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SEPTEMBER 2010

The Only Good Dalek is the first original graphic novel, as opposed to a trade collected edition, to be published bearing the Doctor Who logo since Colin Baker’s The Age of Chaos back in 1994. As such, it marks a new step for BBC Books; a chance to begin a whole new range of graphic novels that could run alongside the current run of prose novels. However, even given the slightly different format, The Only Good Dalek is still a comic strip, and there are an awful lot of other comics in the market these days, both Doctor Who-related and otherwise.  In such an environment, this really needs something new about it in order to stand out.

So it’s a very peculiar choice of story - an enjoyable, yet highly derivative work that has ‘standard Doctor Who fare’ written all over it. It doesn’t even look any different to the strips already out there. Mike Collins is one of the current regular contributing artists to Doctor Who Magazine, and as such this volume doesn’t stand out against that publication in the slightest. I doubt many people picking it up realise that it’s being produced by different publishers. On the one hand, I can see the wisdom of sticking with tried-and-trusted writers and artists. Justin Richards and Mike Collins are old hands, and you know exactly what you’re going to get from them. They’re a safe bet, unlikely to alienate any potential new readers with weird visuals or esoteric storylines. Yet this is also the strip book’s greatest weakness, and there is nothing remotely surprising or new about this story.

It kicks off with the Doctor and Amy apparently arriving in the petrified forest of Skaro, an unashamed slice of the Hartnell-era grafted into the Matt Smith series. It’s even presented in  virtual monochrome. Charming though this is, in a fan-pleasing way, with its magnatons, Varga plants and Slyther, it immediately sets out the tone for this story - cribbing from earlier stories for an attempted Daleks’ greatest hits approach. And, the faux-Skaroene landscape - lifted from the ruins of the planet and embedded in the secret Space Station 7 - is distinctly unimpressive when compared to the majestic Skaro that we only recently saw in the opening instalment of the Doctor Who Adventure Games, City of the Daleks, and that time we didn’t even get to go outdoors.

Before long, there are Ogrons, Robomen and sundry other nods and winks to classic-era Dalek serials. Richards channels the ghost of Terry Nation and the spirit of Eric Saward, presenting us with grizzled space veterans and Dalek agents, gun battles, explosions and exterminations, and someone called Tarrant. It’s a shame, really, that the storyline is so standard in its telling. There’s nothing wrong with the odd bit of macho space-battling, and this is all perfectly enjoyable in an undemanding way, but there are some interesting ideas here that could have been developed further. The central crux of the story, a genetically-modified Dalek mutant that has had all its aggressive impulses removed, could have been exploited to provide some genuinely interesting scenarios. Frustratingly, the Doctor, who sticks to his guns by insisting that there’s “no such thing as a good Dalek,” never has to face the prospect of a genuinely harmless Dalek creature. There’s a great moral dilemma here that’s completely skirted over.

There’s an entire plot thread regarding attempts to mechanically neuter Dalek drones and turn them into weapons for fighting their brethren, but immediately we can tell they’re faking it, because we’ve seen it all before. Readers unfamiliar with The Power of the Daleks will nonetheless remember this year’s episode Victory of the Daleks, and will be expecting them to switch sides at the opportune moment. Amy even references that episode herself! Things improve around the half-way point, when our heroes are stranded on a planet of ice and magma, and a steam-powered cyborg scientist and his army of hairy henchmen are introduced. This is at least something a little more original, at least for a Dalek story, and leads to an enjoyable Daleks versus snowbeasts battle. There are a couple of character twists in the later stages that amp up the jeopardy for the regulars, and events lead to a pretty satisfying conclusion.

However, though the storyline is functional and derivative, it is unarguably good fun. What really lets this volume down is the artwork. Collins’ work is bog-standard in some cases, astonishingly scrappy in others. The impact of many of the battle scenes is lost amidst the scribbling, and certain panels are so small and cramped that it becomes virtually impossible to tell what’s happening. The colour work doesn’t help, being quite unsympathetic to the line work, even though it apparently took five people to do. A real problem point is the depiction of the regulars, who rarely look anything like either Matt Smith or Karen Gillan. Occasional close-up shots manage to do them justice - would it be terribly cynical to suggest that these have the essence of a reference photo to them? And, although there’s probably no way around this, it is strangely anachronistic seeing the primary-coloured new Daleks inhabiting the 1960s and 1970s Who backdrops. I can’t help but feeling that having Daleks more closely based on the originals would work much better, but then, that probably wouldn’t sell as many toys.

What a release like this needed was someone willing to take a chance, to hire an author and artist who could bring something new and challenging to an already flooded market. IDW have experimented with artists new to Who; true, it has been to mixed success, but at least their comics stand out and demand a browser’s attention. The overwhelming sense with this volume is that of a missed opportunity.