Inside a Skaro Saucer (feature)

Inside a Skaro Saucer
Main character(s):	Golden Emperor, Super Daleks
Main setting:	Dalek spaceship
Key crew
Publisher:	Souvenir Press
Writers:	David Whitaker, Terry Nation
Release details
Printed in:	The Dalek World
Release date:	11 October 1965

Inside a Skaro Saucer was one of the features original to The Dalek World, a Dalek annual of 1965, which were not so much a story as an informative feature on Dalek society. Although non-narrative, it featured a wealth of new information about the titular spacecrafts as well as the technology hoarded within by the Daleks.

Like other features and stories in The Dalek World, Inside a Skaro Saucer was presented with the pretence of being an in-universe document circulating among humans during a conflict between humanity and the Dales; the mostly-nondescript narrative sometimes speaks of "our" agents, for example.

Characters

• Daleks
• The Golden Emperor
• Super Daleks
• Robomen

Worldbuilding

• Dalek Commanders are in charge of Dalek Saucers.
• Target-seeking missiles are the weapons of choice of the Daleks during space battles. T.S. missiles home in on their targets by way of a thronic aura beam; this "wonder of Dalek engineering" would cost, by Earth standards, seven hundred million pounds apiece.
• Super Daleks have hypnotic powers and the ability to effect thought transference. One is kept aboard every Dalek saucer at all times.
• Famine bombs are among the weapons used by the Daleks to "soften up" their enemies by releasing gases which destroy nearly all food sources on the planet on which they are released, though they spare root vegetables.
• Screamers are superpowered loudspeakers used by the Daleks to deafen their enemies. The Daleks could also use such sonic waves to kill, but choose not to so that there are still beings left on the planet for them to enslave when they arrive.
• Nightrotor units are a Dalek secret weapon which can cut off the length of lightbeams, thereby plunging planets into darkness.
• The Motivators allow the Dalek saucer to advance like a tank on caterpillar tracks to crush a city; they can only be used at the Dalek Commander's personal command.
• The identity check machines make metal transparent; this is used to ferret out humanoid agents who may have infiltrated the Daleks by climbing aboard a casing.
• Space mine-layers are small remote-controlled rocketships used by the Daleks to lay space mines, of which one thousand are stored in a single Dalek saucer.
• Neutrotomic irradiators are used by the Daleks to create the high-intensity neutronic radiations the Daleks need to survive.
• Anti-grav propellant units are the motive power of all Dalek spacecrafts. Its exact workings are a secret even within the Dalek society itself (given the highest security code, 707). Only Dalek Space Commanders and above are allowed to enter the room in which it is kept.
• Sub-hydrofoils are used to keep the ship on an even course.
• Translux chambers are chambers in which Daleks in whom the temporary invisibility caused by breaking through the light barrier persists too long are bombarded by translux beams.
• The command unit is the Daleks' most advanced type of computer.
• Asteroid advance rods are sensitised to locate anything the ship might collide into, and change the course automatically if they do detect any such obstacle.
• A neutron bomb built into the heart of the ship serves as its self-destruct mechanism in such a way that will even destroy all trace of the craft.
• Mireoton is "the planet of mud".
• Metal stress detectors are small, robot creatures "not unlike beetles" who constantly crawl about the Dalek spacecraft looking for faults in the metal structure. When they fine one, they emit a red glow and a high-pitched whining sound to alert their Dalek masters to this danger.
• The rad-etheric magniscope is an advanced form of telescope which could read fine print on the page of a book on a planet a million miles away, if pointed the right way. It "sees" by means of light ions in the ether, and the image is in three dimensions. The Golden Emperor is seen using the magniscope to look at Piccadilly Circus, in London.
• The nouromatic machine is used to feed Robomen.
• Waxworks of the brain children of Uranus, the Dralug of the Neptune moon and the Brainmos of the planet Ep can be seen in the example Dalek Saucer's Historical Survey Sector, where information about the planets the Daleks are planning to invade is kept.
• The hallucinatory projector-receiver is a psychic weapon which makes its victims think their desires have already been granted; hence, military leaders wishing they had more reinforcements, if the machine is turned on them, will see the reinforcements right in front of them as if they had already arrived, and send illusory soldiers into battle.

Notes

• The concept of the identity check machine — a way for the Daleks to identify humanoid impostors in stolen Dalek casings — is obviously intended as the Daleks' answer to the First Doctor and his companions employing such a ruse in the TV story The Daleks, although the time-travellers are not mentioned by name.
• Another reference to The Daleks is made in Inside a Skaro Saucer: the fact that the Daleks require their native planet's radiation to survive healthily is reinstated, to the extent that for their own health, Daleks must spend an hour each month inside their saucer's "radiation room" to get themselves back to peak fitness.