The Dalek Invasion of Time is the first episode of the video game Doctor Who Infinity. It was released for iOS, Android, and PC and Mac computers.
Both Michelle Gomez and Ingrid Oliver returned to voice Missy and Osgood respectively.
Publisher's summary[]
A tragic event on the edge of the Time War[1] has led to the unlikely creation of a dangerous new type of Dalek hybrid, after a gifted young child is forced to survive by hooking herself into a Dalek life-support system.
As the young girl tries to exact her revenge, the Twelfth Doctor, Missy, Bill and Nardole find themselves in the midst of a full-scale assault on Earth's timeline.
As the invasion spreads, and the Doctor is forced to turn to some of his closest allies for assistance, can they stop this new enemy? And must the Doctor do the unthinkable and ally with the Daleks to save Earth?
Plot[]
Missy sits at a table at Montmartre, in the 18th century, waiting for an old friend. As it turns out, that friend is the Doctor as he stumbles into the scene with panicking in the background, people screaming about a portal opening in the bathroom. He wonders why Missy is here and blames here for why the Tyrellians are attacking. Missy believes them to be some boring species, but he claims they're anything but as they run in and begin to attack. As he arms himself with his sonic screwdriver he states they're all that stand between them and the complete collapse of Earth's time streams. Missy hurried him along to save all the humans, but with an intense gaze, he explains that they keep winning no matter what he does, via military coups, engineering a catastrophe, or even flat out war. With their reality bending technology, they interlace different time streams which forces the present to snap into a succession of multiple timelines in which their victory is assured. Though Missy dismisses it, claiming that he's fought wars before, the Doctor continues to ask for her help as he can't do it alone. Eventually, she accepts.
Battling them, she decides she wants to take a look underneath their masks, revealing a green being with large teeth and long green hair. Repulsed by their appearance, she understands why they wear masks. The Doctor however is frustrated that they are totally unable to defeat them. She orders him to get into their systems while she holds them off. Taking control of their systems, he's able to reassert the timelines so the outcome ends with his own victory instead, but explains that unless their technology is destroyed, their victory was only a temporary one. Missy has the solution for it, and activates a bomb that explodes the building they're in. With the rubble posing a new threat, the Doctor wants Missy to help him save some of the "useless" humans as well. She confesses to herself that it was invigorating. Then she tells the Doctor that this time, she needs his help.
The duo head into his TARDIS, the Doctor sceptical that she was up to something. She didn't like the idea of asking for his help, but swallowing her pride, she'd explain that she found a place where she was happy - a planet called Vartagen. She says that she had been there for nearly a century when light fell out of the sky, which reminded her of Pandaroth during the Last Great Time War, which could only mean one thing: the Daleks were here. She was torturing someone when they arrived, and in attempt to fight back she used a grenade launcher, but there were simply too many and the Vartagens never stood a chance. She fled, not wanting to be exterminated. The Doctor expresses sorrow, knowing full well what it's like to lose people to Daleks, but she explains she didn't mind about the people and was more upset about them taking her home. The Doctor still appreciated this as progress as she begins to understand what it's like for the people left behind. But Missy corrects him as she tells him there were no people left behind. They weren't there just to conquer, but they were there to colonise. The Doctor finds this impossible, as this goes against their entire MO, so Missy shows him.
The TARDIS lands on Vartagen, the ashes still lingering fresh in the air. Missy is proven right as the Daleks are building their own city in the ruins of the old one, as well as turning the previous lifeforms into Dalek mutants before they're put into the machines. Though the Doctor finds this obscene, he also questions as to why they're doing it, given how genetic impurity is abhorrent to the Daleks. They return to the TARDIS in an attempt to understand what exactly is transpiring on the planet. The Doctor attempts to hack into the Pathweb using a remote link from the TARDIS to look inside and find out what they're doing and why.
Unsuccessfully, he states he can't find a way through their security systems. Missy tells him the only way to manage is to capture a Dalek and open it up, and by connecting their neural amplifiers to the TARDIS they could force their way in. The Doctor objects, given they're still living creatures and they'd be subjecting it to a lot of pain, but she handcuffs him so she can continue with her plan.
She exits the TARDIS and successfully captures a Dalek, bringing it back into the TARDIS. She nickname's the Dalek Bob and explains he is harmless. She finally frees the Doctor, open the Dalek up and plugs it into the TARDIS meaning they're able to gain access to the Pathweb. Gazing into it, she can see every single Dalek thought, their entire history. She spots a node of corruption, and deduces it as Freya and discovers her to be a human child.
