There's a glorious golden Sun beating down on the Earth this fine spring morning. Vel finds it easier every day to climb out of his illuminated pool of nutritious radioactive sludge. It feels good to get up early and go to work and get stuff done. He inches his way into the upright vertical tank and relaxes at the controls while the front seals up. Then he trundles out of the bedroom leaving his wife sleeping and moves into the kitchen to make himself some nutritious radioactive breakfast.

The refrigerator is packed with wriggling artificial macrobiotics - certified on the packaging, one hundred percent Pure Dalek Cells, and Safe For Dalek Consumption. There are also ore slices and a small pot of fizzing electrical electrolyte which Vel takes in one sink-plunger manipulator and consumes slowly, savouring the taste and watching the sun rise over his clinically sterile rock garden. His children (likewise encased in smaller, more mobile tank suits) are already outside, throwing a beach ball from one to the other and dashing about with the turn of speed adult Daleks find unpleasant and wearisome once they pass a few hundred years old.

A slower pace of life is preferred here on the Skaroan Utopia.

"FA THER. CAN WE GO TO GHAR RA TON SE VEN THIS CE LE BRA TION DAY?"

"WHY, YES. THEY HAVE EX CEL LENT FIRE WORKS."

"GOOD MOR NING SWEE TIE," adds his wife, entering the kitchen too. The house is a bungalow. Step-free access. Hovering is an unnecessary consumption of power. Other problems nobody has anymore: Racism. Disabilities. Self-defense (everybody is a vertical unstoppable tank). Discrimination. Hygiene. Bacteria. Inequality. War. Murder. Disease. Injury. Disability. Hunger. Rage. Hate. Conflict. Monsters.

Now there's time for family, and holidays, and art and philosophy and sports, and the finer things in life.

"I HAD A NIGHT MARE LAST NIGHT FA THER," says Vel's smallest child, who is only three feet high and going through one new tank every year as she grows to maturity. "IT WAS AB OUT A MON STER. HE WAS TRY ING TO STOP ME FROM FIN ISH ING MY PAINT INGS. HE TORE THEM UP AND HE WAS HURT ING EV RY DA LEK HE COULD SEE AND NO BOD Y COULD STOP HIM!"

"NOW NOW, LIT TLE ONE. WE DO NOT HAVE TO BE AF RAID OF MON STERS AN Y MORE. YOU ARE SAFE! AND THERE IS NO THING BUT FRIEND LY DA LEKS! THE U NI VERSE IS A WON DER FUL PLACE NOW THAT, FROM PLA NET TO SYS TEM TO GA LA XY, WE HAVE EX TER MIN ATE ED ALL OTH ER LIFE FORMS! NOW LET US CEL E BRATE!"