Meet Joel Shaw, Reb Shavron and Mark Seven of the Anti Dalek Force…

I’ll admit freely that I may be a bit biased: I loved the Dalek Annuals when they came out in the mid-1970s. We’d had Dalek stories every season since 1972 – albeit some of them (sorry, Nick) not as good as they might have been – and Genesis was then and still is one of my favourite tales featuring the metal mutants. The Annuals were set in a universe without the Doctor (so far as we can tell), and featured tales of derring-do that were just right for a 12-13 year old.

This first audio collection – read by Nicholas Briggs, Louise Jameson and Matthew Waterhouse with Nick providing the Dalek voices – samples both stories and text features from the first two annuals. It kicks off with Terror Task Force, which introduced the Anti Dalek Force and its key members Joel Shaw, Reb Shavron and Mark Seven. Readers weren’t aware of Seven’s true nature – which presents a little bit of a problem in terms of continuity for the audio version, as later Mark talks in the way you might expect an android of the period to talk (Seven is basically Steve Austin meets Data), but here the others don’t know what he is, so he’s presumably talking normally (either that or they think he’s tone deaf!). That’s followed by a breakdown of Mark Seven’s structure (for which you need to imagine the sort of computer display we got at the start of the bionic shows), and then Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate! sees the Daleks capture the ADF.

The first disc concludes with Timechase – a non-ADF story that does what it says on the tin, featuring two young boys trying to get their uncle’s time machine back, and finding themselves in World War I and on board the Mary Celeste! – and a celebration of Dalek Genius.

The 1977 Annual provides the material for the second disc, which sees the arrival on the scene of Tarrant. That’s Cal, not Del or Dev or Jill (or the character by that name in a Nation script for MacGvyer!) – the humans’ supreme leader. The disc actually starts with a Special Report of a Secret Meeting on Skaro where representatives of other worlds come to the Daleks’ homeworld (maybe Kembel was booked?) before we get The Doomsday Machine during which you are going to seriously wonder if Nation caught a certain episode of the animated Star Trek during its UK run.

A feature on The Dark Side of Skaro draws from some of the previous Dalek books in terms of the planet’s geography; oddly, hearing the entries read out may raise more questions in your mind than just seeing the text written down. Who are these prisoners who are sent to the cut-off jail? And how do they get there? The next story is Report from an Unknown Planet in which a recording from an archaeologist warns of a huge Dalek threat, and the disc concludes with an Earth-Skaro Timescale comparing events on the two worlds.

There’s plenty of high melodrama in these stories and a real chance to play “Nation Bingo” as you tick off the various tropes that he employed in his stories. There’s reworking of elements from pretty much all his stories to date – acid seas, impromptu reverse parachutes, audio recordings warning of threats, a Dalek coming under attack from more primitive weaponry, the inability to understand what a galaxy is… But chances are you’ll have a huge grin on your face much of the time as you return to a slightly simpler time.

Briggs, Jameson and Waterhouse deliver great performances and David Darlington’s sound design and Neil Gardner’s production create a universe that feels exactly right for the stories.

Verdict: If you’re a Dalek fan of any description, then you need to get hold of this. Before the Daleks arrive… 10/10

Paul Simpson