Daleks – The Fan-Favorite Doctor Who Monster Comes Home with a New Hachette Model

This article is sponsored by Hachette Partworks.

Doctor Who is one of the most enduring science fiction franchises in modern history, with its main television series alone running (with several notable lapses) since 1963. One under-appreciated side of the franchise, however, is its foray into video games. Doctor Who has been a part of the gaming space since 1983, with the franchise’s first official game, the aptly titled Doctor Who: The First Adventure, published for the BBC Micro, an early personal computer commissioned by the BBC as its name suggests. This gave the British sci-fi franchise another frontier to explore and leave its mark in, along with television and merchandising, including its most iconic recurring enemy, the Daleks.

The Daleks have had an interesting place in Doctor Who video game history as they have had in the wider franchise itself. 1985’s PC game Doctor Who and the Mines of Terror featured enemies that heavily resembled Daleks but weren’t referred to by name, as the rights to the extraterrestrial exterminators were partially owned by their creator Terry Nation at the time, which would’ve complicated the licensing deal. It wasn’t until the 1992 PC game Dalek Attack that the Doctor’s formidable foes would officially make their video game debut, menacing several different incarnations of the Doctor over the course of the game.

When it comes to Daleks, Hachette Partworks has one of the most impressive models around, available through a subscription service from the company. The model is based on how the Daleks appeared in the Time War, the pivotal conflict that placed the Doctor and his fellow Time Lords in a battle for the fate of space and time against the nefarious enemies, resulting in the Time Lords nearly being wiped out for good. The subscription service has components shipped regularly, along with a magazine to not only help fans assemble the detailed model but with plenty of interesting info about Doctor Who at large.

To shift more focus to Hachette’s Dalek model and accompanying Doctor Who magazine for a moment, the subscription provides fans with the most detailed Time War Dalek currently available on the market at 1:2 scale of those appearing in the television series. This includes built-in sound effects, functional lights, and movement so fans can get their very own Dalek at home vowing to exterminate anyone who stands in their way. More than just building the familiar metallic casing for the villainous extraterrestrial, the model comes with the Dalek’s true organic form piloting the killing machine, tentacles and all.

As with Hachette’s other subscription programs, the Dalek model comes with its own set of free incentives for those who subscribe, while supplies last, of course. These include a Dalek blueprint ceramic mug, a TARDIS keychain, a toolkit giving subscribers all the tools that they need to build the Dalek model, and several free issues of the Doctor Who magazine. This all comes with the attention to detail and clear love letter to the property that Hachette is known for with all of its releases, really reminding Doctor Who aficionados that this is a subscription by fans for fans.

If there was ever a breakout and beloved entity throughout the 60+ year history of Doctor Who, it’s the Daleks, to the point where they starred in two spinoff movies released in the 1960s as the Doctor’s major adversary. Since their return with the 2005 revival series, the Daleks have regained their place as the definitive Doctor Who antagonists, who pushed the Doctor and the Time Lords to the brink of annihilation. With Hachette’s subscription service, fans can construct their own Dalek along with an extensive magazine series celebrating the sci-fi franchise’s legacy, more startlingly real than prior home releases like the series’ video games have provided fans.