Doctor Who: Emissary of the Daleks

It often seems that Daleks have been used so many times on Doctor Who that there is nothing new that can be done with them; every story is essentially retreading old ground. But, every now and then, something comes along that manages to put a new spin on them or that views them from a different perspective. This is not one of those stories.

In fact, it's a perfectly serviceable, but ultimately unremarkable tale of the Doctor trying to liberate a planet conquered by the menacing pepperpots. The Doctor wanders around mostly being supercilious and brashly confident, with no sense at any point that he's under any real threat. There's a minor mystery as to why the Daleks aren't operating in their usual manner but you'll probably work out what the explanation is fairly early on and it's not especially exciting. Peri is written better than she was on TV, being more adventurous and strong-willed, but that's not hard and is par for the course in modern audios by now anyway.

One positive point that the story does have is the use of the title character. Here, we get to see somebody who is a key collaborator with the Daleks, and get some perspective of her point of view. While Dalek collaborators are not by any means a new concept, they're usually weak, greedy, or blindly deluded as to their own importance. The Emissary here is none of those things, albeit still very clearly in the wrong and that makes her more interesting, and more important to the story than we'd normally expect.

Other than that, there's a lot of exterminating (the body count among named characters is unusually high) and escaping from capture and a reasonable amount of action. There's some good variety in the scenery too, showing different aspects of the planet's occupation. It's not one of the most original Dalek stories, but it does what it does well enough and should be an entertaining ride for those wanting more of these particular foes.