This is DOCTOR WHO’s first exciting adventure – with the DALEKS! Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright travel with the mysterious DOCTOR WHO and his grand-daughter, Susan, to the planet of Skaro in the space-time machine, Tardis. There they strive to save the peace-loving Thals from the evil intentions of the hideous DALEKS. Can they succeed? And what is more important, will they ever again see their native Earth?
Original Muller Edition
Despite the added “in an exciting adventure…” the original Muller hardback novelisation of Terry Nation’s The Daleks by David Whitaker was graced with the most uninspiring of the publisher’s three Doctor Who covers. The Crusaders boasted the TARDIS on one side and King Richard in an attack pose on the other, and The Zarbi had a lovely comic book image of the Doctor glancing at one of the insectoid aliens. But the choice of a rather droll faced William Hartnell looking as if he was journeying towards death and with not a Dalek in sight, was suitably coloured a dull black against a maroon background. No wonder it didn’t sell well to the libraries in 1964.
With publishers capitalising on Dalekmania it would receive not one but two attempted rebirths, the first by Armada and the second as part of the initial run of Target Doctor Who stories in 1972. This latter version is how I first encountered Whitaker’s remarkable book, withdrawing it from my local library when I was still in junior school. Fortunately Chris Achilleos’ stunning cover complete with Daleks bearing colour schemes never before seen on screen, ensured that it no longer needed “an exciting adventure” to show its appeal. The success of the TV series would also have added to its saleability, though thankfully the original idea to re-illustrate the novel with Pertwee’s face was dropped. The internal illustrations are beautiful in their simplicity and part of the attraction for this young reader was the knowledge that here was an adventure of an older Doctor. It was good to be reminded periodically of that fact from the pencil drawings of Hartnell’s features.
With no expectations that the preceding story, An Unearthly Child, would be novelised, Whitaker invents a completely different scenario for how Ian and Barbara end up travelling with the Doctor and Susan. Here Barbara is a private tutor topping up her day job and clearly onto a winner with a very generous client who has employed her to educate his Granddaughter in English customs. Ian on the other hand, whilst a science School Master as in the original Coburn scripts, is here a disillusioned one. Seeking a change of career, he first encounters the Doctor on his way back from an unsuccessful interview in Reigate. The opening scenes are evocative and dramatic with Ian stumbling upon the aftermath of a car crash. It is grittily realistic and more adult than would have been allowed on the small screen.
Armada Paperback Edition
The story is told in first person from Ian’s perspective and whilst initially this approach is highly effective it does quickly become a constraint. Scenes where Ian is not present, such as Susan’s journey back to the TARDIS to recover the medicines left there by the Thals, are recounted to him after the event somewhat woodenly as a result and Whitaker tries to offset this with Ian stating “I began to get quite carried away with her story..”. Another unfortunate effect of the first person narrator is that the Doctor becomes largely absent in the final parts of the story since the newly recruited Thal army has been split between his group and Ian’s sub-team. There are even moments when Whitaker makes Ian talk about himself in the third person “I heard a short scream of helpless agony and realised that it was me who was making the noise.” But Whitaker is faithful to the rules of the first person approach and religiously avoids other mistakes such as the omniscient narrator. Perhaps at a meta level the narrator is protesting against his implied author when Ian angrily shares his frustration after the failed attempt to generate a fighting spirit in the Thals “I seemed to have been a pawn in someone else’s game”.
But the beauty of the first person approach is the way in which we as readers journey through the remarkable story with Ian. There is real character development in a way that wouldn’t be possible even in a seven part serialisation. Initially he is the reluctant companion in contrast to the more accepting Barbara “lets get out of this asylum and leave them to their own fantasies”, but as the story unfolds and somewhat foreshadowing modern day companions such as Rose and Donna, he reflects on the appeal of travelling with the Doctor in contrast to the monotony of everyday life “secretly, I knew I was beginning to enjoy what was happening to me. It was a fantastic wrench to be literally heaved out of ones normal way of life and have nothing much in the way of compensation but doubt and uncertainly, yet already a part of me welcomed it…..now I could work out the restless itch that had made be scratch my way through a dozen jobs. I could fill myself with excitement and adventure with the Doctor.”
By the end of An Unearthly Child the leadership struggle between Ian and the Doctor was largely resolved with just a little undercurrent still remaining in Nation’s story. Whitaker quickly bypasses such a struggle by having the Doctor authoritatively stake his leadership credentials to Ian “one rule only – one captain to a ship.” Ian knowingly accepts his role, but maintains his own air of authority through his awareness of what the Doctor is up to. Unlike the televised story, Ian realises immediately that the Doctor is playing a trick on the rest of the crew by pretending to be in need of mercury, but for the sake of maintaining the status quo and knowing that the manipulative Doctor would ensure in any case that he got his own way, Ian lets it pass. Brushing aside the potential struggle for control between the two male leads, Whitaker instead saves his more interesting relationship tensions for that between Ian and Barbara.
