#60 Dalek Empire: "Death to the Daleks!"

My Randomoid Selectortron squeaks away from another sinister trap, and into...

Dalek Empire: The Demons

As with past Dalek Empire selections, I'm overriding the random selection to listen to Dalek Empire in order.

Dalek Empire: "Death to the Daleks!"

Starring: Sarah Mowat as Susan Mendes, Mark McDonnell as Alby Brook, and Gareth Thomas as Kalendorf
Format: One full-cast CD (or download) with no episode breaks.
Silly? No.
Standalone? No. 
Recommended? Yes, although I say this without having heard the conclusion of the series.

My reactions to this story contain spoilers for it and preceding Dalek Empire episodes.

Before listening

I'm now up to a point in Dalek Empire where I definitely haven't heard it before. I've read bits and pieces about what happens in Dalek Empire but I don't know which events are in which episode, or even each season for the most part, and there are some mysteries I don't know the answers to already. I'm mostly looking forward to hearing more of Alby's plot, since I don't expect Susan's to have much left in the way of revelations.
I'm guessing that the title refers to Susan and Kalendorf's seeding of rebellion, but maybe there's a layered meaning to it.

After listening

A lot happens to the galaxy in this episode. The narrative focus is on just a few characters while these larger-scale events happen, which gives a bit of a telling-not-showing feel, but the events are just a scaled-up version of events we've already seen previously on Doctor Who and in Dalek Empire, and the story presented in "Death to the Daleks!" doesn't depend on dramatizing anything outside the direct viewpoints of a few characters.
Dalek Empire has some thematic and linking narration, and in this episode the narration is particularly prominent due to the important offstage events. This is delivered in the first-person past tense by a narrator identifying with Susan Mendes, but credited as "Narrator" and played by Joyce Gibbs rather than Sarah Mowat. In this episode, some explanation of this is being set up: the details are unclear, but it seems that what we are hearing in the narration is some sort of re-enactment. Further-future re-enactment of Doctor Who events is not unique to Dalek Empire; on television it was the most interesting part of Snakedance, and in Big Finish audio it would be important to Jubilee and Omega. "Death to the Daleks!" predates Jubilee and Omega and might be Big Finish's first use of the concept, if indeed that is what is happening in the narrated frame.
The title has no particularly layered meaning as far as I can tell, but the quotation marks are significant, as the phrase itself, used in-universe, is important. The Daleks allow Susan to make a galaxy-wide broadcast, knowing that she and Kalendorf have been planting seeds of rebellion, and she initiates that rebellion. It is unclear what the Daleks hope to gain from this, but it is presumably related to events on Alby's side of the plot.
Alby's side of the plot is still murky: secret agencies from the Earth and other worlds have been collaborating for "centuries" on a mysterious "Project Infinity", which has something to do with probing a dimensional fissure. This is apparently the galaxy's last hope against the Daleks, and the mysterious mineral that was the target of their first strike two episodes ago is an essential component. With that mineral cut off, Project Infinity will only get one shot to do whatever it's going to do.
There is only one episode left in the first Dalek Empire season, and after everything that has happened, it feels to me like there is more than one CD's worth of story to tell if Project Infinity is going to be a good resolution. Looking ahead at summaries of later episodes on Big Finish's website, I suspect the galaxy will in fact still be in chaos at the end of the season, just different more hopeful chaos.
Dalek Empire is coming along quite nicely. Some character decisions seem ludicrously idealistic in the face of the characters' general cynicism, but this fits in with the story's thematic focus on the idea of hope, and the overall universe that's presented has room for both extremes.
I am very much looking forward to when Dalek Empire comes back into focus on my Selectortron for the season finale, appropriately titled Project Infinity. Incidentally, I find myself wondering if this has ever been officially connected to the titling scheme of the Forge arc in the main Doctor Who range, but I'm afraid that looking it up right now might produce too many spoilers for me.