Dalek
Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe (short story) and Father of the Daleks (short story)
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- You may be looking for the 2005 episode.
The Daleks were a warrior race (TV: The Witch's Familiar, Hell Bent) made up of genetically engineered mutants (TV: The Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks) belonging to fundamental DNA type 467-989. (TV: Daleks in Manhattan) By most accounts they were originally from the planet Skaro. (TV: The Daleks) The mutants were usually encased inside armour consisting of polycarbide (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) and the metal Dalekanium. (COMIC: The Humanoids)
On many occasions, the Daleks openly acknowledged a single Time Lord, the Doctor, as their greatest enemy. (TV: The Chase) The Doctor described them likewise, (COMIC: Defender of the Daleks, TV: Victory of the Daleks) and, in their tenth incarnation, stated that a Dalek was "not just metal, it [was] alive," that "inside that shell, there [was] a creature born to hate, whose only thought [was] to destroy everything and everyone that [wasn't] a Dalek, too." (TV: Daleks in Manhattan) The Tenth Doctor also noted that from birth, the Daleks were encased in a cold metal shell unable to feel anything, claiming that was why they "scream[ed]." (TV: Doomsday) The War Doctor also said that Daleks were "not robots", but "savage, incredibly intelligent, living, breathing creatures housed inside a war tank". (PROSE: The Stranger)
The Daleks fought the Time Lords in the Last Great Time War, ending in the near-total destruction of the Dalek race, (TV: Dalek) until they rebuilt their empire (TV: Asylum of the Daleks) by using a progenitor. (TV: Victory of the Daleks) Intensely xenophobic and bent on universal domination, the Daleks were hated and feared throughout time and space. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) Their goal was to eradicate all non-Dalek life, (TV: Victory of the Daleks) as programmed by their creator. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)
Biology
Although the Daleks looked entirely robotic, they were, in fact, cyborgs, with a living body encased in and supported by an armed and mobile outer shell of Dalekanium and polycarbide protective metal armour. These were Mark III travel machines, designed to carry their mutant forms, and they were not truly integrated biomechanoids. (AUDIO: The Four Doctors) In this respect, they were somewhat similar to a Cyberman; unlike them, however, the Daleks' bodies had mutated so drastically from their Kaled ancestors they had lost all humanoid appearance, save for one eye (see below). (TV: The Daleks, Evolution of the Daleks) The Daleks transmitted information using a sort of artificial telepathic network known as the Pathweb, (TV: Asylum of the Daleks) which the Twelfth Doctor would later state to be the “biggest database [he knew]”. (TV: Twice Upon a Time)
Daleks did not die naturally, every cell being genetically hardwired with an impulse to keep on living, (TV: The Witch's Familiar) even if they were chopped to pieces and left buried for centuries away from their casings. (TV: Resolution) However, they did age, the body decaying further and further — eventually reaching a point where it was little more than mewling, hateful sludge of dark brownish colour. Incapable of steering their armour, such decayed Daleks would exit them and confine themselves to the sewers of Dalek cities, for which reason the Dalek word for “sewer” was also their word for “graveyard”. (TV: The Witch's Familiar) One Dalek creature remained alive even as it was dissected by the scientist Bryant Anderson. (PROSE: We are the Daleks!)
The Daleks had a strong association with static electricity; not only were their casings powered by it at some points in their history, (TV: The Daleks, The Dalek Invasion of Earth) but newly-bred Kaled mutants were brought to life by a static shock before they were put into their casings, and the Second Doctor once explained that static "was like blood to the Daleks". (TV: The Power of the Daleks) Theodore Maxtible's attempts to involve static electricity in his experimental time travel resulted in his time machine prototype summoning Daleks across time. (TV: The Evil of the Daleks)
Anatomy
Casing
- Main article: Casing
Exterior battle armour
The Dalek casing could be separated into three sections. The top was the Daleks' means of vision and communication, a dome with a set of twin speaker 'lights' (referred to as luminosity dischargers) (PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks) on the upper part of the sides, and a periscope-like eyestalk in the middle. This was attached to the midsection by a "neck", the grating section. (PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks) The Dalek casings invented by Davros were originally called "Mark III travel machines". (TV: Genesis of the Daleks, PROSE: Still Need a Title!)
Dalek casings varied in colour and exact appearance, (TV: The Magician's Apprentice et al.) with different colours often signifying different ranks within Dalek hierarchy. (PROSE: War of the Daleks) Over the Daleks' history, the basic Dalek was first slatless and silver-white when using Dalek War Machines (TV: The Daleks, COMIC: Genesis of Evil) then given sensor plate slats to become the Silver Daleks, (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan) later replaced by Grey Daleks (TV: Destiny of the Daleks) and finally Bronze Daleks. (TV: Dalek)
On the Dalek's midsection, the weapons platform, (PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks) the gunstick and manipulator arm were attached. These provided the Dalek's means of offence and operating capabilities. In later models, the midsection was capable of swivelling. Most of the mass of the Dalek mutant was located inside the midsection.
The bottom, the base unit, (PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks) was the Dalek's means of mobility, consisting of a sturdy base with a skirt-like structure of plates studded with sense globes. This allowed movement and, in later models, flight.
The interdependence of biological and mechanical components made the Daleks a type of cyborg. The Imperial Daleks created by Davros during the Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War were true cyborgs, surgically connected to their shells. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
Externally, the Daleks resembled human-sized peppershakers, with a single mechanical eyestalk in a rotating dome, a gunstick and a manipulator arm. The casings were made of both polycarbide and dalekanium. (WC: Monster File: Daleks)
The lower portion of the casing was studded with fifty-six partially-embedded spherical protrusions, (TV: Dalek) or sense globes, (COMIC: City of the Daleks) which could serve as a self-destruct system. (TV: Dalek)
The casing was booby-trapped; when a non- time traveller touched the Dalek in Utah, they combusted into flames; however, when Rose Tyler touched the Dalek, it regenerated it. (TV: Dalek) Even dead Daleks could prove a dangerous foe. They were frequently equipped with virus transmitters on the casing, which worked automatically. (PROSE: I Am a Dalek)
The Dalek's eyepiece was its most vulnerable spot – as there was no back-up system if this was obscured, damaged or destroyed – and impairing its vision often led to the Dalek panicking and firing its main weapon indiscriminately in a panic. (GAME: City of the Daleks) It was, however, a sensitive instrument, which allowed the Daleks to see in infrared, among other wavelengths. (PROSE: Legacy of the Daleks) The Dalek casing also functioned as a fully-sealed environment suit, allowing travel through the vacuum of space or underwater without the need for additional life-support equipment. (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Parting of the Ways, COMIC: The Dalek Project) A Dalek's eyepiece could be connected to other Dalek vision centres. (GAME: City of the Daleks, TV: Asylum of the Daleks)
A Dalek was connected to its casing through a positronic link. The mutant itself accessed nutrient feeders and control mechanisms inside its internal chamber. (AUDIO: The Time of the Daleks) The Twelfth Doctor once said that a Dalek was "not a machine", but "a perfect analogue of a living being". (TV: Into the Dalek) Indeed, a Dalek could be "hurt" even when the non-biological part of it was attacked. (TV: Dalek, Into the Dalek)
Due to their gliding motion, earlier models of Dalek were baffled by stairs, which made them easy to overcome under the right circumstances. One time the Fourth Doctor and his companions escaped from Dalek pursuers by climbing into a ceiling duct. The Doctor even taunted a single Dalek before disappearing. (TV: Destiny of the Daleks) Some models were able to hover, or fly under their own power like small spacecraft and travel up the stairs, ending the original weakness. (TV: Revelation of the Daleks, Dalek, Resolution, et al.)
