The Curse of the Daleks (audio story)

The Curse of the Daleks was an audio adaptation of the stage play The Curse of the Daleks, the first Doctor Who-based stage play.

Publisher's summary
A special audio adaptation of the Doctor Who stage-play from the 1960s.

The space ship Starfinder is taking two dangerous criminals for trial on Earth. En route, they crash through a meteor storm and have to make an emergency landing on Skaro — the planet of the dreaded Daleks. But Captain Redway and his faithful crew don't anticipate any trouble. After all, the Daleks were defeated fifty years ago and now they are completely inactive. But when a crate full of mysterious devices is discovered and the Daleks start to come back to life, it becomes clear that there is a traitor amongst the Starfinder's crew... A traitor intent on reactivating the power of the Daleks!

Plot
In the bare, "curved ribbed store hold" of the spaceship Starfinder are two prisoners. Harry Sline is under arrest for slave trading between Mars and Venus, and he's looking at a thirty year prison sentence in The Deeps underwater prison in the Atlantic Ocean. Meanwhile, disgraced Commander John Ladiver's many crimes include illegal sales of uranium to "the wrong people", an act that almost led to a space war. He's suspected of having "cached away about thirty million". Ladiver is facing execution. Both have just done eight days in a holding cell on Satellite Prison, and Sline is trying to file through the handcuffs chaining the pair together. Food is brought by radio-pic operator and engineer Bob Slater, who is armed with a "short stubbly" detonator handgun, while Captain Stephen Redway looks in on the prisoners.

The Starfinder, travelling at light speed, runs into trouble as it hits a meteor storm, resulting in the programme circuits shorting. Co-pilot Rocket Smith enters to inform Redway that there is smoke coming out of the radio-pic set because somebody sabotaged it by throwing iron filings in it. Forced to land to make repairs, the crew choose the relatively quiet nearby planet of Skaro, even though the Unispace Police have declared Skaro out of bounds. The human crew are dimly aware that Skaro is the home of the now deactivated Daleks and the beautiful race of Thals. The aloof Marion Clements enters with her boss, Professor Vanderlyn. Sline and Ladiver are disembarked, still manacled together, along with Vanderlyn's equipment, including refrigerated crates of biological specimens from around the universe, wheeled in on a trolley to keep them out of the oven-like heat on board the Starfinder.

In a courtyard in the dead City of the Daleks, there are many archways and ramps and secret doors, as well as a dormant Dalek standing in the courtyard, overgrown with vines and with its eyestalk and its suction pad arm pointing at the ground. Vanderlyn relates how the humans managed to switch off the Daleks power at the end of the Dalek war, and embraces the Skaro landing as an opportunity to make notes. Rocket hangs his jacket over the Dalek’s eyestalk. Vanderlyn and Marion pull the creepers off the Dalek to examine it, with Redway attempting to flirt with Marion. Vanderlyn thereafter starts to unload his specimen cases from the trolley and finds there is one that he doesn;t recognise - a large case with his name written on it, that contains a dozen thick black discs. It has a smooth bright metal base, metal without joins, in two sections with "some kind of barely visible pin sticking out of a hole in the base." Before long, Rocket notices one of discs is missing, and it turns up stuck to the side of the overgrown Dalek, whose eyestalk twitches into life as its sucker stick starts to straighten up and it moves around and exits through the ramp. The mystery black boxes turn out to be flooding power into the Dalek like a blood transfusion, and at the same time, whispering recorded orders to the Daleks as well.

Redway takes command of the situation, while Vanderlyn talks about electricity and indeed static electricity. Sline eventually manages to file through his manacles, and is felled by an anaesthetic bullet as he attempts to make a break for it. Three Daleks appear trundling down the ramp with a trolley on which is Vanderlyn's crate, a crate that now contains only the slumped body of Slater. The black boxes are gone.

In the Scanner room of the City, the Daleks are powering themselves up and plugging in a huge screen on which they have the humans under surveillance. As a Dalek gives orders to mobilise, Redway goes missing with the only detonator gun, leaving Rocket in charge. It turns out that Slater was not killed by Daleks, but poisoned by a hypodermic. The humans send up a flare to bring in the Thals, who reply by flashing a piece of polished metal.

An explosion then heralds the appearance of the Thal leader Dexion, and his daughter Ijayna, as they seal passages behind them. These Thals and Commander Ladiver have met before, when Ladiver led the regular five-yearly patrol of local star system three years before and investigated Ijayna's claim that someone had landed secretly on Skaro just before Ladiver's last visit - possibly, as they now believe,  to test the black boxes. Ladiver's reports were ignored, and his subsequent uranium-smuggling career was a cover for routine flights across Skaro space. Ijayana and Ladiver become engaged to be married and the Thals set Ladiver free.

A badly-wounded Redway stumbles in, and the Daleks order the humans to hand over their radio as Redway dies. Someone is controlling the Daleks and they have plans to rule the universe from Skaro. Night is falling when a torch-equipped Dalek appears through a secret door. They exterminate Sline when he runs for it, as Ladiver escapes. The Daleks round up the women, and it begins to look as if whoever is controlling the Daleks is probably male, with suspicion falling on Vanderlyn and Rocket.

Dexion, Rocket and Vanderlyn are drugged and propped up on a bench, whilst Marion and Ijayna are secured to floor by magnets. They discover that the Daleks master is Slater, who wasn't really dead, having injected something to freeze his heart. He rants on about how the Daleks obey him, and how the two girls are going to be his playthings when he rules the universes. Ladiver then attempts to thwart the Dalek power-up by clinging to the underside of a trolley full of power cells that is pushed by another Dalek. However, the Daleks do momentarily manage to get full power, which leads to their black boxes falling off, which in turn frees them from Slater's control, immediately turning on Slater, exterminateing him.

Ladiver meanwhile has manged to pull the power cells out of their sockets, and messing with the Daleks electrical engineering, starts to power them back down again. As the Daleks die, Ladiver and Ijanya kiss.

Cast

 * John Ladiver - Michael Praed
 * Captain Redway - Patric Kearns
 * Marion Clements - Beth Chalmers
 * Rocket Smith - Nick Wilton
 * Bob Slater - James George
 * Professor Vanderlyn - John Line
 * Harry Sline - Derek Carlyle
 * Dexion - Glynn Sweet
 * Ijayna - Denise Hoey
 * Narrator / The Daleks - Nicholas Briggs

Crew

 * Cover Art - Grant Kempster
 * Music, Sound Design & Director - Nicholas Briggs
 * Executive Producers - Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs
 * Producer - David Richardson
 * Writers - David Whitaker and Terry Nation, adapted by Nicholas Briggs

Worldbuilding

 * The Dalek City is visited.

Continuity

 * The Dalek City is covered in vegetation after around 50 years of inactivity. (AUDIO: Return to Skaro)