Enemy of the Daleks (unproduced novel)

You may be looking for the (unrelated) audio story of the same name.

Enemy of the Daleks was a proposed BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures novel pitched by Lance Parkin in October 1998. However, Parkin realised he was too busy writing Emmerdale to complete the novel, and it was replaced with Parallel 59.

Summary

The Doctor's TARDIS is knocked from the Time Vortex and crashes, knocking the Doctor unconscious. Fitz and Compassion discover they have landed in the ruins of Sydney, which is being patrolled by flying saucers. Fitz meets a human man and his pregnant wife, who take him to a futuristic undersea Dome where they live; Vana, the female leader of the people there, promises to send search parties to bring back the Doctor.

Meanwhile, the Doctor wakes up, exits the TARDIS, and immediately realises that this ruined Earth is being controlled by the Daleks, who have captured Compassion and are watching Fitz in the Domed City. The Daleks interrogate Compassion about the War; after she tells them where to find the Doctor, they move her to the mining works in Berkeley, California, which they know to be a site of significant activity in the early 21st century. The workers there tell her about the Domed City, which is the home of the Elite, ruthless human traitors who serve the Daleks.

The Daleks catch the Doctor, heal him, and interrogate him. He tells them nothing, but in the process, he goads them into telling him a great deal about their operations in Sydney. Though they know little about the future War, they believe themselves to be the Enemy, and their activities in Sydney and Berkeley are an attempt to find the information they need to become a power capable of threatening the Time Lords.

The Daleks build a perfect robot copy of the Eighth Doctor, designed to emulate him by speaking only phrases the Daleks heard him say in War of the Daleks and Legacy of the Daleks. Vana introduces him to Fitz, who is fooled, and the two of them set out for the TARDIS to find Compassion.

Meanwhile, the real Doctor is rescued from interrogation by three blond humanoids who destroy the Daleks with powerful weapons. These are the Klade, a faction from the far future who have come back in time to prevent Last Contact, the moment when the Enemy were invoked and the War became inevitable. Together, the Doctor and the Klade go to Berkeley, where they rescue Compassion and discover an abandoned laboratory with Gallifreyan artefacts belonging to the Doctor's father, who once worked here with an unclear purpose.

The Daleks arrive at the laboratory with Vana: the Doctor has led them to the very thing they were looking for. They explain that they know the Doctor's father has some connection to the War. Vana goes into labour, and the Doctor delivers the baby, horrified to discover it is a Dalek mutant. The Daleks reveal they are using their technology to force-evolve the lifeforms of a hundred worlds: "the genetic destiny of the universe is to become Dalek."

Vana and Compassion tell the Domed City about the Dalek's horrific plan, and the Elite finally rebel, but they are quickly slain by the Daleks. The Daleks take the Doctor to Dalek Space Command, a vast war fleet that is avoiding detection by being in constant movement near the galaxy's edge. DAVROS, reduced to an artificial intelligence, taunts the Doctor.

Back in Australia, the Klade find the Bad Doctor and Fitz, who they take to the Klade ship. There, the Bad Doctor pulls back a panel to reveal a Dalek mutant. The Klade are the ultimate evolutionary form of the Daleks, and they explain that the Daleks aren't the Enemy: in fact, the Klade is part of an intergalactic alliance, led by the Doctor's father, that is fighting the Enemy. But their war is going badly; the Klade are running out of fuel for their time machines. The Daleks accept this knowledge with horror.

Meanwhile, the Doctor escapes into the Command Ship, where he receives a message from his father: he'll send a rescue team, but the Doctor has to send him his space-time coordinates. The Doctor broadcasts a reply from the communications room, but the message was actually from not his father but the enemy. The Doctor has just established Last Contact; the future is now set, and the universe is condemned. The Black Dalek dubs him the "bringer of darkness."

Fitz has reunited with Compassion in the Dome, but the Daleks have decided to destroy all evidence of Project Destiny, and they blow the airlocks to flood the Dome. As the Bad Doctor's circuits are destroyed, the two companions fight their way to the TARDIS.

The Enemy launch a massive attack on Space Command, smashing apart the Dalek fleet. The Doctor is trapped. But a portal opens and a voice demands he enters. The Doctor is terrified by what he sees inside, which is never described to the reader, and he tries to escape, but he is suddenly pulled in.

Behind the scenes

• The Klade were first mentioned in The Infinity Doctors and would later play a major role in Parkin's 2001 novel Father Time and comic Miranda.
• The Infinity Doctors foreshadowed Enemy of the Daleks in several other ways, including a dream sequence where the Infinity Doctor apparently sees the Eighth Doctor during the Enemy's arrival in Enemy of the Daleks (which would later be retconned to be the events of Father Time) and a conversation about Last Contact with the ambiguously Doctor-like Helios, who opposes Last Contant and mentions that he came to the Needle to "continue his father's work."
• The Doctor's father's presence at Berkeley is a reference to Robert deLaurentis' 1994 movie script The Time of My Life, where the Doctor's father was a professor at the University of California. Daniel Joyce, a Time Lord professor at Berkeley, previously appeared in Kate Orman and Jon Blum's 1999 novel Unnatural History; Parkin would later use the Time Lord Ulysses, another version of the Doctor's father from the various 1990s movie scripts, in The Gallifrey Chronicles, where he discussed Last Contact with Daniel Joyce's assistant Larna.
• The story revolves around Last Contact, a concept which was also mentioned in Parkin's contributions to the charity anthology Perfect Timing 2 and The Book of the War. It would go on to feature as a core element of the Matrix prophecy in The Gallifrey Chronicles.
• Another planned Dalek Eighth Doctor Adventure, Lawrence Miles' Valentine's Day, was also cancelled.
• Parkin reused the imagery of a humanoid giving birth to a Dalek mutant in Corruption.
• The short story We are the Daleks! featured a race of godlike scientists experimenting with accelerating human evolution, and in doing so unintentionally created Daleks.