Doctor Who: Warmonger

Past Doctor Adventures #53

by Terrance Dicks

A chain of events has been set in motion that will change the Doctor and Peri forever. A chain that involves old enemies as well as old friends. How does Peri come to be the leader of a gang of rebel fighters on an outlying planet? Who is the mysterious 'General' against whom they are rebelling so violently? Where does the so-called 'Supremo', leader of the Alliance forces ranged against the General, come from, and why is he so interested in Peri? The answers lie in the origins of a conflict that will affect the whole cosmos - a conflict that will find humans, Sontarans, Draconians and even Cybermen fighting together for the greater good and glory. For the Supremo. It is a conflict that will test both the Doctor and Peri to the limit, and bring them face to face with the dark sides of their own personalities.

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Fiction

286 pages, Paperback

First published May 6, 2002

About the author

Terrance Dicks was an English author, screenwriter, script editor, and producer best known for his extensive contributions to Doctor Who. Serving as the show's script editor from 1968 to 1974, he helped shape many core elements of the series, including the concept of regeneration, the development of the Time Lords, and the naming of the Doctor’s home planet, Gallifrey. His tenure coincided with major thematic expansions, and he worked closely with producer Barry Letts to bring a socially aware tone to the show. Dicks later wrote several Doctor Who serials, including Robot, Horror of Fang Rock, and The Five Doctors, the 20th-anniversary special.
In parallel with his television work, Dicks became one of the most prolific writers of Doctor Who novelisations for Target Books, authoring over 60 titles and serving as the de facto editor of the range. These adaptations introduced a generation of young readers to the franchise. Beyond Doctor Who, he also wrote original novels, including children’s horror and adventure series such as The Baker Street Irregulars, Star Quest, and The Adventures of Goliath.
Dicks also worked on other television programmes including The Avengers, Moonbase 3, and various BBC literary adaptations. His later work included audio dramas and novels tied to Doctor Who. Widely respected for his clarity, imagination, and dedication to storytelling, he remained a central figure in Doctor Who fandom until his death in 2019, leaving behind a vast legacy in television and children's literature.

Reviews

[Jacob Licklider · Rating 1 out of 5]

If there’s one thing I can say in terms of positivity about Warmonger is that Terrance Dicks is an author who is always easy to read. No matter what he is writing, his prose just has this rhythm and flow that makes it easy to get through what’s a truly bad reading experience. There is this weird conception in the larger Doctor Who fandom that it was the Virgin line of books that were harsher and edgier, though the in house line of BBC Books always seem to go down the darker and more importantly less tasteful route. Warmonger is no exception, once again we have another book where Peri is both reduced to a sexual object and her plot is being the hard, sexy leader of a group of guerrilla rebels made up of Sontarans, Draconians, Ice Warriors, Ogrons, and Cybermen because we need to have as many references as we can, and particularly violent aliens too because this is a book about war and the military. It’s genuinely surprising the Daleks don’t get even a cameo, but that could very easily be the Terry Nation estate stopping them. The reduction of Peri’s character oscillates from snarking tough guy style one liners and having to fend off potential predators, something that the Past Doctor Adventures novels just have the tendency to do with female companions. It also feels especially weird coming from Terrance Dicks, considering how many novelizations he had previously written. Dicks also has characterized Peri before in Players, a novel where she was a proactive character, while here she is just catapulted from situation to situation without really caring about what is happening to her.



Warmonger is Terrance Dicks’ attempt at doing a military space opera that is also simultaneously a prequel and a sequel to The Brain of Morbius and incredibly interested in Gallifreyean politics because why would Dicks try to just do one thing? Military space opera as a genre is already one I am not particularly partial to, but as with going into any book there’s always the chance I will enjoy something that isn’t meant for me. Warmonger just doesn’t really care about appealing to really anyone, the worldbuilding is technically there. Much of the novel is set on Karn, though the Karn isn’t presented as the gothic horror of The Brain of Morbius, again Dicks is attempting military science fiction which does not really mesh with the Sisterhood of Karn in terms of aesthetic or their role in the plot. There is an extended sequence that is just taking plot points of The Brain of Morbius and doing them again but with the Fifth Doctor and Peri. Losing the performances of Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen particularly makes you realize both where Dicks is lacking as a writer and just the punch up to the script of Robert Holmes. There are some that say that what would make Warmonger better is if instead of the Fifth Doctor, the incarnation of the Doctor used was the Sixth Doctor. Dicks originally intended it to be the Sixth Doctor and Peri. It’s certainly an easier novel to digest if the Doctor is the Sixth Doctor, the character is brash and loud and clearly meant to be. The disagreement comes with the idea that Warmonger isn’t actually better if it’s the Sixth Doctor, because Warmonger is still a novel that posits the Doctor actually loves being a genocidal military leader. There is an entire diatribe on how the Doctor loves power and is enjoying being the Supremo, there is a moment where characters refuse to kill Morbius so they can physically execute him and make an example of him to the rest of the universe. This is somehow worse than the Doctor in The Twin Dilemma, were this Doctor to strangle his companion it would seem like a mercy.



