After being confused at how so many people could find such an undemanding and shallow action adventure like War of the Daleks so offensive I am now boggling at how so many people can be so kind about this load of tripe. Legacy of the Daleks lacks the scale, the ambition and the imagery of War of the Daleks and is by far the inferior of Peel’s two attempts to bring glory to the Daleks.
This has to be the least inspiring look at a post-apocalyptic Earth ever (oh yeah, apocalypses are common in Doctor Who…get with the programme!). Domains fighting over who supplies the power (that’s electrical power, not bwahaha I have the power power), knights on horseback who parade the Kingdom seeking out wrong doers and factions squabbling amongst themselves rather than rebuilding their once proud Empire. I just could not leap over this massive hurdle the book threw up, the whole atmosphere of the book is all wrong, it should be a deadly, dangerous place the Daleks left after their invasion but instead its lazy politics and really dull traps (there’s a few Slyther’s roaming about…ooh scary!). None of the characters have a chance of sounding convincing in this dull environment despite Peel’s attempts. Go and look at Reckless Engineering for a genuinely scary post apocalyptic Earth, it might not be a perfect Doctor Who book but it at least is has cannibalistic children trying to eat you and a convincing social structure. There were a million possibilities to explore the aftermath of the Dalek attack but this book takes the easiest way out, setting the book thirty years later, losing most of the population and making those in charge strut about like ego-ridden fools. It’s rubbish and I hate reading rubbish. There should be famine troubles and frightening psychological issues (especially xenophobia). Anything but what we get.
The join the dots continuity this book revels in might have worked with a sane mind behind the typewriter but Peel always goes too far. He wants his book to feature an older Susan, Delgado’s Master, the Daleks, Rodan, Goth, Robomen…the last time I shook my head with disbelief at such a blatant lack of originality with The Eight Doctors so that might give you an idea of the novels quality. Legacy so obviously wants to become a re-run of The Dalek Invasion of Earth it hurts, when the metal meanies started exterminating everybody, Robomen were running about and the action shifted to a mine shaft I thought I had accidentally picked up Terrance Dicks’ novelisation of Invasion Earth until I realised how inferior Peel’s prose was. It’s hardly the most innovative inspiration for a story anyway.
Another in a long list of ideas fudged in Legacy is the return of Susan, another potentially fascinating concept. Why doesn’t she meet up with her grandfather properly? What is the point of keeping them apart throughout the entire novel? I was so disappointed; I thought they would have a jolly good chinwag about their problems (now there would be a chat you wouldn’t want to miss, the Doctor upset about losing Sam and Susan devastated at being left behind by her grandfather…it would certainly be more interesting than the tosh we have endure) but the second they are brought together they are flung apart as quickly. The first chapter suggested a character study of Susan, her hurt at watching her husband grow old whilst she remains youthful, but this is forgotten as soon as chapter two begins and she spends the rest of the book wandering around some Dalek corridors! Why waste an opportunity like this?
Talking of wasted opportunities lets talk about the Master. I cannot believe that Peel attempted to conceal his presence for 130 odd pages when it is blatantly obvious from his first line who he is. A sharply dressed geezer with a satanic beard, who enjoys playing about with peoples lives as though he is a kid in a playground. Who else could that be? This is the second time Peel had a chance to explore the mind of one Doctor Who’s great super villains and the second time he botched the job. Without Roger Delgado to make his ooze cool, the Master reads like a walking cliché with horrific Dr Evil style dialogue cheese. And if any villain in the annals of Doctor Who’s history could do with a little bit of background story and tightening up his very flabby motivations it as the bearded wonder. The story wastes page space with the Master rubbing his hands together a lot, whispering things in peoples ears to influence events and goading the Doctor but never actually doing anything of consequence. And the book has to hit us with one more continuity shock doesn’t it? So we get the explanation of why the Master looks so emaciated in The Deadly Assassin, which is given such a horrifically inept answer that I wonder why they bothered. Where the hell is the editor of this range and has he ever seen Doctor Who? Did he think this would actually satisfy the fans? Even Virgin would have rejected this and they published some crap in their time!
