h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Trap of the Daleks began the ever succesful partnership of Penny and Mills,(or Marmike! a name I once consiered for our writing partnership)

The first part of Trap of the Daleks is probably the worst, it has too many writers, the story becomes over complicated and towards the end it is hard to tell what is actually going on...I'm still not too sure myself what with all the duplicates and all.
However it still has its high points, The Doctor learning of Aces death and going to see the Brigadier was one of the stories finer points, The Master and the Daleks working together was a likeable idea, and the thought of Davros creating a new master race was also an excellent idea so hats off to Mr. Mills for coming up with it.

Trap 2-Day of Davros is a big improvement, written this time by Martin Penny and Mike Mills only(with some battle scenes added by other writers). Davros and his davrites come off as far better villains than we saw in part 1, Davros is at his most devious and his forced alliance with the Doctor was particulary effectve.
The Davrites are an excellent invention and succeed in coming off as far more scary monsters than the Daleks. The battle scenes between U.N.I.T and the Davrites/Daleks were superbly done by those who added them, The confrontation between the Doctor and the Master and the Supreme Dalek was done well with both villains meeting a sticky end. And then to round things off there was that nice celebration sequence.

Trap 3-5-The Great War, Total War and Endgame was where things started to get more impressive, This was the defining story of Penny and Mills and wa the first story that they wrote solely together. The story starts well with the idea of the Daleks creating an alliance with the Cybermen(something people always talked about) and also the various buisness corporations of the universe, including The Galatron Mining corporation and its delegate Sil, The intergalactic Bank was run by buisnessman Tor Garane, an interesting character who should have been explored more.

The idea of the Doctor battling all of his arch enemies was interesting(The Master, Davros, The Rani, The Meddling Monk) and all characters came off well, particulary Davros and the Rani whose alliance comes off better than in the first two stories.

By far though the most interesting characters of this story are Rasputaltron and Zigrosi. Rasputaltron was a truly unique villain in the form of a black skeleton who blends together humour, megalomania, power and political manipulation to be a truly intimidating villain who stole the scene in every part of the novel that he appeared in. Fellow time and space board writer The Doctor Martin said about Rasputaltron-"He reminds me of Morbius or Mavic Chen. A supervillain in his own right."
Rasputaltrons sidekick the small winged Barok was also interesting, though he wouldnt have worked without Rasputaltron, he was a welcome presence.

Castellan Zigrosi was also an excellent character, unlike most time Lords Zigrosi is noble and courageous, he is not corrupt or power mad, he only cares about saving his people. As Martin did with Rasputaltron, Mike Mills makes the character of Zigrosi his own, and he is a very likeable character who has a tragic but noble death when he takes the full brunt of an explosion.

So Trap of the Daleks, a thoroughly enjoyable story with many twists and turns that introduces some of the regulars of the partnership of Penny and Mills- Rasputaltron(or Raspy if you will), Barok, Zigrosi(athough he had had one more appearance before this story), and Tor Garane. The Supreme Dalek and his aide would also makes return appearances in th future.