Fugitive of the Daleks (audio story)

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Fugitive of the Daleks was the story comprising the eighth release in The First Doctor Adventures, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Jonathan Morris and featured Stephen Noonan as the First Doctor, Lauren Cornelius as Dodo Chaplet and Maureen O'Brien as Vicki Pallister.

Publisher's summary[[edit] | [edit source]]

Years after ending her travels with the Doctor, Vicki finds herself back in the TARDIS. The Doctor desperately needs her help, and she’s only too happy to oblige. But in the process, the two of them fall into a series of perilous encounters, with the dreaded Daleks never far behind them.

What is the mysterious presence inside the TARDIS? And precisely what damage do the Daleks and their agents intend to cause to the flow of Earth’s history?

The Doctor and Vicki must call upon all their guile and bravery to discover the truth and save the day.

Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]

Part one[[edit] | [edit source]]

Told by her grandson Antiphus that the TARDIS has appeared in Carthage, Vicki gives him a goodbye message for his father in case she does not return and enters the ship with a goodbye. She finds the Doctor unwell inside and agrees to pilot the TARDIS with the telepathic circuits to get him medical attention, materialising aboard Perpetuity Station in the orbit of the red supergiant Quadrans Majoris. Biomedic Oltan takes the Doctor away to be stabilised whilst Tarmis, a maintenance technician, shows Vicki around the station and introduces her to the controller, Astronomer-Scientist Hedra.

Vicki learns that Hedra, Tarmis and Oltan are the only people aboard the station to have survived an outbreak of space plague which killed almost forty others 560 years ago. They have managed to become effectively immortal using the advanced resources at their disposal and, with the station still under quarantine because of the red supergiant's radiation preventing external communication, hope to leave in the TARDIS once the Doctor has recovered. When Vicki visits him, he tells her that he cannot remember anything from after the burning of the City of the Mechonoids in a Dalek attack and she tells him about the life she has lived since Troy.

The Doctor refuses to help Hedra, Tarmis and Oltan and hurries back to the TARDIS with Vicki, but the storage room it landed in is locked and Tarmis and Oltan take them captive. Whilst Tarmis leads Vicki away, Oltan takes the Doctor to Hedra, who demands that he take the trio anywhere in the universe as the supergiant will become a black hole in twenty years and swallow the station. Vicki overpowers Tarmis during a bout of stellar turbulence and discovers that he is a robot duplicate built to survive the plague, something that the Doctor deduces is the case for all three of them due to them never having to eat despite the station having a store of food.

Although the crewmembers now know that they are robots, the Doctor is sure that they will soon forget as their programming keeps them from going insane and explains that he cannot take them from the station because they are powered by the supergiant and would cease to function if they left. They forget as expected and Vicki takes Tarmis to the medical bay, but they hide when a time machine materialises and Daleks exit. They know that the Doctor is aboard and go to capture him.

Part two[[edit] | [edit source]]

The Doctor convinces Hedra to help him and Vicki escape Perpetuity Station to get rid of the Daleks and she pretends to hold him prisoner, demanding that the Daleks return to their time machine to await the Doctor's delivery. Once they are inside, Tarmis escorts the Doctor and Vicki back to the TARDIS and they dematerialise, the Daleks following moments after. The TARDIS materialises in a tomb which the Doctor and Vicki look around whilst the ship's computer reorientates and gathers power, but they are soon taken captive by savages whose High Priest communicates with the Doctor through gestures that he and Vicki are accused of defiling the resting place of their ancestors.

The Doctor and Vicki, unsure whether their inability to understand the savages is because of the translation circuit malfunctioning or their language being too rudimentary, are tied to poles to be sacrificed to a scorpion-like creature in a pool of boiling mud which the Daleks attempt and fail to exterminate. Somehow getting himself free from his bonds in the confusion, the Doctor releases Vicki and they flee back to the TARDIS, finding it guarded by a Dalek which commands them to enter the Dalek time machine. However, the Doctor knocks a statue into it and he and Vicki escape into the TARDIS, although the Doctor is almost hit by a shot from the Dalek.

As the roof of the tomb begins to fall in, the TARDIS dematerialises and the Daleks withdraw to their own time machine. Vicki gets water from the food machine and goes to rest in her bedroom, but the door is locked and the Doctor hurries to her, having remembered that he locked an alien inside. The alien, he says, was responsible for his poor health when he and Vicki were reunited and he declares that the TARDIS has been invaded.

Part three[[edit] | [edit source]]

The Doctor claims to be unable to recall any details about the alien or how it infiltrated the TARDIS and says that he and Vicki will have to wait until it starves to death. Vicki suggests that it could be the alien that the Daleks are after, which the Doctor agrees is possible, and rests in Barbara's room until they land at the site of a battle in North America in 1876. There, they are captured and taken to General Custer, who intends on keeping them with him due to his assumption that the Doctor is a sawbones and could be of use to his men in the war against the Sioux.

