Liberation of the Daleks (comic story)

Liberation of the Daleks was a comic story published in Doctor Who Magazine, starring the Fourteenth Doctor, as portrayed by David Tennant.

In what was pre-emotively described by editor Marcus Hearn as an "unprecedented" move in the magazine's forty-three-year history, the strip was the first full story in any medium to star the Fourteenth Doctor, being printed a mere two-and-a-half weeks after the broadcast of The Power of the Doctor. The story picked up immediately from his regeneration at the end of that episode, officially beginning a line of stories that were effectively "in lockstep" with the television continuity for the first time in the DWM comic series.

Additionally, it was the first DWM strip since Children of the Revolution, twenty years prior, to feature the Daleks as a major force, and the first strip to serve as a "post-regeneration story".

Liberation
From a sheer cliff face overlooking the sea, as a beautiful new day dawns, the Doctor has been born again. Returning to his TARDIS, the newly regenerated Fourteenth Doctor takes a look to see what the universe has to offer and is immediately distracted by a noise. Noting the changes in his new yet old body, the TARDIS suddenly dematerialises without his input; it is following Automated Protocol Epsilon Delta Rho, or in other words, is responding to a distress signal. The Doctor is only too happy to help.

With the TARDIS landing for the first time in this incarnation, the Doctor sees he is outside Wembley Stadium on Saturday 30 July 1966: the date of the 1966 World Cup Final. Wondering who is supposed to be in distress, he enters the stadium with the score at 2-2 by lying to a security guard and begins to ask the crowd one by one. Realising this method is futile, he starts discreetly scanning the crowd by pretending his sonic screwdriver is a microphone, not realising he is being watched by outside forces.

Suddenly, the sonic gets a signal three rows behind him, but not a distress signal. Instead, he spots a family of four glowing faintly blue. He confidently tells them that their psychic shields should be properly adjusted in public, and as they deny all knowledge, he sonics their disguises off, revealing them to be a group of four purple-skinned and space-suited aliens. The Doctor realises they are time tourists, there to see how "Hurst hits the crossbar, ball clips the line, referee says yes, England 3-2, Kenneth Wolstenholme, people on the pitch, Hurst again, 4-2", but they dispute this, pointing out that nobody is watching the match anymore.

Confused, the Doctor looks back towards the pitch where all the players have stopped. Hovering above Wembley is a giant, and terrifyingly familiar, flying saucer. As it opens up, the Doctor tries to herd the crowd out, telling them the game is over, but he cannot stop a fleet of several dozen Bronze Daleks from emerging and exterminating the players. With the Doctor stunned into silence and the time tourists looking smug, they question his assertion that the game was "all over", declaring that "it is now", as the Dalek invasion begins.

Daleks Invasion Earth 1966 A.D.!
With the Daleks landing on Wembley's field, claiming the human race to now be under Dalek control, a TV commentator tries to make sense of the events to the watching audience. They note that the British Royal Family has been safely evacuated from the Royal Box just as the Doctor dashes into it, drawing the Daleks to himself with the sonic and gaining the attention of the Supreme Dalek in their saucer.

The Doctor starts questioning whether it was them who sent the distress signal, calling them names and mocking them as he realises they simply wanted him to take notice. The Daleks aim their attention towards the Doctor and, right on his cue, start shooting exterminating rays at him. The Doctor begins to run, with the youngest time tourist noting the Daleks stopped caring about exterminating the football fans. The time tourists note that the Daleks are everywhere across Earth, and decide to visit other parts of the space/time zone to revel in the carnage. The time tourists go to all sorts of places, such as Carnaby Street in London, and the district between Haight Street and Ashbury Street and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, each time taking gleeful selfies in front of the Daleks and screaming humans for their tel•e•pixXx social media account.

Meanwhile, the Doctor runs off to the TARDIS, mocking the Daleks on their missed shots. As the Supreme Dalek orders his drones to seize the TARDIS, a woman shows up at the door, handing the Doctor the World Cup's Jules Rimet Trophy, claiming the security guards at Wembley neglected to take it with them when they ran off. Presuming he is a policeman, she attempts to give it to him for safekeeping before someone tries to steal it again, but the Doctor rushes her inside the TARDIS at the same time a Dalek on a hoverbout grabs the TARDIS with a clamp. As it takes off without him, he yells at her to close the door as he promises to talk his way out. The Supreme tells its fellow Daleks to not engage with the Doctor in conversation. The Daleks all direct their rays at the Doctor and start firing at him, and he faces his fate defenceless with his eyes closed and fists and teeth clenched.

