Before we go any further, this review comes with two confessions.

Confession #1:

Destiny of the Daleks was the first Doctor Who story I watched with the mindset of a fan. It was so amazing to me back in the day that it sparked an obsession that has now lasted 45 years, and shows no signs of letting up any time soon. I love it madly, irrationally, and completely, and some sweet, twisted part of my soul will remain immune to the screeeeamingly obvious criticisms that can be made of it.

Confession #2:

To maintain my love for it over the years despite frequent rewatching, I’ve had to invent a bubble of headcanon for myself. The Daleks that are despatched from the giant immobile battle fleet locked in endless inertia to go and take on a drilling expedition on Skaro – which forms the basis of the plot – are The Useless Daleks. The ones who have been through a battle or two too many, and as such look battered, act baffled, and forgot to bring the good maps with them. They are, as far as I’m concerned, the Dad’s Army Daleks that, if they never made it back to the battlefield, would cause Central Command not a nanosecond’s concern.

I’ve had to make that little headcanon bubble firstly to deal with the absolutely shonky state of the Daleks that were used on screen, but secondly and more importantly because bits of the plot as it existed in the TV version are utterly illogical, and do the legend of the Daleks absolutely no good whatsoever. 

But, while it’s useful to keep that headcanon bubble close by you when approaching the audiobook version, it’s significantly less necessary here than it is when watching the TV version.

On the one hand, that’s because effervescent journeymen chronicler of the Doctor’s adventures at Target, Terrance Dicks, actually tones down some of the dodgier bits of script malarkey by writer Terry Nation and (though it grieves me to criticise him) Douglas Adams as script editor. While, for instance, we lose one of the lines that first made me a fan – Tom Baker’s joyous delivery of “Ooh! Rocks!” – we make up for that by, for instance, Dicks’ removal of the idea that Romana has never heard of the Daleks. There’s also a different weighting to the material about the Daleks being robots themselves, Dicks going out of his way to remind us that they are still living beings in their casings, but to suggest that they’ve been mechanically assisted for so long there’s now barely any difference asserted by their organic components, and that they are so reliant on the rightness of their mechanical systems that they will never independently question their battle computers, which cannot find a way out of a stalemate in a war against the entirely robotic Movellans.

That weighting from Dicks can even give us a moral for our times – our mechanically-derived news and information bubbles, confirming only our own pre-existing biases, can trap us in a rigidity of thought, just as much as the Daleks are trapped in their life support machines.

You can take that from this audiobook much more easily than you ever could from the on-screen version, and it’s there if you want it.

Mostly though, the combination of Dicks’ judicious silliness-pruning and, in this book his evocative eye for description, just give you a rollicking Dalek tale that doesn’t feel as strained by the time it gets to its final act as the TV version does.

And then, of course, there’s the genius move of giving reading duties to Jon Culshaw, with Nicholas Briggs as ever dutifully supplying the Daleks.

One thing first on Briggs. He makes his Daleks here much more genuinely grating and scary than the ones in the TV version, while also delivering the classic hierarchy of Dalek voices – the high and petulant, the middle and authoritative, and the low and moderately thick. He makes them burst out of silences like heart failure on wheels, and in this story, that raises their game above the TV originals.

And then there’s Culshaw. Culshaw has become a mainstay of Doctor Who audio, and there appears to be little he can’t master…including the Master in his Delgado incarnation. His Fourth Doctor, used to great effect in his early Dead Ringers days, is beyond impeccable and verges on the uncanny. But there’s always a new surprise when you get Culshaw to read a Doctor Who novel, eternally underlining the idea that he’s phenomenally good value for your narration-money. 

Here, that surprise is his take on David Gooderson’s Davros. In fact, what he delivers is a good deal of Gooderson’s intonation and interpretation, but with a closer resonance to the Michael Wisher original than Gooderson achieved through the on-screen mask. It’s magnificent and creepy and makes this Davros feel in sync with both that original and the Gooderson version. And in fact, it gives an extra gift which chimes with that whole underlying notion of the Daleks being increasingly ruled by their mechanical elements. 

Davros has, throughout his history, had two real modes – the ordinarily conversational, and the ranting, Hitlerian dictator which takes him close to being a Dalek himself. Here, Culshaw deploys the different tones not only to deliver Davros’ chillingly rapid changes of mood and mind, but to subtly suggest that when he reaches into his upper registers, his yelling, authoritarian registers, it’s almost akin to the machinery taking over, the humanity of the great amoral scientist being overwhelmed by chemicals and programmed hate, shifting him into those blinkered rages of the true Dalek.

Oh and also, his Movellans are creepily on point, too – warm but emotionless, just as they successfully were on screen. And while we’re at it, Terrance Dicks says barely a word about their disco hair, so with Culshaw’s vocal renderings, you’re free to imagine the Movellans as slightly less silly, too.

Suffice it to say you get more for your money when you experience this novelization as an audiobook than you ever would if you’d seen the TV version and simply read the words on the page.

Yes, Terrance Dicks does a great job here of sanding sown the silliness and bringing up the darkness (though he does also allow himself one joyful silliness when the Daleks, interrogating Romana, insist that she “Grasp the orbs!”). But really, the transformative power of this audiobook is in the skill of the voices that deliver it. 

With Culshaw and Briggs behind their respective microphones, Destiny of the Daleks can break free of the challenges imposed on it in its TV outing by slightly jaded writing, slightly over-silly editing, utterly bedraggled Daleks and a Davros mask that looked like it had foul pest. Briggs’ Daleks are vivid and dangerous, Culshaw’s Doctor, Davros and Movellans are powerful and intriguing, and the whole thing can live in a kind of 4k remake in your head, with all the 21st century effects you could wish for.

The best version of Destiny of the Daleks you’ll ever have? That’s flirting with several dangerous heresies at once. But on balance, probably, yes – the amount of good work that went into the novelization, matched and enhanced by the superb narration work, make the story live in a way it’s never had the chance to do before. 

Give the audiobook version of Destiny of the Daleks a try. The Daleks may still need better maps and better Movellan-recognition software, but in all other respects, it’ll blow your Skarosian socks off. Tony Fyler 

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