Synopsis: The Doctor and Jamie discover they’ve acquired a stowaway – Zoe, the young astrophysicist they met on the Wheel space station. Zoe is determined to join the travellers in the TARDIS, but the Doctor believes it only fair to warn her of the kind of dangers she might face. He weaves a narrative of one of their previous adventures and projects it into Zoe’s mind. A story in which Jamie’s faith is tested and the Doctor is forced to work for his deadliest enemies, the Daleks.

Chapter Titles: A prologue, epilogue and 17 numbered chapters.

Background: Credited to Frazer Hines, with help from Steve Cole and Mike Tucker, this is an abridged version of the longer hardback book published in 2023. Rather than simply adapting the scripts from David Whitaker’s 1967 story, this incorporates material from the 1968 repeat version, plus the final scene from Whitaker’s The Wheel in Space. This edition was released as a free gift alongside Doctor Who Magazine issue 609.

Notes: A prologue is told from Jamie’s viewpoint and adapts the final scene from The Wheel in Space. The quest to locate the TARDIS is heavily truncated, with Chapter One beginning at Waterfield’s shop. Maxtible knew Kemel when he was a wrestler in London’s East End; he offered the Turk lodgings in a small cottage on his land. Kemel performed menial tasks within the grounds to pay his way. It’s stated that Maxtible planned to use Kemel in the Daleks’ series of trials for Jamie.

 Contributions from Kennedy, Perry, Ruth Maxtible, Arthur Terrall and Toby are completely excised; some of these absences are explained away in the epilogue (which is also told from Jamie’s point of view). The epilogue consists of entirely new material, concluding with a line paraphrased from The Dominators: ‘It’s quite taxing, mental projection, y’know.’

Cover: Dan Liles, who took over from Anthony Dry with The Church on Ruby Road, creates a painting of a dramatic scene, with Jamie and Victoria looking on as the Troughton Doctor stands proudly in the Emperor’s control room surrounded by Daleks. In keeping with past Target covers (Day of the Daleks and Dalek Invasion of Earth) the Daleks are flipped so their arms are the wrong way round – a shame as otherwise it’s a beautiful piece of artwork.

Final Analysis: While John Peel’s The Evil of the Daleks was the final TV novelisation of the original run, it was published by Virgin Books, so technically this new adaptation is a first for the Target range. It’s much more in the style of old Target books, economical and fairly linear apart from the intro and outro chapters. Sometimes, the simplicity is to the benefit of the story, skirting over some of the gaps in the narrative that were present in the televised story (such as why the Waterfields have such a presence in Maxtible’s house). As a side-step – and as a freebie for DWM – this is a nice piece of whimsy, but it doesn’t come close to the quality and richness of John Peel’s approach. As an abridgement of the longer hardback, it also loses most of the point-of-view material that justifies having Frazer Hines’ name on the cover. It’s a decent retelling of the TV story though, while still leaving room for the curious reader to approach either of the other, longer versions previously available.