Dead Again
After the exterminations of the Daleks, the Doctor is shocked to find he is still alive and speaks to the Supreme Dalek. In return, the Supreme orders the Doctor's extermination again, and again, and again, with no effect. The Doctor points out that it is getting boring watching the rays pass right through his body, so the Supreme orders that the Doctor is to be brought up into the Dalek flying saucer.

Meanwhile in 1966, the time tourists visit Mount Rushmore and take a picture when the Daleks come and add the Supreme Dalek on the rock face. Inside the saucer, the Doctor continues to mock the Supreme Dalek, who orders that he will be taken to total physiological examination, but the Doctor does it right in front of them with his sonic screwdriver. Upon doing so, he notices that nothing has changed and that regeneration would not normally make him immune from Dalek fire. Knowing he cannot be harmed, he climbs onto the Supreme Dalek's casing. Knowing it wants answers, he promises to give them if they call off the invasion of Earth. The Daleks comply, temporarily halting their invasion. In front of the Great Pyramid of Giza and the destroyed Great Sphinx, the time tourists are worried because in their view it is not time for the Daleks to go; they call in demanding why the Daleks are leaving Earth.

Above Earth, the Doctor examines the Daleks and explains that the drones appear to all biologically identical, so they are fake, while he is real, explaining why they could not kill him. In response to that, the Supreme declares the Daleks are real and attempts to prove as such, ordering their saucers into Formation Red Icosahedron around the planet. It tells them to use pulsator beams, and with a colossal explosion, they seem to destroy Earth right in front of the Doctor, to his utter horror.

Earth Shock!
The Doctor stares out of the window of the Dalek saucer, watching the Eiffel Tower float through the remaining debris of Earth in space, and promises to exact revenge upon the Daleks if the destruction turns out to be real. The Supreme Dalek orders his drones to leave for Skaro to take the Doctor for personal dissection, but the Doctor states that he will just find his TARDIS and leave. As he does, however, he smells a change in the air, like something is coming.

He is proven right when two heavy-set, body-armoured figures, one wielding a claw and the other an energy net, materialise on board, although the Daleks do not notice due to them using psychic shields like the time tourists did. Identifying them as "human-ish", the Doctor politely declines their insistence to come with them and removes their shields. The figures respond by immediately capturing him and teleporting away, alarming the Supreme Dalek. He declares that the Dalek Science Division will conduct a full sub-atomic analysis of their flotilla to prove if the Doctor was lying about them, then reveals the TARDIS itself, claiming it to be their "prize". The Doctor and his captors arrive on a blue-lit ship, with the Doctor being allowed to move freely if he behaves. More confused than angry, he is left with even more questions upon realising that his captors are a pair of bipedal gorillas named Claire and Claudine. Suddenly, the exterior doors open into a wide room with lots of doors and a blue sky ceiling, revealing the woman from 1966 introducing herself to the Doctor as Georgette, albeit with shorter hair and modern clothes. Walking past the family of time tourists demanding compensation from another gorilla, Georgette promises to explain all, but the Doctor is distracted by a large door reading "main dome this way" in Dalek font. She describes it as "the biggest thrill you'll ever know [and] the greatest adventure you'll ever have", as he opens the door onto a massive multi-tiered observatory with hundreds of visitors watching famous moments in Dalek history, complete with direct views of Skaro: the Dalek Dome.

The Atrocity Exhibition
In the kingdom of Albion King Arthur receives word from Merlin that the Daleks are going to attack Camelot from the sky. After a short discussion with a group of disguised Time Tourists, he decides to meet the Daleks in battle. Shortly afterwards, Arthur and the tourists defeat a group of Imperial Daleks while riding on dragonback.

Georgette, having just shown this to the Doctor, asks what he thinks. The Doctor replies that he thinks it's a tacky tasteless, tourist trap, giving it a rating of naught out of five stars. However, the chief who resembles a bipedal lion objects, feeling that the Doctor is over looking the education value. The Doctor denies that the Dalek Dome is at all educational, before questioning the chief's cross-species body mod.

Georgette explains that the site used to be an animal park until clone safaris were banned. In order to stay in business the staff modified themselves into animals to avoid unemployment. The chief then further explains that after the alien zoo was opened, the park's visitor numbers plummeted and they had to sell it to the military. The chief then asks Georgette who the Doctor is, calling her Lieutenant Gold.

The Doctor realizes that it was Georgette that had sent out the signal that led him there. Georgette explains that after discovering the TARDIS's Time/Space signiture she sent out intelligent Code to find him, and that she's surprised that it worked. The Doctor replies that it didn't and he turns to leave. Georgette tells him he can't go back into the 66-scape because the Psychoplasm needs venting first.

