The Lights of Skaro (audio story)

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The Lights of Skaro was the fourth full cast audio story in The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield audio anthology released in 2014 by Big Finish Productions. It saw the death of Audrey Dudman, Ace's mother, bringing Ace's long and often difficult history with her to a close.

Publisher's summary

Bernice Summerfield is on Skaro, and she's very much on her own. The Doctor can't get to her, not this time. All Benny can do is stay alive for as long as possible. And, in a city full of Daleks, that's not going to be very long.

Plot

Asleep in his bunker, forgotten by the Daleks, Davros muses upon how time is broken on Skaro and that nothing must come in the way of the return of his creations. One day, he shall return and ensure that the Daleks never forget him again.

The Daleks shoot Klinus and Benny, Ace, Klinus, Foster and Varna flee and are separated. Benny is cornered and, blaming herself for Klinus's death, commands a Dalek to exterminate her, but escapes when a lift arrives. The Doctor is unable to materialise the TARDIS until the time lock collapses and appears to Benny as a projection, telling her that he hoped that she would keep Ace from reaching Skaro. With time still broken, she sees the planet's destruction by the exploding sun and an infected Dalek.

Benny is trapped in a hydroponics centre and attacked by Dalek mutants before Ace turns on the lights and saves her, holding off the Daleks when they arrive. Benny runs and time jumps to the Dalek Emperor, damaged during the Civil War, and, after accusing him of keeping the Daleks stupid so that they will obey him, she walks away, believing it to be the greatest insult she can give him. She encounters Klinus, who reveals that he and Varna were dead the whole time; he was a Kaled artist during the Thousand Year War who was recruited to become one of the first Daleks. He refuses to remember what he did as a Dalek and returns to history, asking her to remember him.

Benny encounters an early Dalek who had hoped to leave his casing before learning that his kind could not survive without radiation. In order to be able to go on and return to studying science, the Daleks exterminated the Thals, but upon learning of time travel and life on other planets from a stranger they decided to leave and conquer space once power was returned to the city. The Doctor appears again and reveals that he was the stranger and is responsible for all of the disasters that Benny has seen.

Benny finds Varna and Foster in a control room, having revived a prototype Dalek with static electricity. Foster did not really come to Skaro to make a documentary but to help the Daleks overcome their need for static electricity in return for knowledge. The Dalek exterminates Foster for his supposed inferiority and Varna out of jealousy, unable to bear the fact that Daleks came from specimens like the Kaleds. He lets Benny go and she finds Ace, fastened to a wall for interrogation.

Ace tells Benny that the Doctor sent her to the Academy on Gallifrey and, after learning of her mother's slow death to cancer and the Daleks' destruction of Talmeson, she tried to time lock the Daleks out of history with an unstable Omega Device early in their history. Benny believes that what Ace tried to do was wrong and will not help her complete the job even if it would save her own mother from extermination, so she leaves her behind.

With the time lock in its final stages, the TARDIS materialises and the Doctor quickly runs into Benny. They return to Ace and the Doctor and Benny agree to give the Omega Device to the Dalek who let Benny go. It creates a time corridor to the future and the Dalek's future-self emerges; the future Dalek tells the past one that they will never leave their casings and walk on Skaro even after four thousand centuries, leading them to destroy one another. The paradox collapses the time lock and the Omega Device is destroyed.

The Doctor releases Ace with his sonic screwdriver and, furious with her, sends her to the TARDIS. He invites Benny to join him for a while until Ace is ready to return to Gallifrey. She agrees to travel with them again for a bit and the Doctor says that it is time for some new adventures.

Cast

Crew

Worldbuilding

Notes

  • The Lights of Skaro was a 1954 novel by David Dodge. It coincidentally used "Skaro" as the name of a fictional Balkan town nearly a decade before the planet Skaro appeared in TV: The Daleks. Furthermore, Škaro is a Croatian surname.

Continuity

External links