face, the Doctor uses a mind projector to share one of their most harrowing adventures...

And so, Jamie is forced to relive his struggle against the evil Daleks at their most powerful and calculating. In a complex plot that drags him from modern-day London to Victorian times and finally to the Dalek world of Skaro, he endures ordeals that test his courage, strength - and his friendship with the Doctor - to the limit...

Chapter titles

Chapter One: To Set a Trap

First Interlude

Chapter Two: The Net Tightens

Second Interlude

Chapter Three: A Trial of Strength

Third Interlude

Chapter Four: A Test of Skill

Fourth Interlude

Chapter Five: The Human Factor

Fifth Interlude

Chapter Six: Escape to Danger

Sixth Interlude

Chapter Seven: The End of the Daleks

Coda

Plot

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Characters

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Worldbuilding

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Deviations from televised story

Kennedy is given the first name Frank.
The final scene from Episode 2, in which two Daleks discuss the beginning of the experiment and demand there be no delay, is absent.
Terrall has further flashbacks to his time in the Crimean War. His Dalek conditioning further confuses these thoughts, causing him to believe he is actually fighting a war of extermination against the Thals.
Kemel receives an expanded backstory explaining how he ended up in the employ of Maxtible: he was a wrestler in London who was defended from a murder charge by Maxtible after killing a thief in self-defence.
Besides Jamie, the Daleks also factor both Kemel and Victoria into the Human Factor experiment, in order to determine if the traits displayed by Jamie are common across race and gender.
Terral, Ruth and Mollie all witness the destruction of Maxtible's house from afar in an additional scene to feature them after their departure.
A Black Dalek is present on Skaro, serving as the Emperor's second-in-command, in a role virtually identical to the Black Dalek Leader. However, it is destroyed by the humanised Daleks at the start of the rebellion (other material suggests the Black Dalek Leader survived up until the events of Remembrance of the Daleks ^[+]Loading...["Remembrance of the Daleks (TV story)"]). No Black Daleks were present in the TV serial, despite the Emperor's black-domed guards being referred to as such.
Further detail is given to the history and function of the Dalek City.
Omega is explicitly identified as one of the first humanised Daleks to be killed by the Emperor's guards just as the Doctor incited the rebellion.
After the Dalek Civil War begins, the Doctor begins hunting for humanised Dalek reinforcements, finding a group of them who are in the process of giving themselves names and scratching them onto their casings.
At Kemel's death scene, instead of Maxtible beckoning Kemel towards him as they escape the city and Kemel cautiously complying, Kemel immediately knows not to trust him steps forward to defend Jamie and Victoria from the Dalekised Maxtible.
After killing Kemel, Maxtible gets into a fight with Jamie and falls over the same precipice as Kemel. In the original serial, Maxtible responded to orders for all Daleks to return to the city and implicitly died in the fighting.
Greater emphasis is placed on the toll the Doctor's conflicted thoughts and emotions begin to take on him as he drives the Daleks towards genocide, and the deaths that were caused to get there.

Comparisons with the 1993 novelisation

Kemel's backstory different greatly. In the original novelisation, he met Maxtible while working for a blacksmith in Turkey.
The notable Red Dalek is never identified in this story. Technically, there is no explicit confirmation that a Red Dalek is not present. However, in one of the scenes it originally featured in, it is replaced by a Dalek which is said to look similar to all the rest and is also not the leader of the operation.
Both versions feature Black Daleks, which were not in the televised version. Whereas the original novelisation replaced all the Emperor's black-domed guards with Black Daleks, the 2023 novelisation features a singular prominent Black Dalek as well as black-domed Daleks.
Ironically, the Black Dalek Leader, although directly mentioned, is explicitly not present in the original novelisation, despite author John Peel effectively codifying the character's literary portrayal in his other Target novelisations. The individual Black Dalek in the 2023 version is so similar in its portrayal to the Black Dalek Leader that it could be interpreted as the same character, albeit with an alternate fate.
Both novelisations give the Emperor's backstory as being one of the earliest Dalek. The 2023 novelisation does not give mentions of Davros, the Dalek Prime or any of the experiments it conducted on itself as the 1993 novelisation does, but both versions of the backstory are nevertheless compatible.
The 1993 novelisation notably set the background of the story as taking place during the Great War, sparked by the events of The Daleks' Master Plan ^[+]Loading...["The Daleks' Master Plan (TV story)"]. Although no such details are included in the 2023 novelisation, reference is made to an ongoing Dalek "war effort".

Notes

Each chapter corresponds to one episode of the televised serial. The chapter titles for all bar "Chapter Six: Escape to Danger" are the original working titles for the televised episodes,^[1] even though individual episode titles were by this time no longer being used; Season 3's four-part story The Gunfighters ^[+]Loading...["The Gunfighters (TV story)"] being the last to feature them. No working title is given on existing BBC paperwork for The Evil of the Daleks episode six. The original novelisation also featured these titles (except "Escape to Danger") among its 33 chapters.
Each chapter concludes with the Doctor taking a short break from retelling the story on the mind projector, allowing him, Jamie and Zoe to comment on the events. This framing device results in the novel becoming a fully-detailed account of what takes place chronologically between The Wheel in Space ^[+]Loading...["The Wheel in Space (TV story)"] and Fear of the Daleks ^[+]Loading...["Fear of the Daleks (audio story)"].
The interludes with Zoe and the mind projector are written in the first person from Jamie's perspective. The main bulk of the story, retelling The Evil of the Daleks, is written in the third person.
A poster for this novelisation and Rose ^[+]Loading...["Rose (novelisation)"] was included in SFX 373.

Continuity

The Doctor begins questioning the morality of his actions as he realises the implications of what he is doing to the Daleks. Immediately after departing Skaro, he is struggling to come to terms with this. (AUDIO: The Death of the Daleks ^[+]Loading...["The Death of the Daleks (audio story)"]). The Fourth Doctor later experienced the same moral quandry when given the chance to wipe out the Daleks from birth. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks ^[+]Loading...["Genesis of the Daleks (TV story)"])
Some humanised Daleks attempt to give each other names, with the Doctor considering that they could start their own civilisation if they survived. Led by Alpha, they survivors would go on to attempt this. (COMIC: Children of the Revolution ^[+]Loading...["Children of the Revolution (comic story)"]).

Audiobook

This novel was released as an audiobook on 26 October 2023 complete and unabridged by BBC Audio and read by Frazer Hines, with Dalek voices by Nicholas Briggs.

Audiobook cover

References

↑ The Evil of the Daleks at Shannon Sullivan's A Brief History of Time (Travel)

External links

Official The Evil of the Daleks - novel page at Penguin Books
Official The Evil of the Daleks - audio page at Penguin Books

[1] The Evil of the Daleks at Shannon Sullivan's A Brief History of Time (Travel)

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