Dalek invasion of Mazam

The Dalek invasion of Mazam took place during the Second Dalek War of the 26th century.

Initially a swift Dalek victory which saw the quick surrender of Princess Taiyin of Mazam, the occupation force faced further resistance when Abslom Daak, the newly-exiled Dalek Killer, arrived on the planet.

Consequently, the invasion was the first encounter between Daak and the Daleks. It was a defining moment in the life of the Dalek Killer.

Initial occupation
The Daleks reached Mazam after a three-month period in which they made huge advances into Earth space. (COMIC: Star Tigers)

When the Daleks first arrived on Mazam, the planet's ruler, Princess Taiyin, opted to surrender. It was the only way she saw to prevent the Daleks from killing all of her people. The Daleks landed one of their saucers as a base ship some distance from Taiyin's palace which housed the occupation force, including a crew of almost 1,000 Daleks, led by the Command Dalek.

Promising to spare her and her people, the Daleks surrounded Taiyin's palace and forced her to surrender all her planet's weapons, to which she complied. Two Daleks then entered her throne room and declared that she was now expendable. Reneging on their promise, as they considered this a weak human concept, they prepared Taiyin for execution. (COMIC: Abslom Daak... Dalek Killer)

Trial of Abslom Daak
In Earth's desperation, Earth Command turned to hiring bounty hunters to harass the Dalek forces. (PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks)

This practice expanded beyond bounty hunters to include Earth's worst criminals as well. Concurrently with the initial invasion, Abslom Daak had been arrested and put on trial. He was found guilty of "23 charges of murder, pillage, piracy, massacre and other crimes too horrible to bring to the public attention." At his sentencing, he was given a choice: death by vaporisation or Exile D-K, which involved becoming a Dalek Killer. Daak opted for Exile D-K, relishing the thought of further killing and claiming that "Vaporisation doesn't hurt".

The life expectancy of a Dalek Killer was 2 hours, 32 minutes and 23 seconds, with odds against their ultimate survival placed at 600 million to one. Daak ended up among the one in four who successfully arrived at their destination rather than being scattered across the galaxy by the transmat. As a Dalek Killer, he was instructed to wage guerilla warfare for the Earth Empire against the Daleks until they killed him. Armed with his personal chainsword, Daak eagerly leapt through the transmat portal. (COMIC: Abslom Daak... Dalek Killer)

Siege of the palace
Daak happened to end up in Taiyin's throne room on Mazam just as two Daleks arrived to execute her. Daak sliced the Daleks up and went with Taiyin in search of more. He engaged the rest of the Dalek forces surrounding the palace with grenades and his blaster from the balcony, buying Taiyin the time and opportunity to evacuate everyone else inside the palace before the Daleks could massacre them.

Satisfied that they were safe, Taiyin then returned to retrieve Daak, but he was so engaged in his battle that he was prepared to die there fighting. Taiyin knocked him unconscious to save him and they fled the palace on her sky-sled. When Daak came to, the sky-sled was being pursued by three Daleks on hoverbouts. One Dalek was shot out of the sky, but the other two managed to hit the sky-sled, causing Taiyin to lose control and it plunged to the ground. Daak managed to position the sled so that it skimmed off the ground, saving him and Taiyin from dying in the crash, and he dispatched the other two Daleks as they came around to finish them off.

Despite telling J-17 to inform the judge that he would return from his exile, Daak continually claimed on Mazam that he wanted to die there fighting the Daleks, but Taiyin opined that his actions suggested otherwise. He rejected Taiyin's offer that they find her hidden space yacht and travel to a planet free of the Daleks. Taiyin therefore relented and took Daak to the Dalek base ship over a nearby hill. (COMIC: Abslom Daak... Dalek Killer)

Raid on the Dalek command ship
Taiyin considered an attack on the command ship an act of suicide, but Daak continued to relish the prospect and could not be convinced to turn away. She decided instead to accompany him on the assault and the pair kissed.

The Daleks defending the perimeter were quickly overwhelmed. The Command Dalek deployed airborne Omega-Units to dispatch the intruders via saturation bombing but they were flying too close together in formation. One of Daak's well-aimed rockets detonated one of them which destroyed the others in a chain reaction. The Command Dalek ordered the nearest entrance, Entrance 9, to be sealed, but Daak cut through the doors with his chainsaw and made his way into the base.

Rampaging through the corridors, Daak disarmed and immobilised a Dalek which he mockingly dubbed "Cuddles". He used Cuddles as a living shield as he made his way towards the Command Dalek. He then sacrificed Cuddles to engage the Command Dalek's defenders, the Command Dalek himself being restricted by his control panel. Daak overpowered the guards and dropped his remaining bombs and explosives by the Command Dalek's controls. After a delay of 30 seconds, the entire command ship exploded, taking the bulk of the Dalek occupation force with it. (COMIC: Abslom Daak... Dalek Killer)

