Doctor Who: Dalek Empire – a dark and gritty spin-off worth checking out

We look at the excellent Doctor Who spin-off series Dalek Empire from Big Finish, and why every Dalek fan needs to check it out.

Back in 2001 – relatively early days for Big Finish – Nicholas Briggs wrote a four part series. Not a typical Doctor Who story, but a spin-off series focusing on one of the show’s most iconic monsters: the Daleks.

Almost twenty years later, and Dalek Empire is still one of my favorite original spin-offs from Big Finish, along with Jago & Litefoot, Gallifrey and The War Master. (Trust me, they’ve created a lot of original Doctor Who spin-offs over the years.) We haven’t had a new series in over a decade, but it’s still one I like to go back to every so often.

What I love about Dalek Empire is its ambition. We’ve heard plenty about the Dalek wars and humanity’s long battles against them in the TV series. But in those cases, we’ve really only seen the Doctor dip in and out of those ongoing fights.

What’s great with Empire is that we get to see one (or even several) of these major wars from the very beginning. One that’s seen from a very human perspective, too.

An epic spread across thousands of years, Dalek Empire gives us many stories of what humanity does to survive against the onslaught of the Doctor’s greatest enemies.

(Image credit: Dalek Empire/Doctor Who/Big Finish Productions.

Image obtained from: Big Finish Productions.)

When the Doctor isn’t around

That’s what makes Dalek Empire such compelling listening: the well-written human characters that feature in the series. These aren’t superheroes saving the day against the Daleks. These are just people doing their best to survive against a foe that’s unstoppable and relentless.

It’s easy to take the Daleks for granted in Doctor Who. After all, in every story, they’re always defeated by the Doctor. That’s kind of the Doctor’s role in the story. The Daleks show up, the Doctor fights them, the hero wins. Even the so-called Victory of the Daleks just had the Daleks escaping instead of destroying the Earth.

But Dalek Empire doesn’t have that certainty. This is a series where the Doctor doesn’t show up, not this time. And none of these human characters can measure up to the Doctor. They just have to do the best they can. As a result, this reminds you not just how amazing the Doctor is, but how dangerous the Daleks really are.

An epic scale

I also need to mention the sheer scale of the series. The first series alone is set across many years. But the story eventually is spread across thousands of years. It’s clear that with this series, Nicholas Briggs wanted to write a big, epic space opera, and he certainly achieved that.

Even more importantly though, he wrote an excellent Dalek series. I think what Dalek Empire reminds me of most are the Sixties stories. Sometimes, they would be light-hearted like The Chase. But far more often, they were dark and even gritty stories. Dalek Empire feels like a cross between that era of Dalek stories, and the twenty-first century version of Battlestar Galactica. It’s that good.

If you’re a Dalek fan, then this series is strongly recommended. Even if you have yet to listen to Big Finish, Dalek Empire is just a fantastic standalone series. It’s big, epic, gritty and a wonderful exploration of both the best and worst of humanity. (And, as a bonus, it even features David Tennant in a pre-Doctor Who role!) An excellent spin-off series that every fan of the pepper pots needs to hear.

Have you listened to Dalek Empire? What did you make of it? Do you think a Dalek spin-off series could work on television? Let us know in the comments below.