The armour of the Cult of Skaro had temporal shift capacity, seemingly the only users of such technology during the Battle of Canary Wharf. (TV: Doomsday, Daleks in Manhattan)
Power sources
The power source of the Dalek casing also changed several times. During his first encounter with them on Skaro, the First Doctor learned that the casing was externally powered by static electricity transmitted through the metal floors of the Dalek City. Isolating a Dalek from the floor using a non-conductive material shut down the casing, although it was not immediately fatal to the occupant. (TV: "The Escape") The Daleks initially overcame this weakness by adding dishes to their casing to receive power, (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth) although even these were ultimately replaced by vertical rectangular slats around the midsection which absorbed other sources of power. (TV: The Chase)
Even quite late into their history, some Daleks originating on Skaro itself remained powered by static electricity: this was the case with the Daleks from the ship that crashed on Vulcan, (TV: The Power of the Daleks) although their home time postdated the Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War. (PROSE: War of the Daleks) Even Daleks who did not visibly draw their power supply from static electricity retained some sort of association with it, as it was by involving static electricity in his experimental time machine that Theodore Maxtible accidentally summoned into his home Daleks who nevertheless could move freely along its wooden floors. (TV: The Evil of the Daleks)
By the beginning of the Last Great Time War, the Daleks had adapted their technology to use a type of energy apparently linked to the process of time travel. On more than one occasion, Daleks and their devices were seen to leech this energy from time-travellers in order to power themselves. (TV: Dalek, Doomsday)
Whatever the power source the Daleks used in the interim, it was (apparently uniquely) immune to being drained by the Great City of the Exxilons. Strangely, the Daleks retained motive power and the ability to speak even though their weaponry was shut down, which suggests the weapon systems had a separate power supply. The Third Doctor indicated that this was because the Daleks were psychokinetic and moved around through the power of thought alone, and the City was unable to absorb psychic energy. Other references to the Daleks having psychic potential are scarce, but on the planet Kyrol, the Eighth Doctor discovered an enclave of humanised Daleks who had, through years of meditation, developed psychokinesis to a remarkable degree. (TV: Death to the Daleks, COMIC: Children of the Revolution)
Additionally, Daleks from the Last Great Time War era were surrounded by force fields that prevented bullets and energy weapons from making contact with their casings. (TV: Dalek, The Parting of the Ways, Doomsday, Daleks in Manhattan, The Big Bang)
Speech
According to certain accounts, the Dalek creature had no visible vocal apparatus as such and their voices were electronic, as the mutant inside could barely utter a squeak. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks, AUDIO: Jubilee) In contradiction to these accounts, Daleks stripped of their casings were heard to speak in the familiar Dalek voice on several occasions, including but not limited to Dalek Caan after his casing had been ruined by exposure to the whole of time and space, (TV: Journey's End) a Black Dalek whose shell had been entirely consumed by the Kiseibya, (AUDIO: Enemy of the Daleks) and a stranded Dalek reconnaissance scout who reached Earth in the 9th century and was stripped of its casing by human warriors. (TV: Resolution) One incident showed that a human voice spoken from within a Dalek casing would gain the typical Dalek voice's metallic quality. (TV: The Daleks)
At any rate, Daleks spoke in high-pitched, stilted, robotic voices that were easy for others to mimic; (TV: The Evil of the Daleks, Dalek et al.) their most infamous battle-cry was "EX-TER-MINATE!", each syllable screeched in a frantic-sounding, electronic scream (the last two syllables together). Other common utterances included "I (or "WE") OBEY!" to any command from a superior. (TV: Destiny of the Daleks, Dalek, The Parting of the Ways et al.) Daleks also had communicators built into their shells to emit an alarm to summon other Daleks if the casing was opened from outside. (TV: Planet of the Daleks)
At one point in history the communication devices limited Dalek speech. Attempts to state their identity emerged as "I am a Dalek" and emotional statements or "you are different from me" came out as "Exterminate". Saying "I am your friend" came out as "I am your enemy". (TV: The Witch's Familiar) However, these speech restrictions were not present in earlier Daleks, who were able to speak of concepts such as friendship, mercy and servitude, often to affect cunning deceptions, set traps and manipulate others to their will (TV: The Daleks, The Power of the Daleks, The Evil of the Daleks, Dalek, Victory of the Daleks) or on rare occasions when genuinely begging for other beings' mercy. (TV: Dalek, AUDIO: Enemy of the Daleks)
Interior
The inner casing, in which the actual Dalek mutant resided, also held a life-support system and a battle-computer for strategic and tactical knowledge. The Dalek mutant operated the casings manually. Once removed, other life forms could pilot one if they could fit within. (TV: The Daleks, The Space Museum, The Witch's Familiar)
If the interior of the Dalek sustained damage, floating eyeball-like Dalek antibodies would explore the damaged area and eliminate the threat by reducing it to a fine powder. The antibodies would then harvest the ashen remains of the threat, and send them into a feeding tube for the creature to feed off their protein. (TV: Into the Dalek)
Inside a Dalek was an artificial cortex vault, a "memory bank" that kept the Daleks' hatred "pure". According to the Twelfth Doctor, the cortex vault "extinguish[ed] the tiniest glimmer of kindness [and] compassion". The Dalekanium transport shell did this to all the Daleks on purpose, suppressing any memories that might lead the Daleks away from the "purity" that Davros had envisioned for them. If the cortex vault was broken, it was believed the Dalek could in fact learn positive emotions like friendship and kindness. However, Rusty, a Dalek the Doctor tried to save from the hate filled ideology, did not grow to have kindness. Instead, Rusty simply embraced hating the Daleks after seeing the Time Lord's hate. (TV: Into the Dalek) When they reunited, Rusty still showed no signs of compassion and only helped the Doctor after learning it could hurt the Daleks. (TV: Twice Upon a Time)
Mutant
The creatures inside true Daleks were Kaled mutants. In the first appearance of the mutant form, (TV: The Daleks) they were shown to have small hands that somewhat resembled the claws of a lizard, though the entire form was never shown. Later appearances of the mutants were very different, with the Seventh Doctor once describing them as "little green blobs". (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) According to one account, the creatures inside the Dalek casing were originally known as Dals. (TV: "The Ambush")
The living Dalek mutant possessed numerous tentacles, and either a central, single eye, or a normal right eye and a left eye so reduced in size as to be easily missed - overall resembling what Lucie Miller described as "if someone threw up a squid dinner." (AUDIO: Blood of the Daleks) Despite their apparent lack of mobility, they were capable of defending themselves, as demonstrated when a Dalek attacked and killed a soldier. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks)
When referring to Dalek Caan, Davros, the very creator of the Dalek race, used male pronouns, implying the species was male. (TV: Journey's End) However, the Ninth Doctor had used "it" to refer to the "Metaltron" Dalek, implying the race was sexless. (TV: Dalek) The Twelfth Doctor referred to Rusty by saying "it", though this had also been while he was trying to avoid revealing the topic of discussion, (TV: Twice Upon a Time) and, earlier in his life, he referred to the Daleks as Darvos's "boys". Missy referred to a Supreme Dalek by using male pronouns. (TV: The Witch's Familiar) At least one member of the species, Dalek Sec, possessed a sac-like membrane large enough to engulf an adult human male in preparation for his Final Experiment. It was this membrane that he used to absorb Mr Diagoras and transform into a human-Dalek. (TV: Daleks in Manhattan)
Some mutants had enhanced abilities. The mutant of a Reconnaissance Scout Dalek could possess and control other lifeforms, regenerate energy using ultraviolet light and was capable of surviving without a casing. (TV: Resolution)
Heavily mutated members of other species, including humans, also occupied the casings on certain rare occasions. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks, Revelation of the Daleks, The Parting of the Ways, Asylum of the Daleks)
- Main article: Dalek of human origin
Vulnerabilities