A planet with the designated name of Alpha Reticula 12 was populated by Freya and her parents, and renamed Fresia. Her parents devoted their lives to understanding everything that they could about the world and taught Freya everything that she knew, cataloguing all of the lifeforms which Freya found fascinating. They had brought to the planet some Mining robots, and while her mum and dad kept busy, she too didn't remain idle, as she rigged up a satellite receiver after absorbing the data cubes they brought and beamed in data streams from all over the Great and Bountiful Human Empire. She had also re-configured one of the robots to make her very own kind of robot. Despite their anger, her parents let her keep it. She used the robots to prospect for minerals on the beach. Then, one day, the Daleks came.
Missy, briefly, begs the Doctor to unplug her from the Pathweb as she fears she knows what will come. But she soon finds herself back into Freya's part of the Pathweb once more.
Freya and her parents were not ready for the Daleks, as they were too nice to ever foresee anything like them arriving onto the planet. Freya knew these monsters would never stop, for she read about them before. To retaliate, she activates the defensive protocols in her robots. They weren't able to slow them down for long, and ravaged the planet with all their force. They killed her mother, causing her dad to kill them in furious anger with his mining laser. He dragged Freya away, wherein she figured that there was another way to fight them. If she could re-program their system there was a chance for her to slow down or destroy the Daleks. By doing this she stopped one, whilst the other one closed in and exterminated her father. As a Dalek approached, she thought that she had nothing left to live for, but then remembered the self-destruct protocols she implemented into her robots which was enough to distract the Daleks, and so she ran for her life.
The collapsing building killed a Dalek, but also Freya lay underneath a mixture of debris and Dalekanium. She was dying. Laying, she thought that she had to get into the dead Dalek machine to use its life support system to support her, so she got free. Clawing her way into it, she was injected with chemicals that numbed her pain. The nutrients reinvigorated her, whilst more tendrils wormed their way into her. With more cables she plugged into herself, she gained more access to the network the Daleks shared, gaining the knowledge of their entire existence. She was determined to survive and became one with the Pathweb, with her memories becoming hers but vice versa. In the machine, her one purpose was to save the universe from the Daleks. She figured that the only way to defeat the Daleks was to get all people to become like them, to remake them all in the Daleks own image. She selects a world, and gets to work.
Missy realises that she needs to be stopped, having already converted a dozen worlds, with Earth being the next target on her list.
It flashes back to Freya's assimilation of Vartagen, with them at first not appreciating the beauty of their sacrifice that means life can be preserved as a Dalek rather than obliterated by them. Despite her claiming several worlds, she knew there were Daleks still destroying other worlds, and she wasn't fast enough. In spite of this, she had the idea that'll turn the tides of victory. On the nightmare wastelands of the Alterius Drift, where the Daleks fought the Time Lords in the Last Great Time War which annihilated the local star system leaving little behind. However, there were remnants of Time Lord technology, bits of TARDISes, meaning she now had time on her side.
Missy watches on in the TARDIS, impressed by her and her ability to use Time Lord technology for her mission. She begins an assault on Earth, in the year 300 AD. Now joined by Bill Potts and Nardole, they land, but out by six weeks too late. A Dalek rolls by, detecting the presence of an enemy time ship and attempts to exterminate the group. Evading them, Missy notices something different about them, that they're converted Mayans from Earth. As they run away again, the Doctor warns them there's a mist creeping in too.
As they reached the pyramid of Machu Picchu, they noticed Daleks whizzing around including one giant Dalek that towered over the pyramid. It was a Dalek factory. They run back to the TARDIS, believing it'll help take down the giant factory. Thinking it no use as there's too many, the Doctor suggests they try a different tactic. Missy says although she won't like it, the idea would be to go back into the Pathweb to see if they could take control. Although he originally suggests Missy goes in, her not wanting to means he will go in instead whilst the others keep the Daleks at bay.
Finally gaining access, he activates their self-destruct protocol which will in turn blow up the factory. They depart in their TARDIS as the factory explodes. Although Missy is content enough to celebrate, the Doctor announces that it's far from over, as in the Pathweb he can see that Freya's forces are attacking multiple points in Earth's history all at once, each time zone with its own factory. They set their sights on rectifying the Dalek issue in all of these points in time.
Their next destination is New Carthage, Spain at the height of the Roman Empire. Another Dalek factory has been set up, with converted Roman Daleks. The Daleks are now wise to their ways, and thus they need to find another way into the Pathweb. The Doctor speculates that if he could get close enough he could use his sonic to hijack their communications, and because the Daleks are fresh off the production line he could potentially get them to turn on each other.
Succeeding in the task, the Daleks blare out error messages as the factory explodes along with every Dalek. Not safe yet, the group run away from the explosions and debris. Eventually finding safety in the TARDIS, the Doctor reports there are two more to go, and set off to the next destination - Mumbai. The Doctor orders Nardole to remove the globes from Bob's casing and in doing so launches an attack using the bombs against the clock tower for it to topple over and destroy the factory.
After that, the group set off to Wales, in a town called Llandaff, chosen so that the factory could be hidden from the attention of the big cities. This time the Doctor was adamant on taking a look inside which Missy had a feeling meant it was out of curiosity rather than some plan. Suddenly, the original New Dalek Paradigm arrived, here to police their own kind. With brutal efficiency, Freya's Dalek forces were wiped out.
