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Doctor Who: The Missing Episodes #2
Doctor Who: The Ultimate Evil
On Wednesday 27 February 1985 the BBC announced that their longest running sci-fi series, Doctor Who, was to be suspended. Anxious fans worldwide, worried that this might mean an end to the Time Lord's travels, flooded the BBC with letters of protest. Eighteen months later the show returned to the TV screens.
But missing from the Doctor's adventures was the series that would have been made and shown during those lost eighteen months. Now, available for the first time as a book, is one of those stories: The Ultimate Evil.
With the TARDIS working perfectly the Doctor and Peri find themselves at something of a loose end. A holiday in Tranquela, a peace-loving country where there has been no war for over fifty years, seems the ideal solution.
Unfortunately their visit coincides with that of an unscrupulous arms dealer - the Machiavellian Dwarf Mordant...
But missing from the Doctor's adventures was the series that would have been made and shown during those lost eighteen months. Now, available for the first time as a book, is one of those stories: The Ultimate Evil.
With the TARDIS working perfectly the Doctor and Peri find themselves at something of a loose end. A holiday in Tranquela, a peace-loving country where there has been no war for over fifty years, seems the ideal solution.
Unfortunately their visit coincides with that of an unscrupulous arms dealer - the Machiavellian Dwarf Mordant...
144 pages, Paperback
First published September 17, 1989
116 people want to read
About the author
Wally K. Daly
36 books5 followersWally K. Daly is an English writer for television and radio and one time chairman of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain
As well as some minor acting roles including Z-Cars, his writing credits include Juliet Bravo, Casualty and Byker Grove. He also wrote the 1984 radio series Anything Legal featuring Donald Hewlett and Michael Knowles.
Daly also wrote a story for Doctor Who called The Ultimate Evil but due to its hiatus the story was cancelled but was published in the popular range of Who books.
In the early 1980s, three of his stage plays were performed at the Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch - The Miracle Shirker, Vaughan Street (both 1980) and a stage adaptation of his radio and television play Butterflies Don't Count (1982)
As well as some minor acting roles including Z-Cars, his writing credits include Juliet Bravo, Casualty and Byker Grove. He also wrote the 1984 radio series Anything Legal featuring Donald Hewlett and Michael Knowles.
Daly also wrote a story for Doctor Who called The Ultimate Evil but due to its hiatus the story was cancelled but was published in the popular range of Who books.
In the early 1980s, three of his stage plays were performed at the Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch - The Miracle Shirker, Vaughan Street (both 1980) and a stage adaptation of his radio and television play Butterflies Don't Count (1982)
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
January 2, 2022
Another novelisation of a TV story scrapped at the last minute, The Ultimate Evil doesn’t have quite as much promise as The Nightmare Fair. And that’s putting it mildly. Even without a hiatus blatting out a whole season, it’s difficult to believe this would ever have reached TV screens.
There are some okay ideas in it. A world is under attack from a “hate ray” which drives people into a murderous rage at whoever they happen to be with. More interesting, and quite funny, is the way they cope with this: everyone voluntarily chains themselves up and the next person along holds the key. When they’re sane again, they let each other out. The routineness of this makes for a fun SF conceit, but that only takes the story so far. The actual people are completely uninteresting, and that’s down to the story: they don’t NEED to be interesting or complex when an external force keeps transforming them into crazy people. Very few characters have actual motivations beyond not wanting to hurt each other, or wanting power.
The Doctor and Peri (the former written about as brusquely as Colin Baker could get on screen, and that’s BEFORE the murderous rages) saunter into this hoping for a holiday, and are immediately in danger. Promptly separated, Peri meets Lorca, a young man who was caught outside during a hate ray attack and pushed his fiancé off a cliff. Peri then goes with him to the same cliff. Guess what happens next. (What was she expecting?) Not the first, or last instance of a character behaving stupidly here.
In general the characters (including the Doctor) just go from place to place having their feelings dictated by the Evil Dwarf Mordant (just “Mordant” would do but we’re reminded he’s a dwarf several times), sometimes in an almost farcical manner where it switches on and off between rooms. None of it says anything about them, despite some half-baked philosophising about there being evil in all of us which the hate ray highlights. Very deep I’m sure, but this actually being sci-fi, it would perhaps have made more sense to add in a line about brain chemistry. It would feel less wishy-washy than just firing random emotions through space.
