Doctor Who and the Face of Evil is a novella written by Terrance Dicks. Released in 1978, it is a novelization of Chris Boucher's serial of the same name.
Characters[]
- Fourth Doctor
- Leela
- Xoanon
- Neeva
- Calib
- Tomas
- Andor
- Jabel
Publisher's summary[]
Setting the controls for Earth, the Doctor is surprised when the Tardis lands in a primeval forest. Has the Tracer gone wrong or has some impulse deep in the unconscious mind directed him to this alien planet? In investigating the forest, the Doctor meets and assists Leela, a warrior banished from her tribe, the Sevateem. Through Leela, it gradually becomes apparent that the constant war between the Sevateem and the Tesh has been instigated by the god they both worship, Xoanon.
Xoanon, an all-powerful computer, is possessed by a desperate madness – a madness that is directly related to Doctor Who, that causes Xoanon to assume the voice and form of the Doctor, a madness that is partly caused by the Doctor and that only the Doctor himself can rectify!
The Doctor must not only do battle with Xoanon, but also must escape from the savage practices of the Sevateem, and the technically mind-controlling destructive impulses of the Tesh.
Full summary[]
Chapter One: The Outcast[]
The Sevateem, a tribe, hold a trial for a girl called Leela. Her crime was blasphemy against the tribe – essentially deserting in battle. The punishment for this is banishment, where she would get cast into the Beyond and certainly die. An alternate punishment is the Test of Horda, which has a high mortality rate and Leela’s father takes for her. The girl leaves, two warrior priests and her lover following her. In a nearby forest clearing, the Doctor appears. He finds the scene described as a “huge primaeval forest” to be oddly familiar. Leela, walking through the forest, is aware of one of the priests tracking her, and shoots him with her crossbow. The second priest appears and almost kills her, but she is saved by Tomas, her lover. He tries to convince Leela to come back or at least let him come with her, scared of the dangers she’ll face, but to no avail. She speaks one last word of advice to him – to beware of Calib, one of the Chief’s Councillors, and leaves. The girl crosses the Boundary to the Beyond and soon gets hunted by an invisible monster.
Chapter Two: The Invisible Terror[]
The Doctor walks through the forest, feeling that, although he hadn’t intended to land on this planet, there was some sort of purpose to it. He stumbles across Leela, who looks scared to see him and believes him to be the ‘’Evil One,’’ intending to harm her. With the help of an egg-timer, the Doctor causes the invisible monster hunting Leela to lose her trail. In the tribe’s village, Tomas informs Calib about the murder attempt set off by Neeva, the priester who sent his warriors to kill Leela. However, he wouldn’t be punished for this, as he could say their god, Xoanon had sent him to do it. Calib’s plan is to take the power from Neeva and Andor, the Chief, when a future raid promised to succeed by Xoanon fails. The Doctor and Leela cross the Boundary again and enter the tribe’s territory. Leela starts to feel that the Doctor, who believes the Boundary to be an invisible fence for the monsters of the Beyond, does not want to cause her harm after all. Xoanon tells Neeva that Leela has reentered the village’s grounds and her and the Doctor have to be destroyed.
Chapter Three: Captured[]
The Doctor discovers a low-intensity sonic disruptor, which is responsible for the phantoms not entering the village’s territory. Leela says that Xoanon, who is held captive by the Evil One and the Tesh, his followers in the Wall, which she and the Doctor set off too. Tomas tells Andor that the raid to free Xoanon should be cancelled, as it would just result in death. Neeva overhears the interaction and decides to do something about Tomas. The Doctor is taken to the village by warriors, but Leela manages to stay unseen and run off. The girl secretly observes the Doctor being questioned by her people in a hut, who believe him to be the Evil One. Upon hearing the prisoner claim that he is not holding Xoanon captive, Andor states that the Doctor must be destroyed so that the god can be released.
Chapter Four: The Face on the Mountain[]
As Andor is about to stab the Doctor, Neeva steps up and says that he should be sacrificed, which would happen later on. Most people leave the hut to call the rest of the tribe, and the Doctor again tries to convince the Chief that he is not the Evil One and points out that the technology the tribe has laying unused around is connected to space travellers like him, who are connected to Xoanon, but fails. Neeva speaks a Litany to the tribe while the Doctor is freed by Leela, who knocks out the guard with a poisonous and lethal thorn. They make an escape through a hole in the wall the girl had created, and the Doctor instructs her to never use the thorns again. Tomas and a few other men are sent as a search party to retrieve their captive, but Neeva still believes that the planned raid to free Xoanon must take place. Leela and the Doctor reach the edge of the forest, after which they see a mountain with the Doctor’s face carved into it.
Chapter Five: Attack[]
Leela tells the Doctor that the Tesh put his face on the mountain to taunt her tribe. He knows that he has been on the planet before, and decides to return to the village to see if the space technology there could jog his memory. They arrive as the tribe is assembling to leave for the raid, who believe that the Wall will soon open. Upon inspecting some objects from the altar to Xoanon, the Doctor realises that Neeva is directly communicating with his god through technology that has his voice, and he wonders what he did in the past. The warriors of the tribe arrive at the Wall, in which a tunnel has formed. Meanwhile, the Doctor explains to Leela that the Wall is a time boundary and can only be broken by whoever set it up and is outside it. At the Wall, the tunnel begins to close and the men around it start dying.
