By Rob McCow

Nemesis of the Daleks

The Collector

Nemesis of the Daleks appeared in issues #152-155 of Doctor Who Magazine, from September to December of 1989. It was reprinted in black and white in the Abslom Daak – Dalek Killer collection.

The Doctor encounters Abslom Daak!

The World Shapers

Plot – Richard Alan

Story – Steve Alan

Art – Lee Sullivan

Lettering – Zed

Editor – Richard Starkings

Fellow Travellers

"The name's Abslom Daak, Dalek Killer!" Abslom Daak is a huge muscular brute, hideously ugly in a vaguely attractive way. Although Daak is essentially a good guy, he is also a violent, psychotic madman whose only redeeming trait is that he has vowed to wipe out every Dalek in the galaxy. His weapons of choice for Dalek-killing are chainsword and blaster, even though he looks capable of tearing a Dalek apart with his bare hands.

After Daak's first day on set, Barnaby Edwards started demanding a stunt double

Daak first appeared as a back-up strip character in the early days of Doctor Who Weekly. His band of followers include an unlikely collection of Doctor Who aliens, with Salander the Draconian, Haama the Ice Warrior and the human Vol Mercurius. He also carries around the almost-dead body of his girlfriend Tayin in a cryogenic cocoon. The fact that Tayin was killed by the Daleks goes some way to explaining Daak's motivation as a character. He may be aggressive to the point of insanity, but he is still capable of love.

This story takes us to the planet Hell, where the Helkan natives say little and wear even less.

The Deal

Above the planet Hell, a battle rages between a spacecraft and a Dalek taskforce mounted on hoverbouts. The spacecraft is brought down by the combined Dalek firepower (CHOOM) and crashes down on the planet below (PLAWOOM). The lead Dalek declares victory and informs his soldiers that the completion of the Dalek Death Wheel is assured.

The Dalek Death Wheel is an enormous saucer-shaped battle station. On board, the Dalek Emperor exterminates an Ogron for his excuses over a drop in Helkogen production. The Dalek plan is revealed to be the total domination of the Universe!

Expecting Bonjaxx's party on Maruthea, the Doctor accidentally arrives on Hell. He sees a work-group of slaves, but is more interested in the plume of smoke from a crashed spacecraft. As he goes to investigate he is spotted by a Dalek.

Amongst the spacecraft wreckage the Doctor finds the bodies of an Ice Warrior and a Draconian noble. The Daleks catch up with him though and order his extermination. Before their guns can fire, they are torn apart by the chainsaw of Abslom Daak, Dalek Killer!

Yeeouch!

On board the Death Wheel, the Emperor orders that any of the Helkan slaves showing signs of fatigue are to be exterminated. The Death Wheel is a mere seventy rels from completion.

Daak jumps off his stolen hoverbout and tells the Doctor about his friends who have died; Salander the Draconian, Haama the Ice Warrior and Vol Mercurius. The Doctor finds a woman in a cryogenic pod and Daak shouts for him not to touch her. The woman is Tayin, love of his life, who is suspended at the moment of death. Since the Daleks killed her he has vowed to rid the Galaxy of their filth. He has arrived on Hell because the Daleks are up to something big.

The Doctor and Daak spy on the Dalek mining operation and the enslaved Helkans. They observe a rupture in a pipeline that spews out toxic gas. The Doctor recognises the gas as Helkogen, the deadly substance found only on the planet Hell. While the Daleks are distracted, Daak runs over and dispatches a couple with his chainsaw (KRTUNCH) and laser pistol (VARR). The Doctor speaks to one of the Helkan slaves to find their spirits have been crushed by the Daleks. As a male Helkan reassures his wife that the danger is over, one of the Daleks that had only been damaged by Daak exterminates her. In a rage, the Helkan smashes the remains of the Dalek and the Doctor vows to take the battle to its source.

They steal a shuttle and head to the Dalek Death wheel. When they fail to give the correct security code, they are taken captive and brought before the Dalek Emperor. Abslom Daak, however, manages to sneak away. He explores the Death Wheel and finds an enormous machine. Using his chainsaw to disable its weapon, he interrogates a Dalek. The Dalek tells him that the machine is a Genocide Device, the Dalek supreme weapon!

The Dalek Emperor identifies the Doctor as the enemy of the Daleks and demands to know how he destroyed the troops at Helkogen outpost six. The Doctor assumes that the Emperor is Davros, but when he says so the Emperor asks who Davros is. The Emperor tells the Doctor that Operation Genocide will cleanse the planet Hell of all life.

Sure won't let you down

Elsewhere on the station, Abslom Daak chainsaws another Dalek but not before it sounds a general alarm. Aware of the intruder, the Emperor orders that the Doctor be exterminated! Before they can carry out their orders though, Daak comes to the rescue wiping out the Emperor's retinue and spiriting the Doctor away to hiding. The Doctor and Daak head to the detention level and rescue the captive Helkans, but the Daleks are in hot pursuit. One of them manages to blast Daak's chainsword.

Neeargh!

With only a short time to go before the planet Hell is destroyed, the Doctor and his allies steal a hoverbout and head to the Death Wheel's central reactor. The Doctor prepares to sacrifice himself to destroy the reactor, but Daak knocks him out. He tells the Helkans to get the Doctor to safety. Then he flies the hoverbout into the heart of the reactor, destroying the Death Wheel in an enormous explosion. He dies happy, knowing that by destroying the Death Wheel he will kill 'every damned stinking Dalek in the galaxy!'

