I Am a Dalek (novel)
I Am a Dalek by Gareth Roberts was the inaugural Doctor Who Quick Reads novella.
Publisher's summary
Equipped with space suits, golf clubs, and a flag, the Doctor and Rose are planning to live it up, Apollo mission-style, on the Moon. But the TARDIS has other plans, landing them instead in a village on the south coast of England; a picture-postcard sort of place where nothing much happens. Until now...
An archaeological dig has turned up a Roman mosaic, circa 70 AD, depicting mythical scenes, grapes - and a Dalek. A few days later a young woman, rushing for work, is knocked over and killed by a car, then comes back to life. It's not long before all hell breaks loose, and the Doctor and Rose must use all their courage and cunning against an alien enemy - and a not-quite-human accomplice - who are intent on destroying humanity.
Plot
The Doctor and Rose are preparing to visit the moon. The Doctor lowers the TARDIS’s gravity so he and Rose can practice walking in moon-like conditions. The Doctor then asks Rose to open the TARDIS door and leap out onto the moon’s surface. Rose takes a leap but crashes into a wooden table, and when she looks around she finds they’ve landed inside a pub on Earth. The Doctor, concerned, examines the TARDIS to try and determine why they veered off-course. Rose then picks up a newspaper from the bar and sees a headline: ‘ROMAN REMAINS FOUND AT CREDITON VALE’. She looks at the accompanying picture, which displays a man, a woman, and the unmistakeable figure of a Dalek. She rushes to the TARDIS to show the Doctor, but before she can get in the TARDIS dematerialises.
Kate Yates is lying in bed, listening to the radio, when she drifts off to sleep. Around 9:30am she wakes up, and realising she’s late for work leaves the house in a hurry. Meanwhile in the pub, Rose climbs out of her space suit and climbs out of a window when she hears someone moving upstairs. She sits on a bench by the village green, waiting for the Doctor to return, when she sees Kate Yates running for a bus. Kate sees her bus pull away and stops in the middle of the road. Then, before she can move, a sports car speeds round a corner and runs her over. The car’s driver steps out, and Rose shouts for him to call an ambulance. Rose then sits with Kate, holding her hand, when suddenly Kate’s body is overtaken by a crackling green aura. A moment later the aura passes and Kate, whose hair has changed from red to blonde, calmly gets up and tells Rose that she’s fine.
In the TARDIS, the Doctor sees unfamiliar markings appear on the console screen. He realises that the TARDIS is acting of its own accord, and asks it where it’s taking him. Suddenly the TARDIS stops, and the Doctor steps out into a dark underground facility. After some exploration he determines that he’s in an abandoned nuclear bunker. When the Doctor hears somebody listing to the radio nearby he sets out to find them.
Frank is listening to the radio, overseeing the volunteers working at the archaeological dig site, when the Doctor taps him on the shoulder and asks to borrow his phone. The Doctor then uses his sonic screwdriver on the phone to boost its signal and calls Rose. He asks Frank where he is, and when Frank tells him the Doctor tells Rose that he’s at Crediton Vale, a disused nuclear bunker-turned archaeological dig site. He then hangs up and returns the phone to Frank, who gives him a tour of the dig site. When the Doctor asks if they’ve dug up anything unusual, Frank points him to a mosaic being uncovered by the dig site’s student volunteers. The Doctor jumps into the pit, where the volunteers have unearthed a strange metal object. The Doctor then calls to Frank, and tells everyone to get back, as he finds himself face-to-face with a Dalek. The Dalek appears to be lifeless. When the students ask what it is, the Doctor says it’s a bomb and tells them to evacuate. The students go, but Frank remains behind.
Kate sits in the museum tea shop and calls her boss Serena to explain why she’s late for work. When Kate says she was “almost” run over by a car Serena is not sympathetic, and Kate, furious, abruptly ends the call. She then picks up a newspaper and turns to the puzzle page. She completes all of the hardest puzzles with ease. Suddenly Kate finds herself hyper-aware of everything in the room – the exact temperature of her coffee, the chemical processes taking place inside the cup – and can see the atoms that make up the room. When Rose comes into the tea shop asking if she is okay, and why she isn’t dead, Kate tells her to go away. To her own surprise, Kate registers Rose’s kindness as weakness.
