SHORT STEPS AND SIDE STRIPS: Invasion of the Daleks
Presented in: The Dalek Book
Script: Unaccredited
Art: Unaccredited
Page Count: 10
Main Characters: Daleks, Jeff Stone, Andy Stone, Mary Stone
Synopsis:
On Skaro, the Emperor Dalek, having moved Skaro into an orbit in Earth’s Solar System, gives orders that the earth is to be invaded. The Daleks soon wipe out the primitive races on the moons of Jupiter and the moons of Saturn fall just as easily. Mars falls in just three hours. A worker on an observation satellite around the Earth spots the dalek flying saucers but no one believes his story. The Daleks successfully take New Paris on Venus and the first attempt at resistance is soon crushed. In the Churchill Mountains on Venus, three people, Jeff, Andy and Mary Stone are having a working holiday. Jeff and Mary head off to the cabin to start work on the cooking but are captured by daleks and taken back to the ruins of New Paris. One dalek is forced to stay behind to effect minor repairs and Andy over hears it reporting back to its masters. He destroys it with a rock blaster but doesn’t know where Jeff and Mary have been taken…
Episode Endings:
One – Andy over hears Jeff and Mary over the radio as they’re held hostage and vows to find them…
Continuity
There’s no date given in this story but it’s clearly several hundred years in the future and humans seem to have forgotten just what daleks are. Skaro is now in orbit around the Sun between Jupiter and Saturn. The map of the solar system that the Emperor Dalek has lists the planets of the system in the following order: Vulcan (presumably not the same one from “Power of the Daleks”), Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroids, Jupiter, Skaro, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Omega.
Despite it being stated in later books that the Daleks cannot see the colour red, one of the Daleks clearly identifies itself as “Red Commander”.
Daleks travel on transolar disks, which contain sonic pulsators. They use electron shields to hide themselves from the Earth’s scanners.
Primitive humanoid life exists on the moons of Jupiter. The life forms on the moons of Saturn look like red and green dinosaurs.
New Paris on Venus is the showplace of the solar system. The people there travel on flying bikes and in hover cars. The Churchill Mountains on Venus are a jungle like area.
Jeff Stone is a mineralogist, Andy Stone is an electronics engineer and their sister Mary is a biochemist.
There’s a creature called the Pluto Jackal.
Barbecued Venus fruits are very tempting.
Flying saucers were a myth of the 20th Century.
Comments:
VERY sixties and very much a comic strip interpretation of the daleks. No longer confined to studios and miniscule budgets, these daleks fly, wipe out whole cities and are a force to be reckoned with. The heroes are very much in the traditional square jawed mould and the whole story looks wonderful. Basically it’s the first in an ongoing story line and would be continued in the text story “Red for Danger”.
It’s a classic start and worth trying to get hold of.
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