It vexes me slightly when people say that Jubilee was remade as "Dalek". It is not only a lazy assumption but it does a disservice to both – it implies Jubilee could be improved and that "Dalek" is derivative. Both stories are however radically different because they service the needs of two very different products.

The similarity is obviously the lone Dalek kept prisoner by a human despot and tortured to make it speak. That is about all they have in common. Unless you want to claim either pioneered the monster-becomes-more-human-and-a-sympathetic-figure because then I’d have to beat you over the head with Hugh Borg from TNG or that episode of Battlestar Galactica with Starbuck trapped on a planet with a Cylon. And they probably pinched it from a proper science fiction author I’ve never read.

Jubilee’s great ambition was to do something different with the Daleks. Forty years had seen them do many things (or, in Terry Nation scripts, the same thing many times) and there seemed little left for them to credibly do. They had fought the Doctor, they had fought robot armies, they had fought humans, they had fought other Daleks, they had fought with humans against other Daleks and they had been made to look silly in "The Chase". Jubilee is about reminding us the human beings can be truly evil and in many ways worse than Daleks because humans have a choice. The same strain of evil runs through the Dalek race but they are created like that. They have no alternative to killing and destroying (save that of madness). The Daleks were born out of the then-fresh memories of Nazi Germany and the evils men can do given the chance. Jubilee brings that fascist comparison up to date because there are three ways to deal with a past as horrific as the Nazis or the Dalek invasion of 1903. Firstly, you can turn the evil into a joke (as the British have frequently done), secondly, you can try to ignore it (as the Germans are trying to do) and thirdly, you can learn from it and understand all the hows and the whys and do everything you can to prevent it happening again.

"Dalek" on the other hand didn’t seek to make us think – it was all about showing a new generation of viewers that Daleks kick ass. By showing one – just one, old, battered and slightly loopy – Dalek as it destroyed wave after wave of soldiers, millions of new viewers were wowed. And millions of old viewers were left thinking "That was what Doctor Who should’ve been like when I were a lad". The intelligent bit of the story – the Dalek being alone and without orders – served more to make the Dalek fleet’s appearance at the end of the season a surprising cliff-hanger than it did to give weight to an otherwise action oriented story. It also meant the Dalek didn’t have to be beaten.

So both Jubilee and "Dalek" are perfect for what they set out to achieve and both are prime examples of the best Doctor Who has to offer. They just aren’t the same at all – Jubilee is about the nature of evil and our preference for hiding it behind masks and toys and souvenirs, while "Dalek" is about kicking arse and scaring children and selling masks and toys and souvenirs. They have the same writer and the same one-line précis but they couldn’t be much more different.

CD Facts

Part 1 - Tracks 1-12

Part 2 - Tracks 13-23

Part 3 - Tracks 1-12

Part 4 - Tracks 13-21