Paradox of the Daleks (audio story)

was the first story in the audio anthology What Lies Inside?, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by John Dorney and featured Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, Nicola Walker as Liv Chenka and Hattie Morahan as Helen Sinclair.
== Publisher's summary ==
When the TARDIS is drawn to a space station running temporal experiments, the crew discover Daleks in control in the aftermath of an invasion. But these are no ordinary Daleks...
To stop his mortal enemies gaining control of the time technology, the Doctor must work out why these Daleks are here and where they came from.
A war fought through time has many fronts - and in this battle, the Doctor, Liv and Helen will face mortal danger in every time and place they find themselves.
== Plot ==
=== Part one ===
Peetom and Jemash finally succeed in creating a fully-operational time tunnel. An alarm sounds and, detecting an approaching time capsule, Peetom says that they have been trapped by the Daleks.
Liv and Helen get up in the morning to find the Doctor worrying about a temporal helix that the TARDIS has detected in the Time Vortex. Intrigued, he pilots the ship to the source of the helix and materialises on a space station where they receive a temporal SOS and see a scorch mark on a wall. They run into and flee from three upgraded Daleks on the command deck, whom the Doctor refuses to leave with the technology on the station. Liv and Helen remain in the TARDIS and record a message for the Time Lords, setting the ship to travel to Gallifrey should they fail to return.
The Doctor encounters one of the Daleks and is taken to the Black Dalek on the command deck, followed by Liv and Helen, who flee when they are detected and are joined by Peetom. Peetom uses a wave front stabiliser capable of stunning the Daleks and leads them through a maintenance tunnel to his hideout. He explains that the Daleks demanded that he and his fellow scientists set up the station as a staging post for a pre-emptive strike as part of a war they are fighting in the future. Whilst Liv explains to Helen who the Daleks are, Peetom contacts somebody and tells them that all is going to plan.
The Doctor meets Jemash and deceives the Daleks into believing that he is one of the station's scientists; they have him identify a primitive temporal compensator and a sealed time portal and task him with stabilising the time fields. He learns about the Daleks and their war and starts discreetly building a disruptor device and sabotaging the time fields. He also begins to wonder whether somebody with advanced temporal knowledge had assisted the Daleks in coming here through the portal.
Liv looks at the station's schematics, trying to find a way to sneak onto the command deck, and Helen has her look up the crew manifest to confirm her suspicions. Although Peetom claimed that two of his colleagues were exterminated by the Daleks, the manifest shows that he and Jemash were the only two crewmembers aboard. Helen spots dead Kaled mutants in the shadows which Peetom claims to have killed and they watch the Daleks on the command deck using the internal camera feed.
The Daleks demand that the Doctor activates the machinery, but he instead activates the disruptor to attack them. It fails, however, and Jemash activates the portal. The Doctor is confused given that he has been sabotaging it and realises that another Time Lord must have been working against him. The invasion force begins to emerge and Peetom leads Liv and Helen to a supposed panic room, locking them inside where they hear hypnotic voices. The Dalek Supreme arrives on the command deck and identifies the Doctor. Jemash is killed first, then the Doctor is shot multiple times to ensure that he is unable to regenerate.
=== Part two ===
Peetom and Jemash finally succeed in creating a fully-operational time tunnel. An alarm sounds and, detecting an approaching time capsule, Peetom says that they have been trapped by the Daleks. However, Jemash realises that it is their own capsule. Liv and Helen step out and demand that Peetom tells them what is going on, as they thought that he had locked them in a cupboard, but he does not recognise them and they realise that they have been sent back in time. Liv and Helen warn Peetom and Jemash of the Dalek invasion and learn that they are the only two scientists aboard, meaning that Liv and Helen are likely going to be exterminated.
Jemash takes Liv and Helen to the anteroom and find a wave form stabiliser for Peetom to use against the Daleks. When the Daleks emerge, Liv, Helen and Peetom run away whilst Jemash remains behind and is made to work for them. The trio reach the maintenance tunnel and kill the Daleks with the stabiliser. Liv and Helen remove the Kaled mutants so that the two of them can climb inside the casing, marking them with paint to ensure that they can be identified, and give Peetom instructions. Helen accidentally fires at a wall, creating the scorch mark they noticed when they first arrived.
