Eighth Doctor Adventures #10 - “Legacy of the Daleks” by John Peel

Chibnall may be behind my least favourite season of TV ever but some may be surprised to know he’s not my least favourite Doctor Who writer of all time. No, he at least wrote some good episodes. John Peel, on the other hand is the literary equivalent of acid reflux: uncomfortable and ever returning. With an entire career built off his legacy as Terry Nation’s only trusted novelisor, he repeatedly released abhorrent pieces of s**t during his tenure as a regular author for the Wilderness Years’ novels. Timewyrm: Genesys, to this day, is the worst book I have ever read and his other outings haven’t been much better so when I realised my next book in the EDAs was one of his, I procrastinated. But I’ve finally sat down and read it and colour me f**king shocked, it was terrible.

On the trail of a lost Sam, the Doctor finally returns to 22nd century Earth to face his granddaughter, who just so happened to go missing investigating an abandoned Dalek artefact. Caught between two sides of a land dispute, the Doctor must contend with an old enemy and a familiar face.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Before anything else, I should give John Peel his dues; this book was not actively painful to read. The one thing that really stood out to me about his writing was the prose itself, which rolled off the page fantastically and added a really nice momentum to the book that meant I could read it in a mercifully short amount of time. The man clearly has talent as a writer, he just struggles with the whole ‘morals’ thing. Furthermore, he did capture the voices of our characters well; he didn’t do so well in actually characterising them but their dialogue and mannerisms were fantastic, which is something I suppose.

But you see, there’s always one thing that holds John Peel back, one thing that really sullies everything he’s ever touched: the man does not know how to write women. I know, I know, what did I expect from Mr. “you have to respect the times we’re in”, but I don’t remember War of the Daleks or even the abysmal Evolution being quite so bad as the infamous Timewyrm: Genesys. Here however, oh boy is it uncomfortable. Mr. Peel, not sure it’s appropriate to introduce Susan - beloved child-audience surrogate who is meant to look fifteen - in her underwear and fantasising about seducing her husband. I think he might’ve been trying with strong, independent knight Donna but then has lines about her thinking about how she can’t wait to get back into a skirt and then decides to have her be sexually abused. Yeah, Peel’s back on the rape s**t again; sure, we don’t see it directly and its from our main villain but it’s unnecessary, gratuitous and be honest, do you really think this guy is going to present such a sensitive subject matter respectfully?

Even if I didn’t think this book failed on a fundamental level, the blatant misogyny would have already capped what score I could possibly give it. Unforgivable tripe.

However, because Jesus himself looked down on me and decided “I have to f**k this guy’s day up”, the rest of the book is awful anyway. My biggest problem stems from the structure of this absolute abhorrence; it's deranged; we open with a pretty nifty political story, where two factions in post-Dalek Invasion of Earth Britain are fighting for control of the country. Rather neat, I like it, there’s some good set up. Halfway through the book, our main villain is killed out of nowhere and that entire plot just ends, with half of the introduced characters never returning. Then, we suddenly switch to a b-tier run around with dull as bricks Daleks showing up to trundle about and be generally banal. It’s two quarters of two different books coming together to make half a story, this thing needed another year in the oven if it ever wanted even a semblance of competence. Everything is rushed, underbaked, dropped randomly and is unengaging; this plot is an absolute travesty.

Except for one little bit I did like; see, this book has a surprise antagonist: the Delgado Master! Admittedly, I already knew this going in but he was just about the only thing keeping me from setting this book on fire. The Master is written fantastically, Peel’s singular talent of capturing other people’s characters really shines through here and the Master’s dumb “I want to take over the world!” plot is so utterly bonkers and entertaining that I found it a joy to read. Unfortunately, he turns out to be a canon plaster in the same vein as War of the Daleks, with the book ending with his transformation into Crispy Master Mark I from The Deadly Assassin, which didn’t quite stop me loving him but definitely annoyed me.

As for every other character, they’re about par for the course for this book. I already talked about this earlier but Peel spends about a whole two pages just introducing the advisors to Austrian-painter-wannabe Haldoran and only half of them end up being important to the plot with all but one being completely dropped by the halfway point. Our main trio of the Doctor, Donna and Susan’s husband David each have their own problems: the Doctor’s completely aphetic to the fact that the teenager in his care might be dead, Donna is a woman in a John Peel book and David is so ineffectual to the story I kept forgetting he was there. Susan herself, whilst there is some interesting stuff about her aging slower than David, could’ve honestly been taken out of most of this book without actually changing the story, which is annoying considering she’s the whole hook of it.

And it only gets worse from there. We have three major antagonists here; the Master is by far the best one for reasons aforementioned but we’re also lumped with Haldoran for half the book who goes from menacing and somewhat interesting political figure to unnecessary rapist to unceremoniously shot in the head in the span of about twenty pages. John Peel clearly thought he was still writing for the Virgin New Adventures and went for some real uncomfortable edginess because god forbid he write something without violence against women in it. Finally, we have the Daleks who are somehow blander than most of their regurgitated repertoire. They are practically non-entities, showing up suddenly in the second half, doing basically nothing all story and are then defeated by the Doctor pressing some buttons offscreen.