Last shots
Despite Daak's persistent intention to attack the base on a suicide mission, Taiyin refused to leave him. They both escaped the command ship's destruction in a Dalek escape capsule. Daak reckoned that the only Daleks now left on the planet would be a few stray survivors, whom the people of Mazam could easily deal with. Having survived his Exile D-K, Daak admitted to Taiyin that he was feeling glad about it. She offered him the chance to stay on Mazam after the remaining Daleks had been dealt with and live a life with her. However, an unseen Dalek survivor shot her in the back as she confessed her love for Daak. Daak killed the Dalek in retaliation. In her dying words, Taiyin urged Daak to live rather than throw his life away in battle. Enraged, Daak vowed, "I'm going to kill every damned stinking Dalek in the galaxy!" (COMIC: Abslom Daak... Dalek Killer)

Refusing to believe Taiyin was really dead, Daak placed her body in suspended animation in a cryogenic freezer-unit, 20 minutes after she was shot, and acquired her her space yacht. Daak fled Mazam in search of someone who could help revive Taiyin. The Daleks gave chase, seeking revenge for the disaster which Daak had inflicted upon the invasion. (COMIC: Star Tigers)

Intergalactic repercussions
The fall of Mazam to the Daleks worried the Draconians. Although the incumbent Emperor pursued a de facto neutrality in the war, which the Daleks respected in order to focus on Earth and avoid a two-front conflict, the fate of Mazam resulted in a power struggle in the court. Occupying Mazam placed the Daleks within reach of Girodun, a key world for Draconian Empire's trade routes. Fearing they stood to lose Girodun, Prince Salander, as the Minister of the Imperial Left Hand, appealed to the Emperor to strengthen the defences in that sector by moving in the 27th Fleet. His political rival, Axiron, the First Secretary of the Right Hand, advised that the Emperor negotiate a formal peace with the Daleks. The military supported Salander's position but the Right Hand held the ear of the Emperor and their effective neutrality continued.

Amidst the debate, Daak, drunk, was pursued by the Daleks across the Draconian frontier. General Karinis of the Draconian Imperial Command contacted the Dalek Commander and warned the Daleks they were violating Draconian territory. The Dalek Commander stated they were after a "criminal", "a terrorist, subversive and murderer" and claimed the right of hot pursuit, agreeing to withdraw the Dalek forces once Daak was captured.

However, Daak was granted permission to land on Draconia by Salander. Axiron used this as an opportunity to undermine the prince and claimed this action exceeded Salander's authority. Both he and Daak were placed under house arrest pending an investigation. Salander agreed that he would try to help Daak revive Taiyin if Daak aided in the effort to awaken Draconia to the threat of the Daleks. The political pressure mounted on him by his enemies forced Salander to flee Draconia with Daak in a prototype spacecraft, which Daak called the Kill-Wagon. Reuniting with some of his former acquaintances, the crew of the Kill-Wagon travelled the galaxy facing the Daleks. (COMIC: Star Tigers) However, Salander did not meet with success in his mission. Mutual prejudices and attitudes of fear and suspicion harboured by the Earth and Draconian Empires, stemming from the Human-Draconian War, prevented the two empires from forming an effective united front and the Daleks held on to the initiative. (AUDIO: Out of Time) Some human historians believed the Daleks ultimately used this advantage to bring down the Draconian Empire. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)

Abslom Daak and the legacy of Mazam
Daak's mission to Mazam sparked a vicious rivalry between himself and the Daleks. His murderous impulses were compounded by a hatred now made personal by Taiyin's death. Daak remained active throughout much of the Second Dalek War and beyond. After they came together, the crew of the Kill-Wagon wiped out a squad of Dalek Space-Commando Units. (COMIC: Star Tigers) Later, Daak survived the crash-landing of the Kill-Wagon on the planet Hell, where he joined forced with the Seventh Doctor to thwart the Daleks' Operation Genocide. He intended to sacrifice himself to destroy the Death Wheel, believing this would fulfil his pledge to Taiyin to "kill every damned stinking Dalek in the galaxy". (COMIC: Nemesis of the Daleks)

Though presumed dead, Daak was ultimately saved by the Dalek Prime and his forces from the era of the Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War, who scooped Daak out of his native time period as part of a ploy to capture the Doctor. After escaping from the Daleks' clutches, it appeared to Bernice Summerfield as if Daak was prepared to move on from Taiyin, which Benny considered an unhealthy obsession of his. (COMIC: Emperor of the Daleks!)

However, Daak did not ultimately move on. He continued to travel around with Taiyin's body, considering himself to be her devoted husband, and carried on killing Daleks. Following the near-extinction of the Daleks at the conclusion of the Last Great Time War, he struggled to find any. Instead, he decided to hunt down the Eleventh Doctor and collect the bounty placed on his head by the Overcaste. (COMIC: The Then and the Now) Having to put the bounty hunt on hold when Taiyin's capsule became lost in the TARDIS, (COMIC: Pull to Open) Daak was able to break through the time lock and enter the Time War itself, allowing him to live the life of a Dalek Killer (COMIC: Physician, Heal Thyself) which he had started during the invasion of Mazam. (COMIC: Abslom Daak... Dalek Killer)

Behind the scenes

 * The conquest of Mazam was the first event of the Second Dalek War depicted in Doctor Who media beyond the war's origins in Frontier in Space and Planet of the Daleks.
 * In the Marvel Comics colour reprint of Abslom Daak... Dalek Killer, at least two Red Daleks are part of the occupation force.