Original Target Reprint with cover by Chris Achilleos
Ian tries with increasing frustration to get a hold of Barbara’s emotions and thoughts, assuming he ought to be able to understand her. His advances are constantly knocked back with Barbara becoming more and more extreme in her reactions against him. From failing to join him for a smoke, she ends up pretty much blanking him completely. But there is an implicit air of chauvinism about Ian that Barbara is recoiling from. In some ways we as readers almost share his stance, normalising it through the tale being told from his perspective. Frequently the language he employs betrays an attitude that suggests his view of Barbara is somewhat patronising, from the opening impression of her face as “deceptive….attractive yet with strong character.” to his relief at her being asleep when they come to allocating night watch shifts on account of her being in his view the weakest member of the party.
Later in the caves Ian makes the classic error of assuming to know what Barbara is about to say, when he mistakes her offer of water as a peace offering and a request for forgiveness. Ian’s attitude towards women is perhaps best illustrated in his description of the female Thals “like a cluster of different jewels. Each one with her own sparkling beauty yet each one different. Of them all, Dyoni was undoubtably the rarest gem.” But it is not just the narrator Ian who has such an attitude, the implied author too is stepped in this cultural attitude, somewhat unfashionable in the 6os, so that there is added sexual tension between Ian and Barbara and the sniggering observation of the Thal men that the two could be an item: “I caught her round the waist and pulled her beside me thankfully. Then I felt the muscles tighten in her back as she moved away from me” and later “I got up and walked over to Barbara and took her hand lightly. I felt her fingers pressing into mine, asking for comfort? Affection? I still didn’t dare hope it might be love.”
The Doctor is far softer round the edges than the tetchier TV version, with moments of genuine concern and empathy for his companions and a level of perceptiveness that is out of step with the character we see on screen. At one point he is even moved to tears when faced with the guilt of leading his companions into danger. He is also sprightlier with Ian observing at one point his strength and at another his speed. When he smiles he looses twenty years. None of these are particularly apparent from William Hartnell’s screen persona, although he does purport to be an expert fist fighter in The Romans. The Doctor at the end of the story even sympathetically gives Barbara and Ian the choice of staying to rebuild Skaro with the Thals or taking the riskier option of continuing to travel with him, with no promise of ever getting them home “For what can I offer you? Constant danger. No permanence, a life of drifting from place to place, searching perhaps for the ideal and never finding it.”
BBC Reprint Edition
The description and characterisation of the Daleks is notable for three reasons, the repeated use of the word “exterminate” on the lips of different characters (the term only features once in the broadcast story and would only reappear towards the end of The Dalek Invasion Of Earth before becoming a catchphrase); the unique description of the physical appearance of the mutants complete with their slots for mouths and their arms rather than tendrils; and thirdly, the glass Dalek. Whitaker wrote his novelisation before the motion picture, so his task was to add colour to the story and not surprising he uses the language of colour fairly often. The Dalek gun emits a blue ray.
The TARDIS too is described in colourful terms with its “short corridor, made up entirely of tall, square pillars of coloured glass, the reds, the blues and the yellows alternately glowing and dying down”. Whilst inconsistently referred to with and without the definite article (TARDIS and sometimes The TARDIS) Whitaker makes the most of the novel format to expand on the technology it contains. Alongside the food machine (that here provides the Doctor with his favourite Venusian Fish dish) there is the amusing hairdressing and shaving machine (cf. Caratacus Potts’ pedal powered invention) and the shower made of a thousand jets of water and oil. It provides us with one of the very few dated lines in the book “I had as good a barbering as I would have received at Simpsons”
Whitaker adds richness to the story with his attention to the little details such as the story behind Ian’s torn jacket, Susan’s pirate-like attire, the Doctor’ cut pocket, and the everlasting match that makes several useful appearances. Generally the observations of Ian are highly detailed and help to build up strong pictures in the readers’ imaginations. We are less confident when it comes to defining the character of the Doctor and so to coin a suggestion of Ian’s “Perhaps that’s what we ought to call him – Doctor Who?” Imaginatively and bravely told through the eyes of Chesterton, The Daleks remains one of the strongest in the range. Once we get to Troughton in our Story-by-story series, we will be able to look at John Peel’s novelisations of Whitaker’s two televised Dalek stories. Great novels they may be, it is nonetheless a shame that Whitaker didn’t live long enough to be able to novelise his own work. It would have been fascinating to see what changes he would have incorporated and what perspective he would have taken in retelling those classic tales.
This article is the fourth in our “Story by Story” series running all this week celebrating The Daleks. DWW welcomes all submissions and pitches on the theme throughout the week at [email protected]
In future weeks we shall be celebrating Inside the Spaceship (Nov 3 – 9), Marco Polo (Nov 10 – 16), The Keys of Marinus (Nov 17 – 23), The Aztecs (Nov 24 – 30), The Sensorites (Dec 1 – 7) and The Reign of Terror (Dec 8 – 14).
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