Vicki knows that the Battle of the Little Bighorn is imminent and knows it to be a pointless massacre, but the Doctor insists that they cannot change history by averting it. Custer learns of the nearby hostiles and accepts the Daleks' offer to hand the Doctor and Vicki over to them in return for their assistance in the battle on the condition that the fugitives are only handed over afterwards. The Daleks detect an ambush with a seismic detector and withdraw, leaving the 7th Cavalry Regiment to be killed as they do not wish to change human history.

The Doctor and Vicki, who is surprised by the Daleks' unwillingness to change time, get away on horses with Lieutenant James's help and are shot at with arrows. Vicki is unharmed but notices when the Doctor starts speaking in an unusual manner that he has been hit by one, despite him showing no sign of feeling any pain. He declares that his mission is to infiltrate and kill the Doctor.

Part four[[edit] | [edit source]]

Vicki gets the Doctor into the TARDIS where he starts acting normally and speculates that he has been influenced by the Daleks' hypnotic control. Removing the arrow, however, Vicki confirms that he is indeed a robot, although she keeps this from him and claims that it was simply caught in his jacket. They briefly land in 20th century London in place of a police box knocked down by Fred and Charlie, resulting in the two workers getting in trouble with Arnold from the council and vindicated once it dematerialises.

Next, the TARDIS lands on the glass moon Vitros and Vicki plans to lure the Daleks to where the glass is thinnest so that it breaks. Looking around and admiring the crystalline crabs that live on the moon, the travellers see glass worms below and the Doctor attracts them when the Daleks arrive by hitting the glass with his walking stick. A worm bursts through the ice and freezes the Daleks solid. The Doctor's legs are frozen as well, giving Vicki the opportunity to reveal that he is the robot duplicate built by the Daleks to kill the Doctor during her original adventures in the TARDIS. He remembers entering the TARDIS after the Doctor defeated him, wandering into the inner rooms and eventually encountering an intruder he locked in Vicki's room.

The Robot Doctor mourns the fact that he is not the real Doctor, but Vicki assures him that he was the Doctor when it mattered and wonders whether the Daleks want to return him to his original programming because of the reproducer's destruction. The programming starts to return to the surface and the Daleks reactivate, so the Robot Doctor sends Vicki to the TARDIS for her safety and she dematerialises in the hope of finding help. Remembering the prisoner trapped in her room, she opens the door and meets Dodo.

Part five[[edit] | [edit source]]

Vicki tells Dodo, who heard about her from Steven, about her adventures with the Robot Doctor and Dodo in turn tells her about how the Doctor disappeared after they saved Incherton. She attempted to use the TARDIS controls and went looking for the Doctor when the Cloister Bell rang, coming across the unconscious Robot Doctor and being locked in her room for her own safety after he attacked her. Vicki deduces that Dodo accidentally reactivated him and gave him knowledge of the TARDIS when she operated the controls.

The time path indicator alerts Vicki and Dodo to the pursuing timeship, aboard which the Daleks are failing to get the Robot Doctor to obey them due to the Doctor having damaged his motivational circuits, and they use the telepathic circuits to try to find help. The Dalek timeship materialises around the TARDIS and, after exiting, Vicki tells Dodo to remain inside the TARDIS whilst she goes in search of the Doctor, drawing the Daleks away so that she can head back. Vicki is soon captured, however, and brought before the Dalek Supreme.

Dodo finds the Robot Doctor outside of the TARDIS and enters with him, trying and failing to stop him from leaving Vicki behind and realising that he once again wants to kill the Doctor. As they fly to Earth, where the Robot Doctor believes his target probably is, the Dalek Supreme dismisses the other Daleks and opens its lid, telling Vicki that it has a secret. The Doctor emerges and laughs at having deceived the Daleks with his ruse.

Part six[[edit] | [edit source]]

Briefly returning to the Dalek Supreme's casing, the Doctor resumes the Daleks' pursuit of the TARDIS to save Dodo from the Robot Doctor and explains to Vicki how he came to be disguised as a Dalek; he was taken out of his time stream by his people and found himself in a polluted capsule which he used to travel to Kembel to capture the Daleks' time machine to follow the TARDIS, taking the place of the Dalek Supreme dying because of the Time Destructor. It was only when his double survived a blast on the savages' planet that he realised that it was the Robot Doctor.

The TARDIS lands outside the Hotel Métropole in 1911 Brussels on the day of the Solvay Conference and the Robot Doctor, planning to damage history to attract the Doctor's attention, forces Dodo to play along with him by threatening the lives of others. The Doctor and Vicki arrive in 1911, but the Doctor is unable to leave the time machine's dimensional field because he remains displaced in time and sends Vicki to find the Robot Doctor and Dodo. When Dodo escapes the Robot Doctor, Vicki tells her to return to the TARDIS and finds the robot inside the hotel, preparing to detonate himself and kill the scientists in attendance. She manages to persuade him to be the Doctor and deactivates him.

