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TARDIS Guide

Review of Defender of the Daleks by Yar_Nazarenko

19 February 2025

This review contains spoilers!

The story begins with the Doctor lying unconscious in the TARDIS. After he regains consciousness, it is revealed that he and the TARDIS have memory lapses due to the paradox they have experienced. I tend to think that this is the Tenth after the events of Alternating Current, as hinted at by the Previously... text at the beginning of the comic. That's why I noted in my review of Alternating Current that this is the Tenth shortly before the events of the Waters of Mars because, according to the official Time Lord Victorious timeline, Defender of the Dalek is set before the Waters of Mars.

In fact, as you can imagine, the Doctor is defending the Daleks (wow, really!). And it's a really cool move, and it immediately presents the level of threat, which is so high that the Daleks agree to forget their enmity with the Doctor for a while for the sake of their species' survival.

Since the events of the comic are part of the overall events of Time Lord Victorious, the danger comes from creatures that have somehow moved from the Dark Ages (shortly after the universe began) to the greater modern era. The hype around the Dark Ages was a feature of this multimedia event.

In Defender of the Dalek, the Doctor is assisted by a Dalek, the Dalek Strategist, in his fight against the creatures from the Dark Ages. And his interaction with the Tenth is simply the best part of the comic. This vibe is straight up awesome, and it's worth reading this comic for that alone. And in fact, this Dalek has an interesting past and even a character arc!!!

At the very end of Defender of the Dalek, when the Tenth is escaping from the Dalek ship after his victory, the Thirteenth appears and helps him escape from the Daleks, who have turned against him again. In fact, this sudden appearance of the Doctor is the same as her sudden disappearance at the end of Alternating Current, which I wrote about in my review.

Overall, Defender of the Dalek is a very good comic. Since it's not really connected to other events of Time Lord Victorious and its plot is understandable without external context, I would highly recommend this story.

This review is a translation of a part of my Ukrainian-language text, the original can be found here: https://www.mzut-podcast.com/post/2-paradoksy-4-doktory-1-dalek


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