Doctor Who: Revelation of the Daleks

Doctor Who: Target Books #144

by Eric Saward, Albert De Petrillo (Editor)

The Doctor and Peri land on the planet Necros to visit the funerary home Tranquil Repose – where the dead are interred and the near-dead placed in suspended animation until such time as their conditions can be cured.

But the Great Healer of Tranquil Repose is far from benign. Under his command, Daleks guard the catacombs where sickening experiments are conducted on human bodies. The new life he offers the dying comes at a terrible cost – and the Doctor and Peri are being lured into a trap that will change them forever.

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Audiobook, Fiction

208 pages, Paperback

First published November 14, 2019

About the author

Eric Saward worked as a writer and later script editor for Doctor Who during the 1980s.

Saward had a particular fondness for the Cybermen. He wrote stories with good action throughout them and stories that connected the Doctor to important events in Earth's history.

He also wrote the short story Birth of a Renegade and the radio play Slipback.

He served as script editor from Time-Flight, the last episode of season 19, to the penultimate episode of season 23 (The Ultimate Foe episode 1). He resigned his position due to a disagreement with producer John Nathan-Turner over the storyline (and particularly the ending) of episode 2 of The Ultimate Foe. Afterwards, he gave a notably scathing interview to Starburst magazine over his falling out with Nathan-Turner, and he became vocal in his criticism of Colin Baker's appointment as the Sixth Doctor.

Target Books failed to secure an agreement that would have seen Saward's two Daleks serials novelised either by Saward himself or by others, with Saward only novelising both of his Dalek stories in 2019. The 1989 publication of Saward's adaptation of Attack of the Cybermen actually post-dated his falling out with the Doctor Who production team by several years. His favourite snack is a chocolate hobnob

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

A dark, grim television story becomes even darker and grimmer on the printed page.

I've often felt like "Revelation of the Daleks" was Eric Saward's attempt to one-up what Robert Holmes did the season before with "The Caves of Androzani." Both stories are bleak at times but are visually stunning thanks to Graham Harper directing. And while Saward does his best to try and channel Holmes with witty dialogue and double-acts, he never does quite succeed in capturing what made "Caves" so special.

"Revelation of the Daleks" suffers from a lot of the issues that plagued season 22 and the move to 45-minute episodes. Each story in the season suffers from long sections of the first installment keeping the Doctor and Peri from the central action unfolding in the story as characters, situations and worlds are created. A better novel might have streamlined large sections of the Doctor and Peri walking into the trap laid by Davros, but instead Saward follows the basic outline of the script and makes us take every step with them.

Listening to this audiobook, I couldn't help but wish someone would tell Saward that he's neither Robert Holmes nor Douglas Adams. The attempts at Adams-like levity that are sprinkled throughout this book come off as ill-considered and fall flat.

And then there's the final chapters wherein it feels like Saward is gleefully killing off his cast and multiple Daleks. I can't tell you the sheer number of times that Saward mentions the living creature inside the Dalek splattering on the floor as Dalek after Dalek gets exterminated. And that doesn't even begin to get into the various deaths that Saward inflicts upon the supporting cast that he spends much of the first half of the book building up.

I suppose I shouldn't be too shocked by this since Saward's "Resurrection of the Daleks" features one of the highest body counts in all of Doctor Who.

There are some interesting ideas here though --from the mortician Jobel with his inflated ego to what Davros is really up to posing as the Great Healer (think Solyent Green). But these are sprinkled into long passages of grim horror and in-jokes (Saward really loves his creation of the Terraleptils).

As one a completist, I'm glad this gap in the Target book range has finally been filled. I just wish that we'd had a better novel after waiting thirty years to finally get to read it.

[Paul Griggs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Better than the Resurrection novelisation, but still full of odd quirks, dreadful descriptions of violence and poor humour. Also, the bizarre addition of a new character who just seems to be there to up the page count in the latter stages. Makes you look at the televised story in a whole different light and not a favourable one.