Jemash and the Doctor are exterminated on the Dalek Supreme's orders and their bodies removed to an anteroom. There, they wake up and use the disruptor to kill the Daleks who brought them there and realise that their weapons had been damaged by the previous attack. Jemash takes the Doctor to meet Peetom in the maintenance tunnels.
The Doctor learns that Liv and Helen were inside two of the Daleks, explaining why his disruptor did not work the first time and why their fire did not kill the Doctor or Jemash. On the monitor, the Doctor watches as a Kaled mutant is found and the Dalek Supreme realises that one of the Daleks is an impostor. He avoids fixing events by switching the monitor off and, understanding that he is the mysterious Time Lord, uses the time capsule to go back in time and arrive first to send out the SOS. Before going, Jemash gives him the "wave front destabiliser", which is actually his Dalek disruptor, and he tells the two scientists to head to the TARDIS.
The Doctor emerges from the time tunnel and tells Jemash and Peetom what is going to happen, handing them his disruptor to use as a weapon and taking a communicator to keep in touch. Jemash and Peetom open the portal and Liv and Helen arrive in the time capsule. When the Black Dalek arrives, the Doctor kills it, meaning that the three Daleks that he and his companions first encountered were actually the three of them inside Dalek casings. He decides to create the temporal helix as a trap for the real Daleks who will later arrive.
When Liv and Helen arrive in their casings and the Dalek Supreme finds a Kaled mutant, the Doctor, inside the Black Dalek, sends Liv and Helen to the TARDIS and declares that the Dalek Supreme is the impostor. The Daleks exterminate the Dalek Supreme after the Doctor plays a recording of himself with Jemash, wondering why his future self was working with him. Liv, Helen, Jemash and Peetom enter the TARDIS and are soon joined by the Doctor, whom they help out of the Black Dalek. New Daleks arrive and, believing them to be traitors loyal to the Dalek Supreme, the Daleks exterminate them. They are then moved into the past by the temporal helix and become said Daleks before being destroyed by their past selves.
In the TARDIS, the Doctor remotely triggers the self-destruct to destroy the station, keeping more Daleks from arriving. The Doctor takes Jemash and Peetom to their home planet of Ragosia.
== Cast ==
* The Doctor - Paul McGann
* Liv - Nicola Walker
* Helen Sinclair - Hattie Morahan
* Peetom - Joseph Millson
* Jemash - Amy Rockson
* The Daleks - Nicholas Briggs
== Worldbuilding ==
* Liv has found a bakery near the swimming pool.
* The Ragosians come from Ragosia.
* The Doctor asks if the Daleks are fighting the Cybermen, Sontarans, the Eminence or, sarcastically, the Porcians.
* Peetom mentions that the Daleks have human slaves, duplicates and creatures that slither.
* Helen describes the Daleks as "malevolent dodgem cars".
* The Doctor asks Jemash if Peetom has a goatee beard, wears a Nehru jacket and chuckles a lot, referencing .
* The Doctor worries about the Blinovitch Limitation Effect.
== Notes ==
* Paradox of the Daleks was recorded remotely and at Audio Sorcery in May 2022.
== Continuity ==
* Liv mentions that it has been five weeks since the TARDIS left Baker Street. (AUDIO: )
* The Doctor tells Liv that she and Helen might have to go to Gallifrey. Liv says that she "always love[s] seeing those guys". (AUDIO: , etc.)
* The Doctor previously teased the Daleks by asking who they were fighting on Red Rocket Rising. (AUDIO: )
* The Doctor entered a Dalek's casing in his first incarnation. (TV: )
* The Doctor builds a disrupter to attack the Daleks. The third incarnation did so to a Grey Dalek during the Spiridon Incident, (TV: ) the seventh did so to Imperial Daleks during the Hand of Omega Incident, (TV: ) and the eighth did to many including a Dalek Supreme on Red Rocket Rising. (AUDIO: )
== External links ==
Category:Eighth Doctor Adventures audio stories
Category:2022 audio stories
Category:Dalek audio stories