Invasion Of The Daleks
Susan “Suz” Mendes’ peaceful life of conducting mineralogical surveys on the planet Vega VI is shattered abruptly when a Dalek invasion fleet blasts its way through the Vega system, enslaving or exterminating millions of humans. Heartier members of the population are robotized, receiving cybernetic implants that give the Daleks direct control over them, while the other survives are forced to work in mines – often until they die. Alby Brook, a friend of Suz, ran when the fleet appeared, and although he escaped to safety, he now wants nothing more than to return to Vega VI and rescue her. However, with the prospect of a new human-Dalek war looming, Brook – who was actually there on a covert mission to find a rogue Knight of Velyshaa named Kalendorf – is called to full-time service…and told to forget a woman who is, in all likelihood, dead. He befriends an overenthusiastic reporter, Gordon Pellan, who relishes broadcasting live from the war zone. When Suz attracts the attention of the Emperor Dalek by defying the Daleks’ death threats if she doesn’t stop campaigning for the slave workers’ basic human rights, she finds herself in a position to help others and save lives. She’s more than a little surprised to learn that the first life she has saved is Kalendorf. When the tide of battle cuts Alby off from his superiors and their orders, he throws caution to the wind and embarks on a mission to save Suz, dragging Pellan into the fray with him.
written by Nicholas Briggs
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Nicholas BriggsCast: Sarah Mowat (Susan Mendes), Mark McDonnell (Alby Brook), Gareth Thomas (Kalendorf), John Wadmore (Gordon Pellan), Joyce Gibbs (Narrator), Ian Brooker (Admiral Cheviat/Ed Byers/Roboman), David Sax (Tanlee), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek voices), Alistair Lock (Dalek voices)
The war between the Daleks who have overrun Earth’s solar system and the Daleks from an alternate dimension has not gone well. Kalendorf has taken a position at the head of the combined human/alternate-Dalek fleet, fighting for the liberation of the galaxy. Alby Brook has sought isolation and oblivion, choosing to stay away from the main action as he mourns the fate of Suz Mendes. Suz is also the subject of an intensive search by the Daleks. And Mirana seems to have found her before the Daleks can – but in so doing has delayed a rendezvous with Alby, leaving him in a potentially precarious situation. But what has happened to Suz in the meantime? Is she still dedicated to the resistance…or is she in the thrall of the Daleks?
Mirana, operating in total secrecy, has recovered Suz, rescuing her from the burial in a collapsing star that has been ordained by the alternate universe Daleks for all humans subjected to the Dalek conversion process. Mirana and Kalendorf have discovered a horrifying secret – to avoid capture by the alternate universe Daleks, the Dalek Emperor forced its consciousness into Suz’s mind – a cohabitation she’s unaware of until Mirana tells her. Alby’s ship finally shows up for the rendezvous, but it has been commandeered by Daleks, and Alby and a refugee named Morli are hostages. The Daleks storm Mirana’s ship, taking command swiftly, but they refrain from their usual ruthlessness when Suz threatens to kill herself (which would also destroy the Emperor). At Earth’s solar system, Kalendorf’s Alliance fleet succeeds in tearing down the Daleks’ defenses, but at a high cost. Once in the solar system itself, Kalendorf and his alternate Dalek allies make startling discoveries, not the least of which is that the Daleks have terraformed Jupiter into a massive, human-habitable world by brute force. And in a Dalek laboratory, Suz’s mind is being turned inside-out, as the Daleks try to subjugate her personality permanently to bring the Emperor’s consciousness to the surface. 
Suz slowly recovers from her Dalek-inflicted ordeal, which reveals that she is indeed in possession of the Emperor Dalek’s consciousness. In Earth’s solar system, Kalendorf’s crew explores the terraformed Jupiter with disastrous results, and the Mentor – the leader of the alternate universe Daleks – strips him of his command. When his ship is attacked, Kalendorf takes advantage of the confusion to escape, and makes a beeline for Mirana’s ship, which is also returning to the solar system under Dalek control. When he reaches the ship and is reunited with Suz, Alby begins to suspect the same thing of which the Mentor has accused Kalendorf: the leader of the rebellion has switched sides.
Hundreds of years after the Great Catastrophe that reduced many of the galaxy’s civilizations to rubble, Galactic Union agent Sy Tarkov seeks the expertise of Saloran Hardew, a researcher who has a theory that the Catastrophe was caused by one man named Kalendorf. She tells Tarkov of Kalendorf’s seeming betrayal of his own friends and allies, and how Kalendorf even handed Susan Mendes over to the Daleks he had pledged his life to fight, all in a cunning scheme to infiltrate the Daleks’ command network. And she tells Tarkov that, despite Kalendorf’s apparent defeat of the Daleks centuries ago, there are signs that they’re about to return – and this time the decimated galaxy isn’t ready to repel them. 
