Doctor Who and the Destiny of the Daleks was a novelisation based on the 1979 television serial Destiny of the Daleks.
Publisher's summary
1979 edition
Landing on an apparently devastated planet, the Fourth Doctor and Romana make a horrifying discovery.
The planet is Skaro, home-world of the Daleks.
The Daleks are excavating in order to find and revive 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 stretched to their very limits …
Chapter Titles
- The Dead City
- Underground Evil
- The Daleks
- The Movellans
- Slaves of the Daleks
- Escape
- The Secret of the Daleks
- The Prisoner
- The Hostages
- The Bait
- Stalemate
- Suicide Squad
- Blow-up
- Departure
Deviations from televised story
- The novel maintains the original script idea to have all the action on Skaro take place at night, shrouded by darkness.
- During the Doctor's escape from the Dalek command centre, the Daleks use hoverbouts to chase him.
Writing and publishing notes
- This novelisation was intended for release simultaneously with the TV transmission (hence the novel being written from the script version of the story). It appeared two months after.
- This was the first novelisation to feature the character of Romana.The novels adapting the Key to Time arc, in which she debuted, were not published until after.
- The back cover blurb was rewritten because it originally identified the Movellans as robots.
- This was the first novel with a cover illustration by Andrew Skilleter. There was no visual reference available to the illustrator, who had to conduct his own research using the BBC Picture Publicity Library, before appealing to fans and Doctor Who Magazine.
Additional cover images
Hardcover edition; Cover by Andrew Skilleter
1990 edition; Cover by Alister Pearson
German edition
British publication history
First publication:
- Hardback
- W.H. Allen & Co. Ltd. UK
- Paperback
- Target
Editions published outside Britain
- Published in Germany in 1990 by Goldmann Verlag.