Another villainous character has a “hypno-gun” which means he can control anybody - as well as being a tedious contrivance, that made me wonder why Mordant bothered with the long-winded scheme at all and didn’t just hypno-gun a few kings. (Or the bloke he’d given the gun to, for starters, whose cooperation is key.) Other characters have the ability to teleport anywhere at will, and a major plot point concerns the impossibility of a character lying - only he’s able to do it anyway, without explanation. Some of these ideas are not inherently stupid, but they are merely thrown in there without any development. See also, the anticlimactic and silly showdown between the Doctor and Mordant, where he basically tells him off and Mordant goes away. To terrorise somewhere else, presumably? Oh yes, very satisfying.
There are some bursts of decent prose, but it’s mostly workmanlike, including plenty of explaining-what-they’re-going-to-say-before-they-say-it just before a bit of dialogue. And the dialogue is generally pretty silly, at one point boiling down the problem to: “Someone, somewhere, has now discovered the key to our cupboard of deep-buried badness.” The whole thing is just a bit embarrassing.
There are some okay ideas in it. A world is under attack from a “hate ray” which drives people into a murderous rage at whoever they happen to be with. More interesting, and quite funny, is the way they cope with this: everyone voluntarily chains themselves up and the next person along holds the key. When they’re sane again, they let each other out. The routineness of this makes for a fun SF conceit, but that only takes the story so far. The actual people are completely uninteresting, and that’s down to the story: they don’t NEED to be interesting or complex when an external force keeps transforming them into crazy people. Very few characters have actual motivations beyond not wanting to hurt each other, or wanting power.
The Doctor and Peri (the former written about as brusquely as Colin Baker could get on screen, and that’s BEFORE the murderous rages) saunter into this hoping for a holiday, and are immediately in danger. Promptly separated, Peri meets Lorca, a young man who was caught outside during a hate ray attack and pushed his fiancé off a cliff. Peri then goes with him to the same cliff. Guess what happens next. (What was she expecting?) Not the first, or last instance of a character behaving stupidly here.
In general the characters (including the Doctor) just go from place to place having their feelings dictated by the Evil Dwarf Mordant (just “Mordant” would do but we’re reminded he’s a dwarf several times), sometimes in an almost farcical manner where it switches on and off between rooms. None of it says anything about them, despite some half-baked philosophising about there being evil in all of us which the hate ray highlights. Very deep I’m sure, but this actually being sci-fi, it would perhaps have made more sense to add in a line about brain chemistry. It would feel less wishy-washy than just firing random emotions through space.
Another villainous character has a “hypno-gun” which means he can control anybody - as well as being a tedious contrivance, that made me wonder why Mordant bothered with the long-winded scheme at all and didn’t just hypno-gun a few kings. (Or the bloke he’d given the gun to, for starters, whose cooperation is key.) Other characters have the ability to teleport anywhere at will, and a major plot point concerns the impossibility of a character lying - only he’s able to do it anyway, without explanation. Some of these ideas are not inherently stupid, but they are merely thrown in there without any development. See also, the anticlimactic and silly showdown between the Doctor and Mordant, where he basically tells him off and Mordant goes away. To terrorise somewhere else, presumably? Oh yes, very satisfying.
There are some bursts of decent prose, but it’s mostly workmanlike, including plenty of explaining-what-they’re-going-to-say-before-they-say-it just before a bit of dialogue. And the dialogue is generally pretty silly, at one point boiling down the problem to: “Someone, somewhere, has now discovered the key to our cupboard of deep-buried badness.” The whole thing is just a bit embarrassing.
February 11, 2021
Most of the Doctor Who novels I have read have been pretty poorly written. They are pulpy short stories that you can read in a day. They are never gonna be the next great novel. They have ridiculous plot lines, superficial characters and over the top scenarios. Those are also the reasons that I love these novels. It works for Doctor Who because it is Doctor Who. That is what you expect and that is what is delivered. This story seemed a little more thought out then most of the ones I have read before but only just.
November 18, 2014
A rather simplistic style or writing started out cute and fun but became gruelling after a while. Parts of the story seemed to be added on with childish whimsy, especially with the teleporting, which just added to the feeling this book felt as though it was aimed at a younger audience. Some scenes I'd imagine would have translated terribly to screen, so perhaps it was best Trial came along.
September 12, 2024
This book walks a line between a stereotypical “sci-fi for kids” story, and a Doctor Who novelization that knows the main characters on a surface level.
Stereotypical dumbed down sci-fi has simplistic conflicts that don’t arise naturally but are forced on a utopia by technology. They also have silly character names that sound like anagrams. Bad guys are wholly bad, good guys are wholly good, others in the grey are at the mercy of technology, not their own motives.