We get a spanking new companion in the shape of Donna who should have been wasted sooner. What a useless character! She is a war knight of London (what?) who is the ex-wife of her father’s enemy (what?) who was raped and abused by her ex-love and dismissed by her daddy (what and what?). Her dialogue is painful (three of my favourites were… “You murdering, festering little scumbag!”, “A good day to you gentle folk!” and “Did anyone ever tell you you’re a heartless, cold blooded bastard?”) and the more time I spent with her, the more I wanted Sam back, which I suppose would validate the experiment of having her go missing but couldn’t they have achieved that without introducing such a one dimensional, melodramatic wench. Thank God she shoots Haldoran’s head off, I couldn’t stand another second of their soap operatics. Unfortunately the second her ex love is dead she starts flirting with another! Will these women never learn…? When I compare this to some of the stuff coming out these days I have to weep at the amateurishness of it all. Did they want these early EDAs to fail?
A typical example of how illogical and badly thought out this is all is there is an explanation given as to why the Doctor and the Master (and other various villains who keep popping up in his lives) keep meeting in the right chronology (you know, Davros meets the fourth Doctor, then continues their story together with the fifth, and then the sixth, etc, etc). Apparently you have to meet each other in linear progression in your time streams; it’s an actual law. How on Earth can you maintain that when you travel through all time and space? What do you do if you happen to meet an earlier version of somebody? Disappear as quickly as you can a try again until you meet him at a point after the last the time you met him in his life I suppose! Actually if we have to take this crud as written you could write a hilarious book out of it! The Doctor continually popping through time thinking he has finally met up with the villain in their future but botching it each time! It would certainly be more entertaining than this. Gosh, I’m harsh, aren’t I?
I want to discuss the covers for a second. You see Black Sheep come in for quite a lot of criticism for their (apparently) uninspiring covers but this is the tenth eighth Doctor book and only one of them to this point is actually underwheming (The Bodysnatchers). Compare this to some of childish scribblings that adorned the NAs and this is high art! Legacy of the Daleks has a shocking, striking cover (its just a shame the contents could not live up to the wrapping…sounds like Christmas all over again!). And some of the books coming up almost beg you to read them; the covers are so good (Seeing I and The Janus Conjunction especially).
As for Legacy of the Daleks, don’t waste your time. This is every bit as bad as the reputation of those early EDAs (which is the only one so far, most of the other anti-classics has turned out to be surprisingly underrated) and contains some of the most childish, embarrassing writing in any Doctor Who book.
Imagine it is the plague and AVOID! I am currently reading through all the EDAs, simply because I have not done so before! After a brief pause following 'Longest Day' (man, now there's a book title which sums its contents up), I soldiered on to 'Legacy Of The Daleks'.
Now, I'd better get something clear from the start: for whatever reason, and many people have labelled me as odd for this, whilst one other said I was just simply "Sick, quite sick,", I am a fan of both The Eight Doctors and War Of The Daleks. To coin a phrase used round these parts often, they are pure, unadulterated fanw*nk, and yet they are both novels which I enjoyed reading, for whatever reason.
Anyhows, I thought it best that I explained this as it may explain why I liked 'Legacy Of The Daleks'. Once more, John Peel has managed to write a book chockablock with continuity references from here and there whilst also eeking out some form of a plot. Now, don't get me wrong: this book is no 'Alien Bodies,' but I still managed to whizz through it remarkably quickly and found it to be rather enjoyable in the process.
In parts it was rather funny too, though not intentionally. John Peel has the remarkable ability to write small passages which just make the reader laugh out loud due to either their stupidity, or the way they are trying to be deep or profound, whilst coming across as mildly embarrassing.
By a long shot, my favourite example of this comes on Page 212 just after David Campbell has died. It's a sombre atmosphere, we should feel upset, the tone of the story has turned dark, and then- pulling no punches- John Peel comes up with this corker of a line:
His head [David's] was still in her lap, and she was smeared with his blood. That would wash off, but the memory of David Campbell would not.
Pure melodrama!
Well, in summary, I rather enjoyed Legacy, even its shortcomings (e.g. for a book about the Daleks, they are hardly in it, though perhaps that's the point- the world is already dead inside due to them, so why overuse them?)
It's not the best EDA thus far, but it is by no means the worst either. There’s something of the pantomime in the second of the Eight Doctor’s tussles with the Daleks. This is a breezily written, speedily read book that comes with a complete cast of over-the-top villains and noble heroes all acting for purely spurious, if not completely fanciful reasons. While Peel hasn’t tried to produce a comedic book, he has produced an entertainingly shallow one.
Or in other words, pulp.
