A review by thecommonswings
Doctor Who: Revelation of the Daleks by Eric Saward
3.0
Reading a Target book for the first time in almost thirty years is a weird experience in and of itself, but a new one based on an original series story is even weirder. It’s a strange old book, and Saward is trying very hard to navigate memories of something he wrote over thirty five years ago, the finished product from television and his working notes but he *just* manages it. There’s definitely a sense of a man describing a story he originally wrote, and also a confirmation that Seward was never a particularly great Doctor Who writer. It’s very much him trying to channel Robert Holmes, and especially try and emulate Androzani with the baroque characters and sinister machinations culminating in a slaughter of almost everyone. But I’d rather he try and be Holmes than, say, when he wrote the book for Slipback which is him trying to be Douglas Adams.
The story is probably the best TV adventure for my favourite original series Doctor, and the book definitely capture Baker’s presence but sadly doesn’t quite pick up on the solid work that Big Finish have done to make his take on the Doctor finally as well beloved as it always deserved to be. It’s also a very confused story with multiple Dalek factions, people who seem to not care who the Daleks are and Davros barely even bothering to hide. It’s also never quite the story I think Saward wanted to write, with the allusions to The Loved One and Evelyn Waugh being confused and slightly pointless. But it does the job well enough and I know my childhood self would have loved it. It’s still very strange reading a new book on something I know very well from the television incarnation, an experience the original Target books never really shared. But I feel suitably nostalgic and definitely am feeling the urge to reorder my childhood Targets to bookend the newcomer
The story is probably the best TV adventure for my favourite original series Doctor, and the book definitely capture Baker’s presence but sadly doesn’t quite pick up on the solid work that Big Finish have done to make his take on the Doctor finally as well beloved as it always deserved to be. It’s also a very confused story with multiple Dalek factions, people who seem to not care who the Daleks are and Davros barely even bothering to hide. It’s also never quite the story I think Saward wanted to write, with the allusions to The Loved One and Evelyn Waugh being confused and slightly pointless. But it does the job well enough and I know my childhood self would have loved it. It’s still very strange reading a new book on something I know very well from the television incarnation, an experience the original Target books never really shared. But I feel suitably nostalgic and definitely am feeling the urge to reorder my childhood Targets to bookend the newcomer