Although they were nearly invulnerable, Daleks had several exploitable weaknesses. Though these varied from type to type, their consistently biggest weakness was their eyestalk, which if damaged enough would leave a Dalek completely blinded. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks, Revelation of the Daleks, Remembrance of the Daleks, Dalek, The Parting of the Ways) Merely covering it rather than destroying it could sometimes work, for example the Fourth Doctor once blinded a Dalek by throwing his fedora over its eyestalk, (TV: Destiny of the Daleks), but Wilfred Mott attempted to blind a Dalek by firing a paintball at it, only for it to melt the paint away almost instantly. (TV: The Stolen Earth) The Eleventh Doctor could also create a device using a gunstick and a Dalek eyestalk that could blind an entire platoon of Daleks completely. (GAME: City of the Daleks)
While the initial energy blasters from Pete's World could barely damage a Dalek beyond momentarily disabling its weapons and impairing their casing, (TV: Doomsday) the advanced version used by Rose Tyler could outright destroy a Dalek with a direct hit. (TV: The Stolen Earth) The War Doctor's TARDIS was capable of smashing the Dalek casing if it was rammed into them. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
The vast majority of projectile weapons were near-useless against them, however bastic bullets (TV: Revelation of the Daleks), high explosives such as dynamite (GAME: City of the Daleks) and Nitro-9, (TV: Planet of the Daleks, Remembrance of the Daleks), and weapons upgraded by the Hand of Omega (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) have been known to damage and/or destroy them. Most weapons capable of destroying Daleks are energy-based weaponry, such as the energy blasters from Pete's World used in 2009 and the Daleks' own weaponry. (TV: The Evil of the Daleks, Planet of the Daleks, The Five Doctors, Resurrection of the Daleks, Revelation of the Daleks, Remembrance of the Daleks, Evolution of the Daleks, The Stolen Earth, Journey's End, Victory of the Daleks, Into the Dalek, PROSE: Legacy of the Daleks, COMIC: The Threat from Beneath, The Dalek Revenge)
Daleks were also highly arrogant, allowing them to make mistakes that would lead to their defeat, one notable example being Daleks Jast and Thay battling their hybrid army when they had a means of instantly killing them the whole time without any risk to themselves, leading to their destruction and leaving Dalek Caan the sole survivor. (TV: Evolution of the Daleks) They were also highly reliant on logic and had no imagination, leaving them in a stalemate with the Movellans, ended only when a virus was introduced against the Daleks. (TV: Destiny of the Daleks, Resurrection of the Daleks) Even the New Dalek Paradigm was noted to have relied more on recycling old ideas, either from their past or others, than creating new innovations. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
The Daleks were also vulnerable to viruses and sickness such as Light wave sickness, (TV: Planet of the Daleks, AUDIO: Return of the Daleks) the Movellan virus, (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks) and Varga plant virus. (AUDIO: Masters of Earth)
If the Pathweb were to be hacked into, an enemy could delete all record of themselves, which would result in every Dalek forgetting them. However, this was known to be extremely difficult; the Doctor remarking he once tried but was unsuccessful. Oswin Oswald once deleted all records of the Doctor, having access due to her conversion into a Dalek. However, their knowledge of him was later restored by extracting it from the corpse of Tasha Lem. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks, The Time of the Doctor) They were also vulnerable to the Eleventh Doctor's regeneration energy, the Time Lord being able to use such to outright destroy them. (TV: The Time of the Doctor) They could also be absorbed by Sentient oil. (TV: The Pilot)
As historically, most Dalek casings were incapable of flight, obstructions in their path, or vertical shafts, served to delay them. (TV: Destiny of the Daleks) Historical records noted that rough terrain had been a legitimate obstacle in the Dalek Empire's early expansion. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
History
Based on the Fifth Doctor's definition of a generation as twenty-five years, (TV: Four to Doomsday) Dalek history spanned a thousand generations, 25,000 years. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)
The Eighth Doctor found Dalek history a difficult thing to remember because it was always changing. (PROSE: Alien Bodies) A member of Faction Paradox thought that this was because the Doctor "tricked the Dalek Empire into tangled their timeline so bad that their history collapsed under the weight of the paradoxes." (PROSE: Unnatural History)
Origins on Skaro
The Daleks were by most accounts native to the planet Skaro. (TV: The Daleks) Prior to the Daleks' emergence, Davros found a prophecy in the forbidden Book of Predictions, written in the extinct language of the Dals, which stated "...and on that day, men will become as gods." In the original language, the final word was pronounced "Dal-ek." (AUDIO: Guilt)
Though one account stated that Davros heard the word in the proposed "Dalek Solution", presented to him by assistant Shan, and that he soon stole her idea, adapting it into what would become the creation of the Daleks, (AUDIO: Davros) Ronson, a member of the Scientific Elite under the command of Davros, mentioned that the word "Dalek" had never been heard before the Fourth Doctor used it — hours later, Davros himself was first heard to utter it in reference to his creations. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) Other accounts still suggested that the race from whom the modern Daleks mutated were already known as "Daleks". (TV: The Daleks, COMIC: Genesis of Evil)
Whatever the origin of their name, there were several conflicting accounts over how the Daleks actually came to be. They were at any rate mutants, the descendants of a rival race to the Thals who had once had humanoid form. (TV: The Daleks) This race may have been blue-skinned humanoids already known as "Daleks", (COMIC: Genesis of Evil) black-haired fair-skinned humanoids known as Kaleds ,(TV: Genesis of the Daleks) or even humans. (PROSE: We are the Daleks!)
Some accounts held that the mutants within the shells had come to be through unguided mutation following the neutron bomb detonation that destroyed both the Thals and the Daleks' forefathers' civilisations, (TV: The Daleks, COMIC: Genesis of Evil) the metallic "Dalek War Machine" having either been developed as an originally-unrelated weapon of war (COMIC: Genesis of Evil) or as an armour to protect the weak Dalek mutants from the background radiation still infusing their planet even long after the end of the war. (TV: The Daleks)
However, according to most accounts, the eventual mutation of the Kaleds into the blobby, impotent Daleks had been foreseen by the Kaled scientific elite before it actually came to pass, and the mad genius Davros set about intentionally accelerating this process, making his own alterations to the Daleks' genome to make them into heartless warriors who would harbour innate hatred for all other living things, and similarly designing the Dalek travel machine as an impregnable minitank even as he led his superiors to believe it was only to be used as a life-support system for the Kaleds' sickened, radiation-poisoned descendants. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks, The Witch's Familiar et al.)
Seeking to prevent a possible future where the Daleks had succeeded in their goal of exterminating all other life, the Time Lords sent the Fourth Doctor back through time to interfere with the Daleks' creation. However, because of his personal morals, the traveller found himself unable to do much, only delaying the Daleks, by his guess, for around a thousand years. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) Though one account held it to be a later creation who travelled back in time to take over earlier versions of the Daleks, (AUDIO: The Four Doctors) several sources agreed that the Dalek Prime was the first-ever Dalek, (PROSE: The Evil of the Daleks, War of the Daleks) and the one who had made the decision to exterminate the Daleks' own creator Davros due to his being genetically impure by the very standards he had programmed into the Daleks' worldview. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) The first Dalek then set itself up as Emperor of the Daleks, (COMIC: Genesis of Evil, PROSE: The Evil of the Daleks) and continued to experiment on its kin, further mutating them to its own designs. (PROSE: The Evil of the Daleks, War of the Daleks)
- Main article: Creation of the Daleks
Rise of the Daleks on Ameron
According to one dissenting account, the Daleks' home planet was Ameron. It had been the stage of an experiment by the Halldons, who transplanted a population of Earth humans there and used their advanced technology to accelerate the humans' evolution. Within 200 years, the Ameron humans had developed technology that frightened even the Halldons, including fearsome weapons. Realising the experiment had gone too far, the Halldons attempted to exterminate their test subjects, but the accelerated humans refused to bow down and destroyed their creators instead before continuing to evolve both in body and in technology at an accelerated rate, soon surpassing their Earthly brothers by millions of years. According to the scientist Bryant Anderson, who was later able to confirm via dissection that, to his great distress, the Dalek creatures were indeed a future form of Homo sapiens, the Daleks' great technology had only allowed them to express the true nature of humanity, "the most destructive force in the universe". (PROSE: We are the Daleks!)
