The episode works as well as it does because it’s brilliantly directed, Rose and the Doctor are given a lot of great character work to play with, and Billie Piper and Christopher Ecclestone take that character work and deliver breathtaking performances. It’s a simple plot, but one that allowed the episode’s direction and character work to take center stage. Naturally, the Dalek (with a little inadvertent help from Rose) breaks free and reins terror on almost everyone trapped in the fortress. They find a lone Dalek chained up, having been subjected to various forms of torture to get it to talk. The Doctor and Rose pick up a distress signal and arrive in Henry Van Statten’s underground alien museum. On the surface, Robert Shearman’s novelization of Dalek closely follows the events of the episode. And as the Dalek breaks loose, the Doctor is brought back to the brutality and desperation of his darkest hours spent fighting the creatures of Skaro… this time with the Earth as their battlefield. Seeking to help the Metaltron, the Doctor is appalled to find it is in fact a Dalek – one that has survived the horrors of the Time War just as he has. Its billionaire owner, Henry van Statten, even has possession of a living alien creature, a mechanical monster in chains that he has named a Metaltron. The vault is filled with alien artefacts. The Doctor and Rose arrive in an underground vault in Utah in the near future.
NOTE: There will be mild spoilers for “Dalek” ahead. It’s a fun read-but a wildly different experience when compared to the episode. This results in a compelling novel, but one that lacks the tension and focus of the episode it’s adapting. Instead, Shearman takes the opportunity to delve deeper into the story, stretching out the backstories of all of the characters and allowing the narrative a lot of room to breathe. How do you successfully translate the episode’s bone-chilling tension into prose? The answer, in Dalek’s case, is that you don’t. The idea of novelizing the episode must have been a daunting one for Robert Shearman, the episode’s original writer and the author of this new Target novelization. It’s got great character work, thrilling action sequences, and an expertly crafted and executed plot. Dalek is a perfect episode of Doctor Who.
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