02 - Timewyrm: Exodus

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.

Amazing book. Started and finished today. Gripping all the way through. Little fumbles here and there (especially the latter part), but I really enjoyed that it acts as a sequel to the War Games. And the epilogue is just so great.

Recommended Prerequisites

PROSE: Timewyrm: Genesys

TV: The War Games

Timewyrm: Exodus

With Genesys being what it was, I went into Exodus dragging my feet. I knew we were moving from John Peel to Terrance Dicks, but I still had no desire to read more about the Timewyrm, or continue her arc in anyway. Nevertheless we persisted, and Exodus wasnt actually horrible. Far from perfect, but alright.

Exodus is formatted somewhat strangely. The Doctor and Ace, trying to track down the Timewyrm, go to 1951, then 1923, 1939, then 1940. It makes sense, plotwise, but it results in a couple of smaller interconnected stories with new groups of characters.

The first half has the Doctor and Ace walking around an alternate 1951 London, after the Nazis won WWII. This is the stronger and more interesting half of the book.

The second half has the duo going further back to stop the Nazis from winning the war, and followed characters such as Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goering, and of course, Adolf Hitler, who is possessed by the titular Timewyrm

The issue here, and with much of this book, is that Dicks is trying to do too much in only 234 pages. We get an interesting revolution subplot which doesn't go too far, we have only two moments with the Timewyrm, which is barely relevant to anything, and as if that's not enough, we are reintroduced to the War Lords, the antagonists that appeared in one episode twenty-five years earlier. Because why not.

It's a bunch of ideas that aren't inherently bad in themselves, but could definitely be executed a lot better. Dicks goes quantity over quality, and it really makes the book feel disjointed.

Top Quote

"In history, the real history, Hitler's Thousand Year Reich lasted from 1933 to 1945. Twelve years and that was it, finished."

"So?"

"The main reason was that Hitler was an incompetent madman. You blow him to bits and maybe a competent madman takes charge. Someone who really can make the Reich last a thousand years."

"first the timewyrm, now super hitler" wtf is this book

Okay, I have a lot of thoughts about Timewyrm: Exodus.

Let's start with the most basic - it is, as many reviews have discussed before me, a huge shift in tone and quality from Timewyrm: Genesys. It is a very obvious distinction to make, and really a bit of a non-achievement for Exodus. Exodus is better than a lot of the worst in Doctor Who, sure, but most Doctor Who stories are to begin with.

Beyond that, I approached this novel with a lot of excitement, which at first seemed to really pay off. With Terrence Dicks writing, and his huge history with the Classic series, I expected the novel to be in capable hands that really understood the Doctor. The first act is exactly what I wanted - it was smart, quickly paced, and even fun in spite of some very serious material. It was an incredibly fast read getting through the first act. The Doctor and Ace find themselves in an alternate Britain controlled by Nazis. Clearly inspired by the Third Reich's plans for the UK had they conquered it, this part is fascinating on so many levels.

The Doctor and Ace really get to shine here in tons of little ways. It really feels like only the Doctor could get in the face of the British snitch police and just intimidate them through sheer force of will, and a nice touch that the actual Nazis were less affected by his charisma. I love the people we meet along the way forming a sort of quiet, but very weak, resistance to Nazi-occupied Britain. All that works really well.

Which is where the second act brings me down so heavily it kind of crushed my spirit and positive sentiment for the novel entirely. Everything built up in the first act is whisked away as we go back in time to a few earlier moments in Hitler's career. Then it becomes this bizarre pseudo-sequel to War Games, of all things, and, oh yeah, by the way, this is supposed to be a Timewyrm novel, so sooner or later you know Ishtar has to get involved somehow.

It feels very clumsy, to be honest. Where as I raced through the first act, I found the second very disappointing, and the last to an outright slog to get through. This wasn't a terrible book, but given that Dicks wrote it and it is well-recommended by others, I can't say I was at all impressed. It was tolerable - fun at times, and even occasionally interesting, but otherwise a disjointed experience with a lot of very strange moments to it. I feel like I could tell the entire time that this book was written by an older author, even by 1990s standards. The way he would describe something like Ace hurling rockets at Nazis as if the explosives were mildly annoying rocks, the way the War Chief and War Lords come back only to be unceremoniously defeated and whisked away from the plot, the way the Doctor is able to impress Hitler and his inner circle so easily - these were all executed by a writer who is a little too old hat for my taste. It is very, very hard to imagine a modern Who writer tackling this material like Dicks did, and I would argue that is a good thing. Tropes and cliches are generally avoided for a reason, you know?

Still, like Genesys, both books have solid moments to them and are each worth checking out if you really want to know more about this era of Doctor Who. If a Doctor Who story were to deal with Nazi stuff, I'm glad they were doing it this way. Hitler befriending the Doctor like many other historical figures had or would was a nice touch - a clever bit of writing that gives the Doctor a lot of agency in the final third of the story, though even then I found this content very rushed and poorly explored by the end of the book.

I did like the cover though, and the epilogue talking about the second printing of Exodus. That stuff was neat and about the only thing I unambiguously enjoyed about Exodus.