BOOK DETAILS

SYNOPSIS

1965 Armada edition

The story from the beginning! Here is the exciting adventure of Dr. Who, Susan, Barbara, Ian, from the moment they meet one foggy autumn night on a lonely common beside a Police Box (Ah, but what a curious Police Box!) to the time they encounter the weird Daleks.

It is a thrilling story, and we know this book will be one of the most popular published in the Armada series. Can you wait any longer? Start reading!

1967 Avon edition

THE DALEKS HAVE ARRIVED

Free…free… He thought when he woke in the strange machine that had whisked him away from despair on Earth. But the flight through space had ended and he and the hollow-eyed girl he found by his side were strangling in the poisoned air they swallowed with every breath. And around them lay a world in ashes controlled by a hidden city of monstrous machines.

To sleep on earth… and awaken to interplanetary horror!

1973 Target Books edition

This is DOCTOR WHO’s first exciting adventure – with the DALEKS! Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright travel with the mysterious DOCTOR WHO and his grand-daughter, Susan, to the planet of Skaro in the space-time machine, TARDIS. There they strive to save the peace-loving Thals from the evil intentions of the hideous DALEKS. Can they succeed? And what is more important, will they ever again see their native Earth?

1992 Target Books edition

THE DOCTOR LOOKED AT US GRAVELY ‘WHY SHOULD THESE DALEKS SHARE WHAT THEY HAVE WITH ANYONE ELSE? CAN ANY ONE OF YOU SHOW ME EVEN A SMALL HINT THAT THEY POSSESS COMPASSION OR MERCY OR FRIENDSHIP? ARE THEY EVEN INTERESTED?’

The Doctor and Susan, along with Ian and Barbara, land on the planet planet, where they must attempt to save the peace-loving Thals from destruction at the hands of a new and unfamiliar threat – the hideous Daleks.

2011 BBC paperback edition

“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 companions stop The Daleks‘ plan to totally exterminate their mortal enemies, the peace-loving Thals? More importantly, even if they can escape from the 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.

2016 BBC hardcover edition

A thick fog and a girl in distress are just the things that Ian Chesterton needs to escape from a life of dull routine. He has no idea that this is merely a prelude to an advernture quite beyond any normal conception of the word. Or that Barnes Common on a foggy autumn night is the last view of Earth he may ever have.

Both he and the girl he tries to help, Barbara Wright, are transported to a distant planet named Skaro by a mysterious old man known to them as The Doctor. With his grand-daughter Susan, The Doctor sets them down in a world all but destroyed by atomic warfare, the only survivors being a peace-loving and cultured people called the Thals and their bitter enemies The Daleks, horribly mutated both in body and mind.

Thrust into constant danger, his courage and determination tested almost beyond endurance, Ian is forced to struggle against alien creatures and superior enemies with no other weapons than surprise and ingenuity.

The rewords of victory are life for Ian and his new friends…but life where? Can The Doctor return him and Barbara to Earth again?

NOTES

CHAPTER TITLES

1. A Meeting on the Common
   
2. Prisoners in Space
   
3. The Dead Planet
   
4. The Power of the Daleks
   
5. Escape into Danger
   
6. The Will to Survive
   
7. The Lake of Mutations
   
8. The Last Despairing Try
   
9. The End of the Power
   
10. A New Life

DEVIATIONS FROM THE TELEVISED STORY

• The book is told in first person by Ian.
  
• The opening deviates greatly in that Ian and Barbara have never met each other. Ian has never met The Doctor or Susan prior to the events of the story, thereby ignoring the events of An Unearthly Child. The novelisation of An Unearthly Child would not be published until 1981.
  
• The first two chapters are a brief account of An Unearthly Child.
  
• The meeting in the junkyard changes to a car crash on Barnes Common.
  
• Ian is on his way home to Paddington, having just come back from trying to get a job as an assistant research scientist at Donneby’s in Reigate.
  
• Susan was being personally tutored by Barbara.
  
• Susan says The Doctor is very rich, as he paid twenty pounds a week for Susan’s tutor lessons.
  
• Susan wrote a thirty page essay on Robespierre.
  
• The yearometer in the TARDIS was damaged on a previous trip, and The Doctor has been meaning to fix it.
  
• A Dalek is described as having some emotion in its voice.
  
• Susan Foreman is referred to by the name “Susan English”.
  
• The circles on the TARDIS walls can be used to store things.
  
• Ian is not trapped inside the Dalek casing, and escapes with ease long before The Daleks can cut through the door to the lift.
  
• A Dalek leader inside a transparent casing appears. An actual Glass Dalek appeared in the television story Revelation of the Daleks.
  
• Gurna is Alydon’s cousin. He accompanied The Doctor’s group into the Dalek city. Salthyana is a female who says Kristas will propose to her the next day.
  
• Ratanda is a drink made by the Thals.