Customer Reviews

The Dominators (Doctor Who #86)

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Outside the TARDIS crew, the characters in this story are pretty cut and dried. The warlike Dominators, completely lacking in emotions beyond hate and anger have landed on Dulkis. The Dulcians are an extremely pacifist bunch who just hope the Dominators will take what they want and go away. Of course no one really knows what the Dominators want, except that it may involve the annihilation of the planet. The Dulcians are so unable to act that they decide to do nothing and hope the hateful, deranged, kill without thought and show no remorse afterwords Dominators will suddenly decide that they should abandon their path and take after them and sit about talking about nothing for months on end and pretend the rest of the universe does not exist.

The Doctor is joined by Jamie and Zoe. They manage to get a few Dulcians to help them and together they take on the Dominators and their powerful Quark robots. Can the small group save Dulkis and possible the galaxy from the evil Dominators? A quick fun read, nothing too deep or philosophical here.

'The Dominators' is the first story of Patrick Troughton's last year playing the Doctor. It is adapted as a novel by Ian Marter. Like the TV serial upon which it is based, the book has a problem: it is not very interesting!

The TARDIS brings the Doctor, Jamie and new companion Zoe to the planet Dulkis. The Dulcians are a peaceful race, having eliminated war. They are also very slow in making decisions and find it hard to believe anything out of their normal sphere of knowledge. So the arrival of a pair of warlike Dominators and their robots, the Quarks, is generally disbelieved by the rulers of the planet. This allows the Dominators' plan to progress, with limited opposition from the TARDIS crew and some Dulcians...

Unfortunately, the Dominators, Quarks and Dulcians are all pretty one-dimensional. Mr. Marter tries his best, and inserts a number of small items into the novel to prevent it from being dry as dust. But there is only so far he can raise this story from its very pedestrian plot.