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Legacy of the Daleks was the tenth novel in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures series. It was written by John Peel, released 6 April 1998 and featured the Eighth Doctor and Susan Foreman.

This novel is the second and final novel of BBC Books' Eighth Doctor range to feature the Daleks and outright call them as such. Like the first, War of the Daleks, it was written by Peel. Later books like Father Time and Sometime Never clearly depicted their casings, but those novels did not outright use the word "Dalek." Legacy also bridges the gap between Roger Delgado's portrayal of the Master and Peter Pratt's decaying version of the same villain, wherein the Master is severely deformed by his own Tissue Compression Eliminator and left in a moribund state.

However, later accounts would contradict this, more specifically the DWM comic strip Doorway to Hell showing Delgado's incarnation regenerating and the Big Finish audio story The Two Masters, featuring Beevers' incarnation before he was severely burnt.

Publisher's summary[]

England in the late 22nd century is slowly recovering from the devastation that followed the Daleks' invasion. The Doctor's very first travelling companion — his granddaughter, Susan — is where he left her, helping to rebuild Earth for the survivors. But danger still remains all around...

While searching for his lost companion, Sam, the Doctor finds himself in Domain London. But it seems that Susan is now missing too, and his efforts to find her lead to a confrontation with the ambitious Lord Haldoran, who is poised to take control of southern England through all-out war. With the help of a sinister advisor, Haldoran's plans are already well advanced. Power cables have been fed down a mineshaft, reactivating a mysterious old device of hideous power. But has the Dalek presence on Earth really been wiped out? Or are there still traps set for the unwary?

The Doctor learns to his cost once again that when dealing with the evil of the Daleks, nothing can be taken at face value...

Plot[]

to be added

Characters[]

Worldbuilding[]

Daleks[]

  • DA-17 is the designation of one area of Dalek technology left from their invasion.
  • Being inside the Dalek artefact reminds Susan of Skaro and the Daleks' city.
  • The Daleks from the Dalek Artefact begin creating Robomen.
  • The Master mentions the Dalek Prime.

Foods and beverages[]

Individuals[]

  • The Master uses the name Estro, which is Esperanto for "Master".
  • Peace Officers are a group of people who investigate and make safe artefacts and remnants of the Dalek invasion. They have unrestricted access to the domains.
  • David and Susan name their adoptive children Ian, Barbara and David Junior (most likely after Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright).
  • The Doctor considers altering the past (and goes back in time before Susan sent her message) to help her. (This would have been a temporal paradox had he succeeded).
  • The Doctor tells Donna about fighting Daleks, Cybermen and Ice Warriors.
  • The Master is using Draconian technology whilst on Earth.
  • Susan thinks she kills the Master on the planet Tersurus.
  • Rodan makes a brief appearance during a scene set on Gallifrey.
  • Susan uses a disguise to make herself appear older, something which frustrates David and puts a strain on their marriage.
  • Susan is skilled in computers and uses a pin all Peace Officers possess to escape the cell the Daleks put her in.
  • When believing that the Master will soon kill her, Susan hopes he will leave shortly after he does so, which would give her the chance to regenerate without his notice.

Locations[]

  • England has been broken into Domains, originally more than a hundred, now around ten including London, Canterbury, Salisbury, Devon, Edmonds, and Haldoran. (The last two are not named after real-world counties)
  • Castle Haldoran was formerly Leeds Castle, Kent.

Monarchy[]

Species[]

TARDIS[]

  • Susan uses the Master's TARDIS' telepathic circuits to attack him; the shockwave from that contacts the Doctor through his TARDIS' telepathic circuits.
  • Susan notes the Master's TARDIS is more functional than the Doctor's TARDIS, and there are similarities between the two models but she has to draw on the Master's knowledge after she attacks his mind to leave Tersurus.
  • When she overpowered the Master, Susan shut down the defence grid leaving the TARDIS vulnerable to a scan from Gallifrey. She quickly resets it and sets the controls to random.

Weapons[]

Notes[]

  • The Master and the Doctor each speak in Esperanto on page 138-139, though no translation is given in the novel.
"Doktoro, Mi ĝojas ke vi estas tiu kiun mi bezonis por kompletigi la ludon." ["Doctor, I am so happy, you are the one I needed to complete the game."]
The Doctor spun around to stare at the newcomer. "Tiam kiam mi audis la nomon 'Estro', mi opiniis ke tiu devas esti vi. Via vanteco estos la fino de vi, estro de malbonestroj." ["That time I heard the name 'Master', I thought it had to be you. Your vanity will be the end of you, master of masters of evil."]
  • Becca is named for Terry Nation's daughter, Rebecca.
  • The plot of the book was based on a fanfiction that John Peel had written in the late 1970s for the Comic Masque fanzine, in which it was followed by the story Fragments from a Shattered Mind.[1]
  • The third edition of AHistory speculates that the events of this novel became an alternate timeline when the Monk and the Dalek Time Controller rewrote history to enable a second Dalek invasion in the 2180s, as seen in Lucie Miller and To the Death, but admits that this doesn't explain how Susan can have a child with David, or how the Master ended up on Tersurus in his decayed form.

Continuity[]

  • This story is set thirty years after TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
  • This story is set after TV: Frontier in Space and leads to TV: The Deadly Assassin for the Master.
  • This story set directly after PROSE: Longest Day for the Doctor as he searches for Sam Jones.
  • Susan left her key in the ruins of London. The Doctor retrieved it in PROSE: GodEngine.
  • The Doctor recalls seeing Susan as part of Rassilon's Game, in TV: The Five Doctors.
  • The factory within the Dalek Artefact bears a strong resemblance to the Dalek factory in TV: The Power of the Daleks.
  • There's a passing reference to TV: Doctor Who about the Doctor and hospitals (and people trying to kill him in them).
  • The Doctor receives Susan's message "before" the event occurs and arrives "before" it occurs. A similar event occurs in TV: The Doctor's Daughter.
  • Before David's death at the hands of the Master, he and Susan are unable to have children and all their children are adopted. This is later contradicted by AUDIO: An Earthly Child. The children themselves come from the Five Doctors novelisation.
  • In the Five Doctors novel, David is said to be part of a "Reconstruction Government" but here, Britain is divided and Parliament is still being restored.
  • Black and Red Daleks appear. (PROSE: War of the Daleks)
  • The circumstances of the Master's disfigurement are given a different account in The Two Masters, in which the Master's disfigured state is the result of a confrontation with his own future self. However, since the novel only depicts the Master being thrown from his TARDIS and later being discovered by Goth, rather than explicitly stating that he is reduced to his crippled state by the destruction of his equipment, this suggests that the two can be reconciled with the assumption that the younger Master survived Susan's attack unharmed and found another TARDIS to begin his raid on the Terserus compound before being attacked by his future self.

Footnotes[]

External links[]

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