The Dalek Project was BBC Books' second original graphic novel. Originally scheduled for publication in the autumn of 2009, it originally featured the then-current Tenth Doctor. Due to some narrative similarities to the then-in-production Victory of the Daleks, however, its publication was delayed until September 2012 — by which time it had to be reworked so as to accommodate the Eleventh Doctor.
Publishers summary
A stunning new graphic novel, featuring the Doctor as played by Matt Smith.
It's the height of the Great War and Hellcombe Hall is a house full of mystery: locked doors, forbidden rooms, dustsheets covering guilty secrets, and ghostly noises frightening the servants.
Most mysterious of all, the drawing-room seems to open directly onto a muddy, corpse-filled trench on the Western Front . . .
Arriving at this stately home, the Doctor meets Lord Hellcombe, an armaments manufacturer who has a new secret weapon he believes will win the war: he calls it ‘the Dalek’.
Soon, the Doctor and his new friends are in a race against time to prevent the entire Western Front from becoming part of the Dalek Project!
Plot
2017 - North Eastern France a century after the Great War. Two archaeologists, Jules and Guillaume, uncover a Dalek saucer buried in the ground. They attach a power cable to it to get past the door. However, one of the Daleks inside is revived. It exterminates Guillaume. Jules manages to escape but is put in shock. The Doctor is able to destroy the Daleks.
However a Quasimodo Dalek is revealed, reconstructed from Dalek parts, though it is a pure robotic Dalek. It is able to restore power to the Dalek ship from power cables. Daleks start attacking the archeologists. However the Doctor uses a cable from the TARDIS to overload the Dalek ship. He then tells of the events which led to the Dalek ship being there.
In France he found a Dalek working with Lord Hellcombe to construct robot Daleks, with which Hellcombe hoped to win the war. The Doctor also met Corporal Anderson. The Dalek had brought Hellcombe's son Ralph back after he was shot down. The Doctor realises the Daleks shot Ralph down, and have reconstructed him in a robot body to manipulate Hellcombe. The Doctor discovers a Dalek doing the same thing to a German scientist whose son was killed in Russia, so he wants revenge. The Doctor thinks the Daleks crashed in a time-storm. The Daleks reveal they have been travelling through history to gain knowledge of human strategy. They landed there in 1908 and plan to finally say how humans will react toward certain death. The British Daleks and German Daleks are sent toward each other but turn on the humans. The Daleks are ordered to exterminate all the soldiers to eradicate all evidence of Dalek activity. The soldiers order a shell bombardment. The Doctor changes the robot Daleks so they recognize Daleks as enemies. Lord Hellcombe dies fighting the Daleks. Ralph crashes a plane into the Dalek saucer, bringing it down. The bombardment destroys the Daleks but the Doctor and Anderson escape through one of the Dalek portals, closing it before the Daleks pursuing them can get through. The Doctor leaves. to be added
Characters
References
- The Doctor speculates that Gavrilo Princip was conditioned by the Daleks to kill Archduke Ferdinand so that the world would be plunged into war, which the Daleks could use to their advantage as they advanced the Dalek Project. These suspicions are never confirmed.
Notes
- This may have been originally cancelled due to the episode TV: Victory of the Daleks that was being filmed around the time this comic was due to be released. There are some similarities and differences between this and Victory of the Daleks:
- In the comic a man called Lord Hellcombe claims to have created the Dalek. Similary, in Victory of the Daleks a man called Professor Bracewell claims to have created the Daleks.
- The Dalek Project was to be set during the First World War while Victory of the Daleks is set during the Second World War and features Winston Churchill.
- The Doctor is without a companion in this story. He is joined by Corporal Edward Anderson as a one-off companion. PROSE: Dark Horizons, PROSE: Plague of the Cybermen and PROSE: The Dalek Generation also featuring the Doctor travelling solo.
- Despite featuring prominently in GAME: City of the Daleks and COMIC: The Only Good Dalek, the Daleks of the New Dalek Paradigm do not appear in this story. Only the standard bronze 2005 Dalek design is featured, much like how they are the standard Daleks soldiers in TV: Asylum of the Daleks. Later in PROSE: The Dalek Generation, the 2005 Daleks would also feature instead of the 2010 redesign, save for one brief appearance by the Supreme Dalek.
- Given that the novel was originally to feature the Tenth Doctor, the Daleks featured were likely to have been yet more scattered survivors of the Time War first seen in Dalek and finally in Extermination of the Daleks. Since the Eleventh Doctor accidentally helped restore the Dalek race during his first encounter with them, it can be safely assumed that they are the bronze drones of the New Dalek Paradigm as seen in Asylum and the later Generation
Continuity
- A Dalek on low power attempts to kill Jules using its Manipulator arm the same way the Dalek killed Simmons in TV: Dalek.
- The Doctor dons a Panama hat and claims "Panama hats are cool", as he does with his bow tie (TV: The Eleventh Hour onwards) and fezzes (TV: The Big Bang onwards) among other objects.
Gallery
Original Tenth Doctor cover