[Brayden Raymond · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came away with mixed feelings about this one. There are parts I like and parts I don't that are pretty split down the middle. There's almost simple too many characters and plot lines for the story to handle. Some of the characters are pretty unique like the DJ or Natasha but others like Jobel and Tasambeker are mostly just side pieces that barely hold any weight at all. Honestly I'll give it three stars but part of me thinks it really should have more around 2.5

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I approached this with a bit of trepidation as I really did not like Eric Saward's previous novelisation ("Resurrection of the Daleks"). But I think this is an enormous improvement, largely because he has toned down his excessively jaunty, Douglas Adams-influenced style. The original story benefited from some vivid characters, and they emerge from the page very well. I found the character of Tasembeker just as annoying on the page as I found her on the screen, but anyway...Some characters (even the annoying DJ) are given a bit more depth. Davros is at his malevolent best, Takis and Lilt are given backstories, and Kara's cold ambition is emphasised, make her a character a bit like Servalan from "Blake's 7". In Australian football terms, I think Mr Saward deserves an "improver of the year" award for this book! I feel that this time he has really delivered the goods.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd actually rate this a little higher (about 3.5 stars) than Eric Saward's novelization for "Resurrection of the Daleks" -- he's clearly more enthused about this story, and working hard to add some interesting layers. But it's also florid, outrageous, and awkward. It still feels like Saward is shaking off his rustiness after all these years, but this particular adaptation is certainly full of stuff to keep you interested...although occasionally it's like watching an artistic car crash.

[Duncan Steele · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yikes.

A shockingly poorly written book.

[Chris Browning · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading a Target book for the first time in almost thirty years is a weird experience in and of itself, but a new one based on an original series story is even weirder. It’s a strange old book, and Saward is trying very hard to navigate memories of something he wrote over thirty five years ago, the finished product from television and his working notes but he *just* manages it. There’s definitely a sense of a man describing a story he originally wrote, and also a confirmation that Seward was never a particularly great Doctor Who writer. It’s very much him trying to channel Robert Holmes, and especially try and emulate Androzani with the baroque characters and sinister machinations culminating in a slaughter of almost everyone. But I’d rather he try and be Holmes than, say, when he wrote the book for Slipback which is him trying to be Douglas Adams.

The story is probably the best TV adventure for my favourite original series Doctor, and the book definitely capture Baker’s presence but sadly doesn’t quite pick up on the solid work that Big Finish have done to make his take on the Doctor finally as well beloved as it always deserved to be. It’s also a very confused story with multiple Dalek factions, people who seem to not care who the Daleks are and Davros barely even bothering to hide. It’s also never quite the story I think Saward wanted to write, with the allusions to The Loved One and Evelyn Waugh being confused and slightly pointless. But it does the job well enough and I know my childhood self would have loved it. It’s still very strange reading a new book on something I know very well from the television incarnation, an experience the original Target books never really shared. But I feel suitably nostalgic and definitely am feeling the urge to reorder my childhood Targets to bookend the newcomer

[Lachlan McCann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Revelation of the Daleks is one of the most mixed bag Doctor Who stories I have ever read. The planet of Necros and Tranquil Repose have some imagery and settings that become so vivid. However, some boring and morbid characters, slow pacing and pieces of the story that you never know if they'll come back or be discarded partway through do harm the story for me. The Doctor and Peri spend a lot of the story bickering in a way that really isn't endearing and doesn't reflect well on either character, but their concern and love for one another comes through later in the story. The incidental characters range from awful to quite good but none are the best I've ever seen.

The story is also very dark and morbid which I personally love but I understand many others may hate how cruel this story can be. There's some dark stuff especially for a Doctor Who book that was also a TV story, little is spared from description when something is destroyed or beaten or battered. Whilst I don't always love this for me it never detracted from the story and at some moments the brutality felt like a darker side of the Daleks and what a reality of these creatures could mean.

The story drags its heels a little and the setup feels long and drawn out. However, I found the last 3 chapters riveting, full of payoffs and a brilliant struggle between The Doctor and The Daleks. The long setup probably isn't worth it considering only three chapters but I personally loved it. The confrontations towards the end and tension along with some of the twists and excitement that occurs towards the end drew me in and kept me reading till it was finished. Alas, I am a massive Doctor Who fan.

