AUDIO DRAMA
Dalek Empire 4: The Fearless
Part 3


Starring: Noel Clarke, Maureen O’Brien and Sarah Mowat
Big Finish Productions
RRP: £10.99
ISBN: 978 1 84435 302 6
Available 31 December 2007


On board the star cruiser Amorist, the outcome of the war between the human race and the Dalek Empire hangs precariously in the balance. Salus Kade knows what he has to do, but has General Landen told him the whole truth about Susan Mendes? Before his mission is completed, Kade makes a number of shocking discoveries, which turn his assumptions on their heads...

The notion of the technologically aided Fearless becoming no better than the Daleks (which I first noted in my review of Part 1) reaches its apex here, as we realise the extent to which Agnes Landen (Maureen O’Brien) has created a monster in the shape of Salus Kade (Noel Clarke). As with the Daleks, it’s not the battle-suit that’s the problem as such but rather the mind of the being inside it. Here we discover that Landen’s engineering of a situation in order to create the emotionally scarred creature of hate that is Kade is arguably as ruthless as Davros’s genetic manipulation and mental conditioning of the Dalek species.

And that’s not the biggest revelation in this instalment. The one concerning Susan Mendes (Sarah Mowat) comes as far more of a shock, or at least it did to me.

For those of you (myself included) who have been a bit mystified as to why writer/director/Dalek Emperor Nicholas Briggs has set The Fearless during his first series of Dalek Empire rather than moving the storyline forward in time, Briggs explains his reasoning in the interviews that appear at the end of this CD. He states that it has always been his intention to revisit the timeline of that first series. He likens his approach to the genre of the Second World War narrative: we all know the outcome of that conflict, and what happened to Hitler, but that doesn’t stop people from telling new stories set within this already well-documented era.

Like Davros and Landen, Briggs has a powerful creation on his hands. But will he write more series set in this timeframe? You can bet he will. Yes, he would do it. That power would set him up above the gods, and through the Daleks, he shall have that power!

Richard McGinlay

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