Second Empire

A CG webcomic made by Mechmaster with the Daleks from Doctor Who as Protagonists.

The story follows that of General Xenol of the First Conquest Army. Having ignored the orders of the Golden Emperor to establish an outpost at a swamp-world in favor of invading the more threatening planet of Slepkt IV, he is brought to Skaro for insubordination. At first the Golden Emperor congratulates Xenol for identifying the greater threat, only to chastise him for having failed to secure victory against the Slepktians.

Xenol then complains that the reason he hasn't been able to conquer Slepkt is because, while the genetic programming of his Dalek troopers produces excellent soldiers, they lack initiative and have been out-thought by the Slepktians. The Golden Emperor is having none of it and it soom becomes obvious that he cares more about having obedient drones than competent soldiers.

This gets Xenol to think with his top scientist Yttral - The Dalek Empire as it stands owes much of its power to other races, who create and mantain much of the Dalek technology. The Daleks slowly but steadily are decaying as their conquered peoples lose skilled laborers and as the genetic programming that the Daleks depend upon is steadily weakening the race by making them overdependent on their casings. Computers do much of Dalek thinking and the race has slipped into complacency, content to obey their machines. Yttral himself is considered insane for actually perfoming research. Original Kaled devices are almost mythical Lost Technology.

But the straw that broke the camel's back? New Daleks created on Skaro are no longer being issued names. The computers now only issue alphanumeric strings of code.

Xenol, supremely pissed off at this corruption of the Dalek dream, decides it's time to act, and the idea for a Second Dalek Empire is born...

It can be found here.

Now with a character page

This webcomic provides examples of: "Xenol: Make sure he doesn’t try rebuilding the engines or something, at least not until we land."
 * Absent-Minded Professor: Yttral.

"Red Seven: May the fates be with you Red Five.
 * Ace Pilot: First Captain Anzollo, who outmaneuvers fighters in a gunship.
 * One of the fighter pilots of the first empire certainly counts. Anzollo has to resort to Ramming Always Works to shake him:

Red Five: The fates? No, I will not leave this to fate. There is no fate save that which we make ourselves.

Dalek Controller: His computer is off. Red Five, you switched off your Battle Computer. What is wrong?

Red Five: Nothing, I am all right.

(Awesomeness ensues)."

"I am a Black Dalek! I am an avatar of battle! I was born to Exterminate!"
 * Also, this guy.
 * Almighty Janitor: For some reason, SPIE agents seem to prefer being disguised as Sanitation Daleks.
 * Also Grexzol, a General Services Dalek who was once a soldier, and has an electron shredder.
 * Alternate Universe: Although this will become apparent the moment you notice that the Daleks have robotic claws instead of plungers. Though it goes much further than that, as Daleks are content to have slave races, instead of the ferocious racism and speciesism they usually display.
 * That was the original design of the Daleks in Doctor Who but they didn't have the budget for claws.
 * This universe is actually an amalgamation of canon and non-canon sources, such as borrowing heavily from Dalek comics of the 60s.
 * And The Daleks Grew Proud: This has already hit. The Second Empire seeks to return them to their Ax Crazy, Omnicidal Maniac Galactic Conqueror (and most importantly, to their genius) roots.
 * Animesque: Look at Aychemex and try saying he’s not this trope.
 * Apathetic Citizens: Nobody cares about the Skaro City attacks. Skaro's Largest Kwalorblmn takes precedence.
 * Awesome but Impractical: Dalek casings can fly, which is awesome, but unless you have numbers on your side, youl’ll simply make yourself a bigger target, which is pointed out by a Second Empire instructor.
 * Badass: Xenol, just… Xenol.
 * To elaborate, the first time we see him in combat, he smashes his casing into another Dalek, crushes another’s eye-stalk while shooting a third, uses the second Dalek to block blasts from two others, and then kills them both.
 * General Grexnarl is no slacker either.
 * And he just got an upgrade.
 * Neither is Agent 700.
 * Badass Army: The First and Fifth Conquest Armies.
 * The Imperial Legion was once made from the most Badass Daleks in the Conquest Armies. Not anymore.
 * Badass Boast: Xenol:

"Anzollo: And that is your cunning plan? To fly this gunship along the sensor shadow of a moving Battlesaucer in the middle of a void-charge attack and attach jury rigged mines to its hull without them noticing? The reason that sensor shadow tactic is not included in the Dalek Fleet Battle Manual is because it is impossible. That shadow is barely as wide as this ship. With respect General that is the most insane plan you have come up with since the one where we attack the heart of the Dalek Empire with nothing more that a gunship and thirty commandos.
 * Badass Decay: In-universe example: The Imperial Legion was once made from the hardiest, most experienced warriors from the Dalek armies. Now they’re bred for the job and haven’t fought a single battle in over one hundred years, and use Hollywood Tactics.
 * Beam Spam: This.
 * BFG: Special Weapons Daleks are here, so it’s expected.
 * The defence guns of the Second Empire base certainly count.
 * As do the guns of Dalek Storm.
 * The Baryon Fusion Generator
 * Bling of War: General of the Imperial Legion Pturdd. He's not really that much flashier than many of other Daleks, though he does have a very shiny casing with some gold marbling around the mid section, but his gun has an extra power cable that's obviously designed to mimic an aiguillette which combined with his attitude takes him into this trope.
 * Butt Monkey: Longbark keeps getting stuck testing Yttral's inventions, whether they be teleportation, sonic specs, or invisible paint.
 * Canon Welding: Mostly Doctor Who series canon to the TV Century 21 Dalek comic strip but also including pretty much any Dalek related media seen in the last fifty years. For example, the Golden Emperor comes from the comic strip, but his Imperial Guard are taken directly from the Davros Imperial Dalek faction from the late classic series period, while Xenol's Daleks have the colouring of the Renegade Faction from the same period and his Imperial Casing is the one from Evil Of The Daleks. Both sides have capabilities taken from the latest series though like independent powered flight and many of the background characters have casings based on alternative designs from the various spin off books of the 1960's.
 * Colony Drop: How Xenol solves the problem of Slepkt.
 * Color Coded for Your Convenience: If you pay attention, you can tell a Dalek’s job description, rank and what Army he belongs to, simply by looking at its casing.
 * Cool Starship: The Battlesaucers. To fire at an another ship, they need to flip over to the side.
 * Crapsack World: Not apparent at first, but remember that the Daleks pretty much curb-stomp anything in the Whoniverse if The Doctor isn’t involved, and that the Time Lords were the only beings that could match the Daleks in the Time War, and even then they ended up losing (sort of). Now, we have yet to see the Doctor (or any Time Lord, in fact) in the comic. Guess what this means for the rest of the Galaxy.
 * The only reason the Daleks haven’t already killed Exterminated everything else in the galaxy is because they haven’t reached Time War levels of badassery just yet, although they do have more variety.
 * Not exactly. These Daleks are quite vicious, though the far wider and ostensibly better established First Empire is Too Dumb to Live for a large variety of reasons, most notably its overreliance on computers and genetic engineering. The Second Empire, on the other hand, stands poised to correct the problem...
 * Crazy Enough to Work: On Xenol’s plan to destroy a Battlesaucer:

Xenol: Well, apart from the stated objections, what do you think of the plan?

Anzollo: I like it. When do we start?"

"Xenol: A moment ago you were trying to convince me it was impossible and now you are going to do it backwards?"
 * And then Anzollo does one better:

"Grexnarl: I do not have time to deal with this, you have to return to the sub-levels immediately.
 * Curb Stomp Battle: The initial attempt by the First Dalek Empire to exterminate Xenol's rebellion ends in this for the forces of Skaro. Xenol and his warriors wipe out an entire Imperial Legion and their support elements and transport ships almost to the last Dalek. The only survivors are a small group who escape into the local swamp of doom (implied to have been brutally killed there) and the space fleet escort saucers that stayed in orbit. Nobody knows what the hell happened.
 * Deadly Decadent Court: Computers have made Daleks complacent and made their commanders think their casings and numbers are the single important issue in battle, rather than strategy and guile. They crave the Second Empire's advances... but not their leaders.
 * Despotism Justifies the Means: The raison d'etre of the Golden Emperor. Since.
 * Dirty Coward: Pturdd. When confronted with undeniable evidence he and his entire Legion have walked into a trap they're extremely unlikely to get out alive of, he turns into a spineless wimp. Then he forgets why using the flight mechanism is an Awesome but Impractical idea.
 * Dual-Wielding: The legionnaires of the Golden Emperor's personal bodyguard have a second blast gun in place of a manipulator arm.
 * As do the First Army's INTSECTs (INTernal SECurity Troopers).
 * Elaborate Underground Base: Yttral has a pretty impressive one.
 * Even Evil Has Standards: Xenol may be a Dalek, but even he’s horrified when he learns that the new Daleks produce at Skaro aren’t been issued names, just alphanumeric designations.
 * Evil vs. Evil: This is a comic about two Dalek empires decking each other out. What did you expect?
 * Explosive Overclocking: Anzollo destroys several dozen First Empire battleships by doing this on his own engines.
 * Expy: Agent 700 is basically James Bond, complete with one-liners and weaponized vehicle, in a Dalek casing.
 * Pretty much every casing from the Terry Nation comics and Doctor Who series has a lookalike.
 * Fell Off the Back of a Truck: One of the characters notes the head scientist got excellent prices for some stuff that happened to "fall off the back of a cargo ship".
 * Fun with Acronyms: The Skaro Political Intelligence and Espionage corp (SPIE)
 * Artificial Sub-inteligence System (ASS)
 * Faraway Extermination And Recon Dalek (FEARED)
 * INTernal SECurity Tropper (INTSECT). Bonus points for them being Yellow and Black and organised into Sting Teams.
 * Funny Background Event: A fair few, with Yttral being the usual suspect. Examples include during the briefing scene before the assault on Skaro, Yttral randomly takes the sanitation Dalek's floor polisher and continues to push it around the table for a significant ammount of time, and later while the Second Empire commanders are planning their defences, he seems to be gesturing at Grexnarl about how large one of the screens is totally at random.
 * General Failure: Pturdd. Combined with The Neidermeyer, Dirty Coward and Too Dumb to Live for extra humiliation.
 * Xyml is implied to have been one of these.
 * The fact that his soldiers cheer when he gets killed solidly cements the fact.
 * Hell, many of the First Empire generals. All of them live by the manual of war, and they have no idea of what to do when faced with an opponent that actually uses creativity or lateral thinking in their attacks.
 * Gullible Lemmings: The citizens of the First Empire.
 * Ham-to-Ham Combat: Buraoun versus Grexnarl.
 * Heroic Sacrifice: "Let us see how far we can get with determination alone."
 * Human Resources: Implied to be the case with Skaro Green.
 * Humongous Mecha: Siege Lords, which are Humongous Mecha shaped like Daleks.
 * Impossibly Cool Weapon: The very, veeery shiny Battleclaw.

Yttral shows him the gleaming Battleclaw

Grxnarl: All right, you have convinced me. How long will it take to fit the upgrades?"

"Yttral: But first... kwalorblmn. It has been prophesied."
 * Is It Something You Eat?: Diplomacy. Everyone thinks it's a sea creature. Subverted in that there is a Diplomassee.
 * It's Raining Daleks In the form of the 2nd Conquest Army's 183rd Spaceborne Rangers "The Squealing Shurgols". SPACEBORNE!
 * Kent Brockman News: Skaro's Largest Kwalorblmn.
 * Large Ham: Everyone. It's Daleks, what did you expect?

"Note: This is just whow the scene appears in Grexnarl's imagination"
 * Lost Technology: Most of the original Kaled technology. Yttral lampshades that while the Daleks are more intelligent, the Kaleds were smarter. He wanted to examine old examples to reverse engineer them, but was denied at every opportunity, despite being the top Dalek scientist in centuries. He's understandably pissed. Add to that there is very little actual research being carried and that the Daleks are almost fully dependent on their slaves and on Davros to create and innovate new technology and you'll understand one of the major flaws of the First Empire.
 * The Mole: Agent Hexacentum,
 * More Dakka: Yttral’s Rotary Neutron Guns.
 * And the Special Weapons Dalek.
 * And Section Leader Storm.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Let’s see, we have Emperor Xenol (who gets called “The Dark Emperor” by the First Empire Daleks), Generals Grexnarl and Aychemex, First Captains Anzollo and Gnerk, Sub-commander Zlonozite, Golden Emperor Xanzathix, Yarvelling, High Marshal Zolfian Kalkaderak… pretty much every name given is this trope.
 * Hell, even the minor characters have pretty scary-sounding names! General Services Dalek Grexzol, anyone?
 * Except for Pturdd.
 * Obfuscating Insanity:  While he's definitely more than a little out there he's not as much of a Cloudcuckoolander as he appears and as this interlude shows there's method to his madness.
 * Painting the Fourth Wall: Daleks speak in their usual angular font. Ancient Kaled uses a much fancier script. Other alien races have their own fonts (Mechanoids speak only in bar codes).
 * Praetorian Guard: Complete with extra armor (that they can’t seem to make proper use of).
 * Punny Name: General Pturdd
 * Captain Kepptin
 * Supreme Daleks Gariin, Ghalt and Buraoun.
 * Ramming Always Works: How the Millenium Thargon disables one of the Siege Lords. Though.
 * Rousing Speech: Grexnarl gives one.