Chapter Six: Danger for Leela[]
Calib, one of the men from the raid, returns to the village and encounters Leela and the Doctor. He brings news of yet another massacre of their warriors from the attack on the Wall, and is asked for help convincing the others that the Doctor is not the Evil One. However, he attacks Leela with a thorn and plans to capture the Doctor in a ploy to win power. When Tomas enters, Calib is knocked over and the Doctor takes care of Leela, healing her with a medical kit from the space technology the tribe considers to be holy relics. Tomas and Leela flee the village while the Doctor meets the rest of the men returning from the raid and gets captured while retaining a sense of humour and calmness. The girl and her lover are also taken by the tribe’s warriors.
Chapter Seven: The Test of Horda[]
A trial is held by the tribe at their Council Hut for the Doctor, Tomas and Leela – the latter two are accused of being ”in league” with the Evil One. The tribe accuses Neeva of lying to them, as he claimed the Doctor to be dead. When Leela states that the raid on the Wall was a trap laid by Xoanon himself, Neeva calls for all three captives to be thrown to the Horda, which killed the girl’s father. In an attempt to disprove the priest to cause him to lose influence, Calib supports this, claiming the Doctor not to be the Evil One, and commanding him to be put the the Test to see whether or not he is mortal after all. They are brought to the location where the Test will take place — a pit with a detailed set-up of ropes, stones and more. They are shown a Horda, which is a hostile serpentine creature abundant in the pit. The Doctor is told that he has to stand upon a plank and break a rope with a crossbow to make it out alive. He passes the Test and leaves with Tomas and Leela. When they arrive at the council hut where Neeva is communicating with Xoanon, the god’s voice changes between the Doctor’s and a youthful one. It says that it will destroy the Time Lord.
Chapter Eight: Beyond the Wall[]
Xoanon states that he will turn off the Boundary, causing the phantoms to enter the tribe’s grounds and wreak havoc. The village is warned of the incoming danger and the Doctor prepares, using the left behind space equipment for defence – notably, it becomes clear that the phantoms are attracted to vibrations. The Time Lord sets up a generator to keep the creatures away from at least a bit of the area and says that the time barrier – the Wall – must be broken. However, he isn’t sure how to accomplish it until Leela asks how they can hear Xoanon’s voice if the barrier doesn’t let sounds through. They hurry to the village and find out that Neeva had only ever heard the god by the altar. The Doctor realises that there must be a bridge through the Wall. As a phantom creature breaks past a guard, it runs towards the village due to the gong sounding there. Leela hurries off with the Doctor to the scene, where a phantom grabs Andor but is stopped by Tomas with a disruptor gun given to him by Doctor Who. However, Andor dies and in the short moment that the creature’s face is visible, it is a distorted version of the Doctor’s. He and Leela climb up his face displayed in the Wall, entering a tunnel that is the bridge through the barrier.
Chapter Nine: The Tesh[]
Learning of Andor’s death through Tomas, Calib decides that he shall be the new leader. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Leela cross the barrier and see a spaceship. Doctor Who recalls that he had thought he was helping the group from the ship by fixing their computer, who are the Tesh. He explains to the girl that the Tesh and Sevateem both originated from the same crew of the ship, and the Sevateem went out to explore the planet while the Tesh stayed behind. While the two talk, a man walks up to them, addressing the Doctor as Lord. Leela falls over unconscious upon acting hostile and is carried off by some Tesh. The man introduces himself as the Jabel, Captain of the Tesh. He states that their holy purpose is to defend their ship and believes Xoanon to be omnipresent. The Doctor decides that he has to do something against the god, who is a sort of computer, before he kills everyone on the planet. He searches for the central complex on the ship’s computers to stop Xoanon, and goes to the so-called Sacred Chamber in hopes of it being located there. Leela is about to undergo particle analysis, which would kill her – something the Tesh are not concerned about. After an argument where the Doctor calls Jabel out for condoning such violence and shares that Xoanon is the one opening the barrier, not the Sevateem, he is tackled.
Chapter Ten: The Summons[]
The Doctor awakes strapped on a table next to Leela, about to go through the particle analysis process. He manages to reflect the energy that would separate him and the girl into particles with a mirror and they flee. Jabel sends people after them to make sure they get killed. The Doctor explains what Xoanon is to Leela – ‘’a machine that became a living creature.’’ The god wishes to unite with the Time Lord. Having drawn the phantoms away from the village, Calib orders Tomas to get the men away from it. Leela and the Doctor enter a room on the spaceship and the latter impersonates Xoanon to Neeva through a device. He tells the priest that he should get the tribe to cross the barrier. The girl helps ambush a guard on the ship so that the Doctor can communicate with Xoanon in a specific room.