Overall, I liked this but would struggle to recommend it to everyone, it is only 180 pages so it is quite a short book, for me that makes the 60 or so pages of greatness worth the very mixed proceedings.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was pleasantly surprised with this after reading Resurrection of the Daleks. It is better written, has more of a flow, and no jarring moments. There's even a little bit extra that wasn't in the TV series. A decent novelisation.

[Sarah Hughes · Rating 1 out of 5]

cruel and disgusting. saward takes way too much pleasure in his descriptions of the deaths, torture and other such off-putting stuff in here. he also thinks hes way funnier than he actually is. jobel is the worst character in all of doctor who and its intensely uncomfortable watching him chase after peri. what i was hoping could have been a better, fixed version of the tv story actually exacerbated the problems i already has with it to a ridiculous degree. maybe every 5 pages or so, you get a nice line or something but nothing much else really.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

The last story of classic Who to be novelised, here Saward adapts his own original script featuring the Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) and his companion Peri Brown.
Heading to the funerary planet Necros in search of an old friend, the Doctor and Peri discover that a sinister character known as the Great Healer has been experiementing on and mutating humans. As they begin to investigate they realise that there is something truly monstrous in the making on Necros.

This is an odd book really, full of the grim violence that 1980s Who was criticised for at the time, but also full of cheesy and camp touches that give it the feel of a Saturday morning cartoon story. I couldn't exactly tell (not having seen the screen version) whether it was that the story wasn't taking itself seriously or if Saward, in hindsight, wasn't taking it seriously when he novelised it.

What I can say is that it's a very unimaginative adaption. This book is really dialogue-heavy and reads almost as if Saward just transcribed his original script wholesale.
Personally, I prefer novelisations to have a bit more to them than the televised version, be it greater description or perhaps exploration of the characters' inner thoughts. There's not much of either here, however.

What I will say is that the core idea here is brilliant, with a new, flawed race of Daleks being created in defiance of the racial purity which the original Daleks hold as their core ideal, something which sees the beginning of the Dalek civil war that was later picked up in the brilliant 'Remembrance of the Daleks'.
With this concept at its heart and with the Sixth Doctor finally beginning to find his feet as a distinct character (even if he was unceremoniously put on hiatus after this), there's just enough to like here to keep you reading.

* More reviews here: https://fsfh-book-review2.webnode.com/ *

[Bmj2k · Rating 1 out of 5]

Saward is simply a poor writer. Unfunny and odd sums this up. He fleshes out characters and tries to add humor in this way, but nothing he adds is funny and his writing style is strangely stylised, like a children's book, at times. I also got the impression he dislikes the character of Peri. While not the strongest companion, Saward describes her almost (and in some cases, exactly) negatively at times, even taking a cheap shot at "her annoying New York accent." As someone who lives in NY, I can assure you that is not a New York accent.

As for the plot, there really isn't one. Davros came up with an elaborate scheme to lure the Doctor so he could... topple a statue on him. That's it.

[Travis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cool to fill a hole in my Who adaption collection.
Wish they'd make them the same size as the targets.

For all the controversy swirling around Seward, he does write a really good Sixth Doctor and Peri.

Unfortunately, this was not a great story and the padding shows.
While there are good ideas here, as a whole it's clunky. A few of Sewards' fixes work, a few land with a thud.
Another problem is Seward tries for this Douglas Adams clever vibe, except he is not Douglas Adams, so a lot of the funny bits don't work.

[Susanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always enjoyed the TV episodes of this story, so it’s not surprising I enjoyed this novelization as well. Although I wish we had gotten more backstory on the Orsini character — I love him! Other characters benefit from more backstory and new characters/scenes/details help the whole plot make better sense. One of the better Dalek stories, in my opinion.