It appears that Wally knew enough about the Colin Baker Doctor and Nicola Bryant’s Peri to reduce them to generic Doctor and Companion in Distress roles throughout. The Doctor has multiple Condescending Edwardian moments, without capturing Colin’s voice recognizably. Peri thinks and speaks in Britishisms, which is par for the course for uninformed novelizations featuring her. They have a relationship but it has no real depth or history. This is a shame, for a specific reason I’ll get to later.
The best thing about this book is its chapters are SHORT. You _can_ put it down, at least 28 times.
The worst thing about this book is none of the actions in it ultimately matter. The local bad guy gets his comeuppance, but not in a way that changes anything. The Big Bad Guy just reverses the effects of his Advance Technology based on conditions that existed before the story started. But there’s at least one action that should matter very much to Peri…
At several points in this story, the Doctor is taken over by a Hate Ray. He, at one point, attempts to choke a Good Guy. Peri is not present for this, but later they’re both in the TARDIS while taken over by a Fear Ray. Huge missed opportunity for a flashback to the regeneration trauma, and maybe (re-)establish some mutual sympathy.
Speaking strictly about the book, with no televised story to compare to, it is straightforward, but I don’t like it.
2 stars
Stereotypical dumbed down sci-fi has simplistic conflicts that don’t arise naturally but are forced on a utopia by technology. They also have silly character names that sound like anagrams. Bad guys are wholly bad, good guys are wholly good, others in the grey are at the mercy of technology, not their own motives.
It appears that Wally knew enough about the Colin Baker Doctor and Nicola Bryant’s Peri to reduce them to generic Doctor and Companion in Distress roles throughout. The Doctor has multiple Condescending Edwardian moments, without capturing Colin’s voice recognizably. Peri thinks and speaks in Britishisms, which is par for the course for uninformed novelizations featuring her. They have a relationship but it has no real depth or history. This is a shame, for a specific reason I’ll get to later.
The best thing about this book is its chapters are SHORT. You _can_ put it down, at least 28 times.
The worst thing about this book is none of the actions in it ultimately matter. The local bad guy gets his comeuppance, but not in a way that changes anything. The Big Bad Guy just reverses the effects of his Advance Technology based on conditions that existed before the story started. But there’s at least one action that should matter very much to Peri…
At several points in this story, the Doctor is taken over by a Hate Ray. He, at one point, attempts to choke a Good Guy. Peri is not present for this, but later they’re both in the TARDIS while taken over by a Fear Ray. Huge missed opportunity for a flashback to the regeneration trauma, and maybe (re-)establish some mutual sympathy.
Speaking strictly about the book, with no televised story to compare to, it is straightforward, but I don’t like it.
2 stars
April 14, 2019
As with the other stories I’ve read or listened to from the unmade 1985 ‘Season 23’, this story is perfectly adequate and the definition of mediocrity. Rather than a ‘lost’ grail, it’s a reminder of how necessary the (transformative) creative process of television production is: not just a singular screenwriter adapting his own scripts. Despite the affection some may have for the orientalist Celestial Toymaker and the Ice Warriors, there’s more than one reason (the 18 month delay) these didn’t make it to production or broadcast.
However insight from a script editor, director, producer or cast members can only go so far. There’s some interesting concepts of the rituals and conflicts of another society. There’s dwarves and a cawing bird Daly has a lot of fun (probably the most fun) voicing in his rather unexceptional RNIB audiobook. Alongside ‘Iceberg’, RNIB seems to have a thing for mediocre leaning on bad ‘Doctor Who’ books that have never been given an audio version anywhere else. Here’s yet another story about the threat of nuclear weapons and a conflict between warring races that has definitely been told somewhere else before.
It feels more at home with the ludicrous concepts of the comics and Choose Your Own Adventure books that came out of the Sixth Doctor era than the televised series. As with the disastrous reactionary sexism against second wave feminism - along the same line as “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” - depicted in ‘Mission to Magnus’, ‘The Ultimate Evil’ continues that misogynistic trend with the Doctor continually referring to Peri as “fat” and asking her to cut back on her diet. Does Daly even know what Nicola Bryant looks like? There’s some other misogynistic scenes across the novel - barely acceptable in 1986, looking worse in 1989, and inexcusable in 2010 (when Daly recorded his audiobook.)
However insight from a script editor, director, producer or cast members can only go so far. There’s some interesting concepts of the rituals and conflicts of another society. There’s dwarves and a cawing bird Daly has a lot of fun (probably the most fun) voicing in his rather unexceptional RNIB audiobook. Alongside ‘Iceberg’, RNIB seems to have a thing for mediocre leaning on bad ‘Doctor Who’ books that have never been given an audio version anywhere else. Here’s yet another story about the threat of nuclear weapons and a conflict between warring races that has definitely been told somewhere else before.
