Written by Terrance Dicks, based on Terry Nation’s scripts for the 1974 TV serial.

In some respects this is the quintessential Target novel. Wrapped in Roy Knipe’s irresistibly iconic dust jacket, it practically leaps off the shelf into the hands of a child. The prose is classic Dicks – pithy, with wry authorial asides that might entertain an adult reading it to a kid (or to themselves). Faced with becoming embroiled in the Exxilon civil war, Sarah Jane wearily laments, “it was bad enough being on this planet, without having to listen to a lecture on its politics.” Later, when the Daleks penetrate the Tomb of the Cybermen style puzzle interior of the Exxilon City, they fail to notice one of the traps because “Since Daleks take no interest in the finer points of interior decoration, they failed to see anything unusual in the red and white chequered pattern on the floor.”

There are some effective moments of creepy horror, particularly Sarah’s desperate race through the darkness back to the dubious sanctuary of a powerless TARDIS. She sees shapes moving through the shadows, and too late realises the TARDIS itself has been breached. Dicks includes a similar moment at the climax, as the City generates “zombie” antibodies that attack the Doctor. And the dour Galloway gets some more character development than onscreen, with a tragic backstory and a more compelling explanation for his callousness.

Any downsides are inherent in the source material. It’s hard to work out whether The Web Planet was riffing on The Daleks, or whether any similarities are coincidental, but this opens in a very similar way with the TARDIS drained of power, dragged down to a bleak planet holding the remains of a lost civilisation where a war is in progress between those that worship a cancerous power centre and those that want to overthrow it. The Carsenome and the City are both described as living and parasitic, with roots embedded in the planet. In the end, what Death to the Daleks gains in Nation’s regular obsessions on plagues and space security agents versus Daleks, it loses in the increasingly tired way the story plays out. Dicks keeps it brisk, and the book is never dull, but it’s ultimately fairly thin stuff. Grade 4.

Next Time: Doctor Who And… The Android Invasion.