I didn't have high hopes for this book. I don't generally enjoy Dalek stories (I find most of them are very same-y and dull), and the general fandom consensus didn't give me any confidence that I would enjoy this (even if I sometimes have very different opinions to the fandom at large, as most people do). Unfortunately, this somehow went worse than I expected it to.

The story had a pretty strong start with the prologue showing a well-described battle between the Daleks and the Thals, showcasing the horrors of war. Unfortunately, the rest of the book dropped the ball when it came to grappling with that theme. Sure, Sam is a pacifist and the Thals are too war hungry and Chayn never got to know her dad, but none of that really matters, and none of it carries any emotional impact like the prologue does.

When we join the Doctor and Sam and the crew of the Quetzal things are slow, as one might expect the beginning of a story to be. The problem is, the pace never picks up. It feels very much as though the author didn't have enough plot to fill a book and instead decided to pad it out.

At the end, I don't feel like I really got to know any of the characters. They're all very one-note, and about half of them die in the first part of the book. Sam basically had nothing to do again, but this time it's made worse by her constantly commenting on it and making me overly aware of it. It doesn't help that her personality is basically reduced to "jealous of anyone who gets close to the Doctor, and also kind of a pacifist". We've spent five novels with her already, you'd think at this point she'd have a personality.

The plot itself is pretty thin. The whole thing would have probably gone exactly the same if the Doctor wasn't there. The whole thing with Skaro being destroyed or not is never properly explained - probably to leave room for fans to speculate, but it's just done poorly. Space battles and exploding Daleks are the least interesting thing Doctor Who can do, and even if those action moments weren't badly written and confusing, even if I was watching them on my screen, I wouldn't have enjoyed them one bit.

The ending with the Dalek factory on the Thal ship was extremely anticlimactic, even when Sam suddenly realised it might be booby-trapped. Then there were three or four more ending, each slightly more exciting than the last, but at that point I was just so tired of this book I didn't care. And we all know Davros will be back in five books.

The most fun thing about this book is that now it's over and I can read Alien Bodies.

After how cool and original 'Genocide' was, this was a bit disappointing. I didn’t adore this, but I did like it.

This is very much a Dalek story about Daleks fighting to see which Dalek is Dalekier. Even the Doctor in the end is inconsequential to their shenanigans; the Dalek Prime is kinda like “oh, the Doctor’s here?? uh, okay i guess put him on hold, get him some tea, I’ll talk to him in a bit”. The writing style wasn’t all out bad or anything, but the poor Doctor has metaphorically look the reader in the eye and explain the plots of like 3 separate classic Who stories, which was a kind of lazy way of setting the stage here. Not sure how I feel about the twist with Skaro never having been destroyed. I get your frustration, Davros.

It’s cool to see the Daleks being crafty, and I love their infighting, but this plot took so many turns and had so many “but AHA! it’s not over!!!” moments that I was as dizzy as Sam by the end of it. Speaking of Sam, congrats on your first Dalek encounter, girl! One thing that I disliked in this story was that, like in ‘The Bodysnatchers’, Sam didn’t get to do much. She asked a lot of “what’s that” and “what’s going on”, and she did have at least one important conversation with Ayaka, and consoles the Doctor when he gets upset, but there was no big moment for her. Any clever insight she had on the Daleks’ plan was something any character could have noticed, so it didn’t feel like those bits belonged to her. Again, Sam herself notices that the side characters get much more to do than she does. Okay, she is a teenager from the 80s with no technical skills, fine, she can’t reverse the polarity of the neutron flow. If her role is more of a ‘moral compass’, that’s great, but it wasn’t as well done as it could have been. Like, Sam herself got some development, internally, but her being there for this adventure didn’t help the other characters or the plot develop, I guess is the feeling I have.

2/5

The subject of this book is possibly more interesting to others, and I certainly did enjoy the odd scene early in the book. Aside from the odd moment early on though this book was just boring really: side characters as nothing more than templates, main characters having little real contribution to the story, long sections of events repeated from multiple perspectives but with no new insight that the alternate perspectives might have given, and sections of story that seem to bear no relevance to anything else in the book in particular.

There’s better stories and more interesting Dalek stories out there.

I read about two thirds of this but could not for the life of me finish the novel. One of the dullest, most lifeless prose I’ve ever read, at least since John Peel’s previous book, Timewyrm: Genesis. Sam is reduced to just getting jealous of other capable women around the Doctor, which is in line with her character, but she’s also very capable in her own right. The supporting cast is frustratingly bland and if I’m being honest most of them blend together in my mind. I don’t much mind the fact this whole novel is a canon plaster, but it’s not a good book in its own right.

(Taken from my Goodreads Review | Last Read: March/April 2021)

Okay, I fully understand why the fandom hates this book. Because it completely rewrites the televised Dalek stories in order to negate the destruction of Skaro in Remembrance of the Daleks, fans tended to reject this book. I understand this, as Remembrance is a great episode and I'm a bit dubious of John Peel's claims that Terry Nation disliked that plot decision since Nation could've vetoed it before it went to screen. However, that said, this was a great book that's just fun to read. While I understand fandom's criticisms of Peel's Who books, I've found the three I've read enjoyable reads in spite of their flaws. This book (originally designed as a TV story then offered to Virgin before becoming an Eighth Doctor novel) is the fifth EDA and features the Eighth Doctor and Sam Jones. It's split into four parts split by three interludes. The middle interlude features a space battle between the Daleks and Draconians and is really fun to read.

The basic plot features a junker ship discovering an escape pod that contains Davros. The TARDIS is collected by the junker before being invaded by Thals and then Daleks before everyone is taken to Skaro for the Dalek Prime's trial of the Dalek Race that is intended to end Davros and his insurrection once and for all. A civil war erupts between the forces loyal to Davros and to the Dalek Prime while the Doctor, Sam and the Thals escape amid the chaos. There's even a fight between the Doctor and a Dalek inside the TARDIS at the end that's just awesome.

So, let's tackle the elephant in the room, the massive retcon of televised Dalek history. In a nutshell, after learning of the Shoreditch Incident (Remembrance) in the Dalek Invasion of Earth, the Dalek Prime works to ensure that Skaro isn't destroyed by the Hand of Omega. This involves terraforming a planet into Skaro and tricking Davros, and by accident the Doctor, that this is the real Skaro. Therefore, Destiny of the Daleks and Resurrection of the Daleks are part of the Dalek Prime's plot to trick Davros into destroying the wrong planet. Then it goes wrong when Davros creates his Renegade Daleks in Revelation leading into Remembrance. However, I actually don't mind this. It fits with the Daleks' deviousness and cunning, and allows for Skaro to exist in the TV Movie and then the Time War and Series 9. For me, it works. But, I understand why a lot of fans don't like it.

In the end, despite the retcon issues, this was just a fun book to read. If they made another Eighth Doctor movie, this would make a great movie. It's epic in scope and has a cinematic feel about it. Eight feels like Eight (or at least the Eighth Doctor I've come to know from his audio performances) and Sam is an enjoyable companion. A fun book that held my interest the whole time. My only real complaint about the Eight Doctor Adventures so far is the reliance on previously established characters and enemies (Time Lords/Master/Nostalgia, Vampires, Zygons, Jo Grant, Daleks). The next book, Alien Bodies, has a surprising returning villain, but makes up for that in weird new ideas and plot threads that carry on deep into the series.