Destruction of Skaro

Destruction of Skaro
First appearance:	Remembrance of the Daleks
Part of:	Shoreditch Incident Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War
Dates:	30 November 1963
Location:	Imperial Dalek mothership Skaro Coal Hill School
Combatants
Imperial Daleks
Seventh Doctor
Leaders
Emperor Davros
Seventh Doctor
Result
Presumed extinction of the Daleks. The Dalek Civil War is ended. Davros escapes.

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

According to one account, the destruction occurred twenty millennia following the end of the final conflict between the Thals and the Kaleds. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks) Indeed, the Time Lords placed the conflict and the creation of the Daleks as concurrent to the ancient history of Earth, no later than the 1st century, whilst the destruction of Skaro followed the 47th century Necros Incident. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)

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) The explosion destroyed not only Skaro, but all eleven other planets within its star system. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) This event was rendered by an unknown artist. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)

Aftermath

The Dalek Survival Guide believed that the Hand of Omega affair and the resultant destruction of Skaro resulted in the entire Imperial Dalek faction being wiped out, leaving only surviving Renegade Daleks. (PROSE: Dalek Survival Guide)

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)

By the Last Great Time War, the Time Lords believed that the Thals, who they assessed as a potential ally against the Daleks, had been forced to leave Skaro at some point before the planet's destruction, surviving in a series of colonies. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)

Uncertainties

Skaro's time zone

An unknown artist's impression of the destruction of Skaro. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)

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)

The Time Lords' time scale of Dalek activity in the linear history of the universe placed the destruction of Skaro as occuring in the far future following the 47th century. It was after this that (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) the New Dalek Paradigm, having returned to their "own time", established themselves in the post-Time War universe, (TV: Victory of the Daleks) with the Dalek Empire coming to be based on a rebuilt Skaro. (TV: The Witch's Familiar)

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)

Lehena told Susan Campbell that the Doctor had destroyed "one version" of Skaro. (AUDIO: The Shoreditch Intervention)

Restoration

Main article: Restoration of Skaro

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

Other destructions

26th century

Bernice Summerfield recalled that the Galactic Wars of the 26th century ended on a decisive note with the destruction of the enemy's home planet. (PROSE: Beige Planet Mars)

Skaro in the Last Great 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)

In the aftermath of the Time War, Skaro was left devastated and ruined. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)

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) Upon realising she was on Skaro, Missy claimed "they [had] built it again, [that] they [had] brought it back." (TV: The Magician's Apprentice)

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)

Alternate timeline

When the Infinity Doctor encountered the Needle People on the Needle, Gordel believed that their race were the super‐evolved survivors of the Thals, fleeing the penultimate destruction of Skaro that sparked 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)

Behind the scenes

The Discontinuity Guide takes the Doctor's words that the Supreme Dalek was "a thousand years from a disintegrated home" literally, while supposing that it is more likely in the future than the past, and so states that Skaro was destroyed around the 30th century in the new timeline where Davros survived, whereas Skaro was known to exist later in the old timeline.

The Dalek Handbook indicates that Skaro was destroyed around the 47th century and the start of the 48th century.

AHistory dates the basetime of the Daleks in the Shoreditch Incident and the apparent destruction of Skaro to c. 4663.