David Whitaker - Doctor Who and the Daleks

The voice was all on one level, without any expression at all, a dull monotone that still managed to convey a terrible sense of evil

The mysterious Doctor and his granddaughter Susan are joined by unwilling adventurers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright in an epic struggle for survival on an alien planet.

In a vast metal city they discover the survivors of a terrible nuclear war the Daleks. Held captive in the deepest levels of the city, can the Doctor and his new companions stop the Daleks plan to totally exterminate their mortal enemies, the peace-loving Thals? More importantly, even if they can escape from the Daleks, will Ian and Barbara ever see their home planet Earth again?

This novel is based on the second Doctor Who story, which was originally broadcast from 21 December 1963 1 February 1964. This was the first ever Doctor Who novel, originally published in 1964.

Featuring the First Doctor as played by William Hartnell, and his companions Susan, Ian and Barbara.

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Version 1.0

Epub ISBN 9781446417034

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Published in 2011 by BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
A Random House Group Company
First published in 1964 by Frederick Muller Ltd

Novelisation copyright David Whitaker 1964
Original script Terry Nation 1964
Illustrations Arnold Schwartzman 1964
Introduction Neil Gaiman 2011
The Changing Face of Doctor Who and About the Authors Justin Richards 2011
Between the Lines Steve Tribe 2011

BBC, DOCTOR WHO, TARDIS and DALEK (word marks, logos and devices) are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence.
Daleks created by Terry Nation

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 849 90195 6

Commissioning editor: Albert DePetrillo
Editorial manager: Nicholas Payne
Series consultant: Justin Richards
Project editor: Steve Tribe
Cover design: Lee Binding Woodlands Books Ltd, 2011
Cover illustration: Chris Achilleos
Production: Rebecca Jones

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DOCTOR WHO AND THE CAVE MONSTERS

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It was another world, in those days.

Understand me, and try and picture it: we had no video cassettes, no DVDs, no on-demand anything, no YouTube, no iPlayer. There was no way of seeing an episode of a show you had missed. There was no way of re-experiencing a television show you had enjoyed.

Well, almost no way. There were records you could listen to, big vinyl scratchable things, with the songs from films youd liked, or even with old radio shows on them. These were not entirely satisfactory. There were also, and these were much better, books.

Books let you go back through the story as many times as you wanted. They were always waiting for you, doors into worlds you wanted to revisit. They were 360-degree, full-sensory recreations, extrapolations or interpretations of television and film you had loved.

There are still novelisations of films and TV shows, but in the old days, back when this book was written, books really were the only way back to something you had loved, the only way to visit a story you had missed.

And unless you were watching television in early 1964, you missed Doctor Whos first encounter with the Daleks

I was three years old in 1964. Id only just turned three. My birthday was in November. I was at Mrs Peppers Nursery School in Purbrook in Hampshire. John F. Kennedy had been shot a few months ago, but nobody told me about it. Back in those days children got free milk at school. It came in bottles that held a third of a pint. We drank our milk with a straw in our mid-morning break.

One break-time, when they had finished their milk, a few of the other boys did something odd. They bent the straws over, when they had finished drinking their milk, so the ends of the straws resembled eye-stalks, and they moved the bottles around the table, making threatening noises and saying, I-Am-A-Dalek! Which was how I discovered Doctor Who.

My television-watching at home at that age was tightly controlled by my mother and limited to the amiable puppet vapidities of the BBCs Childrens Hour: Andy Pandy and The Flowerpot Men and the like, in strange stories I expected I would understand when I was an adult, because they made no sense then. My grandparents, I am glad to say, were less concerned that television be used in a Positive and Educational way, so it was at their house in Southsea that I watched Doctor Who early on Saturday evenings, and when I got scared I watched it from behind the sofa, because the monsters couldnt get you if you were behind the sofa.

Each episode was precious. It could not be revisited.

Which is why, by the time I was six and living in Sussex, and in control of the buttons on the TV, and when I watched Doctor Who from anywhere in the room I wanted to, and when the behinds of sofas were places I almost never watched television from any longer, my most precious possessions were a couple of Doctor Who annuals, a copy of another annual called Dalek World, and a paperback copy of the book that you are holding.

I did not know who David Whitaker was, not then. I knew that he had novelised Terry Nations Dalek story, though. I knew that he had taken us into the TARDIS, and I made a point of searching for his name whenever I visited bookshops or libraries.

That book was my talisman. It was where I learned how it started. The cover was a moody painting of the TARDIS with the First Doctor in front of it. Its old and battered now, from so much reading, but I have it still.

(The book I loved was almost, but not quite, this book. It was the Armada paperback, with different illustrations and a different cover. The human-armed dragon monster on the back cover looked sort of funny to me then and looks even funnier now, but you cant see it, so youll just have to take my word for it.)

I was surprised, years later, to learn that on the original TV series it didnt begin in the fog, that Ian Chesterton wasnt an unemployed job-hunting scientist but was a teacher. Surely this was how it began, on the heath, in a world that had faded to white.