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Why has Zoe Heriot been having nightmares about the Daleks?
Who is the Doctor, a mysterious man from her past? Surely
he left her behind when he and Jamie departed the Wheel space
station - didn't he? The story Zoe tells to her counsellor
would seem to suggest otherwise... When an evil scientist
hijacks her mind to control a galaxy-conquering weapon, Zoe
knows that she must stop him. But first, she, the Doctor and
Jamie will face an enemy they had thought destroyed forever:
the dreaded Daleks...
In common with Frostfire,
this talking book involves a narrative framing device. Zoe's
(Wendy Padbury) recollections of an adventure set shortly
after The
Wheel in Space
are conveyed as though to a psychiatrist, whom she is visiting
with a view to ridding herself of the mysterious and disturbing
dreams she has been experiencing. This sort of device could
become tedious if overused, but fortunately the other two
CDs in this batch, The
Blue Tooth
and The Beautiful People, just get down to the business
of telling their respective stories without such wrapping.
Also in common with Frostfire, this release ties in
rather well with Big Finish's second Short Trips anthology,
Companions. Both Frostfire and the short story
"Apocrypha Bipedium" involve a post-Myth
Makers Vicki. Similarly, both Fear of the
Daleks and the short story "The Tip of the Mind" deal
with a post-War Games Zoe Heriot (incorrectly spelt
"Herriot" on the back of the CD), whose memories of her travels
in the TARDIS are gradually resurfacing, despite the blocks
the Time Lords imposed upon her mind. Her vivid recollections
here could occur during her encounter with the Third Doctor
in "The Tip of the Mind", while her cleansed mental state
at the very end of this talking book could take place immediately
afterwards.
Zoe never faced the Daleks in a television story, though she
did observe the Doctor's memories of The
Evil of the Daleks, in which the creatures
were supposed to have met their "final end". (Hmmm... Evil
of the Daleks, Fear of the Daleks - I wonder which
other negative emotions writers could use for future Dalek
stories. Terror of the Daleks? Hatred of the Daleks?
Anger of the Daleks? Depression of the Daleks?)
By that point in the show's history, Dalek creator Terry Nation
was trying to secure a deal for the creatures to get their
own series, so Doctor Who promoted the Cybermen to
the post of primary recurring monster. Thus Fear of the
Daleks fills an important gap in the tapestry of Who
mythology.
Unfortunately, the creatures (guest voiced by Nicholas Briggs)
otherwise seem like an unnecessary addition to Patrick Chapman's
story. Like Day of the Daleks, Chapman's narrative
is already a complex affair (involving Zoe remembering being
an out-of-body avatar for the purposes of a villain's evil
scheme) so the Daleks come across as slightly out of place
and over-egg the pudding somewhat. I wonder if, as with Day
of the Daleks, the creatures weren't even in the writer's
original storyline.
I fear that Fear is the weakest of the four Companion
Chronicles in this batch of releases - but it's still
worth a spin.
Richard
McGinlay
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