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Enemy of the Daleks kicks off by dropping the Seventh Doctor, Ace, and Hex onto a planet literally called Bliss while it is being methodically obliterated by Daleks, which is a level of irony so thick you could spread it on toast and choke. If you think the Doctor is here to save the day in the usual heroic fashion, think again. This is late-era Seven. He is not here to help. He is here to use the situation, and that alone tells you exactly what kind of story this is going to be.
Bliss is a warzone. Daleks everywhere. Civilians dying. Hope in short supply. And instead of charging the nearest plunger, the Doctor beelines for Professor Shimura, a scientist whose response to genocide is to invent something even worse. Shimura has created the Kiseibya, a newly engineered lifeform designed to consume metal. Daleks included. It’s a brilliant idea in the way landmines are brilliant ideas. Effective. Horrifying. Impossible to put back in the box once you’ve let them loose. Every time someone says “Kiseibya,” my brain goes “Kasabian,” which does not help the mood, but that’s a me problem.
The central question of the story is very clear and very Doctor Who. What do we become when defeating our enemy becomes the only thing that matters? At what point does survival curdle into obsession? The Kiseibya are not framed as a triumph. They are framed as a warning. A reminder that creating monsters to fight monsters does not make you righteous, it just makes you a different flavour of dangerous.
Kate Ashfield’s Lieutenant Beth Stokes is key to grounding this. She is exhausted, pragmatic, angry, and painfully human. She has watched people die. She has made compromises. She wants the Daleks gone, and she is willing to look away from the consequences if it means the nightmare stops. Through her, the story explores how war erodes moral clarity not with grand speeches, but with attrition. With grief. With desperation.
And then there’s Hex. Oh Hex. Phillip Olivier absolutely steals this story. Ace is, as ever, brilliant with Daleks. She’s been here before. She knows how to fight them. Hex hasn’t. He is thrown into the middle of a full-scale invasion, watching people die horribly and being utterly powerless to stop it. His reactions feel raw and real. This is the point where Hex stops being the audience surrogate and starts becoming a fully realised casualty of the Doctor’s lifestyle. You can hear the cracks forming, and it is devastating.
McCoy’s Doctor is on razor-wire form. Cold. Calculating. Utterly convinced he’s doing the right thing while leaving wreckage in his wake. He knows the Daleks must be stopped. He also knows the cost, and he pays it anyway. This is Seven at his most morally compromised, and the story never lets him off the hook for it.
Yes, the themes are a little on the nose. Big Finish has explored this territory before. But it works because the character work is so strong and the emotional stakes feel earned rather than lectured.
Final Thoughts
This is a brutal, intelligent Dalek story that understands war is not just about explosions, but about what it does to the people trapped inside it. Dark, uncomfortable, and character-driven in all the right ways.
4.5 out of 5 metal-devouring science nightmares accidentally invented to kill Daleks,