At the end of Doctor Who’s fifth season, the Doctor (Patrick Troughton) decides to show new companion Zoe (Wendy Padbury) a previous adventure with him and Jamie (Frazer Hines), leading into a repeat of the previous year’s The Evil of the Daleks. It’s a nice meta-gag to end the season with, and kept audiences engaged with the show before the next run of new episodes would begin (especially at a time when repeats were quite rare). It’s this repeat run of The Evil of the Daleks which has formed the basis for a new novelisation written by Frazer Hines himself, in collaboration with regular Who novelists Mike Tucker and Steve Cole.

The Evil of the Daleks sees the Doctor and Jamie pursue a stolen TARDIS across London 1966, leading them to a mysterious antique shop, a mansion in 1866 and finally to Skaro – home of the Daleks. The Daleks have laid a trap for their greatest enemy that will not only test him but also his friendship with his companion Jamie…

The novel is broken up into seven chapters – covering each episode of the original 1967 serial – alongside several interludes, covering the characters’ reactions to watching the events on the TARDIS scanner. It’s a fun idea, particularly as the interludes are told from Jamie’s perspective (Hines is able to give readers an added depth to Jamie’s character in his inner monologue), although this loyalty to the original TV episodes is both a blessing and a curse. The narrative here is incredibly close to the TV version, with very few deviations or changes. Oftentimes Doctor Who Target adaptations will try to amend plot holes, character motivations, or re-focus the narrative, but that isn’t the case in this novelisation. Loyalists will no doubt be happy with this, but given Hines’ authorship, I can’t help but wonder what this new novelisation could’ve been had it been entirely told from Jamie’s perspective, rather than switching to it in the interludes.

Had this novel been published a few years ago, this would have come as a delight to fans desperate to experience missing episodes of Doctor Who, but The Evil of the Daleks was animated faithfully and in full by BBC Studios in 2021. The previous novelisation by John Peel is out of print, but relatively easy to find second-hand, making this new edition really feel like the book equivalent of a TV repeat – although perhaps deliberately.

Hines’ novelisation makes for a faithful retelling of the story, carrying over many of its strengths – including some terrific scenes of the Doctor and Jamie butting heads throughout the conflict, as well as the epic finale on Skaro – but also some the TV version’s faults as well. With seven, twenty-five-minute episodes to fill, David Whitaker’s TV scripts feature a lot of padding. The entire first episode is largely redundant from a plot perspective, and while Waterfield, Maxtible and Mollie are all compelling characters, by the time Maxtible’s daughter, her fiancé and Toby come into the story, they serve as distractions rather than building the narrative further. This adaptation does try to give Victoria more of a backstory, although her role simply as a damsel-in-distress taken by the Daleks does limit this somewhat. Of all the supporting characters to expand on further, it’s a pity that the authors of this novelisation don’t do much with Kemel, a Turkish wrestler enslaved to Maxtible who helps the heroes throughout the story. That being said, the novel does carry over just how brilliantly evil the Daleks are in this particular adventure, not to mention the humour of the human factor Daleks, and the Patrick Troughton’s Doctor is captured brilliantly in prose form.

Ultimately, this new novelisation of The Evil of the Daleks is a fun read and something of an oddity in the Doctor Who canon. It’s a very meta idea to readapt the story as it was repeated in 1968, but its faithfulness to the TV episodes, especially so soon after the animated version, feels a little redundant (especially when certain aspects of the narrative have not aged well). Fans who adore Evil will no doubt enjoy this loyalty to the original story, and I’m sure the audiobook, read by Frazer Hines himself, adds a touch of authenticity to the proceedings. Lee Binding’s cover artwork looks fantastic, as well. For fans looking for that extra something in their Doctor Who Target novels, The Evil of the Daleks offers some nice meta moments, if perhaps not as much new material as some may have wanted. It’s still a good, fun story though, and I highly recommend this release if you haven’t seen the animated version of The Evil of the Daleks.

The Evil of the Daleks by Frazer Hines is out in hardback on 26 October: https://amzn.to/3tPU4Ba