Doctor Who - Audio Details

The Doctor has always admired the work of William Shakepeare.  So he is a little surprised that Charley doesn't hold the galaxy's greatest playwright in the same esteem.  In fact she's never heard of him.

Which the Doctor thinks is quite improbable.

General Mariah Learman, ruling Britain after the Eurowars, is one of Shakespeare's greatest admirers, and is convinced her time machine will enable her to see the plays' original performances.

Which the Doctor believes is extremely unlikely.

The Daleks just want to help.  They want Learman to get her time machine working.  They want Charley to appreciate the first ever performance of Julius Caeser.  They believe that Shakespeare in the greatest playwright ever to have existed and venerate his memory.

Which the Doctor knows is utterly impossible.

THERE IS ALWAYS THE temptation to try to 'update' the Daleks, but the danger of reinvention is that you might invent-out the very elements that made the thing successful in the first place.  So you have to tread carefully, and you have to decide what those elements are, and play to them.  Having decided for myself what I thought they were, then I thought about 'reinvention'.  Or possibly 'rediscovery'.

The Evil of the Daleks has always been a favourite story of mine.  One reason is that the Daleks work so well within their city, because they are so totally in-keeping with the surroundings.  Yet they are equally impressive and striking in the Victorian manor house - because they are so out of place, so bizarre.

As a starting point for The Time of the Daleks, I asked myself what the aural equivalent of this bizarre image might be - what would a Dalek say that was striking and frightening simply because it is so totally out of character?  And having decided that, all I needed was a story in which Daleks' have a plausible reason for saying it.

Well, okay, it wasn't quite that straightforward.  Nothing about the Daleks ever is.  They are such stuff as nightmares are made on...

Justin Richards, January 2002