On Skaro
After their emergence, the earliest Daleks were directed by their first Emperor to build a city for themselves, which they achieved within two months. As a safety precaution, the Daleks also magnetised the metallic sand surrounding the city, allowing them to pull it towards the city at will, covering it in a large dune that concealed it from unwanted visitors.
Shortly after these events, the planet was visited by a Krattorian spacecraft piloted by the slave-trader Kest. As Kest was here to mine the metallic sand, he soon uncovered the Dalek City, and the Daleks decided to take advantage of this to steal the secrets of space travel from him. Though the ship managed to escape Skaro, the Daleks were undeterred, and, in possession of its schematics, set about crafting spaceships of their own. (COMIC: Power Play)
The work was delayed by the lack of available materials, as space travel demanded that the ships withstand heat greater than what ordinary Dalekanium could bear. A scientist, Dalek Zeg, accidentally discovered a new and stronger Dalekanium alloy, Metalert, which could withstand a sun's heat; as his casing had been the first thing transmuted to Metalert, he became immune to other Daleks' death-rays, and, boasting that he was invincible, demanded to be made Emperor. The Emperor tried to have Zeg destroyed by the Black Dalek Leader's superior firepower, but as the scientist rebellious survived even that, they went to the Brain Machine, who ordered that the Golden Emperor and Zeg duel for the title. After numerous failed attempts, the Emperor succeeded in killing Zeg using liquid air, which was 312 degrees below freezing. From the ruins of Zeg's casing, the Emperor acquired the secrets of Metalert, but later declared that it was still flawed and they were not ready to build flying machines. (COMIC: Duel of the Daleks)
When the Doctor first encountered them, the Daleks were stranded in their city on Skaro, as their casings were powered by static electricity channeled by the metal floors of the City, preventing them from leaving it. They eventually found that the Thals had also survived what was known as the neutronic war. After discovering that they had become dependent on the background radiation to the point of the anti-radiation meds Susan Foreman gave them being lethal to them, the Daleks attempted to vent radiation from their nuclear reactors into the atmosphere which would have left them as the only living species on Skaro. The First Doctor and his companions led a Thal assault and deactivated their power, believing that he had wiped out the Daleks altogether in the process (the necessity of which crime he lamented, though he saw no other way). (TV: The Daleks)
The Daleks survived this apparent defeat; the Doctor later theorised that they were able to return because they had other colonies on Skaro than the Dalek City, (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth) although he had also temporarily believed the Daleks he encountered on 22nd century Earth were from a point in history prior to the supposed destruction of the City Daleks. (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth) According to another account, the very Daleks who had faced the Doctor actually survived, and, having learned of the existence of life on other planets from the visitor, they vowed to conquer the universe and master time travel in order to regain their power. (AUDIO: The Lights of Skaro) Yet another account held that the individual Daleks that the Doctor faced had perished in the Thal-Dalek battle but the Dalek Supreme who led them had survived thanks to its emergency protocols. Manipulating the Thal scientist Tryana, the Supreme was able to raise a new generation of Daleks, whom the Supreme eventually intended to lead to the conquest of other worlds, only for the return of the Doctor and his companions to see the destruction of the Dalek City. The Thals however were confident that this had not been the end of the Daleks. (AUDIO: Return to Skaro)
At a point where they had regained the ability to move freely outside their City, but still had not set out into space, the Daleks received a mysterious transmission which they feared might be a declaration of war. Shortly thereafter, Susan, having borrowed the Doctor's TARDIS and tried to make her way to Venus, happened to instead land in the petrified jungle on Skaro. Thinking she might be responsible for the message, or, at any rate, be able to decode it for them, the Daleks took Susan prisoner and brought her back to the City. As she stalled for time and food by decoding the message very slowly, one of the Daleks grew uncharacteristically fond of her, and even the others came to have a measure of respect for her.
Eventually, Susan realised the meaning of this message which had the Daleks so terrified: "peace and goodwill for all". She burst out laughing, startling and even terrifying many of the Daleks, who had never heard laughter in their lives. In the confusion, Susan took her chance to run off back to the TARDIS, and, despite the pleas of the lone Dalek she had befriended, she fled Skaro. The Daleks remained on a war footing for a while before finding the translation Susan had left behind and realising their error.
This all took place "centuries" before the Daleks turned their minds to universal conquest; their city on Skaro was, at the time, most of all a storehouse of inventions. (COMIC: The Message of Mystery)
The 21st century was, in the Eighth Doctor's recollection, the "static electricity" phase of Skaro's development. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)
Space travel
More information from the Dalek annuals needs to be added.
Rise of the Dalek Empire
Still led by the Golden Emperor alongside the Dalek Council, the Daleks finally perfected the Dalek flying saucer (COMIC: The Amaryll Challenge) and forged an interstellar (and later intergalactic) Dalek Empire, (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan) their first target being Alvega, the planet closest to Skaro. There, they faced opposition from its plant-like inhabitants, the Amarylls. In the end, a scouting party of Daleks had to be sent to the planet's core to destroy it, which led to the explosion of the entire planet — with the Emperor observing that "what we cannot conquer, we destroy". (COMIC: The Amaryll Challenge)
Next, the Daleks headed to the planet Solturis, where the peaceful ruler Redlin the Wise ignored the warnings of the prophet Lurr about the danger presented by the Daleks. As the Solturians possessed a dangerous weapon known as the Pentaray which posed a threat even to them, the Daleks initially posed as "friendly explorers of space who detest[ed] war" to gain their future victims' trust and thereby learn about the full extent of their arsenal. Despite the Daleks' well-laid plans, the prince Jareth succeeded in regaining the Pentaray just in time to annihilate the Dalek forces who had landed; the Daleks still in orbit were recalled to Skaro before they could foil this counterattack, making Solturis the first planet the Daleks failed to vanquish. (COMIC: The Penta Ray Factor)
The Golden Emperor and the rest of his attack fleet returned to Skaro only to find the Dalek City plunged into chaos by a "plague of rust" that destroyed Daleks' casing within minutes of their catching it, usually killing the mutant in the process. It eventually surfaced that the rust germ was being carried solely by the Black Dalek Leader. Initially resigned to his fate, the Black Dalek was repaired by the Golden Emperor, who "could not afford to lose him". (COMIC: Plague of Death) Whilst the Emperor was distracted by the matter of the Plague, a warrior race known as the Monstrons attempted to take over Skaro using their robotic soldiers the Engibrains. Though they succeeded in destroying the Dalek City, they were unable to permanently subdue the Daleks, and were themselves exterminated when a Dalek sacrificed itself to set off the volcano in which the Monstrons had landed their spacecraft. The Daleks then set about rebuilding their City once more. (COMIC: The Menace of the Monstrons)