On Hell the Doctor prepares to leave, saddened at the death and destruction the Daleks have caused. As he goes, the Helkans Kemlo and Adrana watch the burning Death Wheel light up the sky. They give thanks to Abslom Daak, life-giver.

TV Action

The Daleks' Death Wheel is planet-killing superweapon. Other Dalek superweapons have included the Time Destructor from The Daleks Masterplan and the entire planet Earth in The Daleks Invasion of Earth – they planned to hollow the Earth out and fly it through space. In the new series there has also been The Crucible, the first ever snooker-based Dalek Superweapon.

The Daleks' plan in Nemesis is far more coherent and sensible than their usual efforts in the TV show, not involving any Icecanoes, viruses or time-travel. In this story they also indulge in one of their favourite hobbies; mining in a big quarry, which is something they regularly got up to in the Dalek stories of the 60's and 70's.

In The Planet of The Daleks, the Daleks used a Trans-solar disc, which is similar in concept to a hoverbout.

An Ogron makes a brief appearance on the Dalek Death Wheel. Ogrons were the Daleks' gorilla-like servants from Day of the Daleks and Frontier In Space.

Nemesis of The Daleks features some huge environments and would have been extremely difficult to realise on TV in the eighties. It seems unlikely that the opening space battle would have been achievable and the constant battering of the Daleks by Daak's chainsword would have decimated the budget. There are a few similarities between Nemesis and the McCoy story Remembrance of The Daleks, most notably the design of the Dalek Emperor and his interrogation of the Doctor.

The Daleks in Nemesis are the same design as the Imperial faction Daleks from Remembrance of The Daleks. Davros, the lunatic creator of the Daleks is referred to but not seen.

The art in this story is like a breath of fresh air; a hurricane-force breath of super-fresh mountain air. Everything is drawn twice its normal size with enormous single and double page spreads. Indeed, this story features the first double-page spread since the fifth Doctor story The Tides of Time. The scale of the artwork adds an extra sense of excitement and boldness to Nemesis that makes it stand out from the small-scale stories that had made up the McCoy run since it started.

Lee Sullivan's line-styles are clean and muscular. Everyone apart from the Doctor has proper comic book hero physiques. The Helkan men are strong and the Helkan women nubile, but they are all overshadowed by the bulging Abslom Daak. His enormous frame really helps sell his believability as a guy capable of taking a Dalek out with a chainsword.

The Daleks are all spot on, well detailed and beautifully geometric from every angle. There's a great deal of homage to the comic strips of the 1960's too, with the spherically domed Dalek Emperor and lots of Daleks flying around on hoverbouts. The Dalek Death Wheel is shaped like the Dalek saucers from the sixties, although the shuttles look more like the Dalek ships from Remembrance of The Daleks.

End of The Line

Far from the quirky, parochial stories of the early McCoy comic strip era, Nemesis of the Daleks is popcorn Doctor Who for the big screen. It might not get awarded many points for depth of thinking, but it would certainly hurl a rocket-propelled chainsword into the heart of the judging panel and follow it up with a few exterminating blasts.

Abslom Daak is a wonderfully appealing yet revolting character and it is his energy drives this story. Whereas the Doctor might have slowly and cunningly manipulated his way to defeating the Daleks, with Daak's aid they steal a shuttlecraft, fight their way to the Dalek Emperor and destroy the Death Wheel by crashing a hoverbout into it's main reactor. It might not be the intelligent way to go about things, but it's a lot more visceral and fun.

Although this is another crossover strip, you never get the sense that the Doctor is being sidelined. While Abslom Daak is an unstoppable force, the Doctor is still the protagonist in this story and the focus is as much on his reaction to the violence around him as to the violence itself. In some ways it's a very odd pairing because Daak is everything that the Doctor isn't. Whereas the Doctor would never carry a gun, Daak carries at least two, plus a knife, chainsword and other weapons. Daak's first reaction to any situation is to fight, because fighting is what he does best. In slightly different circumstances it would be easy to imagine the Doctor and Daak taking opposing sides.

Nemesis of the Daleks doesn't try to be worthy or to make a point, but it stands out from all the previous McCoy comic strips by being an epic action adventure story.

Follow That TARDIS!

Abslom Daak first appeared in Doctor Who Weekly issue 17 in two stories – Abslom Daak, Dalek Killer and Star Tigers. Unbelievably he returns in Emperor of the Daleks and appears in the New Adventure novel: Deceit by Peter Darvill-Evans. More Daak facts are available here. There’s also a fascinating interview with Steve Moore, creator of Abslom Daak here, which reveals why he and Alan Moore left Doctor Who Magazine.

Daak is seen to dispatch 13 Daleks in this story, not counting the ones that die when the Death Wheel explodes.

In Part Three, Daak leers into a Dalek’s vision and there’s a very similar perspective shot to the ones in the new series episode Dalek when the Doctor is taunting the captured Dalek. He also says ‘Whatcha gonna do now big shot? Suck me to death?’

Richard Starkings provided the plot for Nemesis of the Daleks, while the story was written by John Tomlinson (Who wrote for 2000AD and returned to the Doctor Who comic strip with The Betrothal of Sontar). They used the pseudonyms Richard Alan and Steve Alan respectively.

Also disappearing this issue is the mysterious ‘Zed’ who was responsible for the lettering of the comic strip. Given that Richard Starkings went on to found his own comic font company, would it be unreasonable to assume that ‘Zed’ is another pseudonym?