The Daleks (series)

The Daleks, later reprinted as The Dalek Tapes, was a series of 104 single-page comic stories published in the TV Century 21 magazine between 1965 and 1967. The stories detailed the history of the Daleks from their creation to their discovery of Earth.

Storyline
The strip portrayed a unique narrative of the creation of the Daleks. The original humanoid Daleks were diminutive blue men with large heads. For their war against the Thals, these humanoid Daleks had created not just war machines but also neutron bombs that were accidentally detonated by a meteorite fall. The subsequent explosion created mutant Daleks who used the war machines as their shells. This account conflicted with the story recounted in The Daleks and was later contradicted by Genesis of the Daleks.

Later stories told of the expansion of the Dalek Empire and a lengthy war against the Mechanoids and other enemies (tying into The Chase). In most of these, the Emperor Dalek served as the protagonist.

The final story, The Road to Conflict, concerned the Daleks' first encounters with humans and their discovery of the planet Earth. This was intended to lead into The Dalek Invasion of Earth, but this was retconned in the followup story Return of the Elders released in Doctor Who Magazine issues 249-254. Another followup, Deadline to Doomsday, was planned but ultimately unproduced through legal channels, though a completed version of it was created for the fanzine Vworp Vworp!.

Although much of the material in these strips directly contradicted what was shown on television later, some concepts — such as flying Daleks, Daleks acquiring human characteristics and turning against their masters, and the design of the Dalek Emperor — did show up later on in the programme.

Stories by TV Century 21 issue
Originally, no individual titles were given to the stories. However, some titles were given in the preceding issue's "coming next time" closing caption. After doing research and interviewing those involved in the original strips, John Ainsworth proposed the following titles, which were later used by Doctor Who Magazine:

Crew
Though the strips featured the credit "by Terry Nation", the scripts were written mainly by Nation and David Whitaker. The editor of TV Century 21 said that he had a heavy hand in the writing of the Genesis of Evil story.

At different times, Richard Jennings, Eric Eden, and Ron Turner did the art duties.

Reprints
World Distributors first reprinted the comics in 1976 and 1977.

They were again reprinted in Doctor Who Magazine, issues 33 to 42, under the new title The Dalek Tapes.

In 1994 the original, unedited stories were collected and published by Marvel Comics as a graphic novel called The Dalek Chronicles.

Title graphics
The title image occupied the first panel on the page for the first 75 issues. From issue 76 onward the title ran along the length of the page above the comic.