Doctor Who And The Dalek Invasion of Earth

  Doctor Who And

  The Dalek Invasion Of Earth

  By Terrance Dicks

  Based on the BBC television serial Doctor Who and the World’s End by Terry Nation by arrangement with the British Broadcasting Corporation

  Content

  1: Return to Terror

  2: The Roboman

  3: The Freedom Fighters

  4: Inside the Saucer

  5: Attack the Daleks!

  6: The Fugitives

  7: Reunion with the Doctor

  8: The Mine of the Daleks

  9: Dangerous Journey

  10: Trapped in the Depths

  11: Action Underground

  12: Rebellion!

  13: Explosion!

  14: The Farewell

  1: Return to Terror

  Through the ruin of a city stalked the ruin of a man. His clothes were tattered and grimy, his skin blotched and diseased over wasted flesh. On his head was a gleaming metal helmet. He walked with the stiff, jerky movements of a robot - which was exactly what he had become.

  The robot man moved through the shattered rubble of a once-great city, a fitting inhabitant of a nightmare landscape.

  In time he came to a river, a sluggish, debris-choked, polluted stream which had once carried great ships. He quickened his pace, sensing that the water would provide the thing he sought - a way to end an existence of misery and pain.

  When he came to a gap in the embankment wall, he marched stiffly through it and plunged into the water below. He fell, like a log or a stone, making no attempt to save himself. Dragged down by the weight of the helmet, his head sank beneath the grimy waters. There was something inhuman about the manner of his death - but then, he had not been truly human for a very long time.

  Not far away, on the rubble-littered remains of what had been a building site, something very strange happened. There was a wheezing, groaning sound and suddenly a square blue police box materialised out of thin air, light flashing busily on top.

  Inside the police box, things were stranger still. There was a large, brightly lit, ultra-modern control room. In the centre was a many-sided control panel, its surfaces covered with a complex array of knobs, switches, levers and dials. From the size of the control room it was clear that the police box must be bigger on the inside than on the outside.

  Around the centre console stood an oddly-assorted group of people.

  The oldest was a man who appeared to be somewhere in his sixties, though in reality he was very much older. He wore check trousers, a frock-coat and a long black tie. He had flowing white hair and a proud, imperious face, with more than a touch of ruthless cunning.

  The three others were more ordinary in appearance. There was a young man and a young woman, both somewhere in their twenties, and a dark pretty girl in her teens. All three were casually dressed in the clothes worn on Earth in the last part of the twentieth century.

  The young man was called Ian Chesterton, the woman Barbara Wright. Once, though it seemed a very long time ago, they had both been schoolteachers. Led by their curiosity about Susan, the youngest member of the party, then one of their pupils, they had followed her home. To their amazement, they had discovered that she appeared to live in this police box with a mysterious old man known only as the Doctor, who she said was her grandfather. They had been even more astonished to find themselves inside the police box, and to discover that it was a kind of Space/Time ship, called the TARDIS - a name formed from the initial letters of Time and Relative Dimensions In Space.

  Then had begun a series of terrifying journeys through Time and Space. The TARDIS had many extraordinary qualities, but accuracy of steering did not appear to be one of them. The Doctor's attempts to return them to their own time and place resulted only in an incredible number of unplanned arrivals, sometimes on alien planets, sometimes on Earth, though always at completely the wrong period. They had seen many wonders, and undergone many strange adventures. Such is the adaptability of the human spirit that they had now adjusted to a life of Space/Time travel. Though they still hoped to see twentieth century Earth again, their old life had begun to seem more and more like a kind of dream.

  Now the TARDIS had made yet another landing. They were all waiting with mingled anticipation and apprehension to discover what lay ahead this time. Moreover, to the Doctor's extreme annoyance, they were all being rather sceptical about his assurances that they were back on Earth, and in the twentieth century.

  "Let's take a look on the scanner," suggested Ian practically.