In fact, the whole climax is crap. The Master finds a magical device we had never been told about before and runs off with Susan, who promptly f**king murders him. Susan also has a whole page of interaction with the Doctor before disappearing forever and Donna happily marries a slightly less evil man because, yay, monogamy. It’s as underbaked as the rest of this book and I would call it anticlimactic but that would require some kind of quality beforehand.

I probably could’ve guessed how this book would turn out from the author’s presence alone. Boring Daleks, a dull world, ineffectual characters, painfully dated writing, miserable edginess and a clumsy, misshapen, pitiful story that leaves me hollow. I hope Susan comes back at some point since this story is very open-ended with where she goes but other than that, this book is an absolute skip, especially since it pretty much ignores the Finding Sam arc I was promised in Longest Day.

3/10

Pros:

+ Good, kinetic prose

+ Skilled at capturing the voices of characters

Cons:

- John Peel couldn’t write a female character well if he was being held at gunpoint

- Book is split into two underbaked halves

- Terrible, sudden conclusion

- Awful side cast of underwritten characters

- Susan’s inclusion was superficial at best

- The Daleks are barely a presence in the book

- Haldoran was an unnecessarily repulsive character

The boringest!!!! HOW can a book that has the Master, the Daleks, and Susan be so boring? Because it should be impossible. But this book does it. I honestly did not like anything in this story, but I'll highlight some things:

The Doctor is... strange in this. In the beginning, he's wondering whether he should go after Sam or not. Excuse me??? What did he think happened at the end of 'Longest Day', that Sam saw his dead body, gave him one last hug, shrugged and left the base happily? Of course she needs him to find her! She's 17 alone in space, impossibly far from home, ffs. I also didn't like the emphasis they put on the "the Doctor needs a companion because he needs an audience to his brilliance, plus he gets bored if he's alone" idea. I do believe that is part of why he has a companion, but that is far from the main reason! These people are his friends! He should want Sam back because she's probably lost and in danger, it's his fault, and he likes her, not because he's lonely and bored. He misses his friend!!! "If he really got bored this time he could always find someone else. Anyone else, really. TARDIS-fodder." What on Earth... On top of this, he felt off to me through the entire book. Telling Donna all about himself after just meeting her, like he was reading out of "What you should know about the Doctor before watching Doctor Who" article or something. He doesn't do anything overly OOC, but the voice was wrong in a way I can't pinpoint. And also boring. Cardinal sin right here, making the Doctor boring.

Susan's here, and for all they do for her, she would be better off not being here at all. Her marriage troubles with David make sense, but on God why did the author feel the need to say that she makes David forget about it by seducing him with her sexy forever young body? When the Master kills David, she gets revenge by torturing him, pretty much killing him, and stealing his TARDIS. Yes, exactly what I wanted from a "the Doctor goes back to visit Susan" story: kill her husband and make her kill the killer in revenge. Great. What 99.99% of people would actually want was for Susan to have a meaningful conversation with her grandfather, but they do not get a single scene together. Nothing! And he doesn't go after her once she gets the Master's TARDIS (nor does he go after the Master). Maybe he can't trace her, and that'd make sense, but he doesn't even try. Neither does she, because she thinks he's dead. Which makes no sense, because he got shot by 01 bullet: he would regenerate even if it had been fatal. So yeah, I felt very cheated.

The Master here is Delgado!Master (yes, we're breaking the laws of time a little bit), and thus has a silly Delgado-style 'destroy humankind, rule the universe' plan. Which is okay, his plan is very on par with the expected, but again, he's boring. Very few interaction with the Doctor, does not know who Susan is until the very end, doesn't even interact with the Daleks all that much. Waste of Master.

The Doctor's one-off companion here is Donna (hehe), a almost-princess turned knight. And guess what, she was violently abused and raped by one of the villains of the story. Not to worry though! Like Susan, she gets to kill the man who hurt her, and all is well. She then marries a less evil guy and gets to be queen!

The best word to describe both the character writing and plot of this book is 'amateurish'. Everything is presented like the author had to try real hard not to write it as bullet points. Feelings and reactions are over simplified and at the same time over-explained. The plot is not the riveting political drama it seems to think it is. The immense potential for character interactions between the Doctor, the Master, and Susan is wasted. We get the origin story for the crispy Master: Susan killed him. Yay?

Oh, the list, how could I forget:

• Memory Loss:1 (in 'The Eight Doctors')
• Serious Injuries/Near Death Experience:5 (gets vampired 'Vampire Science', nearly drowns in the Thames in 'The Bodysnatchers', bomb+fingers broken in 'Kursaal', electrocuted in 'Longest Day', gets shot and suffers from severe blood loss in this one)
• Torture:1 (in 'Genocide')