The Daleks (series)


 * For The Dalek Chronicles, the graphic novel collection of the stories, see separate article.

The Daleks (retroactively re-named The Dalek Chronicles) was a single-paged comic strip, lasting 104 episodes, that portrayed a history of the Daleks, without appearances by the Doctor.

History
The 104 episodes of the Dalek comic strip first appeared in the  TV Century 21 (TV21 for short) comics magazine between 1965 and 1967.

The Dalek comic strip was reprinted many times in different forms by Doctor Who Magazine (in this form it was sometimes known as The Dalek Tapes) before appearing in 1994 as graphic novel form from Marvel Comics, as a single volume, unedited and in full colour, priced at £3.99 (UK).

Authorship
Though the strips featured the credit "by Terry Nation", the scripts were written largely or entirely by David Whitaker. The editor of TV21 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. Ron Turner produced some excellent, attractive and slick artwork, almost art deco in its style.

Storyline
The strip did not "soften" the nature of the Daleks in any way and made them just as evil (if not more so) than in the television stories. Interestingly, though the strip described the Thals, they never appeared in the comic. Stories shifted from sympathetic near-human protagonists (no humans appeared until the last story, in which the Daleks discover Earth) to the Emperor Dalek, who served as the hero (of sorts) of most of the stories.

The strip detailed the history of the Daleks from their creation on Skaro, to their discovery of space flight, their conquests, their war with the Mechanoids, tying in to DW: The Chase. Given that the strips concluded with the Daleks' discovery of Earth, that would mean the whole comic was, in effect, a prelude to DW: The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

The Dalek Chronicles gave a very different account of the creation of the Daleks than Genesis of the Daleks and a somewhat different account recounted, but not seen in DW: The Daleks. The TV 21 strips portrayed humanoid Daleks as diminutive blue men with large heads somewhat similar in appearance to Dan Dare's Mekon and generally opposed to the Thals (though at least one Dalek wanted peace). According to the comic, these humanoid Daleks had created both war machines and neutron bombs. The bombs were accidentally detonated by a meteorite fall. The explosion that followed created mutant Daleks who would use the war machines as their shells. For more information on this from a Doctor Who Universe perspective, see Creation of the Daleks and the humanoid Daleks.

Later stories in the Dalek comic told of the expansion of the Dalek Empire and a lengthy war against the Mechanoids, among other enemies. In the last published comic in this series, the Daleks learned the location of Earth, which they proposed to invade. 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.

The last story, The Road to Conflict, concerned the Daleks' first encounters with humans and their discovery of the tempting planet Earth.

A followup story, Return of the Elders, ran in Doctor Who Magazine 249-254, written by John Lawrence, with art by Ron Turner.

Stories by TV Century 21 Issue

 * 1-3: "Genesis of Evil"
 * 4-10: "Power Play"
 * 11-17: "Duel of the Daleks"
 * 18-24: "The Amaryll Challenge"
 * 25-32: "The Penta Ray Factor"
 * 33-39: "Plague of Death"
 * 40-46: "The Menace of the Monstrons"
 * 47-51: "Eve of War"
 * 52-58: "The Archives of Phryne"
 * 59-62: "The Rogue Planet"
 * 63-69: "Impasse"
 * 70-75: "The Terrorkon Harvest"
 * 76-85: "Legacy of Yesteryear"
 * 86-89: "Shadow of Humanity"
 * 90-95: "The Emissaries of Jevo"
 * 96-104: "The Road to Conflict"

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.



Reprint Title Graphics
The first set of reprints from World Distributors in the years 1976 and 1977 only used a series title graphic on the first page. On subsequent pages, as with most reprints of the series, both the title and the news box were replaced with narration. Where divided into parts, only the first part's title box carried the series title The Daleks. The Amazing World of Doctor Who's title box (not shown) read The Daleks in A New Start.