  The Doctor switched on, and they all peered into the viewing screen. The picture was dark and fuzzy, like an old TV set in a poor reception area. "Oh dear, oh dear, it's not clear," said the Doctor peevishly. "It's not clear at all." He glared at them accusingly, as if it were all their fault.

  "I wonder where we really are," said Ian thoughtfully.

  Barbara sighed. "Somewhere quiet and peaceful, I hope." She knew from bitter experience that the TARDIS never seemed to take them anywhere safe .

  Susan gave her a quick smile. "Yes, we could all do with a holiday, couldn't we?"

  Barbara peered at the murk on the scanner. "I can't see anything ."

  Ian looked over her shoulder. "Don't worry, neither can I!"

  The Doctor indicated sluggish movement on the screen. "That could be water. A river, perhaps." Ian gave him a sceptical look, and the Doctor turned away in a huff. "Susan, perhaps you'll be kind enough to give me the instrument readings?"

  Susan was already studying dials on one of the control panels. "Radiation nil, oxygen and air pressure normal."

  "Normal for where ?" snapped the Doctor. He hated any kind of imprecision, especially in matters of science.

  "Normal for Earth, grandfather," said Susan excitedly. "This is a typical Earth reading."

  The Doctor gave a self-satisfied sniff, as if he'd known the answer all along. "I don't want to boast, my friends," he said loftily, "but that might well be London out there!"

  Ian and Barbara exchanged rueful looks. In theory the Doctor's words were true enough. It might indeed be twentieth-century London out there. But on his previous record, it might equally well be some savage alien planet - or the Earth of some completely different age.

  Ian braced himself. "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go and take a look."

  Barbara agreed. "Doctor, open the door, please. We'll chance it!"

  For a moment the Doctor continued to look sulky. Then he gave one of his sudden charming smiles. "Yes, of course, my dear."

  He touched the controls, the door swung open, and they all went outside.

  They found themselves in an open area, surrounded by high buildings. In front the ground sloped down towards a wide river. There were scattered piles of building material all around, bricks, timber, steel girders in enormous stacks. Many of the stacks were partially collapsed - the one nearest the TARDIS was in a particularly perilous state.

  There was an ironic gleam in the Doctor's eye as he looked at Chesterton. "Well, here you are, my boy - home at last. There's the Thames."

  "We've come a pretty roundabout way, Doctor."

  The Doctor nodded. "And arrived more by luck than judgement," he said, with one of his disarming flashes of honesty. He looked distastefully at the rubble all around. "This is a pretty horrible mess, isn't it?"

  Barbara nodded in agreement. It wasn't a particularly pretty spot to choose for a homecoming. But at least it was Earth.

  "Where do you think we are, Ian?"

  "Looks like a building-site, down by the Docks. It all seems pretty deserted. We can follow the river into central London, there'll be people about th
ere."

  Ian and Barbara began making plans to find their homes and friends again. The Doctor watched them, frowning. He ran his hand along the nearest girder, then inspected it. His fingers were covered in thick rust. The Doctor's frown deepened. Building material was valuable. You didn't leave it out in the open to decay unused.

  "I wonder which year we're in," he muttered.

  Ian caught the worried tone. "What's the matter, Doctor?"

  "Eh? Oh, I was just worrying about the time factor, my boy."

  "After all our travels, we're not going to quibble about a year here or there! "

  The Doctor sniffed. For all their recent experiences, these young people didn't realise the dangers and paradoxes in time travel. Suppose they met their own grandparents while they were still children? Or worse still, arrived at a time when all their family and friends were already dead? He kept these gloomy thoughts to himself and said, "For both your sakes, I hope we're very near to your own time. But bear in mind, we may have arrived in the early nineteen hundreds - or in the twenty-fifth century!"

  Barbara refused to be downhearted. "Well, it's still London. No mistaking that, I can feel it in the air," she said cheerfully.

  Suddenly they realised Susan was no longer with them. She'd grown bored with the conversation of her elders, and slipped away. Ian hunted round for her un-successfully. Then it occurred to him to look up. Sure enough Susan was far above their heads, scrambling up the pile of girders. "What do you think you're doing?" he yelled.