The book is set in England about thirty years after the “Dalek Invasion Of Earth”. The Doctor arrives after receiving a mental SOS from his grand-daughter Susan. He is also searching for his missing companion Sam, who he decides through a piece of flimsy logic, might also be on Earth. England meanwhile is cut up between feudal lords who are feuding. A thinly veiled Delgado Master arrives in search of a piece of completely ludicrous Dalek technology, and entertains himself by helping Lord Haldoran start a war with Lord London. Meanwhile Susan investigates an old Dalek landmark, uncovers the Master’s plans, only to get captured by some Daleks the Master has inadvertently reactivated.
Into all of this comes the Doctor with pseudo-companion Donna – daughter of Lord London and owner of a rather intense past. They arrive in the action about half-way through the book, and promptly get captured by the Master, escape and go to deal with the Daleks. Like a scary number of Doctor Who books, the Doctor actually doesn’t do much, but given the lightweight nature of this tale, that isn’t a problem. He never really meets the Daleks, instead nipping in through the backdoor and doing a little sabotage. For the first half of the story, the Doctor’s main purpose, and this is a definite plus, is explain everything. With Donna at his side, he gets to explain who the Master is, what the TARDIS is for and all the other foibles of the Who Universe some readers might be unfamiliar with. He therefore acts as a kind of walking footnote for anyone who picked up the book because they liked the amazing cover.
Donna comes with serious baggage. Her infertility and subsequent social isolation at a time when the country is trying to repopulate is well handled, but most of the time she wanders around being sarcastic, angsty or generally angry. Then there is Dave Campbell, Susan’s husband, who is trying to deal with the implications of having been married to a perpetually young and beautiful wife while he and everyone else grow old. While this might be seen as Peel trying to play the age old game of cleaning up history according to the TV series, in this case he has a point – what would Susan have done when David finally dies of old age. Is she destined to spend the next thousand years wandering around Earth hoping that no one notices? Is she still watching Simpson reruns in 3400?
Everything Susan does here is to attempt show a new maturity since we last saw her. While walking alone into a Dalek artefact with no backup might seem immature, it is precisely the sort of thing some Doctor’s would do and thus would probably be called mature for renegade Time Lords and Ladies. The other job of the book is to construct her escape from the planet, but not with out standing up to some very gullible Daleks. She also destroys a Roboman single-handedly, but that is nothing compared what she does to the Master at the end of the book.
For his part, the supposedly Delgado Master actually comes across like a caricature of Ainley’s, all gloating and maniacal. He does get the best scene in the bookis that in which he shrinks a Dalek with his TCE. The matter transmuter he is searching for is a silly piece of technology that Susan eventually zaps him with, triggering his regeneration to the skull-face we see in “The Deadly Assassin”, and the book leads directly to Goth finding him previous to “Deadly Assassin”. I can’t remember reading anything prior to this that Delgado and old skull-face were adjacent incarnations, and I did roll my eyes in irritation when writers stamping such restrictions onto the series timelines. But then you can’t take anything in this book too seriously.
Take the support cast for instance, namely Lord Haldoran and his band of weasels, perverts and nasty-pieces of work. Everyone is over the top, everyone a cliché. Haldoran is bombastic and stupid and plays the sort of blinkered politics you find in pantomimes and third-rate fantasy novels. Don’t take that as a negative, because it is fun in that pantomime kind of way. Of his men, only Barlow is anything other than a caricature as he turns from villain to an anti-hero once the Daleks appear. He is not a nice man, as he himself keeps telling us, but at least does things for some kind of greater good, knows how to runs things, and generally doesn’t want to kill people every few seconds.
And finally the Daleks, who are basically stuck in their bunker and are easily confused. These Daleks are historically accurate to their forbears in the “Dalek Invasion Of Earth”, including the radio dish stuck to their backs to power them. They are supposed to be a secret cache of Daleks frozen in case of resistance on Earth, but they come over as the Daleks the rest thought were too stupid to be left to their own devices. Thankfully the Doctor puts them out of their misery.
