As I return to my life's work of re-reading every single Doctor Who book/comic/short story on my shelves, we now come to the second book in Virgin's New Adventures line: Timewyrm: Exodus.
Yeah, this is the one with Hitler in it. The Doctor has messed with Nazis before (in 1989's The Curse of Fenric, but this was the first time the Doctor came face to face with you-know-who.) But that isn't the most interesting thing here. That distinction belongs to this being written by a totally unleashed Terrance Dicks, who seems to relish not being trapped by the confines of the countless Target novelizations he's written before. There is some interesting alt-history going on here, some undeniable nastiness, and some good old British anger at how easily people would turn to lick the boots of their new masters.
The story has the Seventh Doctor and Ace tracking the Timewyrm to 1950's England, but this isn't the England that they know. Here, Germany won the Second World War, and now England is under Nazi rule. Hitler didn't delay at Dunkirk, for one thing, and that seems to have made all the difference. That, and something else.
In short order, the Doctor and Ace are captured by the British Frei Korps. They meet Lt. Hemmings, a real bastard among bastards. Determined to find out where things went wrong, the Doctor manages to get to his TARDIS and returns to 1923 Berlin, where he meets a younger Hitler as he leads a doomed demonstration at the War Office. Becoming Hitler's friend, the Doctor then travels ahead to 1939, during the Nuremberg Rallies. Here, Hitler greets the Doctor as an old friend, and there are some disturbing scenes with the Doctor and Der Fuhrer getting along like old chums. But the Doctor realizes that this is where things are going wrong...
We learn that the Timewyrm moved into Hitler's brain, giving him more power than he had in the previous reality. But he's still powerful enough to trap the Timewyrm in his head, so that really pisses her off as well. Still, it's her influence that allows the Nazis to win, and it's up to the Doctor to set things right.
Exodus is a joy, a true, pulpy joy. While I thought I knew a fair amount about World War II, Dicks shows me how little I truly do know as he moves the Doctor and Ace past all the vile celebrities of the time (Goering, Himmler). The only thing that I felt was out of place was Dicks' need to tie this story into 1969's The War Games. I thought the story was fine without additional Who continuity, but I'm alone in that, it seems.
So what else do we have? Again, the Virgin books dabble in more sexuality than we'd seen in the series, with the Nazis assuming that Ace is the Doctor's little piece on the side. (The Doctor quickly says that he prefers his women bigger.) Ace now has a new explosive--Nitro Nine A--which I include because I still think the idea of a companion who enjoys making explosives is something that would not fly at all today. And we have a story that manages to make the rather idiotic concept of the Timewyrm actually work. Unlike, sadly, the next book in the line.
Exodus is Terrance Dicks at his best, and is easily one of the great classic stories of the genre. I'm surprised RTD hasn't turned this into an episode yet, to be honest.
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