Chapter Eleven: Xoanon[]
In the village, Neeva’s message that he supposedly got from Xoanon is met with hefty criticism, due to them believing it to be a trap by the Evil One. Only Calib and Tomas, along with a few warriors, are willing to follow him, while the rest of the tribe stays behind. At the tunnel, they are almost ambushed by a Tesh, but manage to kill him before he does anyone any harm. The group is cautious, fearing another attack. When they hear the phantoms getting closer, the urgency for crossing the barrier becomes bigger. The Doctor talks to Xoanon and communicates who is and that he is there to rectify an old mistake of his. He converses some more with the god, who seems to have split personalities, and explains that he renewed the data core of the ship’s computer by using a direct link to his own brain, so the computer had part of his personality. The technicians worked on the computer, trying to improve it, and finally, without realising, made a new living being. Due to a confusion with personalities, it started to go mad. Confronted with this information, Xoanon has a kind of breakdown.
Chapter Twelve: The Trap[]
Leela, who has been running through the ship, attacking random Tesh guards she finds, is cornered by a group of them when the lights suddenly go out. The guards panic, and one tells the girl that it means the end of the world. Leela enters the room with the Doctor and Xoanon, where the god is repeatedly asking the question of who he is in a frenzy, and drags the unconscious Time Lord out. When brought up to speed in terms of the latest events, he concludes that Xoanon must have set off the ship’s emergency procedures. The Doctor believes that the god will try to kill him, as he contradicts his world views entirely. Suddenly, he is tackled by a Tesh guard and they go down in a fight for life or death, which the Doctor wins. Neeva, Calib, Tomas and the warriors have crossed the barrier and the priest plans to kill Xoanon and the Tesh, as he was betrayed by the former. The Doctor and Leela are in the control room when the girl seems to become possessed and tries to kill him. He manages to hypnotise and she returns to her normal state of mind. Upon hearing that the Sevateem will soon gain entrance to the ship, Jabel orders his acolyte to make sure that they are trapped at a certain location, where they will be destroyed by a disruptor cannon.
Chapter Thirteen: The Last Battle[]
The Sevateem attack the Tesh, and the latter retreat. Calib, unaware of this being a planned manoeuvre and trap on his opponent’s part, goes against Tomas’ advice and follows them with the warriors. The Doctor is in the control room with Leela when she gets him to notice that Xoanon put the atomic generators on overload, meaning he has only little over twenty-four minutes to build a machine to wipe his imprint, which causes the god’s split personality and madness, from its brain. Unless he succeeds, half the planet will explode. The Tesh warriors setting up the disruptor cannon for the trap feel something and realise they achieved communion with Xoanon. The Doctor has built a sort of headset, which, as he explains to Leela, should re-absorb all the information he had originally set into the computer. Suddenly, they hear Xoanon crying ‘’Destroy and be free!’’ out repeatedly, and Leela joins in, threatening the Doctor with a knife.
Chapter Fourteen: Recovery[]
The Sevateem attack party reaches the location with the disruptor cannons, but finds no one there to man them. Suddenly, they are possessed by Xoanon and move away. Neeva, who is the only one not affected, grabs a cannon and runs towards the god instead. Leela attempts to harm the Doctor, but falls unconscious herself after getting electrically shocked. As he is about to use the headset he built – called a ‘“Memory Transfer Unit” – he is stopped by a group of Tesh and Sevateem, bowing to Xoanon’s will. Neeva dies due to the energy from the cannon he sent at the god being redirected towards him. This shortly loosens Xoanon’s control on the men, and the Doctor manages to connect the device he built to the computer. Everyone falls out of their trance.
The Doctor eventually awakens out of his unconsciousness caused by the memory transfer after two days. Leela tells him that Xoanon has been relatively silent and the Tesh don’t believe her when she says he’s a computer. The Doctor enters the main computer complex, where Xoanon is, with Leela. The god seems to be very polite and says he feels whole. The girl asks him why he made the Sevateem and Tesh hate one another. Xoanon answers that the conflict was to speed up their development, as he intended to have both tribes strong so that he could breed them and create superhumans. He then leads a lengthy conversation with the Doctor about his actions. Tomas urges Jabel to agree to unite the tribes for better survival chances, and a debate about who the leader should be takes place. Leela is involuntarily put up as an “ideal candidate.”
Chapter Fifteen: Departure[]
The Doctor, by his TARDIS and ready to leave the planet, is surprised by Leela. She wishes to come with him, but he refuses. However, the girl persists and pulls a level in the TARDIS, causing it to be sent away into the space-time continuum with her.
In-universe continuity[]
- A.L. Kennedy's novel The Drosten's Curse presumably happens shortly before the events of this story.
- The planet from this story is named "Mordee" in Justin Richards' novel Theatre of War.
- An alternate version of Leela remembers a somewhat altered version of this story in Justin Richards' Gallifrey audio drama Disassembled.
- Leela remembers her father's death in Nicholas Briggs' audio drama The Evil One.
- Leela recalls Neeva in Simon A. Forward's novel Drift.