The Dalek Generation (novel)

The Dalek Generation was the fifty-second novel in the BBC New Series Adventures series. It was written by Nicholas Briggs and featured the Eleventh Doctor.

Publisher's summary
"The Sunlight Worlds Offer You A Life of Comfort and Plenty. Apply now at the Dalek Foundation."

Sunlight 349 is one of countless Dalek Foundation worlds, planets created to house billions suffering from economic hardship. The Doctor arrives at Sunlight 349, suspicious of any world where the Daleks are apparently a force for good – and determined to find out the truth. The Doctor knows they have a far more sinister plan – but how can he convince those who have lived under the benevolence of the Daleks for a generation?

But convince them he must, and soon. For on another Foundation planet, archaeologists have unearthed the most dangerous technology in the universe...

Plot
Lillian Belle, a journalist for Sunlight 349 Holo-News living on the Dalek Foundation world of Sunlight 349, arrives at the sight of a train crash where two locomotives have collided head on. As Lillian interviews a security guard, Daniel Ash, a Dalek arrives on the scene to investigate. Some medics with Mr Sezman, one of the drivers, approach the Dalek on the other side of the train — out of everyone's sight — to explain to it what happened. The Dalek murders them and leaves before the bodies can be found.

While the TARDIS is in flight through the Time Vortex, the Doctor receives a Hypercube, a much smaller one that he is used to. He then thinks that maybe he made it himself to send himself a message from his future. He is brought to the desert planet Gethria, where he sees a gathering of humanoids around a stone monument. They all depart as the Doctor realises the gathering was a funeral. An old woman stares at the Doctor as if she recognises him before leaving herself. The Doctor examines the gravestone and sees a toy spaceship embedded into it. He notes it was "Made in Carthedia" and then leaves. His departure is watched by the Dalek Time Controller, who declares: "It is beginning..."

Elsewhere in space and time, a young girl has been taken prisoner by the Daleks. A Dalek enters the cell with a tray of food and forces her to eat it. The girl is disgusted but pretends it is her favourite sweet, jelly blobs, so she can eat it. Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor tries to deduce the purpose of the hypercube when he receives a distress call from a Terrin Blakely and his wife Alyst who claim their ship is under attack. The Doctor sets off to aid them but the Dalek Time Controller fires an energy pulse at the TARDIS, knocking the Doctor off course. He arrives on the ship but too late as he finds a recording showing Terrin and Alyst preparing to throw themselves out of the airlock to protect their knowledge of a certain formula from the Daleks. The Doctor investigates the ship further and finds three children hidden in the escape pod: Sabel, Jenibeth and Ollus — Terrin and Alyst's children. He tells them of their parents' death and returns the ship to their home planet Carthedia, along the way learning a few things: the children are smart for their age, Ollus has a toy spaceship, that a family friend named Hogoosta gave Terrin and Alyst the formula and that the Daleks are considered a force for good.

Upon arriving on Carthedia, the Doctor is questioned about Terrin and Alyst's disappearance. He is found innocent of any crime and is allowed to depart with the children but he mysteriously loses the recording of the Daleks' part in the couple's death and is unable to prove the Dalek are evil. He tries to explain this to a crowd of journalists who don't believe him. He is then arrested for denouncing the Daleks, which is considered a hate crime. The children are taken to an orphanage while the Doctor is put on trial, with the Dalek Litigator acting as the prosecution. The Doctor pleads guilty to the hate crime in attempts to anger the Litigator and provoke the Dalek into showing its true colours but it stays calm. The Doctor is given a sentence and all his and the Blakely's assets are seized by the Dalek Foundation. The Doctor's state-appointed lawyer, Hellic Dansard, appeals for the Doctor to see the children before the sentence is carried out as he displayed some "emotional attachment" to them. Against the Doctor's expectations, the Dalek Litigator holds no objections.

Hellic and some police forces take the Doctor in a skimmer (a Carthedian police car) to the police station where the Doctor finds the children struggling to sleep in a poorly-treated orphanage. Fortunately, security neglects to relieve the Doctor of his sonic screwdriver and he uses it to produce an extremely loud sound, stunning Hellic and the police and shattering the wall of the orphanage allowing the Doctor and the children to escape. They take off in a skimmer (which Ollus is able to drive despite his age), Hellic and the police giving chase. The Doctor spots the TARDIS on a landing pad with a Dalek guarding it. The Doctor uses Ollus's toy spaceship to produce holograms which the Dalek mistakes for an attack. It panics, firing almost hysterically at the sky, shooting down and scattering the police skimmers. Hellic's skimmer is shot down, crashing into the Dalek and killing them both. Ollus lands the skimmer but more Daleks exit a Dalek saucer to apprehend them. The Doctor uses the toy again to project more holograms from the TARDIS light, distracting the Daleks long enough for them to escape. The children, upon learning the TARDIS is a time machine, ask the Doctor if they can travel back and save their parents. The Doctor initially refuses, abiding by the laws set by the Time Lords, but eventually wonders if he could rescue the parents and adjust the controls accordingly. But another energy pulse hits the TARDIS, sending it off course once more.