  "Just having a look around. Can't see a thing from down there."

  Ian was about to order her down when he was distracted by the Doctor, who said mysteriously, " Decay! "

  Ian and Barbara stared at him. The Doctor went on talking as if to himself. "That's the word I was looking for - decay!"

  Barbara put a hand on his arm. "Doctor, what's worrying you?"

  "Look at all this! Preparations for some great constructional work. A new bridge across the river, perhaps. Not a small undertaking. Yet all around us is this air of neglect. This place has been abandoned - and for quite some time too."

  Ian could see the force of the Doctor's arguments, but he didn't want to admit, even to himself, that the Doctor might be right. The thought that perhaps they weren't home safely after all was too awful to be faced. "There's always a lot of mess in construction work, Doctor," he said unconvincingly.

  The Doctor was staring into space, his mind trying to solve the problem on the little evidence available. "Perhaps, my boy, perhaps," he murmured. "And yet..."

  Barbara shivered. Like Ian, she didn't want her hopes of a safe return snatched away. "Doctor, you're spoiling it all."

  The Doctor's keen glance went from one to the other of them. "I'm sorry, my dear. The last thing I want to do is spoil your homecoming. But I think we ought to be wary..."

  Susan's voice floated down from above. "I'm nearly at the top now. Still can't see much, though. I'll just go a bit higher..."

  Enjoying her own daring, Susan continued upwards. Suddenly the girder beneath her feet rocked a little. Nervously she said, "Oops!"

  But the girder steadied again. She worked her way along it and on to the very top of the pile. Balanced precariously, she stared at the view below in shocked disbelief.

  Although she wasn't a native of Earth, Susan had lived there with the Doctor for quite some time. She was very familiar with the way that London ought to look. The sight of the deserted, half-ruined city came as as big a shock to her as it would have done to Ian or Barbara.

  Susan wondered when they must have arrived. Some-where in the nineteen-forties, perhaps? She knew London had been damaged in World War Two - but she couldn't remember hearing that the damage was as bad as this... And how was she going to break the news to Ian and Barbara?

  She heard Ian calling. "Susan, be careful! What's it like up there?"

  "Doesn't seem to be anyone about," she called back. "And the whole city's..." The girder beneath her feet twisted sideways, and Susan lost her footing. She made a desperate grab at the nearest girder but her hand slipped, and she began a bumpy slide down the side of the pile.

  The others looked on horrified and helpless, as she tumbled from the pile, landing almost at their feet. Barbara ran to her, kneeling by her side. Susan stirred and muttered, "Ruined... all ruined," then fell back unconscious. Barbara felt her head with skilful hands. There was a slight trickle of blood on Susan's forehead.

  "She grazed her head on the way down but there doesn't seem to be any real injury. She'll be all right."

  The Doctor looked down at Susan, disguising his very real concern with an air of irritation. "She will go dashing about," he said disapprovingly - forgetting that he spent his whole life in dashing about on a far greater scale.

  Ian helped Barbara to sit Susan up. "Daft kid," he grumbled, sounding very much like the schoolteacher he'd once been. "She's lucky it wasn't worse - "

  The Doctor rested a hand on the nearest girder. It was vibrating . "I'm afraid it is worse," he said urgently. "That pile was finely balanced, and Susan disturbed the equilibrium."

  They stared upwards and saw a huge steel girder, balanced see-saw like across another, tilt slowly to one side. There was a rumbling, grinding sound as the whole pile began to shift. Susan's fall, though minor in itself, had been like the shout that starts an avalanche...

  "The whole lot's going," yelled Ian. "Let's get out of here!"

  The Doctor had already spotted the only safe shelter - the arched doorway of a half-completed building nearby. "Come on," he called. "Over here!" Dragging Susan between them, Ian and Barbara followed him.

  From beneath the shelter of the archway they watched the collapse of the pile of girders. It was an impressive spectacle, accompanied by an ear-splitting clang of metal and clouds of dust.