Shortly after completing the repair work on the City, the Daleks attempted to take over another planet, Oric, which they intended to mine for metals. However, as they were building a space station in orbit around Oric, the Daleks were attacked by the Mechonoids, who first tried to defeat the Daleks covertly by turning them on each other with suspicion rays before being discovered. The Mechonoids proceeded to wage war on the Daleks at full force, declaring themselves supreme and pledging to come to Skaro and destroy it. (COMIC: Eve of War)
Desperate for any edge against the Mechonoids, the Daleks scoured the skies with renewed fervour for any weapons or inventions to use to defeat their enemies if and when they finally came to Skaro. Thus they attempted to rob Phryne of its secrets of invisibility, though they were unsuccessful, only managing to subjugate the planet but losing the secret in the process. (COMIC: The Archives of Phryne)
Shortly thereafter, they had to deal with the threat of the "rogue planet" Skardal, a seemingly indestructible astral body set on a collision course for Skaro itself. Choosing to kill two birds with one stone, the Golden Emperor found a way to divert the planet's course and send it in the direction of the Mechonoids' home planet. (COMIC: The Rogue Planet) However, while trying to disintegrate a dangerous warhead before it landed on their planet, the Daleks ended up accidentally destroying Skardal before it hit the Mechonoids. By then, the android 2K had been sent by the Zerovians to avert a war between the Daleks and the Mechonoids, which the Zerovians believed would be disastrous for them in the long run, as whichever of the two powers survived would be able to turn its unmitigated attention towards the conquest of Zeros. The robot managed to trick the Mechonoids into believing that destroying the rogue planet had been an intentional declaration of non-aggression from the Daleks, thus averting the war. (COMIC: Impasse) The launch of the missiles disturbed a nearby Terrorkon, which broke through an electric barrier and destroyed several Daleks before trying to eat one of the missiles, which it found to be inedible and tossed away, inadvertently arming it. The Daleks managed to deactivate the missile, and the Terrorkon was attacked by a giant electric eel before it could strike again. (COMIC: The Terrorkon Harvest)
Targeting Earth
At some point in early Dalek history, reconnaissance scouts more advanced than the regular Kaled mutants were bred, and subsequently sent out into the universe to (as their name implied) scout ahead of the main invasion force. One of the scouts found its way to Earth, during the 9th century, becoming, by the Doctor (TV: Resolution) and Yasmin Khan's later reckoning,(WC: Case File Eleven) possibly the first Dalek to do so. However, it was, after much effort, defeated by the natives, who destroyed its casing and hacked the mutant apart in three pieces. This Dalek would only be awakened on January the 1st, 2019, at which point it rebuilt itself and tried to fulfil its goal by beaming the coordinates of Earth to the Dalek fleet. It was, however, unsuccessful, thanks to the effort of the Thirteenth Doctor and her companions. (TV: Resolution)
Some time later, mining operations on Skaro led to the release of three of the Daleks' humanoid forebears, the last three in existence — Yvric, Lodian and Zet, who had survived frozen in the mountains in life-support machines. Though mistakenly believing the metal beings now in possession of the planet to be the original robots built by Yarvelling, rather than the similarly-designed travel-machines of the modern Daleks, the humanoids realised that the Daleks were devoid of a conscience and, if not stopped, would eventually destroy every planet in the universe in their lust for conquest. Yvric tried to join forces with the "metal Daleks", offering to tell them a great secret (the location of the planet Earth, which he and Lodian had discovered before they were frozen), though he never got to reveal it, as the Daleks, not recognising one their own ancestors, mistook him for an invading android and obliterated him. Zet, having learned the secret of Earth from Lodian, tried the same thing and was met with more success, as the Golden Emperor had by then realised the truth. Before Zet could tell the metal Daleks how to get to Earth, however, Lodian caused an explosion which killed both himself and Zet, burying the secret. (COMIC: Legacy of Yesteryear)
By the end of the 21st century, the Daleks were scattered around the edges of Mutter's Spiral, working on building a stable galactic powerbase. The ones left on Skaro, meanwhile, briefly attempted to create an independent empire of their own (PROSE: Alien Bodies) as a Dalek who saw value in beauty tried to seize power. This revolution was short-lived, however, as the Golden Emperor defeated the renegade and convinced his followers that beauty's short-lived nature meant that it was inimical to the Dalek ideal of everlasting power. (COMIC: Shadow of Humanity)
The Golden Emperor was later tricked by a Jevon space-crew into letting the Jevon ship leave Skaro. Upon realising they had been tricked, the Daleks swore to wage war on humanoids like never before, (COMIC: The Emissaries of Jevo) and paid particular attention to a human spaceship that crashed on their planet. Though three of the humans managed to make it back home alive, they left behind a scrap of paper with Earth's coordinates, leading the Daleks to decide to conquer the planet Earth. (COMIC: The Road to Conflict)
Although one account stated that the initial Dalek invasion force was easily repelled, (COMIC: Return of the Elders) the Daleks did eventually conquer and occupy the Earth in 22nd century. The Dalek invasion force were led by the Black Dalek known as the Supreme Controller and each saucer was under the command of a Dalek saucer commander. They used Robomen for patrols and overseeing slaves. The Sixth Doctor foiled their plan to unleash a Varga plant virus and new Robomen Elite in 2163 and erased any record of his involvement afterwards but the invasion continued. (AUDIO: Masters of Earth) The Daleks commenced a mining operation in Bedfordshire in order to reach the Earth's magnetic core, replace it with a propulsion system, and turn the whole planet into a massive spacecraft. Some time after their takeover of Earth, however, the First Doctor foiled the plan before its completion; the pit they had dug turned into an active volcano, the eruption of which killed the remaining Daleks and destroyed their base. (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth) A Dalek research facility, DA-17, remained intact. The Eighth Doctor and his granddaughter Susan were trapped along with the Master and new Daleks were produced by the hatchery. They attempted to conquer England but were destroyed when DA-17 exploded. (PROSE: Legacy of the Daleks)
Later in the 22nd Century, the Dalek Time Controller was retrieved by the Daleks, though it was decaying from having been thrown through time. As this era’s Daleks were unable to repair it, they sent a distress call which attracted the Monk, who was able to repair it. The Dalek Time Controller took control over Dalek operation and orchestrated a second Dalek invasion of Earth, forcing the Monk to release another plague to weaken humanity. It planned to use Earth as a Space/Time vessel containing the viruses scattered across Time from the destruction of the Amethyst Viral Containment Station, having seen where they would end up while it was in the Vortex and installing a time engine into Earth to travel to this point. The plague planet could then be piloted through the Universe, infecting entire planets. The Daleks worked with the Monk to maintain control of Earth whilst installing the time engine, allowing him to collect artefacts of human civilisation. Ultimately, the Time Controller, and all Daleks on Earth, were dragged into a time warp thanks to the sacrifice of Lucie Miller crashing a Dalek Saucer containing a bomb into the mine. (AUDIO: Lucie Miller / To the Death)
Other wars with humanity
The Daleks continued to improve their technology: they developed factory ships for conquest, (TV: The Power of the Daleks) and the radio dishes which had originally been required to allow them to travel on surfaces without a static charge (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth) also vanished, enabling Daleks to move under their own power on any planet.
