Justin Richards and Mike Collins know their Doctor Who history inside and out. The opening pages of The Only Good Dalek
are a visual treat for longtime fans, with the various Dalek
environments on Station 7 providing a great excuse to revisit old
stories, such as The Dalek Invasion of Earth (which, like the
Robomen, featured the monstrous Slyther), and even a petrified beast
from the original 1963 dalek adventure. Conventions established by the
Doctor’s Marvel adventures are also adhered to here, as the daleks’
speech is represented in the same lettering as in those earlier strips,
while the Tardis makes the comic ‘vworp vworp’ noise upon arrival.
Station 7 is run by the Special Space Security force that first featured in 1966′s The Dalek Masterplan. There’s also the odd Ogron hanging around. The human scientists on the station think that they have discovered a way to tame the daleks. Yet the chief scientist recently vanished, and his deputy has just been killed… The Doctor and the station chief, Tranter, don’t believe that the daleks can be tamed. However, they are forced to resort to their tame daleks when the station comes under attack by the real daleks… The Doctor’s distrust of such ‘tame daleks’ ultimately derives from 1966′s The Power of the Daleks, as well as this year’s encounter with Winston Churchill in Victory of the Daleks. Indeed, not all of the nostalgia is decades’ old here, as there are also reflections of 2007′s The Daleks in Manhattan. Yet The Only Good Dalek is not just a nostalgia fest, it’s also a fast paced rollicking adventure. At times though, it is a bit wordy with too many speech bubbles littering the illustrations. However, the new daleks, roughly hewn as they are by Mike Collins here, come across at their most menacing. There is a note of optimism at the end, which is swiftly crushed by the ever present need for the Doctor to face the daleks in battle again. One can’t help thinking that humanity’s greatest weakness in fighting the daleks is that they are presented as being incredibly thick here. And yet, as the title suggests, the ‘only good dalek’ may not be a dead one…
Station 7 is run by the Special Space Security force that first featured in 1966′s The Dalek Masterplan. There’s also the odd Ogron hanging around. The human scientists on the station think that they have discovered a way to tame the daleks. Yet the chief scientist recently vanished, and his deputy has just been killed… The Doctor and the station chief, Tranter, don’t believe that the daleks can be tamed. However, they are forced to resort to their tame daleks when the station comes under attack by the real daleks… The Doctor’s distrust of such ‘tame daleks’ ultimately derives from 1966′s The Power of the Daleks, as well as this year’s encounter with Winston Churchill in Victory of the Daleks. Indeed, not all of the nostalgia is decades’ old here, as there are also reflections of 2007′s The Daleks in Manhattan. Yet The Only Good Dalek is not just a nostalgia fest, it’s also a fast paced rollicking adventure. At times though, it is a bit wordy with too many speech bubbles littering the illustrations. However, the new daleks, roughly hewn as they are by Mike Collins here, come across at their most menacing. There is a note of optimism at the end, which is swiftly crushed by the ever present need for the Doctor to face the daleks in battle again. One can’t help thinking that humanity’s greatest weakness in fighting the daleks is that they are presented as being incredibly thick here. And yet, as the title suggests, the ‘only good dalek’ may not be a dead one…