In London, 1963, teachers Ian Chesterson and Barbara Wright discuss their most problematic student at Coal Hill School, one Susan Foreman. Susan's knowledge vastly exceeds that of her instructors in science, but she has also been known to challenge long-standing historical facts. Ian and Barbara follow Susan discreetly when she walks home one night, and the teachers are puzzled when home seems to be a junkyard. When they follow her into the junkyard, Susan has disappeared, and the only place she could have gone is a police call box which is emitting a strange hum. Moments later, an elderly man appears, apparently determined to enter the police box himself. Ian and Barbara force their way in, along with the old man, and find that the police box is actually a time-space vehicle, bigger on the inside than out. The Doctor, worried that Ian and Barbara will draw unwelcome mass attention to the presence of his ship (called the TARDIS), hastily sets it into motion over everyone's protests, and when Ian and Barbara next step out of the doors of the TARDIS, they are no longer on Earth as they know it. It has brought them to the distant planet Skaro, where the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara discover a city constructed by an advanced civilization. After wandering aimlessly in the city for a while, the travelers discover two horrifying things - their growing fatigue is a sign of radiation sickness from Skaro's toxic environment, and there are still living creatures inhabiting Skaro: metallic monstrosities known as the Daleks, intent on wiping out the neighboring Thals - along with the Doctor and his companions, unless they assist the Daleks in their genocidal plan.

Quickly, name the first Doctor Who novel to be written mostly, if not entirely, in the first person. If your mind raced immediately to the Bernice Summerfield spinoff books, you may be too young to remember this one. Originally published just a year after the original episodes aired, Doctor Who And The Daleks (or, technically, as it was originally published, Doctor Who In An Exciting Adventure With The Daleks) is a fascinating look at the early style of Doctor Who novelizations.

Written in the first-person perspective of unwitting TARDIS traveler Ian Chesterson, the book actually combines the events of the TV episodes An Unearthly Child and The Daleks. For those who have ever watched the full, four-episode televised version of Unearthly Child, you'll realize that this not only saves us the trouble of a lot of past-tense backstory-building, but it conveniently skips over episodes 2-4 of Unearthly Child and, in so doing, jettisons the least interesting parts of that story.

Though written for what was assumed to be a young audience, Doctor Who And The Daleks actually comes across as quite a mature piece of fiction, probably something for the "young adults" category had it existed in the early 1960s. Whitaker - who, at the time, was the script editor of the TV series (and collaborated with Dalek creator Terry Nation on future adventures of his metallic monsters) - does a fine job of portraying the wonder, fear and emotional heart of the story from Ian's perspective, even going so far as to suggest near the book's end that romance with fellow TARDIS traveler Barbara may be in the offing. A Terrance Dicks transcript-of-the-shooting-script book, it ain't.

It's easy for connisseurs of post-TV Doctor Who to think that the Virgin Books New Adventures set the rules for adult Doctor Who print fiction, but I highly recommend this book - even if all you want is proof that those rules had been written long ago, all the way back in the beginning.

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com webmaster

• Year: 1964
• Author: David Whitaker
• Genre: franchise science fiction

• Publisher: Target Books