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 bus, 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.
Characters
- Tenth Doctor
- Planning to confuse future explorers by planting a Women's Institute flag on the moon.
- Rose Tyler
- Planning to be the first woman to walk on the moon, but the TARDIS takes an unexpected detour.
- Kate Yates
- Hit by a car but resurrected, her latent Dalek Factor activated
- Hair changes from red to blonde, gains enhanced strength and intelligence
- Is possessed by a Dalek
- Convinced by Rose and the Doctor to turn on the Dalek, goes back to normal
- Frank Openshaw
- Befriends the Doctor
- Is Exterminated
- Though they cannot save his life, Rose and the Doctor meddle in history a bit so that Frank meets his wife Sandra years earlier than in the original timeline
- Serena
- Annoying boss of Kate, nearly strangled by Dalek-hybrid Kate
- Sandra Openshaw
- Wife of Frank Openshaw
References
- Some birds that live where Kate Yates works are curlews and kingfishers.
Notes
- 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 I am a Dalek was released exclusively in paperback format, the first New Series Adventure to not be published in hard cover.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.
- 69,000 copies have been sold.[1]
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 Resurrection of the Daleks; The Dalek Emperor had managed to produce pure-blood Daleks from human DNA in 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 Daleks in Manhattan; and the Eleventh Doctor was captured by a Dalek puppet and met Oswin, an echo of Clara Oswald, who had suffered a complete Dalek-conversion in Asylum of the Daleks.
References
External links
- 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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