[Chris Griffin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was more like it. After the hugely disappointing Resurrection, Eric returns to form. Ok, this was always the better story, but at least now we get a bit of extra detail to the characters and events, and not just a practical prose version of the script.

[Derelict Space Sheep · Rating 1 out of 5]

At last, lagging thirty-five years behind the TV serial, former Doctor Who script editor Eric Saward has novelised Revelation of the Daleks. If only he’d spent some of that time learning to write! This is BBC-endorsed beige-wallpaper fan fiction without the heart.

[John Wilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Take that money and run.

[Jacob Licklider · Rating 2 out of 5]

Those following my reviews as I write them may have noticed that Resurrection of the Daleks was a novel which I called the worst book I had read so far in 2022. Commissioned and published to finally complete the classic series Doctor Who novelizations, Revelation of the Daleks is a book where Eric Saward shows that he at least has the potential to grow as an author, though not enough to make this an enjoyable reading experience. Many of the problems with the former are still present in Revelation of the Daleks, especially when the slaughter of the characters begins in the second half of the story. Saward also introduces another body to be slaughtered which doesn’t need to even exist and is given his own backstory. There’s just so much time dedicated to this character who is essentially a redshirt. He is a character who doesn’t need to be there and doesn’t add anything, which is a thread to every aspect that Saward adds to the story bar the opening scenes in the TARDIS. The opening scenes in the TARDIS is this small piece between the Doctor and Peri where they are actually allowed to be decent friends which makes a change from the television series’ bickering to a more light hearted friendly ribbing. Sure, the bickering was toned down by Revelation of the Daleks but it wouldn’t have evolved into something like this until The Trial of a Time Lord.

There is something quite punchy to the pace of the first half of Revelation of the Daleks. While it does take up the first half of the novel, Saward does explore the Doctor and Peri as characters which are fun while tightening some of the events of that first episode. Just giving the characters the time to interact and be people is enough to make it feel as if the first episode is worth anything. This is undercut by the end as there is added worldbuilding which doesn’t actually need to be there as it undercuts the Soylent Green-esque plot which doesn’t really get wrapped up in the novel while it does on television. By the time things get to Part Two, Saward’s issue with cluttering every scene with asides and characters who shouldn’t be there at that time yet somehow taking the attention away from what is usually the focus of the scene in the television version of the story. There also isn’t anything done to really establish scene or location after a certain point in the novel making it feel as if Saward got bored with writing the book after a while and just wrapped things up as quickly as he could. This is somehow a shorter book than Resurrection of the Daleks and it’s something that makes the story have even less time to tell its story.

Overall, Revelation of the Daleks is a conclusion in its first half but quickly goes back into the weird, Douglas Adams style of writing which doesn’t mesh with the tone of the original television story. There is at least some time spent on making the Doctor feel like the Doctor and Peri feel like Peri with Davors as a villain, however, this is undercut by not really following the witty dialogue and timing. The Robert Holmes-esque double acts from television are also called double acts which makes things even more self-aware in a story that shouldn’t be self-aware. 4/10.

[Chris Jenson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was the story that Eric Saward says he is most proud of in interviews about Doctor Who. In my view this is one of the worst Doctor Who stories televised. I wanted to give the novel version a chance because of Saward's expressed pride in it. That pride is without justification. First, there is the mechanism of the DJ character which is just silly. Everytime the DJ character comes on you are taken out of the story because he is entirely incongruous with the rest of the story. Saward's writing in this novelized version is also annoying. He continuously refers to the Doctor as "the Time Lord." This is fine once or twice, but he uses it almost everytime he needs to the refer to the Doctor. "Hurry Peri! We've got to get out of here," said the Time Lord., etc. This began to take me out of the story as well.

This silliness is then combined with a sort of moral ambiguity to the actions of the characters, including the Doctor, that I don't think fits with the character of the show. Saward indiscriminately kills off heroic characters, Natasha and Grigory, whilst allowing jerks like Lilt and Takis to survive and even thrive. Somehow Saward thought this makes the show more sophisticated and adult. First, it's a family show, so I'm not sure why you want to do that in the first place. Sophisticated is fine. Children are usually more sophisticated than they are given credit for. However, "adult" is a puerile
excuse for Saward to investigate his dark side. Yes, moral questions can be difficult and ambiguous, but Saward doesn't do anything interesting here.

