02 - Timewyrm: Exodus
“The One Where the Doctor Befriends Adolf Fucking Hitler”

Terrance Dicks’s second installment in the New Adventures delivers in every way that Genesys failed, bringing the Doctor and Ace to Nazi Germany for a time-hopping adventure that would have been far too spicy for TV.

After leaving ancient Mesopotamia, the Doctor and Ace land in another classic trope of time-travel fiction: a Nazi-occupied Britain in the early 1950s.  The Seventh Doctor really shines here; he effortlessly takes the role of a Nazi official sent from Berlin, demanding authority so convincingly that even Ace is alarmed.  Following some intel gathering in 1951, the duo takes a brief hop to 1923, where the Doctor befriends a young Adolf Hitler to gain his trust.  Having learned that the timeline diverges in 1940, he then uses his connection to the Fuhrer to worm his way into his inner circle, where he discovers the involvement of not one but two alien races!  The Timewyrm is trapped in Hitler’s mind, but the War Lords (from 1969’s The War Games) have arrived as well, hoping to assist Hitler for their own ends.

There are some truly great timey-wimey ideas thrown around in this story, and Uncle Terry explores most of them in a way the reader will find satisfying.  Ace asks the obvious question - why not just kill Hitler?  Not only would a Nazi victory be stopped, but millions of deaths would be prevented.  The Doctor counters with a famous line of logic; had Hitler died in the 1930s, a more competent subordinate would have taken his place, and perhaps would have wreaked even more havoc.

Unfortunately, Exodus fails to connect to the Timewyrm arc to the extent that the authors intended.  The story, while brilliant, seems only to include the Timewyrm herself as an afterthought, shoving her into the middle of an unrelated alien plot in a way that some readers may find contrived.  However, it’s still a very fun read, and is a prime example of the sort of story that the franchise can explore now that it is free from the restrictions of family TV.