On Gethria, Hogoosta is working at an excavation site, worrying about Terrin and Alyst, when Klektid Enforcers arrive and evict everyone off the site. The TARDIS arrives and the children greet Hogoosta, who tells the Doctor about the Cradle of the Gods, a great monument they have discovered with inscriptions meaning it either has the purpose of creation or destruction. The Klektid enforcers chase them back to the TARDIS for venturing too close to the monument. The Doctor materialises the TARDIS closer to the Cradle and they begin to investigate. It seems active for some unknown reason. The Daleks then arrive. The group realises the enforcers must have been working for the Daleks. The Doctor, Sabel and Ollus manage to escape back to the TARDIS but Hogoosta is exterminated and Jenibeth is captured. Ollus promises to rescue her, then the TARDIS dematerialises, the Cradle suddenly becoming inactive at the same time.

Some months after investigating the train crash on Sunlight 349, Lillian Belle is approached by the member of an underground resistance said to be plotting the downfall of the Dalek Foundation. They give Lillian a report exposing the murders at the crash site and give her information in the form of memory cells about the Doctor. She is told to find him. The Doctor ends up finding her first and asking if she knows a way to defeat the Daleks.

Meanwhile, the Dalek Supreme is becoming impatient and demands that the Dalek Time Controller activate the Cradle of the Gods immediately. The Time Controller refuses, claiming, "The Doctor's course is set. Set by me." Intervention would disrupt the flow of time and harm the Daleks. The Time Controller forces the Supreme Dalek to obey, and the Supreme Dalek reluctantly complies.

The Doctor, Sabel and Ollus use Lillian to sniff out a resistance member and they are met with success. The Doctor, Sabel and Ollus are taken to a resistance meeting where five dark and mysterious figures are in discussion. The Doctor asks about their course of action but Sabel and Ollus discover Daleks invading the hideout. The Doctor and the children escape but they see the resistance members killed by the Daleks. The Doctor returns to Lillian and interrupts her in the middle of a news report. He takes her camera to a busy shopping centre and then begins transmitting a live message to all the screens on Sunlight 349, urging its citizens to rise up against the Daleks. His revolution fails as people still refuse to believe that the Daleks are evil. Someone changes the channel to the quiz show How Nice Is Your Brain? rather than listen to him. The Doctor persists and tries to rally the citizens without the use of a camera but the Dalek Litigator arrives to deal with the situation and subject the Doctor to another trial in public. The crowd's support for the Daleks is huge and Doctor is totally outwitted as the Litigator demands that the Doctor provide proof for his accusations. Sabel and Ollus defend the Doctor but the Litigator makes them question their trust in him, noting that they only have his word to tell them who killed their parents. The resistance members emerge unharmed, the Litigator stating they are care workers. It further declares that Jenibeth will be found and safely returned and the Blakely children will be left under Lillian's care. Four more Daleks arrive with the TARDIS and the Doctor is forced to leave. He is allowed to say goodbye to the children and hands Ollus the hypercube, telling him that if he ever needs the Doctor, he just has to think of him. At last, the Doctor leaves in the TARDIS – but he has a plan.

Approximately 90 years later, Gill is taking care of an elderly Ollus and tells him Sabel is expected to recover from her cold in hospital soon. Gill then finds a white cube and inquires about it, and Ollus begins to remember the Doctor as he goes to sleep.

The Doctor lands on Gethria not long after he left the funeral. Ollus' funeral. The old woman he saw returns. Due to the family resemblance, the Doctor mistakes her for Sabel but it is really Jenibeth. The Doctor takes Ollus' toy spaceship off the gravestone and explains that Terrin and Alyst placed the formula to activate the Cradle of the Gods inside the toy, which is why the Cradle was so active when they investigated it. He is about to smash the toy when Jenibeth takes him hostage. She is a Dalek puppet. Another Dalek ship arrives with a captive Sabel and Ollus who explains the Daleks faked his funeral. The Dalek Litigator is with them and reveals that the Daleks have been manipulating the Doctor since they sent him the hypercube so that he could lead them to the Cradle and activate it. The purpose of the 400 Sunlight Worlds was to have them transformed by the Cradle into "a billion Skaros". The Litigator then turns into the Dalek Time Controller and demands the Doctor activate the Cradle or the Blakelys will die. The Doctor examines it and then finds it is almost ready to turn the Sunlight Worlds into jelly blobs because Jenibeth, having been a Dalek prisoner for decades, had no education and still has the mind of a child and the Cradle is feeding off her mental power. To save the worlds' inhabitants, the Doctor sets the Cradle to self-destruct. The Time Controller moves to kill the Doctor but Jenibeth, able to resist the Daleks' control, attacks him. The other Daleks fight back but Jenibeth destroys them. The Time Controller and a remaining drone retreat but not before shooting Jenibeth.

