Terry Nation in the late 1970s. Photo © Joel Nation.
None of us would begrudge Terry Nation the right to stake a claim over his most famous creations, but it must have been apparent to even the youngest of readers that Terry Nation’s Dalek Special was nothing of the sort. Small type buried on the cover revealed the truth: this slender miscellany of Dalek facts and illustrations was actually ‘Compiled and Edited by Terrance Dicks’. Thirty of its 96 pages were, however, occupied by some original content from Nation - a short story called Daleks: The Secret Invasion.
Nation’s six-chapter tale removed the Doctor from the equation, placing four heroic children at the heart of a plot that understandably lacks the more disturbing elements that characterised his science-fiction.