Although The Daleks is an iconic story in the history of Doctor Who it has, surprisingly not resulted in many direct sequels.
The TV stories which follow more or less retcon the situation in The Daleks. From The Dalek Invasion of Earth onwards, the Daleks are planet-conquering despots zipping around the universe with access to time travel technology and feared across the cosmos. Quite the contrast to their city-confined desperate survivors of their first appearance.
But a number of expanded universe stories have returned to Skaro to examine this earliest iteration of the malevolent pepperpots.
Is there a story or explanation that tells us how the Daleks managed to improve their technology so much (in The Daleks they canāt even move outside the city), and also develop time travel, or is it just ābecause Daleks needed to be a bigger threatā?
Thereās Terry Nationās āthis must be from an earlier point in their historyā guff in The Dalek Invasion of Earth which really makes no sense other than āIāve realised these guys can make me rich, but that wonāt happen if I leave them stuck in the city on Skaroāā¦
I agree with @fingersmash here: Return to Skaro is fine, nothing special, but The Last of the Romanovs is a great historical. Itās educational, genuinely touching and very interesting.
Honestly, I didnāt even know The Curse of the Daleks was a direct Sequel to that Serial! Sadly I havenāt gone around to this, but I hope to do it eventually in this Year.
But I did have listened to Return to Skaro and I thought it wasā¦ fine, I do love the Bits where the Tardis Crew are seen in such high light, similar as to Planet of the Daleks when Pertwee talked about it. The rest of it? Yeah, itās pretty whatever honestly and feels rather dull at times to me, which is a shame because while I am not totally in love with the recast cast, their stories have been brilliant, this one just felt painfully average for the high Standard we get with them, which is a shame. However, the second Story is so good and worth to buy that Set alone, like some already pointed out!
I remember being so excited for Return to Skaro, and, like everyone else here it seems, found it just fine. Defo does not live up to its potential but if you like this recast TARDIS Team you can still have fun with it.
The Lights of Skaro was one of the first Big Finish stories I heard and i remember it very fondly, but donāt think Iāve relistened to that boxset since 2017.
Really need to get around to The Curse of the Daleksā¦
Last year we also had the prequel story The Boy and the Dalek which I did not like much at all.
Itās covered pretty extensively in Retconification of the Daleks.
That story shows the Daleks developing a machine that adapts their abilities and backstory to fill the needs of the plot.
Or at least it will, once they build the machine that gives them the ability to build a machine that adapts their abilities and backstory to fill the needs of the plot, which they will do as soon as they build a machine that adapts their abilities and backstory to fill the needs of the plot.
