Destruction of Skaro

The destruction of Skaro. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)

The destruction of Skaro (PROSE: The Whoniverse) occurred when the Seventh Doctor tricked Davros into destroying the ancestral home of the Daleks at the concludion of the Shoreditch Incident during the Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War.

Lead up and event

After the ancient Time Lord stellar manipulator, the Hand of Omega, was located on Earth in 1963, the Imperial Dalek faction, led by Davros, took possession of the Hand while fighting the Supreme Dalek and its Renegade Daleks in Shoreditch. Davros, intending to turn Skaro's sun into a source of power, was tricked by the Doctor into activating the hand. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)

Via a causal nexus in transjovian space, using faster-than-light travel to punch a hole in reality, (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks) the Hand travelled to Skaro's time zone and turned Skaro's sun nova, vaporising the planet and wiping out the Skaro system, destroying Davros's entire army, (PROSE: War of the Daleks) including his fleet, (AUDIO: In Remembrance) before destroying the Imperial Dalek mothership just as Davros fled. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) One account specified that the Hand detonated the system's second sun. (PROSE: The Stranger)

Aftermath

Various accounts depicted Davros's escape pod as either landing on Azimuth, (AUDIO: Daleks Among Us) being blasted into the Time Vortex, (AUDIO: Terror Firma) or drifting through space for thirty years. (PROSE: War of the Daleks)

One Imperial Dalek was sent to 2016 where it learned of the Shoreditch Incident and tried to relay the information to the Emperor Davros, intending to change their defeat, but the Imperial Daleks remaining on Earth were destroyed instantly by the Hand. (AUDIO: In Remembrance)

Skaro's destruction was not the total end of the Daleks, however, as the Doctor later stating that there were more Daleks in the universe than there were on Skaro. (AUDIO: Daleks Among Us)

Uncertainties

Skaro's time zone

It was unclear what time zone Skaro existed in when it was destroyed, the Doctor remarking that the Supreme Dalek was "a thousand years from a disintegrated home," implying 2963. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) It may have occurred thirty years prior to c. 4000. (PROSE: War of the Daleks) Ace also referred to "New Skaro" which existed in the 26th century. (PROSE: Birthright)

Additionally, the Seventh Doctor later collected the Master's ashes from the planet after the Daleks tried and executed him, (TV: Doctor Who) the Eighth Doctor explaining that this was a "special trip [...] not normally allowed" but that he had a "special mission to perform" and "the year then tallied" with what he knew of Skaro. (PROSE: War of the Daleks)

The Antalin confusion

It was also unclear whether or not Skaro was actually destroyed. According to one account, thirty years after the event, the Dalek Prime claimed that Skaro had not really been destroyed. Having learned about what would happen to their homeworld, but unable to successful alter history, the Prime developed a complex plan that involved moving the Kaled bunker to Antalin, ten parsecs from Skaro, so that Davros would believe it was Skaro when he awakened; combined with faking the war with the Movellans and ensuring Davros had access to time travel technology, when the Hand was activated it actually destroyed the decoy Antalin instead.

However, how much of this claim was true was uncertain: the Eighth Doctor was curious as to why the "real Skaro" had no radiation, the Dalek Prime referred to Antalin as a "constructed world" though the Doctor knew it to be home to an advanced civilisation, and Davros suspected that Skaro had been destroyed, and that the Dalek Prime had transformed another world into "Skaro" to save face and have the Daleks remain loyal. (PROSE: War of the Daleks)

Restoration

Another account stated that following the civil war, the Emperor of the Restoration "restored" Skaro, (PROSE: The Restoration Empire) while an historical account of the universe theorised that the Daleks manipulated the timelines, making it so while the planet was destroyed, they reconstituted it, effectively erasing the destruction from time. (PROSE: The Whoniverse)

Other destructions

Events in an alternate timeline

In an alternate timeline, when the Doctor encountered the People on the Needle, Gordel believed their race were the super‐evolved survivors of the Thals, fleeing the penultimate destruction of Skaro, that sparked off the Final Dalek War.

Later he had Omega destroy and bring back Skaro's system repeatedly to illustrate the meaninglessness of his powers. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors

Skaro in the Time War

The destruction of Skaro during the Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War helped cause the Last Great Time War between the Daleks and Time Lords. (PROSE: The Stranger, AUDIO: In Remembrance) Skaro was also said to have been destroyed in the Time War, (PROSE: The Whoniverse) with Dalek Caan of the Cult of Skaro recalling that their planet was "gone" because it had been "destroyed in a great war". (TV: Daleks in Manhattan)

A Dalek-shaped skyscraper on a ruined Skaro after the Time War. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)

As the Eleventh Doctor would present to Amy Pond, Skaro remained intact but "ruined", with the city of Kaalann abandoned. After acquiring the Eye of Time, the New Dalek Paradigm returned to and repopulated Skaro, creating an alternate timeline which the Doctor negated by travelling back to just before the Daleks arrived, where he set free the Eye of Time and destroyed the Dalek forces led by the Supreme Dalek, leaving Skaro in ruins once again. (GAME: City of the Daleks) Later, while the Parliament of the Daleks operated in space, the Doctor visited a ravaged and desolate Skaro, where he was captured by the Dalek puppet Darla von Karlsen. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)

Later still, the Twelfth Doctor was captured and taken to a Skaro "rebuilt" by Davros and the Daleks, Davros explaining that the Daleks had a strong concept of "home," (TV: The Magician's Apprentice) which "Skaro" translated to in the Kaled language. (PROSE: War of the Daleks)

Final implosion

Propelled into the far future by the Father of Time, the First Doctor and Susan Foreman were given a glimpse of Skaro's "unforeseeable future" just before it was destroyed in an implosion, the final result of the Daleks' own mistreatment of their home planet. (COMIC: The Test of Time)