An odd one this. It feels very faithful and yet the novelisation changes the dialogue far more than usual. One of the instances that really sticks out is the Doctor’s final farewell to Susan, well-loved by fans (though that’s probably got a lot to do with ‘The Five Doctors’), Dicks doesn’t seem so keen. In fact, he thoroughly fillets it, preferring new sentiments such as ‘Be kind. Work hard both of you. You’ll find that life on Earth can be an adventure too’ and ‘love’s the thing. That’s what really counts’.

It’s all a bit twee, but it manages to be interesting at the same time. That celebration of love aligns the Doctor more strongly with late-60s youth culture than the TV episodes had (I know it sounds odd to suggest it’s a flaw not to embrace late-60s concerns in mid-60s episodes or that it should be interesting to insert them in the late-70s but bear with me) and it forms a bit of a bridge to the future of the show. ‘The Dalek Invasion of Earth’ was the last story made as part of the first recording season, held back along with ‘Planet of Giants’, for broadcast in Season Two, and the very next story, and so the first one made after they’d taken a bit of a break, introduces Vicki, a character more closely aligned with youth culture than Susan had been and with whom the Doctor has a much more conspiratorial relationship. Discussing that next story Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles, suggest Hartnell suddenly becomes ‘exactly the kind of Doctor we all sort-of-remember him being’ – Dicks is letting that transformation bleed backwards a bit.

And, Dicks being Dicks, he manages to cast far further forward than just ‘The Rescue’ or 1977. The Doctor’s instruction to ‘Be kind’ is reminiscent of Capaldi’s big speech to the two Masters in ‘The Doctor Falls’ when he insists ‘I do what I do, because […] it’s kind’, while his belief that ‘life on Earth can be an adventure too’ comes straight out of the Eccleston hymnbook, most explicit in ‘Father’s Day’: ‘Who said you’re not important? […] Street corner, two in the morning, getting a taxi home. I’ve never had a life like that’.

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Not that Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth presents a thoroughly modern Doctor. There’s a strange obsession with the Doctor’s authority that runs through the whole book, from the point when ‘Craddock found himself obeying [the Doctor] without question’, through Tyler’s reflection that ‘if we stick together long enough I’ll learn to do what you say the first time’, to the way the Doctor is ‘Very much in command’ by the end. None of this is especially odd for the Pertwee/Baker years (when the Doctor regularly assumes command through force of personality – the period probably responsible for the fans’ strange relationship with the word gravitas), but the Doctor’s authority comes a bit less naturally here.

On TV, the Doctor gets quite upset when Susan questions the Doctor’s plan of action in deference to David, but his behaviour is even worse in the novelisation, parroting Susan’s interrupted line ‘David says’ back at her ‘savagely’. The book also shows David much more knowingly salving the Doctor’s ego, not just asking for the Doctor’s advice as the ‘senior member of the party’, but grinning at Susan as he does it and replacing the simple recognition of age with a call on the Doctor’s ‘superior experience’, the very thing Susan identifies David as having in the TV script. Placated by the younger man’s flattery, the Doctor decides David must be ‘a sensible chap’ and agrees to his plan, suggesting the one about returning to the Tardis was never especially better in the first place –  this isn’t authority based on knowledge and experience but on social hierarchy.

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This isn’t the only time Dicks suggests the first Doctor’s arrogance is actually petulant and problematic. When he delivers his speech to the Dalek that comes out of the river, taunting it that it will have to ‘destroy every living being’ before it can have conquered Earth, the novelisation reveals how Ian has ‘closed his eyes and held his breath, mentally willing the Doctor to shut up’. This is a moment often presented as when the Doctor’s crusading nature, his willingness to take a stand against the oppressor and his ability to turn words to weapons crystallises, a moment to celebrate, but Dicks recasts it as a moment of arrogant stupidity that endangers the life of his companion.