It is my view that Saward's tenure as script editor in combination with John Nathan Turner's role as producer in the eighties torpedoed the show. This combination is what led to the show being cancelled in 1989. This was despite later script editor Andrew Cartmel's best efforts. These were too little, too late. JNT was apparently good at logistics, but had no sense of story. He made other questionable decisions as well. He was behind the question marks on the Doctor's lapel and Colin Baker's (the 6th Doctor) godawful technicolor coat. His lack of sense of story needed a good strong script editor, and Saward simply wasn't it.

I would have given this one star, but it is Doctor Who. I am a Doctor Who superfan, so I have a soft spot for even the worst of the franchise.

[Finlay O'Riordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I'm glad Saward finally got to adapt this one and "Resurrection" for completionist's sake, he feels more like a trainee writer playing at penning a Target novel, rather than an accomplished Doctor Who veteran, which is strange given how he wrote the original story.

Saward's attempts to match the tone of other Target authors such as Dicks, Adams and Lucarotti are painfully sore and don't work. He goes too much into detail about the most irrelevant things (who cares about a speelsnape's life cycle? Or what water would think if it was sentient?) and foregoes expanding on characters who could've done with more fleshing out, like the funerary assistants or the two assassins. He also makes the Daleks unbelievably weak for no real reason; Natasha Stengos manages to kill three of them with her blaster alone, then kills herself, rather than on-screen where one Dalek manages to kill both her and Grigory.

However, there are a few changes and expansions which I approve of, such as the Dalek troopers from "Resurrection' accompanying the Skaro Daleks in the climax, or the inclusion of Alex, another mutant human-Dalek experiment like Arthur Stengos. It's interesting, the original sections of this novelisation are actually pretty good, but for some reason Saward just seems to really struggle at novelising the script he already wrote.

Another example of this is how it takes the Doctor and Peri far too long to reach the action. While that was also a problem in the original story, Saward could have sped up and condensed these sections for the novelisation. Yet once they actually get there, as mentioned above, there are some original sections to this book which are actually not bad to read.

That said, I love the cover art, which are a surprisingly huge part of why these novels are so collectible. This and "Resurrection" look neat alongside each other and really channel the likes of "Destiny".

So bottom line, this is a fairly standard Target novel. Is it quite as bad as the fandom makes out? No, I don't think so. It's definitely not good, but it's still enjoyable to a degree thanks to some new sections added in that weren't in the original story.

[David Robert Bloomer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Never released during the initial Target Novelisations run, this has been a long time in coming; was it worth the wait?
What I think must be remembered is that Target novelisations were never literary masterpieces. The only two novelisations that expanded greatly from the original work (if my memory is correct) were Power and Evil of the Daleks by John Peel. So when you look at the page count being only 178 pages, you know it's back to basic Target story telling. Not that the Target novels of old were all duds. Their function was to tell the televised story in a quick and clear fashion. I feel that this book is very much in that vein.

Anybody buying this book I will assume is a Doctor Who fan. I can't see the casual reader wanted to read a novelisation of a show that is much more easily accessible on other media, than this. The story is pretty much what it is on TV. The Doctor visits a planet called Necros and finds a neat of Daleks. As I say this is very much in the style of the old Target Novels. A few extra bits are in there but the main thrust is pretty much spot on to the televised story. I personally enjoyed it. I've always enjoyed that particular serial and being able to read it brought back a lot of nostalgic feelings.
I only started reading/collecting Target stories in 1992, so my nostalgia is limited, to a certain degree. In a way I'm sorry it took so long before this story was novelised but it was a great little read.
So I'd recommend it to any Who fan out there as it's a nice piece of nostalgia and it helps complete the Target initial run. Although on saying that it has no Target issue number, so it's maybe a completists book. Give it a go though, Seward did a nice job in this one.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, Revelation of the Daleks.