Sabel and Ollus begin to comfort the dying Jenibeth, telling them stories of their parents and childhood. The Doctor tries to get them into the TARDIS before the Cradle explodes but he is forced to leave them. He takes cover in the TARDIS himself, fearing the worst for the siblings. But when the danger passes, he searches for them and finds them as children, the way they were when he first met them. The Cradle has also converted the rest of the Sunlight Worlds accordingly — all has been reverted by the Cradle to the way it was when the Blakelys were children because of the stories making so huge an impact in Jenibeth's mind for the Cradle to feed on. Another spacecraft arrives, piloted by Terrin and Alyst Blakely, also recreated by the Cradle and Jenibeth's mind. The Doctor leaves in the TARDIS before he can witness the reunion. For a moment, he is ecstatic about how the Daleks' plans for destruction instead had the opposite effect, but he then thinks about what could have been if the Daleks had succeeded. How many people could have died because the Daleks were able to manipulate the Doctor and his reputation for meddling with the affairs of others all throughout time? How many lives had already been lost due to his meddling? Finally, the Doctor decrees: "No more meddling. No more."

Sabel tells her family she thought she saw a man but Ollus and Jenibeth saw nothing. Her parents tell her she must have imagined him and they prepare to leave. As they do, Sabel hears and faint groan in the distance but it quickly fades to nothing.

Characters

 * Eleventh Doctor
 * Sabel Blakely
 * Jenibeth Blakely
 * Ollus Blakely
 * Terrin Blakely
 * Alyst Blakely
 * Hogoosta
 * Klektid Enforcers
 * Dalek Time Controller/Dalek Litigator
 * Dalek Supreme
 * Lillian Belle
 * Maizie Belle
 * Alfred Belle
 * Hellic Dansard
 * Daniel Ash
 * Mr Sezman
 * Gill
 * Mathias Sunam
 * Captain J. L. Gafeska
 * Judge

Audio release
The story was released as an audiobook read by Nicholas Briggs. As with his reading of Prisoner of the Daleks, and almost all other subsequent audiobooks featuring the Daleks, he uses his voice modulator whenever a Dalek speaks. As a result of him being both the writer of this story and the current voice of the Daleks, Briggs becomes one of the few authors of Doctor Who fiction to read the audio release of their own story.

Continuity

 * The Daleks send the Doctor a hypercube, reminding the Doctor of the previous times he used one: a long time ago, (TV: The War Games) and just recently. (TV: The Doctor's Wife)
 * This is the Dalek Time Controller's first encounter with the Doctor, and he is told that they will meet many times in the future. At later points in his personal timeline, the Dalek Time Controller encountered the Sixth Doctor (AUDIO: Patient Zero) and the Eighth Doctor (AUDIO: To the Death, X and the Daleks, The Traitor, Time's Horizon, Eyes of the Master, The Monster of Montmartre, Master of the Daleks, Eye of Darkness)
 * Daleks previously pretended to help humans in order to further their own objectives in TV: The Power of the Daleks, TV: Victory of the Daleks, COMIC: The Only Good Dalek and COMIC: The Dalek Project. They also lured the Thals into a trap by offering them friendship and food in TV: The Daleks.
 * The Daleks know of the Doctor, despite Oswin erasing him from the memories of the Dalek Asylum and the Dalek Parliament in TV: Asylum of the Daleks.
 * The Daleks later regain their memories of the Doctor from Tasha Lem (TV: The Time of the Doctor) but in that story, the Doctor is surprised that the Daleks know who he is while he does not question it here. Where these two stories fit into the Dalek timeline is also unknown.
 * The Doctor calls the TARDIS "sexy thing". (TV: The Eleventh Hour, The Doctor's Wife)
 * The Doctor remembers witnessing the Daleks' "birth in the fires of war." (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)
 * After informing the Blakely children about the death of their parents, the Doctor allows them to have whatever fun they want, knowing they need the happiness. (TV: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe)
 * Ollus asks if the Doctor's sonic screwdriver is a magic wand. (PROSE: Plague of the Cybermen)
 * The Doctor mentions Dalek slave labour camps. (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, Day of the Daleks, Destiny of the Daleks, AUDIO: Invasion of the Daleks, PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks)
 * The Doctor suggests it is wise to be afraid of the dark. (TV: Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, GAME: Shadows of the Vashta Nerada)
 * The Doctor says the Daleks want to get their "protuberances" on the Cradle of the Gods. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
 * The Doctor uses his psychic paper. (PROSE: World Game, TV: The End of the World et al.)
 * References are made to Robomen, and people disguising themselves as one to raid a Dalek ship, (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth) Duplicates, (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks) and Dalek nanogenes reanimating the dead. Dalek puppets make another appearance. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)
 * At the end, the Doctor thinks about the lives his actions put in danger and decides "No more meddling". This is highly implied to be the event in which he made his decision to retire. (TV: The Great Detective) Numerous continuity points support this:
 * The reference to Dalek nanogenes and the appearance of a Dalek puppet places this story after Asylum of the Daleks.
 * This means it also occurs after The Angels Take Manhattan as Amy Pond and Rory Williams continued to travel with the Doctor from Asylum until Angels and they are absent here. It could have taken place in the gap between Asylum and Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, or in other gaps before The Power of Three, but then the Doctor's decision to stop interfering would be ignored.
 * The interior of the TARDIS gives an "orange" glow like its 2010 design, rather than a blue glow following its 2012 redesign in The Snowmen.