The Dalek Project

The Dalek Project

Second of BBC Books’ original graphic novels, it was going to be the first (starring the Tenth Doctor) but a particular episode got in the way. So now it stars the Eleventh Doctor and directly references the episode in question.

Past here, we enter the realm of spoilers...


It also follows The Only Good Dalek in being about, well, Daleks. And being rather tangled in continuity. And being written by Justin Richards and illustrated by Mike Collins, some pages looking lovely, some oh-damn-deadline-looming.

An initial could-be-an-episode-itself prologue has archaeologists digging up ruined Daleks and presuming them to be Bronze Age ceremonial artefacts.

(Archaeologist joke: What do you call find when you have no idea what it is? “Ceremonial object.”)

That’s a big “whoa” moment already, introduces a new companion and leads to a big splash page reveal which is rather amusing.

And then it goes back to the Great War for almost the entire rest of the book.

And we get three more new companions from the period, and the mystery of a manor house whose doors open on places they shouldn’t, and a couple of mad retro Dalek redesigns, and a gratuitous zeppelin. And a since-inducing idea that it sensibly dismisses as just “a possibility”.

It’s a more ambitious and more fun story than its predecessor, as well as less all-about-the-references, except to Victory Of The Daleks which is unavoidable. So, I think, worth picking up.

Oh, and it isn’t a “found footage” episode. They really should do one of those...