Virgin New Adventures: Timewyrm Arc

#002. Exodus ~ 10/10

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◆ An Introduction

The Wolfenstein Paradox is my nickname for the scenario wherein the Nazis somehow gained a last-minute advantage and won the Second World War. It’s undoubtedly the oldest paradox in the book and has been prevalent in fiction for years – the aforementioned game series has shown the fascist menace armed with mech suits, and cybernetic bloodhounds with giant cheese graters for a face! They even demolished down-town London and replaced it with a top research facility focused on aviation and space travel.

Doctor Who has also dabbled with this paradox on a few occasions, like when Elizabeth Klein managed to unmake her own timeline during a visit to Colditz Castle. I’ve already reviewed BigFinish’s attempts to showcase a nightmarish future where Hitler was victorious, so let’s see how the novels did.

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◆ Publisher’s Summary

The pursuit of the Timewyrm leads the Doctor and Ace to London, 1951, and the Festival of Britain — a celebration of the achievements of this small country, this insignificant corner of the glorious Thousand Year Reich.

Someone — or something — has been interfering with the time lines, and in order to investigate, the Doctor travels further back in time to the very dawn of the Nazi evil. In the heart of the Germany of the Third Reich, he finds that this little band of thugs and misfits did not take over half the world unaided.

History must be restored to its proper course, and in his attempt to repair the time lines, the Doctor faces the most terrible dilemma he has ever known...

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◆ The Seventh Doctor

Terrance Dicks penned more novelisations than any other author for this franchise, and served as script editor for the entirety of the Pertwee era, so it should come as no shock to you how well written this adventure is. The characterisation of the Seventh Doctor is incredibly fun, if a little bit on the generic side (you could easily switch in any other incarnation and it would make very little difference). Still an improvement over what we got in the first novel though, so well done to Uncle Terrance, because I had actual fun with the Seventh Doctor in ‘Exodus’.

The Doctor is described as a smallish dark-haired man. He wore shabby brown checked trousers, a brown sports jacket with a garish fair-isle pullover beneath, and a jaunty straw hat. He believes that Edward VIII was a vain and silly man, a German sympathiser from his early youth that gave poor old Churchill no end of trouble. He theorises that the Meddling Monk could be responsible for this abhorrent timeline (he’s not, but we will be meeting up with that menace later in this range). The Doctor takes an incredible risk by posing as a Reichsinspektor-General, and it appears to pay off – confronting the commanding officer of the Freikorps, right in the foyer of their headquarters, that takes some guts! He claims that he likes to have his enemies where he can see them, hence why he had the recently humiliated Lieutenant Hemmings selected to be his aide. Considering the Doctor is undercover as a senior officer of the Reich, it’s unsurprising that he has decked himself out with a long leather overcoat and a monocle (which Ace thinks looks ghastly, describing it as “real Gestapo chic”). He manages to get a Free Korps lieutenant arrested, shop the resistance to the Gestapo and get them right off the hook, all in one breath – leading Ma Barker to agree with Ace about him having the cheek of the devil! He informs Kriegslieter that he is a doctor of practically everything. The Doctor claims that when it comes to low cunning and high treason, the Nazis have got nothing on the Time Lords of Gallifrey. He manages to manipulate the forces of the Reich into attacking each other, in a monumental fire-fight at Drachensberg Castle – Goering marches in there with an armoured column of the standard German Army, fighting tooth and nail against the mind-controlled troops of the Black Coven!

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◆ Ace

‘Exodus’ is the first time Terrance Dicks has written for the girl from Perivale, and I think he does an excellent job at capturing her character.

Ace is described as a brown-haired, round-faced girl in a badge-covered bomber jacket. After witnessing a man die, carried off by the strong current of the River Thames, she thinks they should inform the authorities… and is taken aback by the Doctor’s willingness to just not bother (“The crime I’m concerned with now concerns millions, billions of lives. I’ve no time to worry about one squalid little murder”). She ends up having a rather odd nightmare whilst staying at Freikorps HQ, one where swastika-clad Daleks are chasing her shouting “Heil Doktor!” and carrying breakfast trays filled with coffee and bacon! Ace believed that all politicians were slightly weird and suspect.

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◆ Story Recap

London, 1951. People should be visiting the Festival of Britain in their millions, celebrating the end of post-war austerity, and the hope of future prosperity… but something has gone incredibly wrong with time. The Doctor and Ace arrive to find the festival ground adorned with swastika flags, the remaining local populous threatened and bullied by thugs working for the British Free Korps. The Dome of Discovery recounts the historic moment that King Edward VIII was restored to the throne, alongside her royal highness Queen Wallis, and the moment Great Britain was formally established as a protectorate of the German Empire. Somehow, the Nazis were victorious in the Second World War, and Great Britain is now occupied!