A virus called NFS – Neurotransmitter Failure Syndrome – has swept the galaxy, laying entire populations to waste. Siy Tarkov, after discovering evidence of an impending Dalek invasion, fell victim to NFS after leaving Velyshaa and placed himself in suspended animation after helplessly watching the rest of his crew die. His desperate distress signal, warning of the Dalek approach, has gone undetected…except by a mysterious man named Selestru, who hires a space traveler named Galanar to find Tarkov’s drifting ship and bring Tarkov back. Selestru wants to know more about the Daleks, and he wants to know about the planet Velyshaa, which has fallen off of the galactic star charts and into the realm of myth.
Galanar, traveling incognito as a doctor, backtracks Siy Tarkov’s two-decade journey, and decides to investigate the planet Skelanis, where “the Healers” are rumored to be fighting the NFS plague. On Graxis Major, when one of Commander Saxton’s crew refuses to obey a Dalek order, the Daleks show their true colors by exterminating him on the spot. Saxton and the surviving Wardens are rounded up and imprisoned, but Saxton stubbornly insists on formulating an escape plan. Without realizing it, Galanar is being spirited away to Skelanis VIII, which the Daleks have “geoformed” and turned into a massive medical facility. Having only heard Tarkov’s word that the Daleks are a force for evil, Galanar wonders if the Daleks – known here as the healers – are as bad as their reputation. And as Selestru continues to demand more information from him, Tarkov wonders precisely who his rescuer and benefactor is.
Selestru takes Tarkov to meet with the leaders of the Galactic Council, warning them of the imminent threat posed by the Daleks, but the warning is dismissed as unfounded hysteria. Selestru’s case isn’t helped by the fact that he hasn’t received any new information from Galanar. Desperate to bring new facts about the Daleks to light, Selestru sends Tarkov and a woman who claims to be his daughter on another intelligence gathering mission. But the chairman of the Council confronts Selestru with proof that the woman with Tarkov may not be who Selestru thinks she is. And when he breaks cover in the heart of the Dalek base on Skelanis VIII, Galanar is captured and brought before the Dalek Supreme, who says that Galanar isn’t who he thinks he is, either.
Galanar is told that he is a creation of the alternate Daleks who emerged from the Project Infinity dimensional rift two millennia ago. Genetically engineered to have abilities beyond normal humans, Galanar is one of the only experiments to survive. And it turns out that someone else on Skelanis VIII is another one of the surviving experiments, a woman named Elaria. Galanar also learns that the Daleks are trying to find the planet Velyshaa. With Elaria’s help, Galanar frees Tarkov – posing as a patient in the Daleks’ treatment center, and the only man alive who has been to Velyshaa and knows how to go back – and together they launch a desperate escape attempt.
Commander Frey Saxton leads a charge against the Daleks, with hundreds of Graxis Wardens as her army and an armed but battered freighter at her disposal. During the attack on Skelanis VIII, Frey’s crew rescues Galanar, Elaria, and Tarkov from a waiting Dalek force. Once aboard Frey’s ship, however, Tarkov turns against his rescuers, believing that they work for the Daleks, until Frey manages to smooth things over and Tarkov agrees to lead the Graxis Wardens to Velyshaa. There, he believes, they will find the final telepathic imprint left by a man called Kalendorf who fought in the last great war against the Daleks, though what information he might have left behind 2,000 years ago is anybody’s guess. Something else that no one can even begin to guess at is the true nature of the cure that the Daleks are offering to the plague sweeping the galaxy.
Notes: One of the Daleks refers to a refueling station called Exxilon Gamma 9 – apparently despite the trouble they encountered on Exxilon during their final clash with the third Doctor, the Daleks prevailed against the planet’s many perils.
Galanar, Tarkov and Frey’s crew are finally en route to Velyshaa, only someone has betrayed them to the Daleks, who will soon follow. The source of the plague is discovered to have been the Daleks all along, only their cure is merely a way to mutate the victims into a new army of Daleks. The Graxis Wardens find the evidence they need on Velyshaa to warn the Galactic Union of the Daleks’ plan, only their ship is destroyed before they can leave with that evidence. The human race may finally have the means to destroy the Daleks, only they’ll have to become equally ruthless – and perhaps, in the end, as inhuman as the Daleks themselves.
On the backwater planet of Talis Minor, Salus Kade has a decent life; he helps to bring home the food that feeds his people, he has a wife and daughter – and he wants absolutely nothing to do with the war raging between the Earth Alliance and the Dalek Empire. When he finds Earth soldiers holding a recruitment drive in the middle of his home town, he’s not pleased, and he’s not afraid of them until he discovers that the “recruiting” is just for show and it’s actually a forced conscription drive. Even as he rallies his own people around him by denouncing the Earth Alliance’s tyranny, the Daleks themselves arrive – and a catastrophic attack helps to change Kade’s mind. He enlists, along with many other men from his community, and ends up leading a battallion of Earth and allied soldiers in the Alliance’s newest gear: a sealed, self-contained armored spacesuit which is practically its own interstellar vehicle and weapons platform built around one man. Designed specifically to combat the Daleks, these suits are worn only by the Earth Alliance’s elite troopers, code named the Fearless. But Kade’s latest mission into the teeth of the Dalek war machine is enough to strike at least a little fear into his heart…