Overall, Warmonger is essentially everything bad Terrance Dicks has ever done as a writer wrapped into a single book, with a clear lack of editorial not editing the shift in Doctor from the Sixth to the Fifth at all, maybe because Dicks is Doctor Who royalty. It doesn’t fit in the genre it’s trying to be a tribute to and somehow is darker and succeeds less than Rags. 1/10.

[David Layton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Terrance Dicks has long been a Doctor Who traditionalist, a writer with very clear ideas about both what The Doctor should be like and "Doctor Who" should be like. This novel is, then, an utter surprise as he abandons both of those lines. This Doctor 5 is very little like the Doctor 5 we saw on TV, and very little like any other Doctor. And this story is very little like traditional Doctor Who stories. Ostensibly, the novel takes the reader to the backstory of "Brain of Morbius." The reader gets to see Karn prior to its war-torn ruins on TV, the Sisterhood as a powerful and influential organization, Solon as the self-absorbed chief surgeon, and Morbius on his rise to power. Of course, getting a later Doctor to an earlier period on Karn where he knows all these characters, but they don't know him, is a tricky matter. So, the Doctor spends much time and effort preserving an incognito. That is all fine, as it is. The difficult part for this reader is the elaborate plot Dicks has built around that central idea. To get The Doctor to Karn at the right time, the plot (but not the story) begins when The Doctor takes Peri to a planet unencumbered by civilizations and their various problems, so she can get some R&R. In less than half an hour, Peri is almost fatally wounded by a prehistoric creature, and the Doctor takes her to the best surgeon he can think of - Mehendri Solon, chief surgeon at the Hospice of Karn, a hospital renowned in the galaxy. There is some business with Peri's stumbling upon Solon's secret experiments and The Doctor's surprising uninterest in that, at least surprising to her. There is quite a bit of this before Morbius arrives, nearly midway through the novel. At that point, the novel takes a sudden turn to full not-Doctor-Who territory while using all the trappings of Doctor Who. The Doctor ends up going back to Gallifrey to convince the Time Lords to do something about Morbius. They do, mainly by setting up The Doctor as military leader who gathers forces from various, and given Doctor Who history highly unlikely to join such an endeavor, races. The Doctor becomes supreme military commander, must become everything he hates, but somehow finds that he actually kind of likes it. Meanwhile Peri, of all people, becomes a guerilla leader by accident.

Dicks with his later Doctor Who novels seems to be very interested in war, the phenomenon of war, the political necessity of it, and the tactics of it. With this novel, Dicks has forced the Doctor, who is otherwise both uninterested and opposed to all those things, to share these interests out of necessity.

As I read the book, I kept thinking of it as being much like Lance Parkin's "The Infinity Doctors." Like that novel, "Warmonger" has the recognizable characters, the references to various episodes and periods of the show, the trappings of "Doctor Who." And yet, like "The Infinity Doctors," "Warmonger" reads as if it occupies a parallel universe to Doctor Who's. It reads as a kind of "what if" exercise.

It might have worked in some way. However, Dicks, who is usually pretty careful about keeping his plots tidy, has left many loose ends; plus, he has created an unresolved paradox in which Borusa meets The Doctor and knows who The Doctor is before The Doctor is even born, if I get my time lines right. Certainly, it is before Borusa is a teacher at the academy and the young Doctor his pupil. How is it that the CIA know who The Doctor is before he becomes The Doctor? Why aren't the Time Lords panicking about time paradoxes and crossing one's own timeline? Plus, the whole beginning of the story (though not of the novel, which uses flashback storytelling) when Peri gets injured seems a mere contrivance to get The Doctor to Karn.

Audacious in some ways, "Warmonger" just does not quite hold together well enough to make the ambition pay off.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/warmonger-by-terrance-dicks/

This is a really surprising Doctor Who novel from Terrance Dicks, a writer who one doesn’t normally associate with the word “surprising”. It’s a prequel to The Brain of Morbius, but set later in the Doctor’s timeline – Peri is injured one a random planet that they happen to be visiting, so the Fifth Doctor takes her to Mehendri Solon earlier in his career to get fixed up. The two get separated, of course, and the Doctor finds himself the military commander of a grand alliance of improbable partners against Morbius, while Peri leads guerilla resistance planetside. There is a lot about war and military strategy and tactics, and one feels Dicks perhaps working through themes that he was never quite able to explore in his other work – though of course he was the co-author of The War Games. This is a very different Fifth Doctor and Peri to those we are used to, and diehard fans may want to read it as an alternate timeline. But I must say I enjoyed it.