Firstly, a passing chat about the television story. It's one of my favourites and one of the Colin Baker era's best. Even as it becomes obvious that Eric Saward doesn't seem to like The Doctor much and pushes him to the periphery of the story. But overall it is a delightful story, with an odd tone: 'Soylent Green' meets 'The Loved One'. The sort of fusion that only Doctor Who really does.

However, what of the book? Well, it's OK. Saward's novelization of 'Resurrection of the Daleks' was a disappointment and perhaps because of that, I had lower expectations of this book, which helped. There are changes to the televised version, particularly one extra character and a whole Dalek army who I suspect a mid-80s budget couldn't stretch to.

And, sadly, the oddity of some of the characters is lost without the performances. Jobel's sex pest creepiness isn't quite as uncomfortable on the page for example. Nor is Tasambeker quite the same without Jenny Tomasin's strange line readings. You can't help but see scenes from the book through your memories of the television series, which I've watched far too many times.

I do like the ending AFTER the TV story's ending [SPOILER], with its suggestion that the Doctor and Peri don't just go back to the TARDIS in the immediate aftermath of the events and stay for a little while to help the people of Tranquil Repose re-build. I always think the speed the Doctor does a runner after over-throwing a civilization is not an endearing habit.

So, not a bad novelization of a story I like, but not up to the standards of some of the recent Target novelizations of 'New' Doctor Who stories.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

A problem I sometimes find with Doctor Who novelisations is that you get people who are good script writers but who don't do nearly as well with prose. I think Saward does fall into that bracket at times - there were definitely points where he over-explained something in the narrative or sentences were a bit awkwardly phrased. Which is a shame given that I do really enjoy his TV stuff, but I don't actually think it was so bad that I'm going to significantly drop my rating. Plus I did genuinely like some of the stuff he added in the narration (special mention to the part near the beginning where Peri debates wearing an ugly outfit just to annoy the Doctor - finally, an explanation for that Team TARDIS's fashion disaster tendencies!). One thing as well that really lets the televised version down for me is the performance of the actress playing Tasambeker, so at least on the page that's not a problem.
I'm probably a bit of an outlier in that I like Colin Baker's era anyway, so maybe I'm being slightly over-generous by giving this four stars, but I do think even if it's not the best novelisation-as-novel out there, it's a perfectly serviceable adaptation of what (I think, at least) is a good TV serial.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating between 3.5 & 4

An adaptation by the original author of the final Doctor Who - Dalek story from the original series, probably automatically made this a 4 star book for me. I enjoyed the original program, still do and found the actors were all very good.
The only disappoint for me with this book (and the same issue with the Resurrection adaptation) is the length. Sticking to 192 pages might be a throwback to the old Target novelizations, but towards the end of the original publication run authors were expanding their stories with details that hadn't made it into the final program and they were not detracting from the prose story line at all.
So I would have quite liked additional background supplied, as with the Remembrance novel where additional back ground was supplied on the state of the Daleks' after the Movellan war. I feel that this would have benefited from pseudo-documentary notes about the state of the Dalek empire, more details about Tranquil Repose and perhaps a biog on the Stengos character.

Overall though these are minor quibbles as I did enjoy this novel, surprisingly more than the Resurrection one, and would recommend to other Who fans - new or old.

[Michael Mills · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm afraid it's not very good. This novelisation of the 1985 TV serials largely exacerbates the problems of the original version, throwing away key dramatic moments (the Daleks, for example, turn up mid-sentence), reducing the titular villains to easily disposed of henchmen to Davros, and becoming comically overwrought at times ("She was just 25").

It's not without some good stuff. There's a joy to Saward's writing – it reads like he's having a heck of a time – and the dialogue throws out the odd gem ("That would have created what I believe is termed consumer resistance"). The TV version is well remembered for its macabre atmosphere (a clever combination of Gothic horror and 80s superficiality) and, though dulled, it can still be seen here, as can Saward's tight world-building (something he seems to have learnt from his hero Robert Holmes).