The Doctor questions what psychoplasm is, and Georgette begins to explain saying that it's not holographic but is interrupted by a priority call. Merlin, the staff member who had played the role of the wizard in the Daleks and Dragons attraction, tells Georgette that she needs to come to surveillance due to an issue with Specimen Six Sigma.

Georgette tells the Doctor that she can't take him with her or else she'd be atomized, but remarks that the Doctor should be able to get in on his own before going through a security door, which the Doctor opens a moment later with his Sonic Screwdriver.

As Merlin explains the problem to Georgette, the Doctor enters and deduces that psychoplasm is "The stuff dreams are made on". He notes that what his TARDIS landed on was real, a dream made reality, with a Dalek mutant kept in a tube as the dreamer. The problem now being that the Dalek has woken up.

Characters

 * Fourteenth Doctor
 * Time tourists
 * Daleks
 * Fans
 * Supreme Dalek
 * Georgette Gold
 * Chief
 * Merlin
 * Claire
 * Claudine

Liberation

 * In order to avoid spoiling the appearance of the Daleks, the story title was given on the spine as simply "Liberation Part 1", was not given at all on the magazine's contents page, and does not appear in the strip itself until the final page.
 * The yellow text box in the first frame reads "Born Again, Again", a reference to Born Again, the 2005 Children in Need special.
 * When questioning random members of the crowd in German, the Doctor asks, "Welches team unterstützt du?", which roughly translates to, "Which team do you support?".
 * The time tourists' line, "'All over'? Well... it is now" is based on the famous final words of Kenneth Wolstenholme's BBC TV commentary of the World Cup final.

Daleks Invasion Earth 1966 A.D.!

 * The cover of Doctor Who Magazine #585 featured a live-action version of the Daleks invasion on the cover and as a full-size poster inside.

Dead Again
To be added

Earth Shock!

 * Amongst the various aliens visiting the Dalek Dome are several from the Doctor Who franchise's long history:
 * Astrans, who originally appeared in the Fireball XL5 comic strip published in TV Century 21.
 * Raxacoricofallapatorians, aliens who, in the form of Slitheen and Slitheen-Blathereen, originally appeared throughout Russell T Davies' original era as showrunner from 2005 to 2010.

The Atrocity Exhibition

 * Among those hidden in the crowd at the Dalek Dome include:
 * James T. Kirk and Mr Spock from the Star Trek franchise
 * A Korad and two grey Kandalinga, both from the 1966 Doctor Who Annual. Lee Sullivan, the comic's artist, had also hidden these specific aliens in the background of COMIC: Bazaar Adventures, a part of the 50th Anniversary comic Prisoners of Time.

Production errors

 * In Part 1, when the Doctor's TARDIS displays the notification for activating Automated Protocol Epsilon Delta Rho, its screen shows the Greek letters "ΔΣΡ", meaning "Delta Sigma Rho", instead of the correct "ΕΔΡ".
 * The tail of the last speech bubble in Part 1 is slightly cut off.

Original print details

 * (Publication with page count and closing captions)


 * DWM 584: (6 pages): Next Issue: Daleks Invasion Earth 1966 A.D.!
 * DWM 585: (6 pages): Next Issue: Dead Again
 * DWM 586: (6 pages): Next Issue: Earth Shock!
 * DWM 587: (6 pages): Next issue: The Atrocity Exhibition
 * DWM 588: (6 pages): Next Issue: When the Sleeper Wakes

Continuity

 * The Doctor has just regenerated from his thirteenth incarnation on a cliff. (TV: The Power of the Doctor)
 * The Doctor displays ability to smell when and where in time he is. (TV: The Unicorn and the Wasp)
 * The Doctor has been at the 1966 World Cup Final before. (COMIC: The Love Invasion, They Think It's All Over, PROSE: Extra Time)
 * The Dalek gunsticks fire out red rays just like the Defence Drones. (TV: Revolution of the Daleks)
 * The Doctor claims that the only football match that could change history is Christmas 1914. (TV: Twice Upon a Time)
 * Georgette tries to hand the Doctor the Jules Rimet Trophy before it is stolen again. The First Doctor previously helped recover it from its theft. (AUDIO: This Sporting Life)
 * The Doctor comments on the colour of his kidneys. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
 * The Daleks have no sense of smell. (TV: The Curse of Fatal Death)
 * The Dalek Dome contains a Jungles of Spiridon Zone, (TV: Planet of the Daleks) Skaro Civil War Zone, (TV: The Evil of the Daleks, Remembrance of the Daleks) Vulcan Factory Zone, (TV: The Power of the Daleks) Death Wheel Zone, (COMIC: Nemesis of the Daleks) Earth Invasion Zone, (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth) and Zeg Duel Zone. (COMIC: Duel of the Daleks)