The Human Factor (audio story)

 was the second story in the Dalek Empire I audio series produced by Big Finish Productions. It advanced six months from the previous story and covers a period of approximately three additional months, firmly establishing this as the first of Big Finish's stories told over a long period of (in-universe) time.

Publisher's summary
The Earth Alliance seems powerless to stop the Dalek invasion of the galaxy.

Enslaved by the Daleks, along with billions of others, Susan Mendes and Kalendorf must find a way to turn the tide against these metallic monsters...

...or the galaxy will be lost forever!

Plot
6 months have passed since Susan Mendes gave her speech, the daleks have taken her around the galaxy to enforce her system on many worlds. Susan thinks back to her speech, and then she thinks about her last meeting with the Supreme dalek, In this meeting, the Supreme dalek comments on the effectiveness of Susan's shift system, but Susan denies that it was her system. The Supreme dalek tells Susan that she has saved thousands of lives with her system, and asks her if she is proud of herself, Susan tearfully says that she is not proud of her actions, and twice tells the Supreme dalek to stop addressing her by name.

The Supreme dalek has another meeting with the Dalek Emperor, where the Supreme dalek asks if some certain people should be exterminated. The Dalek Emperor tells the Supreme dalek that these people will be exterminated only when he (the Dalek Emperor) gives the order. Back in space, Alby and Pellan still haven't managed to rescue Susan. Kalendorf meets up with a man named Wernay, who warns him that a man named Morebi is planning a rebellion against the daleks, and they must stop him. They go to the moon K5000, but they are too late; they find dozens of dead robomen. They go into a warehouse, and find that the humans have severely damaged a dalek. Kalendorf berates Morebi for his actions, and tells him that the dalek will have sent out a distress signal, meaning other daleks will be on their way. The daleks arrive with Susan. At first, the daleks are planning to outright exterminated the rebels, but Susan talks them into giving them a chance to surrender. The daleks tell Susan to convince the rebels to surrender, if she fails, they will be exterminated. Susan talks to Morebi, but is unable to convince him and the rest of the rebels to surrender. She tells the daleks of her failure, and the daleks exterminate everyone except Susan and Kalendorf.

On the planet Guria, a dalek talks with the Highness and his daughter; they discuss Susan Mendes, whom the people of Guria call "The Angel of Mercy". Highness keeps laughing, which annoys the dalek. The daleks force Susan to go to Guria. Alby and Gordon head towards Guria after hearing that Susan has been taken there. Their ship is detected by daleks, but Gordon sends out dalek frequencies in an attempt to trick the daleks into thinking that Drudger is a dalek ship. It works at first, but after a few minutes the daleks realise they are being duped, and pursue the Drudger. When Alby and Gordon reach Guria, they receive a message telling them to head to a specific side of the planet, so that rebels can give them cover fire. The Drudger crashes into the ocean, and Alby barely managed to get the door open with what little power remains.

The daleks exterminate Highness of Guria to force the rebels to surrender; Daughter of Guria attempts to tell her people to keep fighting, but the daleks cut off communications. Alby and Gordon take shelter in a cave. After a while they go outside and are captured by daleks; they are put in a cell with Daughter of Guria, who is now Highness due to her father's execution. The cell is observed by the ship that Susan is on, when she sees Alby, she says his name in shock; a dalek demands to know who Alby is, and Susan says that he is someone who she believed was dead, and also someone whom she had fallen in love with.

An assault vessel crashes into the prison, Alby is knocked out in the resulting explosion. He later awakes in another building, with Neo Highness of Guria standing over him. He is told that he had to have his legs replaced, as the explosion blew off his original legs; Neo Highness of Guria had to save him, as the explosion also knocked out Gordon. They discover an abandoned dalek saucer and decide to use it to escape Guria. Neo Highness decides to stay behind with her people. Alby and Gordon easily escape Guria with the dalek saucer. In space, the dalek saucer is grabbed by a tractor beam and is taken onto an Earth Alliance starliner. The crew tell Alby and Gordon to exit the ship and surrender. Alby and Gordon exit the ship, and are immediately shot and killed.

Cast

 * Susan Mendes - Sarah Mowat
 * Kalendorf - Gareth Thomas
 * Narrator - Joyce Gibbs
 * Wernay / Drudger / Gurian - Ian Brooker
 * Morebi - David Sax
 * Alby Brook - Mark McDonnell
 * Gordon Pellan - John Wadmore
 * Highness - Adrian Lloyd-James
 * Daughter - Georgina Carter
 * The Daleks - Nicholas Briggs, Alistair Lock
 * The Dalek Emperor - Nicholas Briggs

Crew

 * Cover Art - Clayton Hickman
 * Writer, Director, Music and Sound Design - Nicholas Briggs
 * Executive Producer - Jacqueline Rayner
 * Producers - Gary Russell and Jason Haigh-Ellery
 * Script Editor - John Ainsworth

Astronomical objects

 * K5000 is one of Garazone's many moons.
 * Guria is at the edge of the Daleks' advance into the galaxy. It was previously one of the Earth Alliance's largest suppliers of fossil fuels.

Daleks

 * The Dalek Supreme claims that the Daleks have conquered a thousand planets since their invasion of Mutter's Spiral began six months earlier.
 * Once the top of a Dalek's exterior casing is removed, a message is sent to Garazone Central, alerting the Dalek Supreme.
 * Fifty Robomen were assigned to K5000 by the Daleks. All of them were killed by Morebi and his rebels.

Individuals

 * When the Daleks invaded Garazone, they killed Morebi's entire family. In order to save his own life, Morebi surrendered, for which he has never forgiven himself.
 * Alby came from a broken home and became involved in crime as a youth in the slums on his homeworld of Proxima Major. He joined the Earth Alliance military as a means of escape but "got into trouble." He was given a reduced sentence since he agreed to work for Earth Security.
 * Alby's legs were blown off when an assault vessel crashes on the Gurian rig to which he and Pellan were brought after being captured by the Daleks. He is given a pair of prosthetic legs.

Organisations

 * Prior to the Dalek invasion, the Reinsberg Institute, for which Suz worked as a geologist, had a major contract with the Earth Alliance Space Security Service relating to something called Project Infinity.

Technology

 * Alby and Pellan spent six months in hypersleep, a form of suspended animation, aboard an Earth Security scout ship during their trip to Garazone.

Titles and offices

 * Throughout the galaxy, the human slave labourers refer to Suz as "the Angel of Mercy" as she gives them hope.

Continuity

 * After removing Suz from Vega VI, the Daleks transport her to the Garazone system, a "backwater" of the interstellar spacelanes which the Eighth Doctor and his companion Charley Pollard had visited in the 26th century. (AUDIO: Sword of Orion)
 * This era is later revisited in AUDIO: Return of the Daleks, which bridges this story and the next.