The TARDIS phone rings after the fact, with Osgood on the other end pleading for him to come as she tells him that there are Daleks everywhere. As Dalek flying saucers fly over and another factory stationed by Westminster, Daleks capture the humans. Despite all of UNITs best efforts, Osgood expresses disappointment in the inability to protect the planet. It took the Daleks three minutes to succeed. Petronella and other UNIT officers made their way to a mobile UNIT base that's constantly circling London before she called for the Doctor.
The Doctor sits with Kate Stewart, who explains that none of their weapons are good enough to combat the Dalek forces. Although his friends suggest destroying the factories again, the Doctor warns them that they'll have raised their system's firewalls making it a lot harder, not to mention blowing up the factories could put half of London at risk of death. The Doctor plans to get a closer look and to gauge the numbers. Osgood picks up that more saucers have entered the atmosphere, a Dalek Purity Squad. The Doctor warns them that they must be stopped for they will tear London apart in the process. He puts Missy in charge while he goes off to find Freya and a means to end her entire operation.
Simply overridden by Daleks, the Doctor suggests a different approach, which leads them back to the TARDIS. He determines the only way is to go back into the Pathweb, in spite of the risk. The Doctor is greeted by Freya, welcoming him into the heart of the New Dalek Empire. He tells Bill that Freya is in the factory by Westminster and is expecting them.
Overwhelmed by two opposing Dalek forces, the Doctor mentions no one will have the upper hand unless helped. He continues by saying the one thing Daleks hate more than him is racial impurity. His idea is to help the real Daleks as opposed to Freya's Daleks. He goes to the Supreme Dalek and proposes an alliance. The Doctor convinces the Dalek eventually to join forces.
Osgood expresses concern that Missy will be in charge of an army, but comparing them to the various Dalek forces in the Time War means Missy doesn't think of them as such. The Supreme Dalek transfers control of his squad to the mobile base they're in. Freya had become aware of the alliance and expressed disappointment that the Doctor didn't see the beauty in her plan, and so plans to exterminate the Doctor.
They notice the factory is bigger on the inside - another piece of Time Lord technology that Freya was able to utilise. They plan to head to the control room where Freya will likely be. Along the way, Bill proposes the save the prisoners yet to be transformed, so the Doctor creates a distraction while her and Nardole find the holding cells to free the prisoners while the Doctor confronts Freya.
While Bill and Nardole succeed in their task, the Doctor takes to trying to talk Freya down from her mission. She disagrees, believing the Daleks will succeed in conquering and this was the only way to stop them. Missy back at the base is struggling to support the Doctor as Freya has locked her out. Missy states she's heading back to the TARDIS.
The Doctor manages to get through slightly by reasoning with her, and tells Freya that he can she her how she can truly help, firstly by freeing her from the Dalek systems that are currently holding her captive. But it's too late, and she continues her plan. He gives her the chance to surrender, in which he'll grant her a head start to get away from the Purity Squad Daleks waiting outside who have finished destroying her other factories. She refuses, and she engages the self-destruct systems. Missy assists by helping to deactivate the bombs, but also taps into the Pathweb to also get rid of the Purity Squad, ridding themselves of both problems.
The group then head to the TARDIS, believing her to take the TARDIS, but she instead goes to Viridia and makes sure to leave no trail behind.
Cast[]
- Missy - Michelle Gomez
- Osgood - Ingrid Oliver
- Freya - Bella Ramsey
Crew[]
Writer - George Mann
Worldbuilding[]
- According to Missy, the Doctor has a middle name.
- Osgood is the Zygon Bonnie, who takes mild offence to being labeled a human. Missy recalls killing the previous Zygon Osgood.
- During the Last Great Time War, the Master lead Battle TARDISes against the Daleks fleets, watching them burn in the Promethian Zephyr. He also ordered legions of the Reborn into chronal battles that lasted billions of years.
Notes[]
- Bill unknowingly foreshadows her Cyber-conversion into the first CyberMondan when thinking about becoming a Dalek of human origin.
- The publisher's summary indicates that Freya lost her family at "the edge" of the Last Great Time War. However, in the story itself, her family is exterminated during the resurrected Dalek Empire era:
- The story features both Bronze Daleks and New Dalek Paradigm units during the lifetime of the Twelfth Doctor.
- Upon making herself part of the Pathweb immediately after her family's extermination, she sees a Paradiagm Supreme and the Twelfth Doctor.
- The Time War is mentioned as a past event, which Freya secures salvage from by visiting the nightmare wastelands of the Alterius Drift.
External links[]
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- ↑ While this summary implies Freya lost her family during the Last Great Time War, the story itself indicates that they were killed during the resurrected Dalek Empire era.
