Doctor Who Season 13 Updates: The latest Doctor Who novelization, “Dalek,” based on the Christopher Eccleston story, reveals that the Doctor unwittingly fathered a Dalek.
In an entertaining twist, Doctor Who discovered that the Doctor became a father – to what he thought was the last of the Daleks. There is no love lost between both the Doctor and the Daleks; he was present on the day they were produced, sent by the Time Lords to prevent it.
His actions in “Genesis of the Daleks” triggered the Time War, but the Doctor’s contempt for the Daleks would surpass the Daleks’ hatred for anybody else.
In the end, it was the Doctor who unleashed the shot at the end of the Time War. He used an antique Time Lord weapon to move Gallifrey out of normal space-time, as seen in “The Day of the Doctor,” with the Daleks exterminating each other when their shorts skipped the disappearing planet.
The Daleks, unfortunately, perished. In the properly named Christopher Eccleston story “Dalek,” the Doctor found a single Dalek held prisoner on Earth. This is widely regarded as one of the better Dalek episodes of modern Doctor Who, and an official novelization – written by the story’s author, Robert Shearman – was recently released by the BBC.
Doctor Who Season 13: The Ninth Doctor
Screen RantA portion of the scenes in the novelization of “Dalek” is from the perspective of the Dalek itself. This is the first time a Dalek – or, rather, one that isn’t misfiring – has been handled as an individual in its own right on Doctor Who. As such, the viewpoint is entirely fascinating because it reveals that Dalek troopers were created with twisted versions of recognizable needs.
A Dalek seeks a father figure, but as with all Dalek needs, this need has been twisted to the point where the Dalek considers any commanding officer as its father. Dalek troops are bred with only two commands in mind: follow and exterminate.
This provides the episode’s priorities for the lone Dalek. Its main goal is to pursue orders, without which its very existence is meaningless; this corresponds perfectly with previous Dalek betrayals, particularly in the Sylvester McCoy period, when the Doctor convinced one Dalek that it was the last of its kind, and it self-destructed without orders. In the Eccleston narrative, the Dalek goes to great lengths to find proof that other survivors of its race exist, but there is no trace of them; it is alone.
And this is where the novelization gets into its own. The Dalek is looking for a father figure, which it interprets as someone willing and able to give it orders. Its mind has crumbled by this point, driven insane by its feeling of alienation and the genetic impurities it has absorbed from the Doctor’s roommate Rose Tyler, and it has focused its attention on the Doctor himself.
When the Dalek orders the Doctor to give it orders, the monster is actually pleading with the Doctor to take on the role of father. He refuses this, an act of much greater significance than he could possibly comprehend at the time. Instead, the Dalek turns to Rose and orders her to give it one final command: to eliminate itself.
The Doctor had briefly become a father figure to the Dalek before rejecting the role; however, Rose is possibly the first mother to a Dalek in Doctor Who history.