The Seventh Doctor once foiled a Dalek invasion of Earth in Earth's year 2254, which had been planned out by Davros and a Dalek Emperor different from the Golden Emperor on Skaro. Davros had stolen a Time Ring, for which crime he was tracked down by the Time Lords and frozen in time soon after the Doctor caused the destruction of the Davros-friendly Emperor on Skaro. During these events, large numbers of Dalek variants existed, both on Skaro and as part of the Earth invasion force. Among them were redesigned Daleks with radically different casings, who, for example, had no eyestalk but instead two large round eyeholes. (GAME: Dalek Attack)
In 2400, the Emperor gave an address at the Great Council Chamber, ordering a Dalek invasion of the solar system, with Earth as their prime target; this was because, as the humans had created colonies on Mars and Venus, the Emperor was worried that they might try to land on Skaro someday soon and wanted to preempt such an attack. (COMIC: Invasion of the Daleks) Residing in the Emperor's Quarters, the Emperor gave the order to switch on the revitalising rays. He was unaware that he was being observed by the human Jeff Stone, who was conducting espionage in the Dalek City. (COMIC: City of the Daleks) Ultimately, this second war with Humanity ended with the Emperor being forced to sue for peace by Earth ambassadors. In a televised ceremony, the Emperor renounced the Dalek dream of conquest and promised that the Daleks would never leave Skaro again. (COMIC: Battle for the Moon)
After two hundred years of peace, a mysterious Mechanical Planet came which threatened both Skaro and Earth. The Emperor landed on Earth and made an offer to eliminate the threat in exchange for the return of confiscated Dalek weaponry, which the humans grudgingly accepted. Ultimately, the Daleks destroyed the Mechanical Planet and, with their weapons and power restored, the Emperor vowed to conquer "all the planets in every sky". (COMIC: The Mechanical Planet) The Daleks later discovered the Mechonoids had created the planet, and invaded Mechanus, where they wreaked revenge on the Mechonoids by destroying their city with an Atom divider. (COMIC: The World That Waits)
Soon after, the Daleks abducted Defence Minister Tal Yorke and his family and replaced them with Humanoids in order to have the humanoid Yorke undermine Earth's war effort by damaging critical alliances. However, Unispace Security agent Meric Scrivener discovered the plot and assassinated the robot Yorke before burning down Yorke's residence, killing the replacements of his family. Agent Arthur Lippert pursued Scrivener, but was kidnapped by a humanoid duplicate of journalist Tom Lytton and several enslaved humans and taken to The Octagon, where the Dalek overseeing the operation attempted to replace him with a humanoid. However, Scrivener arrived and shot the Dalek, killing it. The remaining humanoids were then arrested and deactivated. (PROSE: The Secret Struggle)
Two men, Borg and Zemmer, kidnapped Security Agent Brit and took her to Skaro, where they attempted to rob the Dalek Treasure House and leave her as the scapegoat. However, Brit managed to escape, leaving Borg and Zemmer, who were exterminated. Responding to the break-in, the Daleks re-inventoried their treasure house but found nothing missing except a diamond stolen by Brit during her escape. (COMIC: Treasure of the Daleks)
Having given him a tour of the Dalek City, the Emperor personally interrogated Irishman Pat Kelley, who had arrived on Skaro in the spaceship Emerald Isle. Believing him to be a spy, the Emperor ordered all the Dalek inventions and technology, which Kelley had praised, to be screened for flaws. Interpreting Kelley's advisement for the Daleks to grow out their five-leaf clovers as an attempt at sabotage, the Emperor had his ship refitted before sending Kelley back to Earth with the clovers, believing that it would bring Earth to ruin. Little did he realise however, Kelley had in fact been playing an elaborate ruse to acquire the clovers all along. (PROSE: The Five-Leaf Clover)
The Second Dalek War
When the Skaro water plant was sabotaged, the Emperor initially believed that human slaves were responsible. Soon after, however, the Daleks caught an alien spy whom the Emperor ordered to be brought to him. The spy proved to be scout for an army of Birdmen that invaded Skaro. Though the invaders were ultimately exterminated, the Emperor lamented that their ability of invisibility, a potential asset to the Daleks, was lost with them. (COMIC: The Invisible Invaders)
A Dalek squadron began the construction of Interferer Beams on the planet Esmera in order to block all radio signals on Earth before abandoning the planet, leaving behind an Orbitus to finish the construction. The beams were completed, but the Orbitus was found by Rod Marlow, who re-programmed it to destroy them. (PROSE: The Log of the "Gypsy Joe")
The Daleks allied with the Master to undermine the Earth and Draconian Empires and set them against each other and then take over with a huge army assembled on Spiridon. (TV: Frontier in Space) Despite the Master's failure to cause war, the army was prepared and the Daleks looked toward utilising the invisibility properties of Spiridon's inhabitants as a means of developing stealth technology. However, all of these plans were foiled when the Dalek army was frozen by the Third Doctor and a taskforce of Thals. (TV: Planet of the Daleks) Once the Earth and Draconian Empires learned it was the Daleks disturbing the peace, war was declared on the Dalek Empire. (PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks)
A Dalek force led by a Black Dalek destroyed a fleet of civilian transporters and allowed a ship piloted by Lieutenant Beth Stokes and Sergeant Tahira Khan to escape so that they could follow them to the planet Bliss where Roarke 279 research facility was located. The Daleks encountered the Seventh Doctor and his companions Ace and Hex. Professor Toshio Shimura created the parasitic creatures the Kiseibya, and these creatures attacked the Daleks, tearing through a Dalek platoon, leaving the Black Dalek — now infested with Kiseibya eggs as the only survivor when the Doctor arrived. The remaining Daleks on the planet ordered their ship to depart to prevent the Kiseibya spreading before exterminating themselves. The Doctor departed the base before the Black Dalek exploded, destroying the facility and the Kiseibya: the very atrocity that history recorded would take place. (AUDIO: Enemy of the Daleks)
During the Second Dalek War, a Dalek Supreme led a force to capture the Cathedral of Contemplation after intercepting one of its doors, planning to use it to open a link to Earth to attack without warning. They sent through a Dalek duplicate to ensure the door remained open to gain access and then invaded. They exterminated the Abbess and claimed the control room but found themselves unable to operate the Cathedral. The Daleks captured the Tenth and Fourth Doctors, who had been aboard the Cathedral, and connected their minds to the Cathedral. The Doctors opened a door to Earth and the Supreme ordered the Daleks through. The Daleks were destroyed however, as the Doctors had actually opened a door to the final destruction of Earth in 5.5/Apple/26. They abandoned the Supreme inside the Cathedral as it collapsed, unable to survive without the Abbess. (AUDIO: Out of Time)
The Arkheon Threshold
During the Second Dalek War, the Daleks used more advanced casings. Despite their efforts, after decades of fighting, the Daleks found they were losing. They tried to use the Arkheon Threshold, a rift in time above a planet they had destroyed decades earlier, planning to use the rift to wipe out humanity throughout time so that the human race would have never existed. They used human prisoners to dig through the crust of the planet to reach the Threshold. The Tenth Doctor joined forces with a crew of Dalek Bounty Hunters aboard a spaceship called the Wayfarer. About the same time, the people of the planet Auros learned of an approaching Dalek fleet, and the population fled before the Daleks arrived. Meanwhile, the Daleks waited for the refugee fleet to come to them and the Dalek Inquisitor General, Dalek X, ordered the citizens sent to work in the Arkheon mines. The crew and the Doctor were taken prisoner on Arkheon and the Doctor was forced to reveal his identity. Dalek X arrived to subject the Doctor to torture and extract Bowman's brain to learn how to bypass Earth's defence systems.
