BBC Books The Only Good Dalek

Published	2010
Script	Justin Richards
Art	Mike Collins

• A Review by Finn Clark

A Review by Finn Clark 18/5/11

I like Justin Richards. I've enjoyed his books and their plot twists right from the beginning with Theatre of War. He's my favourite of the Safe Hands Brigade, although obviously I've long since given up on the New Series Adventures and even before that I'll admit that Richards is capable of being a bit dry and mechanical (e.g. The Sands of Time).

The Only Good Dalek is bloody horrible.

It doesn't work. As a short story, it would be fine. Hell, that's practically what it is already. It doesn't read like a comic, with very little of the storytelling being communicated visually and instead all being done through the dialogue. Personally, I found it almost frustrating to read. I ended up skimming through, forcing myself not to pay detailed attention to anything because to do so would be to get annoyed. The story beats don't flow from panel to panel, with poor Mike Collins being used more like an illustrator than a comic book artist. I finished this book with a sense of irritation and a desire to see Justin Richards never allowed near the medium of comics again.

This is a shame, because the story's not worthless. There's some good stuff in there. The title's more subtle than it looks, while there are a few good bits in the second half. The plot twists of "who can you trust" are occasionally rather satisfying. Theoretically, we've seen stories a bit like this before, but this adds an extra dimension and ends up being a story that becomes more interesting the more you think about it afterwards. There's also a nice moment at the end where the Doctor's wrong.

It's got a raging Terry Nation hard-on, mind you. This is not a good thing. It makes it awfully macho and emotionally one-note, taking after Nation's work in its survivalist mentality and one-dimensional inner life in which no one's got time for anything except death. No one has a hobby, a girlfriend or a sense of humour. There's no wit, even from the Doctor. Everyone just fights and dies. There's even a character called Commander Tranter. However, the other side of Richards putting on his Terry Nation head is a roll-call of Hartnell Dalek lore (plus Ogrons) on Station 7 that's sometimes cool (Varga plants, Slythers) and sometimes just implausible. Were the Daleks really still using Robomen circa 4010? Nevertheless, I must admit that my inner fanboy appreciated seeing a Varga plant. Do we even know what they looked like? Well, we do now.

Some of this Dalek lore is seriously obscure, by the way. Magnetons? Zeg radiation? (I think the latter is a TV Comic reference, although I don't have my comics with me to double-check that.)

It's a Matt Smith story that was released in September 2010, of course, which means we've got a generic Doctor being drawn with Matt Smith's face and a generic companion with Karen Gillan's. Amy in particular is almost risibly anonymous. That you can't blame Richards for, though. Given how long it takes to draw a 128-page comic strip, the real surprise is that it stars Matt Smith's Doctor in the first place. More startling was the fact that these are the Crap Daleks. I know, I know. Victory of the Daleks has happened. It's where they've taken the franchise. What can you do? Nevertheless, to my surprise, Mike Collins manages to make the Crap Daleks look okay, partly because comic strips thrive on ridiculousness and partly because he's drawing them in a scratchy, beaten-up style that means they don't look fake and plastic any more. The stone Crap Dalek in The Big Bang looked quite good for a similar reason. That impressed me.

Mike Collins's work is good, by the way, although you'll be in for a shock if you only know him from his DWM strips. DWM gave him an inker. Here, it's all the man himself and it looks rough, not glossy. I'm not sure he's really found his Matt Smith, just as it took him quite a while to find his Eccleston for DWM, by which I'm not suggesting there's a problem with likenesses or anything like that. If Collins returned to this in a couple of years time, I'm sure his Doctor would live and breathe in a way this one doesn't quite. However I like what he's doing with the important guest stars (Weston, Tranter) and he creates some atmospheric settings. I like his snowbound wilderness, for instance.

The cover design's dog-ugly, too. I like the back cover, but Mike Collins's artwork on the front is being bludgeoned to death by logos, titles and text. Apparently this is "a thrilling, all-new adventure" and "an epic, full-colour graphic novel".

In a sense, this is quite a good story. In a different medium, I think I'd have quite liked it. However a 128-page comic strip is the equivalent of 16 months of the old "eight pages a month" DWM strip, which by my calculation makes it 75% wasted trees. It's a four-parter, tops, and that's generous. One of those old-school comic strip professionals could have done it in two. Alan Barnes or Scott Gray in the McGann era would have probably done it as a five-parter, but that doesn't disprove my point. The wastage isn't even subtle. You'd just cut out 75% of the dialogue, give what remained to Mike Collins and tell him to tell the story as a comic strip instead. As published, it's slow, clumsy and frustrating.

Did the BBC really take away Panini's licence to reprint DWM graphic collections for this?