Doctor Who: Revenge Of The Judoon (Novel)

When I was younger (so much younger than today, lalalaaaa) my interest in Doctor Who was stemmed, not only from the television show, but from the novels, the majority of which were written by Terrance Dicks. I believed that Jon Pertwee was the first television Doctor, and then I saw him regenerate into Tom Baker, and I honestly believed that the any Doctors before Pertwee were created by Dicks for his novels, and boy oh boy how exciting were they? I never saw The Three Doctors on initial transmission, and so as far as I was concerned, Dicks had written this novel bringing his first two Doctors in to meet the third. The second Doctor was scary. Look at that jacket cover. Yes, Dicks fashioned my love of Doctor Who.

When, in the 1990s, he began writing the New Adventures, this was a good thing. Exodus was a great book, and gave us fans hope that these new book adventures would work. He churned out a few more and they were all pretty good. Then he wrote The Eight Doctors. And from that point on, Terry found it difficult to redeem himself. He's been writing pretty dodgy shit for a while now, climaxing in the godawful Warmonger, which turns the fifth Doctor into a battle commander and Peri into a commando. So believable.

Last year, when tasked with writing the Quik Read, I was hesitant. He's written mostly crap recently, but the short novel might be more his style. And it was. Made Of Steel was pretty good. They announced he was writing this years, and I thought, fine, bring it on.

Revenge Of The Judoon...is terrible. The Judoon actually aren't in it for most of the book, and only go about "revenging" in the last two chapters. Well, I saw go about revenging, I mean, one says "I shall have my revenge" and the Doctor says, "Leave it to me," and the Judoon commander says "Fair dues, I'll sod off then" (OK, so he didn't say that last bit, but that was the gist of the conversation).

No the actual villains are these "Peacemakers" who...well, I don't actually know what they want to do. Something about using Britain to conquer the world in order to...what? Get peace? I have no idea, because frankly I just didn't care when I finally found out their plot. Dicks sticks in a number of characters to get us a little excited - oo, there's Arthur Conan-Doyle, oo, there's Baden-Powell, but it's just over-egging a pudding that isn't tasting all that great to start off with.

I think, Uncle Terry, it may finally be time to hang up the pen and move on. You've done Doctor Who a great service and it, and myself, would not be the same things without you. But go out on top...or as close to top as you can now...

"C"