The Doctor and Frank open the Dalek’s casing, and the Doctor is relieved to see a mound of ash where the Dalek creature would have been. Frank begins to wonder how the Doctor knows so much about the past, and seems to know so much about outer space. He asks the Doctor if he’s mad and the Doctor, ignoring the question, tells Frank that the Dalek is a creature from outer space. Frank, thinking it’s a joke, decides to play along.
Rose pleads with Kate to let her help. When Rose mentions the Doctor, Kate suddenly becomes very alert. Rose persuades her to come with her to Crediton Vale to meet the Doctor. They get on a bus, and as they approach Kate finds that memories of planets burning are flashing into her mind, taking over her own memories. Uncontrollably, she begins to think the word ‘exterminate’ over and over.
The Doctor removes the Dalek’s gun and hands it to Frank. He tells Frank that the gun is dangerous and shouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. He asks Frank to take it home, saying he’ll collect it later, and Frank gets into a lift to head up to the surface.
Rose and Kate arrive at the building site under which Crediton Vale nuclear bunker was built. They see Frank with the student volunteers outside the bungalow which served as the bunker’s secret entrance. As they pass Frank, Kate feels a tingle of static. Rose and Kate get into the lift to descend into the bunker, and Kate fights hard to supress her murderous thoughts and urges. Eventually she decides that, when the time is right, she will exterminate Rose.
Underground, Rose and the Doctor are reunited. Rose begins telling the Doctor about the mosaic, but stops suddenly when she sees the Dalek. The Doctor reassures her that the Dalek is dead. Kate wants to run to the empty Dalek casing, but recognises the Doctor as the dangerous man from her visions, and decides to play her cards close to her chest. To appear like a normal human, she asks what the Dalek casing is. Rose then introduces Kate and the Doctor, ignoring her, proceeds to tell Rose he’s dismembering the casing so he can dispose of it in a black hole. He tells her it might be booby trapped, and in particular mentions virus transmitters which could lock into the TARDIS and take over its operating systems. Rose tries again to tell the Doctor about Kate, but he insists that dismantling the Dalek casing must be more important. The Doctor continues his work, only stopping when he looks up and sees Kate, with her arm outstretched, sending tiny glowing filaments from her fingertips into the Dalek casing.
The Doctor quickly tackles Kate to the ground, and asks Rose to tell him everything she knows about her. Rose explains how Kate healed herself after the car accident, and the Doctor, feeling static electricity coming from Kate’s hands, realises that a kind of Dalek energy is coursing through her. He theorises that the dying Dalek sent out a genetic imprint of itself which had laid dormant in humans until it was activated in Kate. He then corrects himself, stating that he would have noticed if all humans had been imprinted with the ‘Dalek factor’, and suggests that the imprint failed and Kate’s transformation is the result of a dangerous fluke. He then tells Rose to get Kate as far away from the Dalek casing as she can, saying that the further she gets from the casing the less susceptible to the Dalek factor's influence she will be. As Rose carries Kate to the lift, the Doctor examines the circuitry inside the Dalek casing. He peers inside, looks down into the body of the casing, and sees a newly-formed infant Dalek creature writhing around. It reaches for the controls. The Doctor considers killing the creature, but hesitates for a second too long. The casing slams shut, and the Dalek’s once-dormant eyestalk begins to glow. The whole creature then begins twitching into life, relearning to speak and move, and then frees itself from the ground. The Doctor, out of options, runs to the lift and begins desperately jabbing the button. The lift arrives, and the Doctor jumps inside as the levitating Dalek approaches. When the lift begins to ascend the Dalek breaks into the shaft, follows it up, and then grabs the base of the lift with its sucker. The lift grinds to a halt, and the Dalek begins to pull it back down with the Doctor inside. The Doctor removes the lift’s ceiling panels with his sonic screwdriver and jumps up. As the Dalek pulls the floor of the lift away, the Doctor climbs out and begins to clamber up the lift’s metal cable.
