Flood!!! (comic story)


 * ''Not to be confused with other, similarly-named things.

 was an original comic strip in the pages of the 1976 Dalek annual. Like the rest of the stories in that volume, it featured the trio of Reb Shavron, Mark Seven and Joel Shaw. It was the only full-colour strip in the annual. It was somewhat reminiscent of *Sub Zero, another 1970s comic strip set in the Doctor Who universe, in that it involved a Dalek base in Antarctica and the use of submarines in Australian waters.

Summary
Reb Shavron, Mark Seven and Joel Shaw return to Earth after a long space voyage to find it remarkably changed. Waters are rising all over the planet. Low-lying areas, such as Denmark, are now completely submerged. Great cities like London and New York are being inundated.

The trio are diverted to the ADF's emergency headquarters in Melbourne. There, they are informed that the Antarctic polar ice cap is rapidly melting. They immediately set off towards the southern pole in a nuclear submarine. As they near what remains of the ice cap, they are fired upon. The missile doesn't sink the sub, but it does compromise the hull. The ship has begun to slowly take on water. The captain discharges his three passengers on what's left of the ice cap but warns them that he can't wait long for their return. He's got to pull out soon, or his vessel will sink.

The ADF trio quickly run into nightfall, and so must make camp to survive the night. When dawn breaks, Mark Seven is no longer with them. The human ADF agents notice tracks leading away from the camp — tracks that lead them directly to a Dalek base. Shaw and Shavron immediately see the problem the world is facing: the Daleks have installed a massive neutronic power unit, capable of melting "thousands of billions of tons of ice".

The trio have no choice: somehow they must get inside and deactivate it. Once inside, they are reunited with Mark, who has just freed himself from a Dalek interrogation. The reunited trio head for the control room. Once there, they not only shut down the neutronic power unit, but they reverse it. The water that had been created by the device is now safely being re-converted to ice. In a final moment of inspiration, Mark programmes the unit to retract one of its support legs. This tips the whole thing over, throwing the unit, and all the Daleks, into the water. The ADF trio are able to swim to the safety of solid ice before the water refreezes over the bobbing Daleks.

Characters

 * Reb Shavron
 * Mark Seven
 * Joel Shaw
 * Daleks
 * Submarine captain
 * Scientist

Continuity
to be added

Timeline
There's nothing much in the story to definitively place this story anywhere with respect to other stories starring Reb, Mark and Joel. Therefore, the arbitrary placement of "table of contents order" would place this story after Nightmare and before Timechase.