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What’s more, Ian’s definitely right and the Doctor’s definitely wrong because it later transpires the Doctor’s little speech was what prompted the Daleks to take a particular interest in him and test him for robotisation. And just to make sure the reader doesn’t read this as an example of how the Doctor throws himself into situations in a way that gives him a better chance of victory, we get an insight into the Doctor’s ‘fully alert’ mind at the culmination of all he’s wrought. His grand plan as he lies paralysed on the conversion table? – ‘Surely something would turn up to save him’.

Mind you, if Dicks puts a downer on drawing too much attention to yourself, that’s nothing to his attitude to those who seeks to avoid confronting the Daleks altogether. Mick Thomson, who tries to leg it the moment he appears, dies immediately. His mate Craddock, who sits ‘moping’ rather than trying to escape and generally seems a bit hopeless, gets quickly recaptured, robotised then killed. Baker, who’s doing quite well, dies the moment he decides make off on his own for the Cornish coast, and he doesn’t even get the tacit approval of David for his plan as he does on TV. It feels like Dicks is having a go at the idea of desertion, removing David’s suggestion that he won’t run away because ‘things aren’t made better by running away’ and instead emphasising his loyalty to ‘my world. My Earth’.

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There are, however, exceptions to all this. Larry might fit the pattern, interested only in finding his brother and dying as soon as he does, but Phil was on an active mission to find out what the Daleks were up to and, presumably, fight them, and he still gets robotised and dies. The clue might lie in the other exception – Dortmun. He’s also dedicated to the fight and ends up dead, but he’s actually quite easy to explain because he seems largely motivated by a desire to prove his bombs above all else. It looks too much like a personal crusade.

With this in mind, Phil’s sin might be a similar hubris. Dicks changes one small detail about Phil’s operation – rather than simply ‘working at the mine’, he more actively ‘got himself sent to the mines on purpose’. Considering how easily we see others sneak about the mines without getting themselves captured, especially Ian and Larry, this seems like he might be being too clever by half. That would fit in with his getting robotised, as the Doctor’s example earlier in the book suggests you have to draw attention to yourself for the Daleks to run you through their tests. And, to follow the Doctor’s example, he was presumably too full of himself to see the danger coming when he passed the test, assuming his to be a level of ‘human intellect’ the Daleks couldn’t have anticipated.

Phil could have been the way the Doctor went. What saves him is that, despite his protestations that others should respect his authority, he’s far from the one-man army he’ll later become. There’s a lovely bit near the start of the book when, the Tardis trapped under a load of rubble, he and Ian seek a solution. The Doctor is shown to adopt an expectant tone as if he’s waiting for Ian to catch up with his own ideas when really he has ‘no idea what to do next’. The passage focuses on the Doctor’s exasperating trait, but it also reveals his reliance on his companions. He might not be willing to ask for help, but he knows that he needs it, much like how he regurgitated David’s plan once he’s been shown the respect he feels he’s due.

Everyone who succeeds in this story finds themselves part of a team: Jenny sticks with Barbara, David, Susan, the Doctor and Tyler eventually coalesce, even Ian has Wells’s help to thank for sneaking around the mines uncaught and finally finding himself inside the Dalek bomb. This reading has the advantage of elevating Susan and David’s relationship from a necessary bit of house-keeping crowbarred into the story to the culmination of its main lesson. The budding of their romance is written in such a way as to reinforce that resonance, with Susan realising she has ‘grown to rely on David’, and David realising he doesn’t ‘want them to be separated’.

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The message of the story, then, isn’t so much a criticism of desertion as warning to the perils of going it alone. The Daleks may see Man as nothing but ‘an insignificant specimen of life scarcely worth conquering’, and they may react to needlessly confrontational speeches by co-opting those who stick their heads above the parapet rather than getting scared and barking at the wind, but their final defeat comes when the robomen and the mine-workers rise up together. The answer to even the worse of time is to recognise your co-dependence, throw your fate in with others and take collective action. Maybe this is the point when Leftie Who’s going to start pulling ahead..?