It feels more at home with the ludicrous concepts of the comics and Choose Your Own Adventure books that came out of the Sixth Doctor era than the televised series. As with the disastrous reactionary sexism against second wave feminism - along the same line as “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” - depicted in ‘Mission to Magnus’, ‘The Ultimate Evil’ continues that misogynistic trend with the Doctor continually referring to Peri as “fat” and asking her to cut back on her diet. Does Daly even know what Nicola Bryant looks like? There’s some other misogynistic scenes across the novel - barely acceptable in 1986, looking worse in 1989, and inexcusable in 2010 (when Daly recorded his audiobook.)
May 16, 2022
Doctor Who stories are either loved or hated by the fans, there is no middle ground – but on one thing, all fans agree. The stories we never got to see are the best ones ever.
The myths surrounding them grow, and because there is no evidence to the contrary, the always remain the best adventures ever.
Shada held the title for a while, but then it finally got animated so now people can have actual opinions on it.
What should have been Colin Baker's third series also falls into this category. Four stories that never saw the light of day.
Thankfully the BBC spotted a gap in the market and allowed three of them – The Nightmare Fair, Mission To Magnus and The Ultimate Evil – to be turned into novelisations.
Which would have been great if they'd found someone who could actually write.
The initial problem is the Doctor himself. Baker's incarnation started off very grumpy and unlikeable and was actually very mean to Peri, making himself quite unpopular with the fans. Which does rather beg the question as to why Wally K. Daly decided this was the version he wanted to bring to the page.
Then we have the appalling dialogue and terrible descriptions. It's as if Daly had never actually read a book before.
Now I know what you're thinking – it's aimed at younger readers, Johnson! Have a word with yourself. Get down off your high Dalek!
But the problem there is, a good children's book is equally enjoyable for adults. Some Doctor Who books manage this. Pratchett managed it. Then there's the Borribles, Thursday, Paddington, Pooh....
Well written is well written, no matter who the target audience is.
And this isn't that.
Worth owning if you're a diehard fan, but the rest of you won't be missing anything.
The myths surrounding them grow, and because there is no evidence to the contrary, the always remain the best adventures ever.
Shada held the title for a while, but then it finally got animated so now people can have actual opinions on it.
What should have been Colin Baker's third series also falls into this category. Four stories that never saw the light of day.
Thankfully the BBC spotted a gap in the market and allowed three of them – The Nightmare Fair, Mission To Magnus and The Ultimate Evil – to be turned into novelisations.
Which would have been great if they'd found someone who could actually write.
The initial problem is the Doctor himself. Baker's incarnation started off very grumpy and unlikeable and was actually very mean to Peri, making himself quite unpopular with the fans. Which does rather beg the question as to why Wally K. Daly decided this was the version he wanted to bring to the page.
Then we have the appalling dialogue and terrible descriptions. It's as if Daly had never actually read a book before.
Now I know what you're thinking – it's aimed at younger readers, Johnson! Have a word with yourself. Get down off your high Dalek!
But the problem there is, a good children's book is equally enjoyable for adults. Some Doctor Who books manage this. Pratchett managed it. Then there's the Borribles, Thursday, Paddington, Pooh....
Well written is well written, no matter who the target audience is.
And this isn't that.
Worth owning if you're a diehard fan, but the rest of you won't be missing anything.
November 5, 2018
In nearly a dozen years reading Doctor Who books published across different decades and different publishers, I have never regretted reading one. Or indeed read one that I could describe as "irredeemable." In The Ultimate Evil, Wally K. Daly's novelization of his unmade Sixth Doctor television story, I have at last found one.
Why? In part, because it's such a bland story of the type that the series had outgrown by the end of the Hartnell era. It's also everything that's wrong with the Sixth Doctor era: over-the-top, thin plotting, tortured dialogue, and a Doctor prone to violent fits. It says something that the "the Machiavellian Dwarf Mordant" feels more like a bad parody of Sil than anything else.
About the only good thing I can say is that I won this book at a trivia thing at a Doctor Who convention. So at least I didn't pay money for it. Because, frankly, this is one of the rare books (of any genre) that isn't worth the paper its printed on.
Why? In part, because it's such a bland story of the type that the series had outgrown by the end of the Hartnell era. It's also everything that's wrong with the Sixth Doctor era: over-the-top, thin plotting, tortured dialogue, and a Doctor prone to violent fits. It says something that the "the Machiavellian Dwarf Mordant" feels more like a bad parody of Sil than anything else.
About the only good thing I can say is that I won this book at a trivia thing at a Doctor Who convention. So at least I didn't pay money for it. Because, frankly, this is one of the rare books (of any genre) that isn't worth the paper its printed on.