On the surface, Rose and Kate hitch a lift from a lorry driver named Atif. Rose tells Atif that Kate isn’t feeling very well. As they drive further from Crediton Vale Kate gradually comes round, and asks Rose what just happened. Atif offers to drop Rose and Kate off in Hastings or Dover, and Rose says Dover sounds good.
The Doctor flees from the bungalow, and his heart sinks when he sees two police cars pulling up in front of him. A student volunteer recognises the Doctor as the man from the dig site, and a police officer asks the Doctor for his identification. The Doctor, knowing they are all in danger, pleads with everyone to run away. When the infant Dalek then emerges from the bungalow, the police officer approaches it with curiosity. When a student makes fun of the Dalek’s sucker, believing the Dalek to be a robot made by the Doctor, the Dalek grabs his stomach and throws him aside violently. The students and police officers them begin running away, but the Dalek picks up a police car with its sucker and throws it over their heads, blocking their escape from the building site. The Dalek then chases the humans into a narrow alley between two half-built flats. Once they’re herded in, it begins to knock the walls in the hopes of sending the girders and scaffolding stacked on top crashing down on its victims. The Doctor then distracts the Dalek by calling its name. The Doctor calls the Dalek to him, asking it to scan his hearts. As it does so, the humans make their escape. The Dalek, its thinking capabilities still new and slow, gradually realises that the Doctor is a Time Lord. The Doctor then tells the Dalek that he’s a very specific Time Lord who the Daleks refer to as the Oncoming Storm. The Dalek then states that the Doctor is an enemy of the Daleks. The Doctor then runs further into the building site, and the Dalek, flying, follows closely behind.
In the lorry, Kate begins crying. She can’t stop the Dalek part of her putting evil thoughts into her head. She begins talking as a Dalek, about how she looks forward to exterminating the human race and bringing purity to the universe. Atif, growing concerned, begins a detour to the nearest hospital. Kate then suddenly grabs the steering wheel and sends the lorry crashing into a grass verge next to a row of shops. Kate sees that they have arrived in Twyford, the largest human settlement near to Crediton Vale, and is excited to find that a market has caused the place to be crawling with humans. Kate elbows Rose in the stomach before escaping from the lorry. Rose then climbs out after her, telling Atif to escape while he can.
The Doctor lures the slow-moving Dalek round a corner. When it turns the corner, the Doctor calls to it from the cab of the building site’s tallest crane. He throws a brick which hits the Dalek’s eyestalk, impairing its vision. He then pulls a lever, and the concrete ball attached to the crane swings across and whacks into the side of the Dalek, sending it flying over a nearby cliff and down towards the sea. The Doctor then carefully clambers down the cliff-face to find the injured Dalek twitching in the shallow water. He approaches and removes the Dalek’s casing with his sonic, intending to kill the creature with his bare hands. He knows he has to act fast, before the Dalek can repair itself, and presses his sonic into the Dalek’s life-support connection. He activates the screwdriver and the Dalek screams as sparks fly from its casing. The force of this pushes the Doctor back into the sea, where he is knocked unconscious.
Kate pushes through Twyford’s market, disgusted by the humans and their dogs. She shouts “I will be unstoppable!”, drawing the attention of her boss Serena, who is visiting the market on her lunch break. Serena tells Kate that she’s fired. Kate then grabs Serena by the neck and begins to choke her. A crowd gathers, and Rose pushes to the front. She tries to reason with Kate, and when she mentions Kate’s mother Kate feels a twinge of conscience and lets Serena go.
The Doctor comes round in the water, and finds his sonic screwdriver floating beside him. He looks to the cliffs, and the Dalek is nowhere in sight. Its casing had repelled him and stolen electrical energy from the sonic screwdriver. The Doctor then fears that the Dalek is now charged up, with its mind fully formed, and on the loose. He then realises that the first thing the Dalek would want to do is retrieve its gunstick, and he sets out to get to Frank before the Dalek can.