It's a shame. On TV, Revelation of the Daleks is good bordering on a classic; an intelligent, sympathetic novelisation – similar to those enjoyed by Douglas Adams' scripts – could have pushed it over the line. But that's not what we've got. Hard to recommend to anyone other than the completist.

[Bart Lammey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Soylent Green plus Daleks? That sounds thrilling, right?
Gallows humor, dark humor, using a funeral parlor for creepiness and humor in equal measures - none of that was new to Who when this story was being made. Neither were the ideas of people being eaten, dead or alive, nor humans being grotesquely merged with machines.
What sets this story apart is how mean the characters are to each other. Saward has done this before (and does it again later), but the televised story doesn’t give me people worth saving by the Doctor and Peri. That alone is an intriguing idea (and some Who has explored this) but doesn’t seem to be the focus. The novelization could have explored that, with additional dialog by Peri about wanting to get away from these people instead of just whining about going back to the TARDIS.
This is a faithful adaptation, with minor adjustments. Normally a cause for celebration, but this took decades longer than it needed to, even considering the rocky legal relationship between the Daleks as characters and making any money off of them.
Two and a half stars.

[Pete · Rating 3 out of 5]

Doctor Who : Revelation of the Daleks (2019) by Eric Saward is the novelisation of the final serial of season twenty two of Doctor Who. It was one of the last of the original series to become a novel.

Tranquil Repose on Necros is a giant mausoleum. There the Doctor and Peri are attacked by a mutant who tells them that the Great Healer has caused his mutations. Two other people have entered Tranquil Repose, Natasha and Grigory. They are looking for Natasha’s father’s remains. Meanwhile Kara sells a protein food that originates from Tranquil Repose. Kara, fearing the great healer hires Orcini and his assassin to kill the great healer. The Great Healer turns out to be the creator of the Daleks. Soylent Green goings on are afoot as is a Cybermen like plan of converting other life forms into Daleks. There is a lot of killing toward the end of the book.

Revelation of the Daleks isn’t a great story but it’s not too bad.

[Meikeidreaming · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a bit of a disappointment for me. I haven't seen the episode that inspired the novelization so I'll only judge the plot as a book. 180 pages are not enough to introduce so many characters and follow them, especially when they are separated in groups of 3 up to 5 people. It's far too many plot lines for such a small book. And I find no point at introducing 20 characters when not even 1/4 of them survive. Don't get me wrong, I am used at people dying when it comes to Doctor who, but some of these characters didn't last more than a chapter so what's the point of learning their names or a small backstory only to unceremoniously murder them 10 pages later? Apart from the appearance of the grey daleks (which didn't serve much to the plot anyway) there were no plot twist. Not anything surprising or shocking.
This book felt as if someone just watched an episode of doctor who and then described it to me. I don't know if this is a problem that concerns all the novelizations but in my opinion this story would make a much better graphic novel. There just isn't enough of a plot or character development to make a book out of it. I'm sure I'll give these books another chance, but if the next one is disappointing too I'll just assume those stories are not meant to be read but only watched on the screen.

[David Layton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't say I like the cover on this book. The color is wrong, for a start. As for the book itself, ... Eric Saward has, thankfully, exorcised his Douglas Adams demon and this time written a straightforward novelization of his TV script. Pretty much all the dialogue from the script is here. There are some explanatory bits added to flesh out characters, and most importantly to explain how funeral floral arrangers can also be rather brutal security managers. Saward has made only one major deviation from the plot of his original serial, adding a character and revising how Tranquil Repose collapses. This novel is a brisk read, which helps one ignore some of the plot holes until after one has finished the novel.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 3 out of 5]

 https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3311899.html

Neither of these is Great Literature, but on the other hand this is a better, more coherent story than Resurrection of the Daleks (even if the plot is basically resolved by killing almost all of the other characters) and these are therefore both better novels for it. Saward for once has dialled down his writing style, and cranked up his concentration on character and giving his fictional world a bit more in-universe context, to the point that this is actually a pretty readable book. These are for completists only, but not too embarrassing.