Dodo is caught and released by the Daleks because of the Doctor's order that they harm no humans and they depart in the time machine once they detect that the Robot Doctor has been deactivated. She and Vicki take the Robot Doctor into the TARDIS where the Doctor, having used the Dalek time machine to return to his own ship before setting it on a course for Skaro with the Daleks inside, explains that he has more control over the TARDIS than usual because of his circumstances and uses the telepathic circuits to get Vicki back to Carthage. Although she expresses no wish to return to her life without Troilus, she changes her mind upon seeing Antiphus on the scanner.

Vicki insists on a proper goodbye and thanks the Doctor for rescuing her and showing her that life went on, a sentiment which the Doctor shares. She tells Dodo to look after him and returns to her grandson. The Doctor dematerialises the TARDIS and can feel the time tracks shifting, which he believes will cause Dodo to forget about everything that has happened since he disappeared in Incherton. He reactivates the Robot Doctor and leaves him near Amboise where a young Frenchman is waiting to greet the new Abbot of Amboise; the Robot Doctor adopts this identity.

Cast[[edit] | [edit source]]

Crew[[edit] | [edit source]]

Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]

Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]

Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • Vicki has told Antiphus about the events of The Web Planet [+]Loading...["The Web Planet (TV story)"].
  • Vicki parted with the Doctor and Steven in The Myth Makers [+]Loading...["The Myth Makers (TV story)"].
  • The Doctor and Vicki skipped a time track in The Space Museum [+]Loading...["The Space Museum (TV story)"].
  • The Robot Doctor believes that he is suffering from temporal amnesia as a result of being taken out of time, just as the Sixth Doctor did in The Mysterious Planet [+]Loading...["The Mysterious Planet (TV story)"].
  • The Robot Doctor remembers the burning of the City of the Mechonoids, which he saw in The Chase [+]Loading...["The Chase (TV story)"].
  • Vicki asks the Robot Doctor if he can remember the events of The Time Meddler [+]Loading...["The Time Meddler (TV story)"].
  • The Doctor has a collection of swords and antique firearms. He mentioned having a collection of guns in The Gunfighters [+]Loading...["The Gunfighters (TV story)"].
  • Vicki references the "noble art of fisticuffs", a phrase the Doctor used in The Romans [+]Loading...["The Romans (TV story)"].
  • The Robot Doctor is aware that deleting a room in the TARDIS with living beings inside would automatically bring them into the main control room. (TV: The Doctor's Wife [+]Loading...["The Doctor's Wife (TV story)"])
  • Dodo heard the Doctor mention the Daleks in The Ark [+]Loading...["The Ark (TV story)"].
  • Dodo tells Vicki about what happened after she and the Doctor saved Incherton in The Incherton Incident [+]Loading...["The Incherton Incident (audio story)"].
  • Dodo mentions how the Doctor turned invisible in The Celestial Toymaker [+]Loading...["The Celestial Toymaker (TV story)"].
  • Vicki says that somebody would have to be stupid to mistake the TARDIS for a real police box. Dodo did just that in The Massacre [+]Loading...["The Massacre (TV story)"].
  • Vicki remembers being in a Dalek time machine in The Chase [+]Loading...["The Chase (TV story)"].
  • The First Doctor entered a Dalek casing in The Space Museum [+]Loading...["The Space Museum (TV story)"].
  • The Doctor recalls that the last time he encountered the Daleks was The Daleks' Master Plan [+]Loading...["The Daleks' Master Plan (TV story)"].
  • Vicki thanks the Doctor for having rescued her in The Rescue [+]Loading...["The Rescue (TV story)"].
  • The Robot Doctor becomes the Abbot of Amboise, who appeared in The Massacre [+]Loading...["The Massacre (TV story)"].

Cover gallery[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • Alternate cover

    Alternate cover

  • Textless cover (painted)

    Textless cover (painted)

  • Textless cover (digitised)

    Textless cover (digitised)

  • Cover variant without the First Doctor and Dodo, used for the audio trailer[2][3]

    Cover variant without the First Doctor and Dodo, used for the audio trailer[2][3]

External links[[edit] | [edit source]]

Footnotes[[edit] | [edit source]]

Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]

  1. ↑ Plays the First Doctor and robot duplicate.
  2. ↑ Arnold is excluded only in the audio credits.
v • e
The First Doctor Adventures
Starring
David Bradley
Volume One
Volume Two
Volume Three
Volume Four
Volume Five
Starring
Stephen Noonan
The Outlaws
The Demon Song
Fugitive of the Daleks
v • e
Dalek audio stories
For the purposes of this list, a "Dalek audio story" is one in which one living, authentic Dalek plays a part within the confines of the story, outside of flashbacks to previous stories and cliffhangers that lead into the following story.
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Because of the ubiquity of this race, no attempt will be made here to list every appearance in every medium. Instead, we focus on audio appearances here, except for Dalek Empire, which has its own template, and invite you to explore a complete list of appearances elsewhere.
  1. ↑ https://twitter.com/cnayloractor/status/1730591387651817776
  2. ↑ https://twitter.com/bigfinish/status/1724819741372551281
  3. ↑ https://soundcloud.com/big-finish/fugitive-of-the-daleks-trailer
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