Next we have The Elite from The Lost Stories range, the first in the series to adapt one of the Fifth Doctor’s lost scripts and we truly lost a marvel with this story. Honestly one of the most unique stories that show would’ve done had it made it to screens.

Fresh off Tegan returning to the TARDIS, the Doctor sets a course for the planet Florana when of course something knocks the TARDIS off track and they crash land somewhere unknown. As they explore they find a dystopian society where the young are ruthlessly trained from childhood in war-like computer programmes to launch attacks on insurgents across the planet and those of the middle age or above are discarded. All this is done under the wisdom and guidance or their high priest who fell from the sky ten years earlier claiming to have been sent by the gods.

I debated whether or not to go into spoilers as the midway reveal is so well executed but if I don’t then my talking points pretty much stop here outside of giving this a high recommendation. The Elite is such an intense and mean-spirited story that just never lets up with the dangers our main characters are in, such as this wonderfully demented scene where the Doctor is almost killed on the spot for offering the schoolchildren chocolate. Anyways, spoilers ahead!

The reveal halfway through is that the High Priest is actually a lone damaged Dalek who spends most of the story separated from its casing and has influenced the society into adopting Dalek ideology. There’s a lot of elements you’ll recognise from stories like Dalek, Jubilee or Resolution in presenting just how much damage a single Dalek can cause but The Elite takes the approach of showing the ideological chaos a single Dalek can create when its conventional weapons are of no use and its only option is to manipulate the inhabitants through religion into giving it a position of power over them. It’s amazing that this story was almost produced for the show as it’s very unlike any Dalek story that had been done at this point, the Dalek itself isn’t even focused that heavily on, it’s not even involved in the climax! The story instead focuses more on the fanatical followers who’ve perpetuated this society and have faith in the eventual arrival of the cleansing fires the Dalek has prophesised. Between this and the criminally underrated Enightenment, had it been made, Barbara Clegg would’ve been looked at as one of the top writers for the show.