The Doctor and Ace soon find themselves heading towards the point where history was diverted, Nuremberg in 1939. They discover an occult society has been operating out of a remote castle in the German countryside, disguising advanced alien technology as black magic, to keep up the pretence and maintain favour with their contact within the Nazi party, one Heinrich Himmler. The leader of the mysterious Black Coven, Dr Kriegsleiter, seems more than a little familiar to the Doctor, but it has been many lifetimes since their paths last crossed.

Are the Black Coven truly responsible for the disturbances in time, or does it have something to do with the Timewyrm trapped inside the brain of Adolf Hitler?

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◆ Time-hopping Action

‘Exodus’ is a novel that never stands still for too long, with the narrative hopping to various times and locations as the Doctor attempts to deal with related instances of alien interference in Earth’s history.

We get to explore an alternate version of London; a bombed-out shell of a city where civilians and resistance members alike are brutally beaten by the British Free Korps, who enjoy the luxuries of their headquarters inside of the former Savoy Hotel.

We accompany our protagonists to Munich, 1923, on the date of Hitler’s failed coup that led to his imprisonment (during which he would write “Mein Kampf”).

We even spend some time at the infamous Nuremberg Rally, where the Doctor manages to ingratiate himself with the most high ranking members of the Nazi party (which also includes a mysterious sorcerer working out of the imposing Drachensberg Castle).

Speaking as someone who has a very limited attention span, the pacing will always be what makes or breaks a novel for me. Not once did I feel bored whilst reading this adventure, not once did I consider skipping ahead a couple of chapters hoping for something interesting to happen. This whole book is exquisitely paced. It’s a real page turner that you simply wont want to put down.

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◆ Occultists in Deutschland

I’d like to move onto the subject of antagonists now, as ‘Exodus’ does a brilliant job at leaning into the Reich’s obsession with matters of the occult. From the moment they made their presence known in 1933, the Black Coven attempted to curry favour with the new ruling power in Germany. Commander-in-chief of the Gestapo, Heinrich Himmler, quickly became the group’s biggest cheerleader, thus allowing them to become a part of the war effort at the end of the decade. Using a combination of advanced technology and knowledge of the future, they devised a strategy that would lead to a Nazi victory in the Second World War… but why go to all that effort? What do the Black Coven actually hope to achieve from doing all this?

That leads me neatly onto the group’s enigmatic leader, Kriegslieter, whose name just so happens to be the German translation of the title “war chief”. It becomes apparent in the latter half of this novel that it’s a sequel to the very first story Terrance Dicks wrote for the franchise, ‘The War Games’.

The War Chief was a renegade from Gallifrey who allied himself with a race that were hell-bent on conquering the entirety of Mutter’s Spiral. The War Lords attempted to build an army by taking human soldiers from different moments in Earth’s history and subjecting them to a giant death match; the survivors would be used in their conquest of the galaxy. The plan was foiled by the Second Doctor and his allies, and by the Time Lords, who executed their leader and placed their homeworld within a force field – cutting it off from the rest of the universe forever.

The War Chief barely survived the chaos, enduring a failed regeneration that left him disfigured, before being taken back to the War Lord homeworld as a scientific curio. He eventually convinced his former allies that he hadn’t betrayed them, and began work on a new plan for universal domination… which led him to a faction utterly obsessed with taking over planet Earth and uniting it under the swastika. The War Chief knew full well how powerful the Third Reich could be, especially if he increased their ambitions from global to galactic conquest!

Terrance Dicks really managed to up the ante for this sequel to ‘The War Games’, and also make it a lot more horrifying by mixing it with the oldest paradox in the book.

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◆ The Timewyrm

Before I conclude my review of ‘Exodus’, I feel as though I should mention the eponymous villain of this story arc. The character formerly known as Ishtar did have a lot of potential to be incredibly unique and frightening in her first adventure, but expecting John Peel to write anything original that doesn’t make you vomit into the nearest latrine is like expecting pigs to fly. I wondered if Dicks would manage do her justice, but he kind of just sweeps her under the carpet.

The Timewyrm spends the majority of this novel trapped inside the mind of Adolf Hitler, an idea which is equal parts barmy and terrifying. That being said, it does feel like she was only included in this novel to kidnap Lieutenant Hemmings from this abhorrent timeline… who will become a lot more deadly during the final novel in this story arc.

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◆ Conclusion

“Hitler is a magician, a spellbinder. The German people will follow him anywhere, even to disaster.”

Adolf Hitler’s quest for world domination was meant to die with him when his forces lost the Second World War, but what if history were diverted down a different path?

Great Britain has been established as a German protectorate, patrolled by the numerous thugs that have pledged allegiance to the tyrannical Free Korps, all working to keep the fascist war machine at the top of its game. Members of the ever-dwindling resistance are routinely brought in for questioning, and beaten within an inch of their lives. History has been manipulated down a nightmarish path, and it’s up to the Doctor and Ace to put things right.

‘Exodus’ is a real page turner that you simply wont want to put down, thanks to both its exquisite pacing and the huge amount of detail written into every single page. Terrance Dicks will likely always be a legendary figure to us Doctor Who fans, but I am tempted to call this the best thing he had ever written.