Adversary of the Daleks

"You have no idea what I'm running from."

Writers: Dulce Montoya & Dan Watters

Format: Comic Strip

Released: July 2026

Printed in: Circuit Breaker #1

Featuring: Fugitive Doctor

Synopsis

The Doctor is sent across time and space into her deadliest conflict yet – her first encounter with the Daleks!

The Doctor arrives in Thessaloniki in Ancient Greece where she discovers that even the gods fear strange visitors from across the universe.

Verdict

Adversary of the Daleks was an excellent comic strip to really kick off the main meal offerings that make up the Circuit Breaker multimedia event! This is actually a pretty monumental comic story because it depicts the earliest chronological meeting between the Doctor and the Daleks. That feels like a ludicrous statement but it's true! It's part of the whole basis behind the entire story arc with the Fugitive Doctor being the earliest known incarnation so she's the most likely to not have interacted with the strange and mysterious artefacts that need returning to their own time. The throwbacks to Calling the Doctor were good but I thought the comic strip did an impressive job in setting the scene for any readers who hadn't yet found their way to the UNIT website for the first story in the event. It's pretty simple but it just works. It's also really good to expand upon the character and personality of the Fugitive Doctor and she definitely isn't quite the version we would know. That was touched upon very nicely by both Osgood and Andrew as she didn't match the files at all. I was intrigued with how open they were to the Doctor herself about that because they were basically telling her what she was like in the future. I feel like we may have some early character development over the course of this event by the time we get to the Big Finish conclusions. That's my prediction and it feels very exciting. The concept of the Doctor not knowing the Daleks feels almost incomprehensible at this point in fandom but if the Fugitive Doctor truly does predate the First Doctor then the events of The Daleks are yet to come. So here she is encountering them for the first time which is brilliant. The silhouette of her encountering the Dalek in the Greek setting was wonderful. I thought the design of the red Dalek here was also magnificent and definitely felt retro which fits with the implied setting and timeline. I must say, I was reading this comic strip as a Kindle version because my local Forbidden Planet didn't have the physical version in stock and I just couldn't wait! Maybe being a digital version made this all the better, but I thought the artwork was absolutely astounding here. It was so vibrant and the colour just shone off the page. The new design variant for the Fugitive Doctor's costume is also wonderful and she just suits the comic strip format perfectly! I thought the Mitikili were quite fun as the alien race impersonating gods but they were just there as refugees from the Daleks. The Doctor making them apologise was a bit of a shock and a stark reminder of how different this incarnation is. She isn't the buttered up version Osgood and Andrew knew about and she was keen to imprint that on them. Osgood's reaction of shock that the Doctor yelled at the Greeks after witnessing a genocide was powerful stuff but I actually sided with the Doctor here. It really wasn't her fault and if they just followed instructions the whole trojan Dalek might have worked! That was a terrific image. The Doctor disposing of the Dalek exterminator arm was good in returning that somewhere close to the right time and species, and there's certainly tension in the air amongst her and the Black Archive staff. Continuing to explore that going forward is exciting stuff. Overall, a brilliant read! 

Rating: 9/10