A new novel from Terrance Dicks. Will it live up to the standards of Players and Endgame?
There are two sides to me. One side loves spotting continuity references in novels; the other loathes continuity references unless they are used to further to story, not just thrown in by the author to make them look like they know their Doctor Who, or to see how obscure they can be. The last time these sides really came to the fore, with Divided Loyalties, saw my continuity side sobbing in a corner, with my continuity loathing side laughing maniacally. Unfortunately, Warmonger is another one of those novels which will leave one part of me sobbing, the other part a cackling monstrosity
My initial impression of Warmonger was that Terrance was pulling a fast one on readers. The whole story is a 'fake' war, designed to flush out Morbius as a power hungry maniac. The cover, blurb and sample chapter on the BBC website led me to these conclusions. Upon reading the full novel, my initial 'take' on the story proved to be extremely off track.
The actual story sees Peri seriously injured, with the Doctor taking her to the only man that can save her: Mehendri Solon. Once on Karn, the Doctor gets caught up in Morbius' plans for conquest, and contacts Gallifrey (in a time before he's entered the academy) to warn them about the threat Morbius poses and he ends up leading the army against Morbius' forces.
I suppose we can be grateful for the fact that Dicks has chosen to write a sequel to his own story, The Brain of Morbius, so therefore the sections of the novel that are directly related to this story tie in with it. It is the sections on Gallifrey where the continuity errors of Warmonger are exposed, the biggest of these being that the Doctor meets Borusa, before Borusa first encounters the Doctor at the Academy.
The aliens which make up the Doctor's army are the usual aliens that show up in Dicks' previous novels, such as Draconians, Sontarans and Cybermen(!). Dicks continues the tradition started in the New Adventures of successfully giving the Ogrons more of a personality, making them more than the dumb mercenaries they appeared to be onscreen. Morbius' army, in contrast are shown to be a horrible lot, with there being a discussion among his men of raping Peri. Nasty stuff, with Peri's way out of her situation being that she is 'diseased', and could pass it on to the men. Dicks tries to throw some humour into Warmonger, but 'appropriating' the climax of Carry On Up the Kybher is not the way to go about it.
By the conclusion of Warmonger my continuity loving was rocking back and forth in the corner sobbing, while my continuity loathing half was laughing its head off while putting together a book submission featuring the Doctor teaming up with the Drahvins, Bandrils, Chameleons and Axons against the Master and his army of Quarks in order to make sure that the planet Tara is decimated by a plague.
Finally, the story of Morbius' demise did have to be told, and I could see within Warmonger the ideas that would form a good story. Unfortunately, Warmonger as it is, is a failure.
4.8/10
Next time: The First Doctor, Ben and Polly arrive on an asteroid where things aren't as they appear...