October 25, 2017
Of the three stories novelized from the abandoned 1986 season of "Doctor Who", this is by far the weakest of the batch. "The Nightmare Fair" was a lost classic. "Mission to Magnus" was bonkers, yet undeniably full of interesting moments (and fully redeemed by a Big Finish audio adaptation). But "The Ultimate Evil" reminds me of a less interesting version of the 4th Doctor story "Meglos". Rather too simple and cliched for its own good, and lacking any comedic or dramatic fire. This is "Doctor Who" by the numbers, and seems more in-keeping with a story from one of the old annuals.
August 15, 2020
Well, this wasn’t the worst book I’ve read, but it was close!
The basic plot was okay for an 80’s Dr. Who, but the writing wasn’t even up to that.
I consider myself rather tone deaf to most things, but boy did I see several misogynistic bits of text.
I don’t recall the Doctor treating Peri as bad as shown in this one.
The basic plot was okay for an 80’s Dr. Who, but the writing wasn’t even up to that.
I consider myself rather tone deaf to most things, but boy did I see several misogynistic bits of text.
I don’t recall the Doctor treating Peri as bad as shown in this one.
Read
April 8, 2009http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1287541.html#cutid2[return][return]This is an odd case - probably the best of the three Missing Episodes books considered as a story (so it's unfortunate that Big Finish won't be doing it), but the worst written by some way; Daly, who is basically a TV and radio scriptwriter, has followed the by-the-numbers novelisation method of the Target books at their least compelling.[return][return]The story, as I said, is decent stuff: there is a planet whose two halves are at an uneasy peace with one another; there is a bad guy who is using Evil Tech to make them go to war and has subverted an ambitious aristocrat in one of the planet's hemispheres; the Doctor is also subjected to mind control, and Peri almost gets some romance from a guy whose girlfriend, presumed dead in the first chapter, she resembles. I thought the Doctor let the bad guy off a bit lightly in the end, but basically enjoyed it apart from the clunky style.
February 20, 2020
This novelization of a script from the scrapped second Colin Baker series fails in many ways. The major problem is that Wally K. Daly seems to think that Doctor Who was a children's show, and so he comes up with a children's show plot with children's show dialogue. The story of two continents on one planet that remain absolutely isolated from each other so as to prevent war might have worked had Daly created logically functioning societies. Instead, we get people who can teleport just by thinking about it, cartoony villains, and "rays" that turn people murderous, hypnotized, or fearful. The writing style for this novelization is likewise aimed squarely at the eight-year-olds.
November 25, 2014
Another story from the fabled 'lost season' and like the others you finish reading it and can't decide if this would have been a great or terrible episode.
The Doctor and Peri arrive on serene paradise planet at the same time as evil alien weapons dealer that has decided to use the planet as a testing site for new products.
On the page, the story is okay, but a bit flat in places, that I imagine could have gotten better on the screen with good casting.
Or the BBC could have gotten really cheap and killed the story.
Decent story, interesting bit of Who history, but will be enjoyed more by completists than casual fans.
The Doctor and Peri arrive on serene paradise planet at the same time as evil alien weapons dealer that has decided to use the planet as a testing site for new products.
On the page, the story is okay, but a bit flat in places, that I imagine could have gotten better on the screen with good casting.
Or the BBC could have gotten really cheap and killed the story.
Decent story, interesting bit of Who history, but will be enjoyed more by completists than casual fans.
April 9, 2016
Me: I need to collect every single Doctor Who book!
My wife: Why?
Me: They'll be worth money some day!
My wife: You're an idiot.
Me: Our son will be rolling in Doctor Who money!
My wife: Why did I marry you?
Me: Some of these books are actually pretty good! Okay, not "good," but still readable!
My wife: How are you so smart and yet so stupid? Are you listening to me?
Me: Hold on! Someone just outbid me on eBay.
My wife: Why?
Me: They'll be worth money some day!
My wife: You're an idiot.
Me: Our son will be rolling in Doctor Who money!
My wife: Why did I marry you?
Me: Some of these books are actually pretty good! Okay, not "good," but still readable!
My wife: How are you so smart and yet so stupid? Are you listening to me?
Me: Hold on! Someone just outbid me on eBay.
January 18, 2014
Adaptation of a "Doctor Who" story that was never made. Some very good ideas - I think it would have been an interesting story, at least visually.
August 13, 2014
A peaceful race, a computer ruled race and an evil dwarf, what's not to like?
These old Dr Who books are short and wonderfully campy!
These old Dr Who books are short and wonderfully campy!
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews