Emperor's Machine

Emperor's Machine
Type:	Casing
Place of origin:	Skaro
Made by:	Daleks
Used by:	Dalek Prime
First appearance:	City of the Daleks
Appearances:	Emperor's Machine - list of appearances

Dalek Emperor casing types
Dalek Survival Guide
Dalek Combat Training Manual
Other

Many sources depicted the first, Golden Dalek Emperor's rule over the early Dalek Empire within a special casing, referred to as simply the Emperor's Machine by one source. (COMIC: Genesis of Evil)

On at least one occasion, the same Emperor used a somewhat different casing of a similar shape, but with a spike at the apex of the dome. (COMIC: Invasion of the Daleks) It was recorded by the Dalek Survival Guide as the Emperor Type 2. (PROSE: Dalek Survival Guide)

Characteristics

The original Emperor's Machine was made of Flidor gold, quartz and Arkellis flower sap. It was golden in colour, with a bulbous dome section with three horizontal golden bands and a "wreath" of red luminosity dischargers. It had a normal manipulator arm and gunstick, plain bands instead of slats, (COMIC: Genesis of Evil) and only three rows of sense globes on the base section, making the Emperor slightly shorter than ordinary Dalek drones. (COMIC: Power Play)

The spherical dome section contained memory cells augmenting the organic Emperor's mental capacities, making him the most intelligent Dalek on Skaro. Other components included sonic guards and a built-in time machine. (COMIC: The Secret of the Emperor)

History

Discarding

The Dalek Emperor's casing is taken apart. (COMIC: The Secret of the Emperor)

Over time, the Dalek Emperor's casing became damaged. This first became during the 2415 Dalek invasion, when the Emperor's time machine proved "faulty" and sent him on a long, strenuous journey through human history before he could find his way back to his own era and the rest of the Dalek Empire. Shortly later, his sonic guards were cracked during the Invasion of Uranus by human colonists using supersonic waves.

The faulty Emperor's failures piled up, and were ultimately called out by the Red Extra-Galactic Squadron on the occasion of the Super-Skaro year. Though the Black Dalek Leader exterminated the Squadron's leader for its insolence, the Emperor admitted that he was faulty, and had Scientist Daleks take him apart to try and find the flaw. Reviewing the damage and also the digital memory cells contained in the casing, the scientists realised what had happened. (COMIC: The Secret of the Emperor)

Trading in mobility for increased mental capabilities thanks to an augmented electronic brain that hooked into all the Dalek City's systems, the Dalek Emperor mutant had himself transferred out of the sphere-headed casing and into a huge, towering one in the Great Hall of the City. (COMIC: The Secret of the Emperor, PROSE: The Evil of the Daleks) According to another, slightly different account, the change was prompted by the simple fact that the Emperor mutant had grown far larger as a result of the experiments he had been conducting on himself to expand his organic brain's mental capacities. (PROSE: The History of the Daleks)

At any rate, it was in this casing, dubbed the Emperor Type 3 by the Dalek Survival Guide (PROSE: Dalek Survival Guide) and the Emperor Type I by the Dalek Combat Training Manual, (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) that he oversaw the plot to distill the Human Factor and the Dalek Factor. (TV: The Evil of the Daleks)

Legacy

During the Emperor formerly known as Davros's encounter with the Seventh Doctor, his Emperor Dalek casing sported a standard eyestalk, manipulator arm and gunstick having been added to the casing, making it almost identical (COMIC: Nemesis of the Daleks) to the casing used by the Golden Emperor on the eve of Davros's takeover. (COMIC: Emperor of the Daleks!)

The Emperor of the Restoration, who founded the Restoration Empire from the ashes of the Imperial Dalek faction following the close of the Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War, adopted a golden casing with a large bulbous dome, deliberately hearkening back to the Emperor of the bountiful, unified pre-Civil War Dalek Empire. (PROSE: The Restoration Empire) During the Time War, the Time Lords recorded this Emperor as a separate "anomaly" from the original Golden Emperor. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)

In their scrutiny of the Daleks' timeline during the Last Great Time War, the Time Lords' Dalek Combat Training Manual acknowledged "some of the earliest work on Dalek history" as presenting "a very different origin story" for the Daleks, seemingly conflicting with what the Time Lords knew about the creation of the Daleks as involving Davros. This included the history of the golden, mobile casing of the first Dalek Emperor. They listed this whole history among a list of anomalies in the Dalek timeline, with opinions varying as to whether they were apocryphal or evidence of Dalek activity in parallel dimensions. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) Human historians in the post-Time War universe were also aware of the alternative origin story but regarded it as a myth which may have briefly become reality as history changed during the Time War. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) Some accounts suggested that despite appearances, the "two" creation stories were actually continuous events within a single timeline. (PROSE: The History of the Daleks)

Behind the scenes

Although the Golden Emperor debuted in Invasion of the Daleks, his classic casing design's debut was actually in City of the Daleks, printed later in the same annual, The Dalek Book. Invasion used a variant design with multiple discrepancies, including a large spike atop the dome.