"Yttral: It is also very shiny."
 * Scarily Competent Tracker: The Phonar operatior is so damn good at his job he can identify the excact model of a coupling manipulator, just by the noise it makes when dropped.
 * , nonetheless.
 * Scenery Porn: Mechmaster has some pretty impressive CG scenery.
 * Sealed Evil in a Can:
 * Self-Destruct Mechanism: Used by Second Empire troops to blow up their dead units so no technology can be reverse-engineered.
 * Serial Escalation: How many ShoutOuts can we cram into this Comic? Into this chapter? into this page? Into this panel? Into This. Single. Sentence?
 * Behold: a Dalek destroying another Dalek... with a katana!
 * Shout-Out: Lots.
 * Super Prototype: Compared to the First Empire units, Second Empire travel machines are considerably more advanced. The First Empire desperately seeks the technology, but to compensate, it has access to larger armies, allowing it to think that there's a chance Zerg Rush is a valid tactic in this case.
 * Super Soldier: Xenol, Pturdd and . Xenol and Pturdd were part of Project Ancestral, an attempt to create a better Dalek commander by reactivating dormant Kaled genes. As a result, Xenol is charismatic, extremely competent leader, but is independent to the point of insubordination; and Pturdd is a merciless and bloodthirsty commander, but also a Jerkass with an ego the size of a planet and a General Failure.
 * Dalek Storm's casing has the speed, range and firepower of a Combat Hoverbout.

"Xenol: Silent running? Surely the nebula gasses are not dense enough for sound transmission, even in the Shoal zone.
 * Take That: In the Dalek History Vaults, the New Paradigm Daleks are in the section reserved for the Empire's "worst mistakes, preserved for all eternity".
 * Techno Babble: On why they need silent running in space:

Anzollo: That is correct, but we are moving so fast that the ship creates a bow wave of highly compressed gases that acts as a quantum resonator. Excited by sound vibrations it propagates etheric waves through the medium of subspace.

Xenol: Ah. I see. Quantum."

"Yttral: The underlying scientific principles are well established of course, simple stated... blah blah blah... Meson polarity inversion... blah blah... Boson nullification... blah blah blah... Unstable quark pairs... blah blah blah blah.
 * Also parodied here with the operating principles of the Baryon Fusion Generator:

Grexnarl: I see, so it is quantum, then? This is utterly fascinating, Yttral, I do hope I am not keeping you from anything more important."

"Yttral: I am the first Science Dalek to actually do research in over five hundred years and yet they call me mad!"
 * Tempting Fate: WARNING! Saying you are beyond weapons range only tempts snipers. He really should have known better.
 * Also applies to the communication Dalek here.
 * The Neidermeyer: Pturdd. He seems stuck in War Is Glorious mode until he's shown, forcefully, he's not fit to lead a parade.
 * There Is No Kill Like Overkill: To get rid of the Slepktians, Emperor Xenol orders a bunch of HUGE asteroids to be diverted to impact the planet.
 * Two Words: Atomic Minefield
 * They Called Me Mad: Yttral.

"High Marshal Zolfian:…may their very name become a curse for ten times ten thousand years."
 * Those Three Daleks: The three General Services Daleks who become minor recurring characters. One of them, Grexzol, won’t stop talking; the second tries to ignore him (“I am still not listening!”); and the third keeps asking to drive the transporter.
 * Trademark Favorite Food: Kwalorblmn, for the entire Dalek species. Justified in that it’s the only plant that can grow in the radioactive wasteland that is Skaro.
 * Unusual Euphemism: The word Thal is thrown around a lot.
 * Made funnier by this flashback


 * Wiper Start: Occurs when Agent 700 tries to start an advanced Hoverbout with a nonstandard control layout.
 * Zerg Rush: The First Empire's invasion. Holy crap.

EX-TER-MINATE!!