The Ironside Advance (short story)

The Ironside Advance
Main character(s):	Daleks
Release details
Printed in:	Doctor Who The Official Annual 2011
Format:	Short story

The Ironside Advance was a short story printed in Doctor Who The Official Annual 2011. It is presented as an in-universe text which the Eleventh Doctor recommends to Amy Pond with a post-it note.

Summary

to be added

Plot

In an alternate history in which the Ironsides were never found by the Eleventh Doctor, they became fully operational. The Battle of Britain lasted only one more week before the German Luftwaffe suffered crippling casualties, forcing them to retreat and turn their forces against the Soviet Union. Their underestimation of the strategic possibilities of the Ironsides cost them dearly. Whilst their efforts were diverted elsewhere, the Ironsides landed on the Normandy beaches, travelling along the seabed of the English Channel to avoid detection. The first two Ironsides were joined by the third Dalek from the ship.

The conflict was brief. Soon the three Ironsides were marching across France, clearing a path for the liberation of the towns along their way by British soldiers. The enemy's guns could not penetrate the Ironsides' defences and their speed and mobility meant that the Nazis had to retreat to Germany to prepare a final defence, allowing the Russians to spread across Eastern Europe at the other end of the Allied pincer movement. Until this point, the United States of America had remained silent, unwilling to commit forces to a war that seemed impossible to win, instead steadily stockpiling their weapons, awaiting a tactically advantageous moment. However, when the Japanese attempted to come to Germany's aid with a pre-emptive attack on Pearl Harbor, the Ironsides stepped in, taking on the enemy bombers in a vicious dogfight lasting two days. The American Navy was saved and President Harry S. Truman bestowed the Medal of Honor on the Ironsides, finally agreeing to aid the British in the war effort. Two months later, the Allied forces marched on Berlin, and the Nazi stranglehold was broken.

In summer 1942, the Allies met in a secret bunker underneath Washington, D.C.. With no common enemy to fight, relations between the Soviets, Americans and British were breaking down and the centre of the debate was the Ironsides. Neither Stalin or Truman were keen to allow such powerful weapons to be the property of the British Army alone, but the Ironsides' insistence that under no circumstances would they relocate from the United Kingdom (as this was the most likely location the Doctor would appear in) meant that Churchill had no choice but to agree to their destruction.

It took the United States nearly a year to refine the nuclear technology needed to destroy Professor Bracewell's creations and, in an operation broadcast live across the globe, the first test of the atom-bomb took place on 7 February 1943 on the Isle of Man, the blast vapourising the Ironsides. It was an ironic fate for the Daleks, permanently ending their race and their terror.

Characters

• Daleks
• Ironside 1
• Ironside 2
• Bronze Dalek (Victory of the Daleks)

References

to be added

Story notes

to be added