Vignette - Dalek Emperor and the Control Room

As they moved, the lights gradually began to come on. It had obviously been a trap, the Doctor realized, but he had not spotted it until too late. Well, you won some and you lost some, but hopefully not permanently. The walls began to appear at the far reaches of the room; only the far lefthand corner stayed dark. The walls were lined with control panels that flickered and returned to life. There were screens, computers and a huge map of Skaro with several locations glowing green. All around the walls were Daleks, monitoring their reawakened equipment. There had to be thirty or forty of them, all paying close attention to their tasks and completely ignoring the intruders. He noted several other Black Daleks. So this had to be later in time than the affair on Kembel. That had been about AD 4000.

Then he looked ahead and stopped dead in his tracks. Beside him, Jamie and Waterfield did likewise. It was hard to believe what they were seeing.

It looked at first superficially like a Dalek, but it was over forty feet tall. The gigantic base rose upwards. There were few of the semi-circular sensors that covered the other Daleks’ lower halves. This part of the casing was honeycombed with panels. Above this section was a thick ‘neck’ made of metal struts supporting a vast domed head. This monstrous creature possessed neither arm nor gun, but it had a huge eye-stick that was trained on the captives. It appeared to be completely immobile, supported by huge struts; a web-like arrangement that filled the entire far wall of the control room. There were about a dozen huge tubes leading into the immense form: power supplies and nutrients, the Doctor assumed, for the creature within this casing.

‘Doctor,’ the monster said. It was unmistakably the voice of a Dalek, yet completely unlike those of the smaller forms. It sounded as if there were many voices, each overlapping the other, speaking at once. Strangely, it sounded more human than a normal Dalek.

‘Look at the size of that thing!’ exclaimed Jamie, awestruck.

‘It’s the Dalek Emperor,’ the Doctor replied. ‘The single brain that controls the mind and destiny of the Dalek race.’ 

‘And you are the Doctor,’ the Emperor stated. ‘We meet at last,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘I wondered if we ever would.’