I was sufficiently intrigued by all of this to check out Dicks’ own military career. According to his obituaries, he studied English at Downing College, Cambridge and then did two years of National Service with the Royal Fusiliers. He was born in 1935, and National Service was abolished from 1957 to 1960, so he must have been in one of the last cohorts to do it, probably in 1956-58.

Two years in the forces don’t make you an expert on military history, but 1956-58 saw the Suez crisis, the intensification of the EOKA campaign in Cyprus, the climax of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, the IRA’s underwhelming border campaign, and the independence of Ghana and Malaysia. From the law of averages, Dicks must have been involved with at least one of these, even if only peripherally, and I guess it gave him some thoughts that he worked out 45 year later in this book.

[Christian Petrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading Superior Beings, this is a bit of a lighter read. Though it does start off with more possible PTSD for Peri. Even though it is always nice to see how Terrance Dicks can expand his writing after the Target books, this book is just average. Nothing too wrong with the book, it is a light read, the downside overall to it is that it feels to be more fan service than anything else.

The plot covers more on Morbius and the events leading towards setting the stage for the TV story The Brain of Mobius. Of course the Doctor and Peri get caught up in the events. However, due to how they are written, the characterization of Doctor and Peri just don't feel right. Even though there are moments that show the formation of their relations, it just feels off. Of course this could be due how Big Finish has handled them during this time period.

Overall, this is not a bad story, it falls under one of the average Past Doctor Adventures Books. Though, you might get more enjoyment out of the references if you are more familiar with Classic Doctor Who.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn't sure about it at first, but it grew on me. A sequel and a prequel to The Brain of Morbius

[Abs007 · Rating 2 out of 5]

And a half

[Dan Hodges · Rating 2 out of 5]

Intriguing as a sequel/prequel to 'The Brain of Morbius', though ultimately messy, confused, and underwhelming. It starts out okay, with the Doctor desperately journeying to Karn to seek help from a younger Solon after Peri is gravely (sadistically?) injured, though right from the start the writing seems at odds with the Fifth Doctor, as he kills a flying creature with his bare hands. Things grow increasingly baffling as he becomes embroiled in a convoluted and protracted quest to become a planet-conquering warlord in order to face the titular menace, even going so far as to seek the Time Lords help in disguise (as though they wouldn't obviously know it was him!). I appreciate the book is trying something different and ambitious, but it feels woefully out of character for the Doctor - and Doctor Who, in general. The idea that he would deal with a tyrannical warlord by becoming one himself (and teaming up with the Sontarans and Cybermen, no less!) feels like something from a very different sci-fi franchise. This is more Star Trek than Doctor Who, and while it's not a terrible book - Terrance Dicks writes in his typically workmanlike fashion - it's a real head-scratcher. Also, Peri is once again written through an uncomfortably misogynist and objectifying lens, quickly becoming tedious.

[John Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here it is, cats and kittens - the most crack-tastic Doctor Who novel ever written. It has no reason to exist. Indeed, had anyone other than Terrance Dicks submitted this to a publisher, the editor would have burnt it at his desk. Enjoy it for what it is. Cringe at the cringey bits. Admire the fact that a man who was so integral to the lore of the series during the 60s and 70s would - thirty years later - write a 288 page length fan fiction that would leave diehards aploplectic. RIP, Uncle Terry.

[Brad Kuhn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yes, there is a character named the Doctor in this book. He has a companion named Peri. But they are nothing at all like the characters you know from the show. I have no idea what Terrance Dicks was trying to do with this book - he has written a ton of stories for the series and I've enjoyed them all. But not this one.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 1 out of 5]

The only unmitigated disaster (what WAS Mr. Dicks thinking???) in "Doctor Who" fiction...and this is the opinion of a man who has suffered through the writing of Peter Darvill-Evans! Avoid this at all costs!

[Eric · Rating 1 out of 5]

that was bad. bad characterizations for all, especially the Doctor and Peri, with ridiculous forcing of references to old stories and characters. just...disappointing from an author like Terrance Dicks.

[Michael Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

An OK book, but I believe that the book was a better fit for the 6th, not the 5th Doctor.

[Tim Pollock · Rating 1 out of 5]

What the hell did I just read?!