The Doctor explained that the Daleks did not have the technology to use the Threshold, but Dalek X thought the Doctor's TARDIS would allow their plan to succeed. The Doctor used his TARDIS as a lure to take Dalek X to Hurala, where Bowman, Koral and he escaped due to Cuttin' Edge attacking a Dalek and being exterminated. The Doctor detonated the abandoned fuelling station on Hurala, destroying all the Daleks as well as Dalek X's flagship, the Exterminator. The loss put a huge dent in the Dalek war machine. Earth pushed back their fleet and the Dalek Empire surrendered shortly after. Dalek X was knocked down by a gantry and survived the explosion, though was badly damaged and unable to escape. (PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks)
Further strengthening of the Dalek Empire
After the Dalek war, a Dalek Saucer travelled to the planet Exxilon in search of Parrinium, where all of its power was taken by the Exxilon City. The Dalek task-force encountered the Third Doctor and his companion Sarah Jane Smith along with a human expedition. They attempted to gun down the humans, but discovered that the Exxilon City had also drained their power supplies, rendering their gunsticks useless and forcing the Daleks to form an unholy alliance with the humans. While their gunsticks didn't work, the Daleks replaced them with machine guns and enslaved the Exxillons in search for parrinium. When their power was restored, the Daleks revealed they were the cause of the Space plague and were about to fire plague missiles to kill the Exxilons and the Doctor as they made their getaway in their ship. However, it and its crew were destroyed by Dan Galloway, who had stowed away on the ship with a Dalek bomb, which he detonated. (TV: Death to the Daleks)
At some point, the Daleks invaded Trodos and nearly wiped out the Trods. They were defeated by the Second Doctor. (COMIC: The Trodos Ambush)
A Dalek outpost was located on an Earth-like planet. The planet was rich in the materials the Daleks needed to construct more Daleks. In 2135, the Second Doctor arrived on the planet, intent on fighting the Daleks' power. Using a home-made Dalek casing for a disguise, he infiltrated the outpost (leaving John and Gillian Who in the TARDIS) and learned that the Dalek Supreme was on his way to supervise the production of thousands of Daleks. He went to the mine to sabotage it, but was spotted leaving his casing and was forced to flee. The Daleks searched for him and, unable to tell which one was the impostor, began destroying each other. The Dalek Supreme contacted them from his ship and ordered them to stop, but the Doctor then impersonated the Dalek Supreme and ordered the Daleks to destroy themselves. The Doctor escaped in the TARDIS just before the Dalek Supreme arrived, having struck a devastating blow against the Daleks. (COMIC: The Doctor Strikes Back)
The Daleks established a base on a Earth-like planet and constructed the giant Exterminator which they intended to use to destroy the Earth. The Second Doctor, John and Gillian arrived on the planet and learned what the Daleks were up to. To defeat them, they derailed the train carrying the Daleks who had been trained to operate the Exterminator, and stole the weapon's instructions so the Doctor could learn to operate it himself. He then used the weapon to destroy all the Daleks on the planet. (COMIC: The Exterminator)
The Daleks invaded an unnamed Planet, where they attempted to construct tracks they could use to travel. The Second Doctor, John and Gillian arrived just as they were building the tracks and managed to escape before sending out an electrical current which destroyed the Daleks and their tracks. (COMIC: Jungle Adventure)
On an unnamed planet, the Second Doctor, John and Gillian tested the Doctor's pedal-copter, which crashed. When they got up, they ran into a group of Daleks, who chased them. They managed to keep them back by pelting them with rocks, then threw a boulder in the Daleks' way before escaping in the TARDIS. (COMIC: Attack of the Daleks)
The Daleks led by a Dalek saucer commander used a saucer to destroy Earth satellites during the Cold War, hoping the Americans and the Russians would blame each other and the conflict would escalate. The saucer landed at the bottom of the ocean, sealed within a pressure dome, where it was to wait until the Daleks saw the perfect moment to strike. However, it was infiltrated by the Third Doctor who contacted a submarine, the HMS Pandora, and ordered it to fire on the ship. The Daleks died as the ship flooded. (COMIC: The Threat from Beneath)
The Daleks invaded Ecros and enslaved the Klims to test the Dalek driller in order to destroy both Ecros and Earth. The Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith foiled the Daleks' plans. (COMIC: The Dalek Revenge)
The Daleks invaded the New Earth System with Werelok henchmen they brought to the 25th century from "many years ago" and planned to destroy the system with neutron fire so that they could turn the system into a breeding ground for cloning Daleks by isolating the qualities of various creatures throughout Mutter's Spiral and breeding it into the new Daleks. The Fourth Doctor froze the Dalek battlecraft in one moment in time and space forever when he disconnected the time-space rationaliser of the Daleks' time transporter. (COMIC: Doctor Who and the Dogs of Doom)
The Fifth Doctor took Tegan and Nyssa to Florana early in its history, when it was a barren planet. He found that a Dalek had crashed and taken control of the planet, pretending to be its god. It was destroyed by Thane, who attempted to take over himself. This resulted in the killing of many of the inhabitants, and the flowers Florana was named after grew from their ashes. (AUDIO: The Elite)
Time travel
Early days of Dalek time travel
Thirsting for time travel which would finally even the odds between them and the Doctor, as well as generally enabling wider Dalek conquest of the universe, the Daleks allied themselves with the Renegade Time Lord Shazar. Shazar gave them the knowledge and the means to build a fleet of TARDISes to conquer the galaxy. The Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith foiled the plan by having the Daleks damage their space station's cooling system, as it was very close to a sun. The Daleks escaped with their TARDIS fleet but all ships exploded by cirenium, destroying them. (COMIC: Return of the Daleks)
A treaty made with early Time Lords allowed Daleks to develop simple time travel, while also keeping them from being scooped out of time for entertainment (PROSE: Dead Romance) in the Game of Rassilon. (TV: The Five Doctors) When the treaty was updated at a much later point in history, Chris Cwej told Christine Summerfield about this treaty, but by the time she wrote Dead Romance she couldn't remember what the Daleks had promised the Time Lords in return. (PROSE: Dead Romance)
The Seventh Doctor reflected that the Daleks had trouble with time travel because the Timewyrm, who they called "Golyan Ak Tana," the twister of paths, changed the possiblities all the time. The Daleks sent a taskforce against the Timewyrm but she consumed them. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Revelation)
The Daleks managed to develop primitive time travel in the form of taranium-powered Dalek time machines of their own, which resembled cruder version of the Time Lords' own timeships. Under orders from the Dalek Prime, the Dalek Supreme sent an execution squad in a Dalek time machine to pursue the TARDIS throughout history and kill the First Doctor and his companions. The squad chased them to the planet of Aridius, New York City in 1966, the Mary Celeste, the Festival of Ghana, and, finally, to Mechanus. The Daleks created a robot version of the Doctor to "infiltrate and kill" the real Doctor and his companions, but it was destroyed. The squad attacked the Mechonoids in their Mechonoid City. The Dalek Leader slipped away from the battle with the Mechonoids after it realised that the assassination squad had no chance of winning. As the last surviving Dalek and in an act of self-sacrifice, it hacked into the city's computer systems and set the whole place to self-destruct, hoping to kill the Doctor and his companions in the blast. The Doctor escaped and the squad failed in their mission. Two of the Doctor's companions, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, used the Dalek time machine to travel back to their own time before destroying it, (TV: The Chase, PROSE: The Chase) thus crippling the Dalek time researches. (PROSE: Mission to the Unknown) Some human historians believed this mission had been launched later in Dalek history, claiming that the Dalek Supreme had launched this operation after the Third Doctor destroyed a Gold Dalek. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
A Time Squad of Daleks decided to exterminate the human race before they could challenge the Daleks, by channelling an excess of energy into the receivers on Earth in 2025. This would lead to the formation of a giant forcefield around Earth, which would counteract the effect of gravity. The Moon would be forced out of Earth orbit. This would in turn cause the Earth to shift on its axis of rotation, leading to highly destructive floods, Earthquakes and tectonic events which would eventually wipe out all life on the planet. The Fourth Doctor and Leela stopped them by redirecting the energy transfer to their ship as they fled. (AUDIO: Energy of the Daleks)
The Galactic Council
In the year 4000, the Daleks formed an alliance with the Outer Galaxies and Mavic Chen, who supplied them with an emm of Taranium, which was vital to the Time Destructor to wipe out the Solar System. However, the First Doctor escaped with the Taranium, and the Daleks pursued him until he apparently surrendered it to them - this turned out to be a fake, however, so a Dalek task force with a Red Dalek sent from Skaro in another time machine by the Dalek Prime pursued him and his companions through time until the core was finally recovered in Ancient Egypt. They successfully recovered the core, although the Red Dalek was killed by rocks during the battle with the Egyptians. The Doctor activated the Time Destructor which destroyed the Daleks, their invasion fleet and left Kembel a wasteland. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan, PROSE: The Mutation of Time) With the Dalek plans exposed, the exact situation the Daleks had wanted to avoid by taking out the heart of human space occurred. Several powers declared war against the Dalek Empire over the following millennium, beginning the Great War. (PROSE: The Evil of the Daleks)
The Great Dalek Civil War
Though it pained him to admit it, the Dalek Emperor eventually realised that the Daleks were slowly and steadily losing their Great War: two hundred saucers were lost to the Thals in the Seventh Sector, half of the Dalek fleet had been annihilated on the Draconian frontier, and six planets had been won back from the Daleks' control by the Terran Federation. Faced with the computer prediction that the Daleks would be utterly defeated within eighty years if things went on this way, the Emperor took the decision to resort to time travel more fully than ever before: as the Doctor's interference had always been what threw a spanner in the Daleks' schemes, he reasoned that not only preparing for the Doctor's involvement, but drawing him out outright, might be the Daleks' path to victory. (PROSE: The Evil of the Daleks)
Hence, after Daleks under the leadership of the Emperor were eventually summoned to 19th century Earth by the human businessman and amateur alchemist Theodore Maxtible, who had devised a new form of time travel involving mirrors and static electricity, they took over Maxtible's techniques for themselves. Armed with this venue for time-space travel, they used it to trick the Second Doctor into a trap. They asked him to implant the Human Factor into three Daleks, claiming that they desired to become humanised Daleks allying the best of mankind and Dalek-kind. In truth, the Emperor's design was that the Doctor's experiment would, by contrast, also identify the Dalek Factor, which they would then spread through Earth's history — thus preventing their Great War with Earth from happening.
