Quest of the Daleks

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Site added: 16 January 2007 · Last updated: 12 July 2007

Follow up to the fan novel, Redemption of the Daleks, by Dalek fan writer Alan MacKenzie.

Quest of the Daleks is a direct sequel to Redemption of the Daleks - and is set four years after the Redemption of the Daleks epilogue. It is a longer novel longer than Redemption of the Daleks, at 65,000 words and is, according to Alan, “both deeper and darker than its predecessor”.

It is allegorical in places and takes some fairly thinly-veiled swipes at some of the stupidities going on on this planet today. Anyone who had read Redemption of the Daleks will know what an excellent (and ambitious) piece of work it is. Redemption of the Daleks was written a period of approximately four months and has its roots in the classic Doctor Who story Remembrance of the Daleks, screened on BBC TV in 1989.

Story extract:

“Yes, but what is it all doing?” asked Tamaran in a quiet voice. “This equipment has been inactive for thousands of years, until we arrived to bring it to life.”

“If I were to hazard a guess,” said Ellaran, “looking at the regular variations in the patterns of these indicators, it would be, that it is running through some pre-determined programme that we have triggered. The question is, what is it programmed to do?”

As if in answer to his words, another sound intruded upon the air. Higher in pitch than the ubiquitous background pulse, it seemed to emanate from the opposite side of the room. Moving across, they saw that a section of the chamber wall was starting to shimmer and dissolve, in a similar fashion to that they had seen earlier, in the Emperor’s office.

The metal thinned, grew less substantial and eventually, a dim, roughly conical outline could be made out, nestled in an alcove closely moulded to its shape. As the wall panel dissolved into mist the form became clearer, more sharply defined. It was partly obscured by the network of cabling and thin tubes surrounding, and connected to it but the silent, inert figure was unmistakable.

Tamaran gasped, “Stars! Is that what I think it is?”

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