In the end, “Legacy of the Daleks” is a fun read. Forget about dense plotting or experimental writing, this one of those books where you turn off your brain and escape. It is a timely reminder that pulp is just as much part of Doctor Who as those deep and meaningful novels scattered throughout the series. OK then, what exactly am I doing reading this then? I know it’s going to be awful – you can tell by the words ‘John’ and ‘Peel’ emblazoned on the cover. Well – the answer is that back when War of the Daleks was released I considered it such a blasphemy that I exercised the consumer’s greatest weapon of complaint – and refrained from buying Peel’s next book. It seems to have worked, as Peels dastardly alliance with the Daleks seems to have reached it’s ‘final end’ here, but that sole missing EDA in my collection has been nagging at me like an absent tooth. Was it really that bad? On the back of the recently released DVD of The Dalek Invasion of Earth I decided to finally complete my collection, and find out once and for all…
The biggest surprise is that, if you come to it with very low expectations, the first two thirds of this novel is actually quite enjoyable. Yes, the prose is basic and cringe-worthy at times (‘Their stubby metal guns spat death…’), but it moves at a goodly pace, and is entertaining in a lowbrow comic book fashion. One of the problems is how continuity heavy it is - throwing the 8th Doctor (thankfully without eco-warrior Sam) into a direct sequel to The Dalek Invasion of Earth is enough, but Peel over-eggs the pudding by also including the Delgado Master and using this novel to bridge the gap between Frontier In Space and The Deadly Assassin. I’ve got no problems with the 8th Doctor coming across Pertwee’s nemesis – it always seemed to me an illogical imposition of necessary TV practice that 2 separate time travellers could only meet each other chronologically – but added to the Daleks this does come over with more than a faint whiff of fan-wank about it.
Susan’s return is mostly fine, though I imagine some would be disappointed that there is no expected big meeting between her and The Doctor, I feel this would just be too obvious to have any satisfying pay-off. The only silliness comes with her lack of aging necessitating donning make-up so as not to arouse the suspicion of her Earthling neighbours. Unfortunately the Master comes across as particularly poor – with his insane megalomania and desire to gloat over the Doctor this character shows why he had become such a joke by now – his replacement with Sabbath was long overdue…
The Daleks themselves have an uneven time of things. On the plus side, they lurk nicely offstage for the first half of the book, although it’s a bit obviously a Power of the Daleks riff, but when they do emerge they seem rather ineffectual. The plot also falls apart spectacularly when it’s revealed exactly what they are up to – their ‘matter transmuter’ is laughable, and the final action scenes descend into tedium. Thankfully there is little revisionism this time, although there seems to be a retcon with what the Daleks were doing in their previous invasion, as all talk of piloting the Earth is dropped in favour of a simple desire to mine the metal at the Earths core.
So, a simplistic over-continuity heavy book, but while I’d certainly never call this a good novel, I’ve certainly read a lot worse. As a comic strip this could have been fun, but ultimately it just lacks the depth to make a satisfying novel. After "Longest Day," I really needed the next Eighth Doctor book to really soar. After reading "Legacy of the Daleks," I finally took that old "canon" debate to heart... and decided I'm going to pretend this one never happened.
John Peel, unfortunately, fails because, while other authors successfully have built upon traditional elements of the series to transcend its limits, he tries to copy things Terry Nation did decades ago. And, sadly, poorly. Fans of Terry Nation's Doctor Who and Blake's Seven stories will get the chapter titles like "Countdown to World's End," a staple of the early years of the program. But they will also likely note that this Earth after the Dalek Invasion, where women are forced to reproduce, is merely a sad copy of Nation's series, the survivors. Nothing here is original.
This worked in "War of the Daleks," a novel many disliked but that I loved. It served the dual purpose of celebrating all that had gone before and updating new readers as well. "Legacy" attempts too much. Peel tries to bridge "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" with "Deadly Assassin"... does that sound interesting? Trust me, it isn't.
The Master is back in his Delgado incarnation, but he is a flat stereotype unworthy of the fine portrait David McIntee gave the character in the other recent Delgado Master tome, "The Face of the Enemy". Even worse, he's under the pseudonym Estro this time... Estro being the Esperanto word for Master. (How trite.) Susan is worse; she's still a teenager while husband David has grown into an old man. This seems a generically reductionist concept; she bears none of the dept of the Susan from the novel "Lungbarrow" or the original series. Also, the Doctor only spots her for a moment during a fight scene and there is no huge homecoming between them. Susan boringly leaves in her own TARDIS boringly taken from the Master after David is boringly killed.
Donna, the cliche stand-in companion who replaces Sam (because Sam was written out temporarily for other plot reasons) is more integral and interesting than Susan. And she's a tired concept too; being infertile, she's useless as a bride and has instead become a knight (post-Dalek London is almost medieval). But being born to a ruler, she jumps marriages from one ruler to another until she finds happiness. Yuck.
If you aren't yet convinced to avoid this book, here's my favorite line from page 87: "Estro managed to get out of the war room by pleading the need to go to the toilet." It is this reader's opinion that most third grade fans are devising better Doctor Who.