Frank is on the train home, with the Dalek gunstick in a canvas bag on the seat beside him, when the train suddenly grinds to a halt. The Dalek pulls up the carriage roof with its suction cup and descends into the aisle. It says it has detected the weapon and demands to know which human has it. Frank then takes the gunstick out of his bag and attempts to use it, but can’t find a way to fire it. The Dalek then demands that Frank attach the weapon to its casing. Frank hesitates, but when the Dalek injures another passenger he finally agrees. With its blaster reattached, the Dalek exterminates Frank before turning its weapon on the other passengers.
Police arrive at Twyford Market and attempt to arrest Kate. Before they can, Rose hears screams and shouts of ‘exterminate’ in the distance. She sees the Dalek flying across the town, firing in all directions, massacring people on the high street. Everyone except her and Kate flee the market. The Dalek then recognises Kate, and descends to talk to her. It asks her who Rose is, and when it learns that Rose has an emotional connection to the Doctor it decides to weaken the Doctor by killing her. It aims its gunstick at Rose, but when the TARDIS materialises between the Dalek and Rose its blast is deflected. The Doctor then steps out of the TARDIS to face the Dalek. He raises his hands, and dares the Dalek to exterminate him.
The Doctor’s bluff works, and the Dalek does not exterminate him. The Doctor explains to Rose that the Dalek needs the information in his head because its own data stores are out of date. He then tells the Dalek to destroy itself or be destroyed. In response, the Dalek proposes a deal: if the Doctor helps it escape to space-time coordinates of its choosing it will spare the Earth and its inhabitants. The Doctor, unwilling to risk the Earth, accepts the Dalek’s proposal.
The Doctor and Rose enter the TARDIS. Rose asks the Doctor how he’s planning to betray or trap the Dalek, and the Doctor tells Rose that he isn’t. He says that the Dalek is too intelligent to be tricked, and he intends to help it escape for real. Rose suggests they could destroy it using the time vortex, but the Doctor dismisses this as too dangerous. He then retrieves a Time Ring from a trunk, explaining to Rose that it works like a kind of personal TARDIS, and goes to deliver it to the Dalek. Outside, the Dalek scans the ring before the Doctor attaches it to its sucker arm. It then asks Kate to step forward and set the ring to the coordinates seven zero five nine galactic north by eight eight point five galactic west, with the time factor Earth date AD 500 million. It then tells Kate to join it on its journey, so when they arrive she can help it source materials to rebuild the Dalek race. Kate activates the ring, and as the Dalek prepares to leave it tells the Doctor and Rose that they will be exterminated. The Doctor is not phased by this apparent betrayal. As Kate continues to operate the ring’s controls Rose pleads with her to fight against the Dalek life force taking her over. She asks Kate to recall the number of the bus she missed, her ex, and what she had for dinner the night before. Kate slowly begins to regain some humanity. The Dalek fires, but its shot is caught inside a forcefield Kate has created around herself and the Dalek. Rose then continues trying to pull Kate’s mind away from the Dalek’s influence. As Kate’s autonomy grows stronger, she sets the Time Ring to self destruct. The Dalek begins to rattle uncontrollably, and the Doctor tells Kate and Rose to get in the TARDIS so they can be safe from the coming warp implosion. They head inside and shut the door as the Dalek implodes, leaving nothing behind but a scorch mark on the ground.
Inside the TARDIS, Kate has lost all of the Dalek’s memories and urges and seems confused about where she is. The Doctor thanks her for saving so many lives, and as a gesture of goodwill he wipes away her credit card debt. The TARDIS then drops Kate back in Winchelham. As she leaves, Kate is determined to return to London and make a second start on the life she wants.
At Durham University, in the summer of 1970, Frank Openshaw is walking to his next lecture when he sees Sandra, the girl he fancies, walking the opposite way. Rose then crashes into Frank on a bicycle, knocking him over. Sandra rushes over to Frank, helping him up and smiling at him. Rose then returns to the TARDIS, where she and the Doctor watch Frank and Sandra walk away together. Rose asks the Doctor why he wanted her to run into Frank, and the Doctor tells her that he’s bending the rules for his friend.
Characters
Worldbuilding
- Some birds that live where Kate Yates works are curlews and kingfishers.
- The Doctor plans to confuse future explorers by planting a Women's Institute flag on the Moon.
