This story takes place between the television adventures, The Trial of a Time Lord and Time and the Rani.

THE JUGGERNAUTS
The writer of the story was American Scott Alan Woodard, who was commissioned by then-producer Gary Russell. Scott recalled: “The initial brief went something along the lines of: ‘We’d like a story featuring Colin, Bonnie, Daleks, Davros and the Mechonoids from The Chase.’ With a laundry list like that, how could I possibly resist?”

Some people find it hard to write for the Daleks – how did Scott find it writing for Daleks and the not-so-expressive Mechonoids? He smiled: “It’s a bit challenging, but not really that difficult. I did read every single line of dialogue aloud to ensure that they sounded suitably ‘Dalek.’ There were definitely lines that I originally wrote for them that were completely rewritten after reading them aloud. You can’t (and shouldn’t) give Daleks words with too many syllables! It should always be clipped, short, bursts of dialogue. Too many syllables and you’ve lost the word by the time the Dalek reaches the full stop!

“Mechonoids are an entirely different beast. They are far more primitive and I had to go back to their appearance in The Chase and listen closely to the way they spoke, the words they spoke, and the number of times they repeated said words. I also had the John Peel novelisation handy, along with a few collections of Classic Comics for more inspiration. Ultimately, whenever I write something based on a TV show, I go to the source material, so the original serial was my main source for their patter and I watched it repeatedly (taking copious notes).”

As well as voicing the Daleks, Nick Briggs did the Mechonoids too. Nick said: “The Mechonoid voices for The Juggernauts were a product of great post-production. I just spoke the words very slowly and clearly to give Steve Foxon something to play with, and he did the magic, after listening to The Chase. Sounded very authentic, though, didn’t it? Clever chap, that Steve Foxon!”

Steve added: “I seem to recall Nick did try something in the studio using the same effects he uses for the Daleks, but nothing was sounding right, so he left it for me to figure out in post-production. It took quite a while, as everything I was throwing at it didn’t work. I am not sure how I came to use this particular plugin – but I ended up with Audio Arpeg by Analog X, which basically allowed you to arpeggiate audio – faders allowed you to change to volume of audio in stages. So I just completely zeroed the level of every other fader and there I had the stuttering sound! A touch of ring modulation and pitch shifting up then finished it off nicely.”