Perhaps because it only became well-loved with ‘The Five Doctors’in 1983, Dicks fillets the Doctor’s farewell speech to Susan (3). Gone is any mention, quite sensibly by 1977, of his ever coming back, instead he advises the couple to ‘Be kind’ and that ‘life on Earth can be an adventure too’ (4).

    Extraordinarily, or maybe not considering how fundamental Dicks was to most people’s childhood experiences of Who, this echoes forwards to Peter Capaldi’s closing speech as the 12th Doctor (14th Doctor?), his final advice to his successor to ‘be kind’ (5). It’s also reminiscent of the credo of much of the Russell T Davies years, most transparently Eccleston’s insistence 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’ (6).

    This isn’t entirely accidental. The Doctor also insists ‘love’s the thing’, aligning himself far more with 1960s youth culture than you might expect of Hartnell in his first year (7). However, the very next broadcast story, at least according to Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles, sees the Hartnell suddenly becoming ‘exactly the kind of Doctor we all sort-of-remember him being’ (8) and aligning himself far more conspiratorially with his new ‘“hip” in a specifically 1960s way’ companion (9) in a way he never did with Susan. Dicks is just letting that transformation bleed back a bit.

    However, he’s still a long way off being a thoroughly modern Doctor. For a start, there’s a strange obsession with the Doctor’s authority that runs through the book, from the point when ‘Craddock found himself obeying [the Doctor] without question’ (10), through Tyler’s reflection that ‘if we stick together long enough I’ll learn to do what you say the first time’ (11), to the way the Doctor is ‘Very much in command’ by the end (12). While none of this is especially odd for the Pertwee/Baker years, when the Doctor regularly assumes command through force of personality, Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth sees him seek it as his right rather than as a necessity of perilous situations.

    On TV, the Doctor gets quite upset when Susan questions his plan of action in deference to David (13), but his behaviour is even worse in the novelisation, parroting Susan’s interrupted line ‘David says’ back at her ‘savagely’, allowing his ‘autocratic side’ to show (14). 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’ (15), but grinning at Susan as he does so and replacing the simple recognition of age with a call on the Doctor’s ‘superior experience’ (16), the very thing Susan identifies David as having in the TV script (17). 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.

    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 (18), the novelisation reveals how Ian has ‘closed his eyes and held his breath, mentally willing the Doctor to shut up’ (19). This moment is often lauded as when the Doctor’s willingness to take a stand against the oppressor crystallises (20), but Dicks recasts it as a moment of arrogant stupidity that endangers the life of his companion. What’s more, Ian’s definitely right to worry – it later transpires that the Doctor’s little speech was what prompted the Daleks to take a particular interest in him and test him for robotisation (21).

    Mind you, if Dicks is rubbishing the idea that drawing attention to yourself is heroic, that’s nothing compared with his attitude to defeatists who seek 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 (22), gets quickly recaptured, robotised then killed. Baker, who’s been doing quite well through the opening chapters, dies the moment he decides make off on his own for the Cornish coast (23), and he doesn’t even get the tacit approval of David for his plan as he does on TV (24). 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’ (25) and instead emphasising his loyalty to ‘my world. My Earth’ (26).

    There are seeming exceptions to all this. Larry might fit the pattern, interested only in finding his brother and dying as soon as his quest is over, but Phil was on an active mission to find out what the Daleks were up to (27) and, presumably, fight them, and he still gets robotised and dies. The clue might lie in the other exception – Dortmun, who’s also dedicated to the fight but ends up dead.

    Maybe, the problem with Dortmun is that he’s on a personal crusade, motivated by a desire to prove his bombs (28). 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’ (29), he more actively ‘got himself sent to the mines on purpose’ (30). Considering how easily we see others sneak about the mines without getting themselves captured, especially Ian and Larry, maybe Phil’s problem was, like the Doctor, unnecessarily drawing attention to himself. And, like the Doctor, he was presumably too full of himself to see the danger coming when he passed the Roboman test, assuming his to be a level of ‘human intellect’ (31) the Daleks couldn’t have anticipated.

    So the question isn’t why Phil dies but why didn’t the Doctor. 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’ (32). 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 theme. 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’ (33), and David realising he doesn’t ‘want them to be separated’ (34).

    The story isn’t so much an attack on desertion as a warning on the perils of going it alone. The Daleks may see Man as nothing but ‘an insignificant specimen of life scarcely worth conquering’ (35), but their final defeat comes when the robomen and the mine-workers rise up together. The answer to even the worst of times 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..?