Recap / Big Finish Doctor Who The Curse Of The Daleks

Remember, remember, the Dalek December

With Paris in ruins and London an ember

In times of the future when fears are abating

Don't try to forget them, the Daleks are waiting

Quietly planning and scheming and hating...

In 1965, Terry Nation made his first attempt to spin off his beloved omnicidal creations, the Daleks, in their own story, a stage play that ran over the 1965-6 Christmas season at Wyndham's Theatre in London. Set sometime after "The Daleks", a ship transporting a scientist, his assistant and two convicts is sabotaged and forced to land on a mysterious planet. They quickly learn that this is Skaro, home of the dreaded Daleks. But the Daleks are all dead since their city's power ran out, right?

Right?

It wasn't actually written by Nation, but by David Whitaker. Eventually adapted by Big Finish as part of their Stage Plays series.

Tropes in this episode:

• And I Must Scream: The Daleks are depowered and left sitting around their city, just waiting for something to happen.
• Artistic License – Physics/Artistic License – Chemistry: There's a lot of really dodgy science in the script, which Nicholas Briggs chose to leave intact for the adaptation. Possibly the strangest is the suggestion that you can't boil water while travelling at lightspeed, for some reason.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: These are the Daleks as seen in their very first episode, reliant on static electricity from the floor to move.
• Prop Recycling: The five Daleks built for the production were later used in Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D..
• Remake Role: John Line played The Hero Ladiver in the original production, and they were lucky enough to get him to play Professor Vanderlyn for the audio version.
• The X of Y: This is the first appearance of the "X of the Daleks" title in performed Doctor Who of any kind (though the Dalek comic beat them to the punch slightly to claim the first ever use of the title).