Dalek Project

A bronze Dalek engages primitive humans in battle. (COMIC: The Dalek Project)

The Dalek Project was conceived by the Daleks to study human strategy and determine their weaknessess. They did this by travelling through time and analysing how humans made war throughout history. Three ships equipped with new time-drive systems were used.

History

Early operations

The project was ordered by the Supreme Council of the New Dalek Paradigm. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) Operating throughout centuries of human history, bronze Daleks engaged primitive men armed with clubs and rocks, Roman soldiers, armoured knights with swords and shields, siege operators from the protection of stone fortifications, men on horseback with swords, and men with guns. (COMIC: The Dalek Project)

Conclusion

However, while in the process of travelling forwards through time, they were caught in a vortex storm and arrived on Earth in 1908. Survey Ship Sigma and Survey Ship Delta collided and the latter was destroyed in Siberia. The other ship Sigma managed to make it to Kent. According to the Doctor, "everyone who was paying any attention knew" that war was coming. Ultimately, on 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo. Through various alliances and treaties, Europe was plunged into the "inevitable" Great War, later known as World War I. Though the Doctor presumed that the Daleks simply waited for the war to begin, he did briefly consider the possibility that they, motivated by desperation, engineered Gavrilo to carry out the assassination, making them responsible for the conflict.

The crew of the ship hid until 1915 when they could study the war, intending to upload their data to Dalek Central Command. The Eleventh Doctor foiled the Daleks' plans, thus ending the Project. However Survey Ship Epsilon and its crew were on special duties, abandoned the Dalek Project in the process. (COMIC: The Dalek Project)

Aftermath

In 2017, one century after the last battle of the Dalek Project, archaeologists came across the crashed Survey Ship Sigma in France and accidentally revived the surviving Daleks inside. The Eleventh Doctor arrived just in time to prevent a disaster and connected the saucer to a power line, overloading the Daleks. He saw this as him dealing with "unfinished business". (COMIC: The Dalek Project)

Human historians following the Siege of Trenzalore acknowledged the Dalek Project, between the Total Collapse Event Incident and the Dalek Foundation, within a string of defeats the Doctor inflicted on the New Paradigm which led to their organisational restructure into the Parliament of the Daleks preceding the Asylum Incident. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)