I think this one is an interesting one to digest, especially when considering its previous Entry, of course it’s MUCH better than Peel’s rather poor bafflingly attempt to write for Characters he hates. Dicks certainly get 7 and Ace right, and it feels much more like them than whatever the previous Timewyrm Book had. That said, while an Improvement, I wouldn’t say I enjoyed myself too much with it. While yes one can argue that plenty of Moments are supposed to make you uncomfortable, and they achieve it, there are just plenty of Decisions made that baffles me. Choices that yet again feel like they made solely to be more ‘mature’, when it’s just a bit dumb.
I do like the beginning quite a bit, it’s good and like with most of the Book it’s quite readable, there are some great Concepts and some very well-written Moments to be found. The Characterization is much in line with what we are used to from the TV Show and gets some good or at least more interesting Moments to it. It’s a nice surprise to see the War Chief back, and even nicer when Dicks himself uses the Opportunity to make sure: No, he isn’t the same Character as the Master. But I do find his Inclusion a bit disappointing, I must admit.

As it is, it’s quite a readable Book, even if I am not sold on plenty of Decisions made here. Still solid and a massive Improvement from what came before.

Virgin New Adventures: Timewyrm Arc

#002. Exodus ~ 10/10

◆ 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.

◆ 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...

◆ 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!

◆ 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.

◆ 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?

◆ 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.

◆ 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.

◆ 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.

◆ 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.

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.

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.

i absolutely adore the pacing, its fast but not too messy. and the plot is engaging. i also think the war chief was well placed and i liked his backstory. only thing is the idea that an alien made hitler do what he did. no, that was all us, all humans. but really, this is a fantastic book. it offers a breath of fresh air as its sandwiched between two pretty mediocre novels (although i do think genesis is overhated, its not amazing but its not awful either)