I'm with the canon-fodder... I'm pretending it never happened. Avoid this book. John Peel has written another new Dalek novel, and like the last one it has a nice cover. Unlike the last one, the cosmically awful "War of the Daleks", there are nice things to be said about by no means all of the words within that cover.
We'll start with the plot. Plausibly, it is revealed that the Dalek blitzkrieg on Earth in the 22nd century has had some bad effects on the planet. The future society drawn here bears some relation to (ie completely rips off) that Terry Nation SF kitchen sink drama, "The Survivors," but by and large Peel sets this up well. Considering that his brief is also to reintroduce (a) Susan, (b) the "Delgado Master" (c) the Daleks, Peel does fairly well with the local colour. Future England is run-down, collapsing into feudalism, and there are feral slythers on the loose, hunting kittens and small children in the apparent belief that Ann Geddes cards are advertisements for fast food outlets.
Any major continuity lapses between the future Earth drawn in "Legacy" and the carefully-crafted future history created over years in the Virgin NAs are, I'm sure, the unintended consequence of a metaphorical bull in a china shop. The schematically-detailed timeline outlined from Warhead onward is thrown overboard. For little real effect.
"Legacy's" future history does append itself neatly to The Dalek Invasion of Earth, however. Various self-appointed "Lords" are contending for supremacy amid the post-apocalyptic ruins, and the main conflict occurs, as one might expect, over power supplies. Equally plausibly, there is Dalek technology scattered around the countryside, and, this being the UK, the government solution is to employ civil servants (such as Susan) to catalogue potentially lethal sites and place BEWARE OF THE DALEK signs on their front gates. The nastiest Lord of all is ably assisted by a "mysterious adviser" named Estro, whose identity is plain as the goatee on his face. This Lord also has various other nasty assistants, whose various psychoses are outlined early in the piece and then forgotten.
Enter the Doctor, still in search of Sam.
The Eighth Doctor's character is still oscillating between that of the Jon Pertwee Doctor and Voltaire's Candide at this point in the 8DAs. Unlike "War of the Daleks," where he all-but reversed the polarity of whatever neutron flow happened to be available, the Doctor has a few flashes of his own personality here. Like adopting a cat at the end, and getting gratuitously shot. There's a long way to go yet to "The Burning".
Susan is laughable: disguising herself in a fat suit a la Mike Myers' Fat Bastard to give the impression of ageing, for instance. She spends most of the book captured, by Daleks and "Delgado Master," and emerges at the end to watch the Doctor get shot, and to participate in a truly contrived set of continuity setups. There are, mercifully, no signs of weak ankles and no threats of smacked bottoms, but what a wasted opportunity nonetheless.
I nearly made it to the end of "Legacy" without groaning, and then...we get a Truly Gratuitous Peel Continuity Reference. Not content to bring back the "Delgado Master" for no readily apparent reason, we have to read on while Peel crams the whole "Tersurus incident" from "The Deadly Assassin" into a few flat pages. He's really out to snatch the Continuity Nazi mantle from Terrance Dicks here: we make it from the "death" of the "Delgado" Master to the troubled life of Chancellor Goth to the "Deadly Assassin" teaser in a couple of paragraphs, and remain profoundly unmoved in the process. The big question is Why Bother? "Legacy of the Daleks" is (like "Blood Harvest" in the Virgin range) one of those books where the author kills the story with the obscene device of turning Act 5 into one long flashback. All that's missing is Borusa, and I'm sure it's only because he was cut in the editing.
"Legacy" would have been better as a PDA...maybe even as the final showdown between the Third (or Fourth?) Doctor and the "Delgado Master". On those terms, it would have been a damn fine piece of escapism. As an 8DA, it simply doesn't suit the developing context of the franchise. It's better than "War of the Daleks" of course, but the general ingredients that made the earlier book such a treasure of bad storytelling are present in "Legacy," albeit in a minimised form. These include desperate reliance on continuity in place of actual plot, resurrection of profoundly uninteresting characters and zero development of potentially good ones, and the JN-T era assumption that anybody reading this text will have surely seen the entire series.
Fortunately, counter-productive devices such as this are largely missing from the 8DAs these days. The series has developed quite a way from its occasionally slipshod beginnings, and the dreaded continuity crutches have been cast aside, or left to the PDAs where they are more appropriate. Like "War of the Daleks" this book saddens me with its cavalier treatment of characters and scenarios that really should be let alone. As I said, it's a fine piece of escapism, but ultimately a very hollow one. |
