Before we're past page 30 Draconians and Ogrons and all manner of fan faves have been thrown into the melange.

One of many reasons to admire Terrance Dicks is his unadmonished shamelessness. Ever since his first original Doctor Who novel, Timewyrm: Exodus he has taken unabashed pleasure in rehashing his own twenty year old ideas for the edification of a new generation of Doctor Who fans. This self-revamping paradigm has resulted in some great Doctor Who (the aforementioned Exodus), some appalling stuff (The Eight Doctors), and a load of middling stuff which is less easy to categorise.

Warmonger fits into this last category, taking the continuity-rich approach to extremes rarely seen in professional Doctor Who, and certainly not since last year’s The Quantum Archangel. By page 8 we have met the Doctor’s old teacher Borusa, and before we’re past page 30 Draconians and Ogrons, and all manner of other fan faves have been thrown into the melange. The effect, though, is less pernicious than one might think, at least partly due to what is - certainly for Terrance Dicks - a nicely unexpected structure which throws us straight into the middle of what is clearly proving to be, for Peri and the Doctor, rather a harrowing adventure. Indeed, although there is still an element of ‘romp’ to the unfolding tale, it’s clearly been designed at least in part to test the fifth Doctor’s pleasant, easy-going nature, by pushing him to extremes of required behaviour rarely seen before (and certainly not on TV). Oh, and there are some Sontarans in it too.

Perhaps uniquely for Terrance Dicks, though, the problem is one of excessive verbiage. Not that the book isn’t, as usual, an entertaining and easy read, but it is way, way longer than any of his recent novels, and I’m not sure the plot really warrants this - part of the appeal of Players and Endgame lay in their succinctness. Oh, did I mention the Cybermen? They’re in it as well. And some Gaztaks off of TV’s Meglos. The disappointments of Warmonger, though, lie not is such groundling-pleasing which is, perhaps, acceptable in its audacity, but in the fact that the story supporting them sort of stops being fun or funny long before it runs out of pages.