- The Doctor mentions Mary Poppins.
- The Doctor sings the words to Jerusalem.
- The Doctor paraphrases Neil Armstrong.
- The Doctor examines a Tanzanian flag.
- Rose compares the moon to Calais, and the Doctor then compares Earth to Dover.
- The Doctor owns a set of golf clubs.
- The mosaic also displays a jug and a bunch of green grapes.
- Kate is a fan of the radio presenters Terry Wogan and Ken Bruce.
- Terry Wogan talks about toothpaste, TV, and plays 'Snowbird' by Anne Murray.
- Kate eats half a croissant.
- Rose recalls a first aid training video she watched as part of her old job.
- The Doctor mentions Northampton.
- Frank drinks coffee from a thermos flask.
- The Doctor sees Nero on a Roman coin.
- The Doctor identifies a Roman turning spike and a pizza slice.
- Kate eats a teacake.
- Kate solves sudoku puzzles and a crossword.
- The Doctor mentions sausage and chips.
- The Doctor tells Frank to go home and watch Brainteaser.
- The Doctor alludes to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
- The Doctor mentions the fall of Troy.
- The Doctor says that Dalek casings are booby trapped.
- A student mistakes the Dalek’s sucker for a sink plunger.
- The Doctor sees a fish.
- Serena has dealt with delays in mattress delivery all over Liverpool and the North-East, mentioning that people calling the call centre shouted with Scouse and Geordie accents.
- Frank sees washing on a washing line.
- The Doctor mentions burgers.
- Kate imagines custard pouring over bread and butter pudding.
- Rose mentions The X Factor, floor polish, contact lenses, home delivery, gas bills, mobile phones, trains, internet arguments, Kylie, and a Boots advantage card when listing normal, human things.
Notes
- By causing Frank and Sandra to meet at university in 1970, rather than ten years after they left, the Doctor changes the course of history. This also creates a paradox – if Frank and Sandra had met in 1970 then the Frank in this story's timeline would not have told the Doctor that they didn’t meet until much later, and so the Doctor would have no reason to go back in time and change these events in the first place.
- This short novel (or novella) was the first release under a subsidiary banner of BBC Books, Quick Reads, an initiative to promote literacy. Quick Reads novellas are considerably shorter than the usual releases in the BBC Tenth Doctor Adventures line, roughly equivalent in word count to some of the shorter Target Books novelisations. I Am a Dalek was released exclusively in paperback format, the first New Series Adventure to not be published in hard cover.
- This novella was also released as an ebook available from the Amazon Kindle store.
Continuity
- This is the Tenth Doctor's first encounter with the Daleks. He would later encounter them in TV: Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks, The Stolen Earth/Journey's End, COMIC: Carnage Zoo/Flight and Fury/The Living Ghosts/Extermination of the Daleks, and PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks.
- This isn't the first time the Daleks attempted to use modified humans as puppets: The Fifth Doctor had already faced Dalek duplicates in TV: Resurrection of the Daleks; The Dalek Emperor had managed to produce pure-blood Daleks from human DNA in TV: The Parting of the Ways; Dalek Sec had turned himself into the first Dalek-human hybrid as an experiment to convert all humans to Daleks in TV: Daleks in Manhattan; and the Eleventh Doctor was captured by a Dalek puppet and met Oswin Oswald, an echo of Clara Oswald, who had suffered a complete Dalek-conversion in TV: Asylum of the Daleks.
- The Dalek Factor plan is similar to the Dalek Emperor's plan in TV: The Evil of the Daleks.
- Rose recalls destroying the Daleks after absorbing the Time Vortex. (TV: The Parting of the Ways)
- The Dalek recalls that the capsule containing the Dalek Factor fell to Earth as a result of the final battle of the Last Great Time War. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
- The Doctor alludes to the Dalek conflict of the year 4000. (TV: Mission to the Unknown, The Daleks' Master Plan)
External links
- Official I Am a Dalek page at Penguin Books
- I Am a Dalek at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
- The Discontinuity Guide to: I Am a Dalek at The Whoniverse
- The Cloister Library: I Am a Dalek
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