The Dalek Project

"War is a terrible thing."

Writer: Justin Richards
Format: Comic Strip
Released: September 2012
Series: BBC Graphic Novel 02

Featuring: Eleventh Doctor

Synopsis

"Our invention will change the nature of warfare. It will make this conflict truly the war to end all wars. Gentlemen, our factory in France is ready to start mass production of these remote-controlled armoured vehicles. The war machine we call... the Dalek."

1917. It's the height of the Great War and Hellcombe Hall is a house full of mystery: locked doors, forbidden rooms, dustsheets covering guilty secrets, and ghostly noises frightening the servants. Most mysterious of all, the drawing room seems to open directly onto a muddy, corpse-filled trench on the Western Front...

Arriving at his stately home, the Doctor meets Lord Hellcombe, an armaments manufacturer who has a new secret weapon he believes will win the war: he calls it 'the Dalek'. Soon, the Doctor and his new friends are in a race against time to prevent the entire Western Front from becoming part of the Dalek Project.

Verdict

The Dalek Project was a great comic strip adventure and it was quite intriguing to read a concurrent graphic novel rather than a collection stories. It certainly filled the time on a train journey to watch my beloved football team away from home and I was glad that it was of high quality. It was interesting to see that the Eleventh Doctor was travelling alone but I would have liked some explanation as to why that was the case. It doesn’t seem to fall in line with his actions in The Snowmen but I guess it does fit the narrative. The idea of Dalek pieces being found as part of an archaeological expedition underground was terrific and I loved how the supposed artefacts were mistaken as being from the Bronze Age. Obviously, these were no historical items but rather weaponry from the deadliest species in the universe. The Daleks struggling on low power systems for much of this story was good and I liked how it allowed the Doctor adequate time to escape the numerous attempts at extermination. I have to say, I thought the artwork for this extended graphic novel was excellent and I liked how some pages, even doubles, were pure artwork featuring no speech. Things were actually quite beautiful and the visuals were very impressive which made telling the story very good. The characterisation of the Eleventh Doctor was brilliant throughout with Matt Smith’s likeness easily captured on the page. I found that all the more impressive given that this story was intended to originally feature the Tenth Doctor bit had to be delayed due to the similarities to Victory of the Daleks.There were obvious resemblances within the stories but I don’t think they were as similar as one might initially think. The setting of the Great War was really good and I thought the revelation that there were proto-Daleks on both the British and German sides was very good. I didn’t expect that and it saw quite a shift in the direction of the story. It turned out that the Daleks weren’t just experimenting on humanity in the First World War but they were conducting an experiment that went throughout history. They somewhat surprisingly erased their involvement from history but I wasn’t overly sure by the Daleks’ desire to learn about humanity. Surely if they thought themselves as the superior beings, then humanity wasn’t a match? I guess they were just overawed by their ability to keep on going, even when death was inevitable. That seemed to the end result of the Dalek Project but they didn’t get much time to analyse the data and act upon it as the Daleks were blanket bombed into an oblivion. That was quite an image but one positive I really liked was the Daleks just featuring in World War One. They wanted to take on all of humanity and the plan was to destroy them all but that ended up backfiring in a catastrophic way. The Doctor stating that humanity always prevailed, before they actually had, was great. I thought the prospect of the Doctor and Ted being the last men standing after the latter called in the aerial assault was fantastic but they managed to get away a little too easily for my liking. The mini story that bookended the main plot with the Doctor and Angela was good and another highlight of the story I must mention was the appearance of a Black Dalek illustrating the ranking hierarchy of the Daleks in the modern series. Overall, a very good comic strip adventure! 

Rating: 8/10