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Doctor Who: The Chase (Target Doctor Who Library)

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This is the novelisation of the third Dalek story, and the fourth script written by Terry Nation for Doctor Who. Sadly, it more closely resembles 'The Keys of Marinus' than 'The Daleks' or 'The Dalek Invasion of Earth'.

Getting John Peel to adapt this novel was a good idea. Mr Peel is a great fan of the work of Mr Nation, and hence more likely to give it the best interpretation. He also adds some continuity references to other stories. Unfortunately, despite Mr Peel's efforts, it is let down by one thing - the original story.

In this story, the Daleks have invented a time travel ship not too dissimilar to the TARDIS (it looks quite different, though) and set off in pursuit of their enemies in the TARDIS. It is a chase, going from one location to another. Most of these are extremely bland, and an almost pointless exercise in building tension.

As well as their version of a TARDIS, the Daleks also have another new piece of technology: they create a robotic duplicate of the Doctor, who has the task of infiltrating the group of travellers and destroying them. In the case of the book, we are spared the presence of an actor who doesn't look like Bill Hartnell playing the duplicate in many scenes.

The story actually doesn't take off until the end, where the TARDIS crew and the Daleks are on the planet Mechanus, where the threat of the Daleks and their duplicate are added to by the Mechonoids, a race of robots.

This story is also notable, as it sees the departure of companions Ian and Barbara and arrival of Steven. Other than the Doctor himself, the TARDIS crew has changed entirely. After this, the Doctor is almost always the focus of the stories.