  The last girder clattered to the ground and there was a deafening silence. Coughing and choking, the Doctor peered out. "Everybody all right? Splendid!" He seemed rather exhilarated by the adventure.

  "We're all right," said Ian. "What about the TARDIS?"

  The Doctor smiled complacently. "How many times must I tell you, Chesterton, my boy, the TARDIS is indestructible."

  The dust was settling now, and the Doctor left the shelter of the arch and began making his way towards the TARDIS. Suddenly he called in an alarmed voice. "The Ship, Chesterton, the Ship!"

  Ian ran to join him, then stopped in horror. The police box was still visible - but only just. An impenetrable tangle of twisted steel girders blocked the way to its entrance. The TARDIS was safe right enough - but they couldn't get back inside it.

  2: The Roboman

  The Doctor began tugging crossly at one of the obstructing girders. Ian came to help him, but they were wasting their strength. Ian shrugged and gave up, stepping back and wiping his hands. "We'll need help to shift this lot, Doctor. We'd better try and find someone."

  The Doctor didn't move. He stood gazing at the twisted pile of wreckage, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Remember where we are, Chesterton."

  "We're in London - oh, yes, I see what you mean. Why do we want to get into a police box, people will ask."

  "Ironic, isn't it?" The Doctor was still studying the wreckage. "Now as I see it, this girder here is the main problem. Shift that and we could open the door of the Ship far enough to squeeze inside."

  Ian looked at the girder. Luckily it was thinner than the rest. "I could cut through it with an oxy-acetylene torch."

  "Easier said than done, my boy. One can't just whistle up machinery and tools at a moment's notice." The Doctor looked at Ian with an infuriating air of expectancy. His manner suggested that he already had the answer to the problem, and was waiting to see if Ian could work it out for himself. Since Ian had a shrewd suspicion that the Doctor had no idea what to do next, he found this attitude particularly annoying. Ian glanced about him. "That building over there looks like a warehouse of some kind. We might find something in it. Even a few crowbars would
be a help."

  The Doctor shook his head disappointedly, like a teacher whose favourite pupil had let him down. "I'm impressed by your optimism, my boy. But brute strength will never move that girder. No, a cutting flame is the right answer."

  Ian's temper boiled over. "I'm sure of one thing, Doctor," he snapped. "We won't achieve anything just standing here. And we must be able to get into the TARDIS before we start looking round - just in case we run into trouble."

  The Doctor was quite unruffled. "Good, good, Chesterton," he said approvingly. "A very intelligent observation." Clearly the favourite pupil was doing better. Ian opened his mouth for a sharp retort, when the Doctor lowered his voice and led him a little further from the two girls. "I have a feeling, Chesterton, an intuition if you like, that we're not in your time."

  A wave of disappointment swept over Ian, all the stronger because he himself shared the Doctor's suspicions. "Just a feeling, Doctor?" he asked, hoping against hope.

  The Doctor shook his head. "Consider this, my boy. Here we are by the Thames. We've been here some little while. And what have we heard? Nothing. No sound of birdsong, no voices, no shipping, not even the chimes of Big Ben. Just an uncanny silence."

  Suddenly Ian realised the truth of the Doctor's words. Apart from the noises they'd made themselves, there'd been nothing but dead silence. Now deeply worried, he followed the Doctor back to the two girls.

  Susan was trying to stand up, with Barbara supporting her. "Ow, my foot!" She sank to the ground, looking apprehensively up at the Doctor. "Sorry about what happened."

  The Doctor sniffed, showing no signs of his relief that Susan wasn't badly hurt. "Oh, you're sitting up and taking notice, are you?"

  "There don't seem to be any bones broken," said Barbara encouragingly. "Just a bit of a sprain."

  Susan was still looking at the Doctor. "Don't be angry. After all, there's no real harm done."

  "Oh isn't there? Just look at all this mess in front of the Ship. We can't get in."

  Susan looked as if she was about to burst into tears. Hurriedly Ian said, "We're going to take a look at that warehouse over there, see if we can find some tools."