However, having realised the Daleks' plan, the Doctor encouraged the three humanised Daleks, Alpha, Beta and Omega, to defend themselves. Fearful of the implications, the Emperor ordered many Daleks through an archway that would re-implant the Dalek Factor. However, the Doctor switched factors so that all Daleks through the archway were humanised. A conflict between the normal and humanised Daleks inevitably broke out across Skaro, apparently ending the Daleks. (TV: The Evil of the Daleks, PROSE: The Evil of the Daleks)
Restructuring of the Empire
However, the Dalek Civil War did not end the Daleks as the Doctor predicted it would; the humanised Daleks were defeated and the Emperor's forces began rebuilding, resulting in the emergence of a new command structure involving grey Dalek drones and Gold Supreme Daleks. The Doctor next encountered the Daleks in their third incarnation, and reflected on how he was wrong to believe that the Daleks had been utterly defeated.
The Daleks led by a Gold Dalek, invaded Earth in an alternate 22nd century after the World Peace Conference was destroyed by Shura from the future. World War III started as various global factions accused each other of having done so. They used Ogrons as enforcers. The Third Doctor and Jo Grant travelled to 1970s and undid that alternate timeline. Shura used the bomb to destroy the Daleks and Ogrons in the Auderly House. (TV: Day of the Daleks) One account claims a Black Dalek was present as a second-in-command and was responsible for much of the Gold Dalek's tasks while the Gold Dalek acted as an overseer. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks) Even though the Daleks involved in the invasion had failed to recognise the Third Doctor until confirming his identity, (TV: Day of the Daleks) a group of human researchers claimed these events had occurred after the eve of the Second Dalek War from the Dalek's perspective. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
Meanwhile, the surviving humanised rebels, led by Alpha, were forced to flee Skaro in a captured saucer. Alpha had a vision of a world where they could live in peace and seclusion, knowing the rest of their species would never stop hunting them. They settled on Kyrol in a subterranean city, Azhra Korr, beneath the sea bed. Here they created their own culture, making art, meditating, and developing the psychic abilities latent in all Daleks. The Eighth Doctor and his companion Izzy Sinclair helped the humanised Daleks defeat the Kata-Phobus, the last Kyrolian. The Kyrolian race became extinct when Alpha and the other Daleks self-destructed. (COMIC: Children of the Revolution)
Return to power
A small group of Daleks spent three hundred years hiding beneath an Antarctic glacier waiting for humans to advance to a stage where the Daleks could use their technology against them to invade Earth. This eventually happened when a nuclear submarine, the USS Jefferson, entered the cavern and the Daleks enslaved its crew through mind control. They launched proton missiles into Sydney Harbour, and invaded Sydney. They planned to use factories to turn humans into Daleks and take over Earth. Discovering the Third Doctor, the Daleks chased him in the Jefferson to Sydney Harbour Bridge, where Lt Davis destroyed the Daleks by dropping a live cable on the submarine from above. (COMIC: *Sub Zero)
The Daleks, having observed the destruction of their forces on Earth, used a time vector to transport the TARDIS to Skaro, where they planned to perform an operation on the Doctor which would mentally turn him into a Dalek. The Doctor and his companion Finney escaped into the jungle, where they used a herd of dinosaur-like creatures to destroy the Daleks. (COMIC: The Planet of the Daleks)
Further battles
At some point, a Dalek ship was shot down in a war, crash landing on the planet Red Rocket Rising. The Eighth Doctor deduced that Professor Martez had turned human beings into "Mutant Daleks" in his experiments to make humans more like Daleks using deceased but intact Daleks and technology taken from the ship. Years afterwards, a group of Daleks with short supplies and badly damaged from fighting were under the leadership of a Dalek Supreme, and responded to a signal sent by Professor Martez, pretending to take the survivors of the asteroid-stricken world Red Rocket Rising to another planet. In reality, the Daleks deflected the asteroid to destroy Martez' experiments, whom had deviated from the idea of Dalek blood purity, and failed. They planned to detonate their command ship to destroy the Mutant Dalek base to ensure that the blood of the Daleks remained pure, and after that they would exterminate all humans on the planet. An explosion inside the command ship cancelled the detonation, causing the ship to go off course, saving Eileen Klint's people thanks to Tom Cardwell. Despite this, the Daleks decided to destroy the mutants personally. A full-scale Dalek battle followed, with both Dalek groups determined to completely wipe out the other. With the help of the humans, both groups of Daleks wiped each other out. (AUDIO: Blood of the Daleks)
In 45th century Stockbridge, a rain was mutating the villagers into zombie slaves of the Daleks. They tried to turn the Doctor into a Dalek and use his TARDIS to help conquer the universe, but failed and they were defeated. (AUDIO: Plague of the Daleks)
Dalek-Movellan War
In 4949, (AUDIO: Neverland) the Daleks got involved in a war with a race of robots called the Movellans. (TV: Destiny of the Daleks) The Twelfth Doctor once arrived in a war zone during this conflict with Nardole and Bill Potts. (TV: The Pilot) The conflict soon resulted in a stalemate: each side's purely logical battle computer kept them in deadlock. To circumvent this stalemate, the Daleks returned to Skaro to find Davros so his biological mind could reprogram their battle computers to win the war. However, the Fourth Doctor defeated them and the Movellans and Davros was taken by the Daleks' former slaves to stand trial. (TV: Destiny of the Daleks) The war continued for another 90 years, until the Movellans developed a Movellan virus to defeat the Daleks. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks)
Imperial-renegade Dalek war
Afterwards, a detachment of Daleks led by a Supreme Dalek went to free their creator to find a cure for the virus. They also used a time corridor and a Dalek duplicate called Stien to trap the Fifth Doctor to duplicate him and his Companions to assassinate the Time Lord High Council. However, the Doctor broke free of the duplication apparatus and turned Stien to his cause. Meanwhile, Davros turned several Dalek Troopers and two Daleks to his cause but the Supreme's Daleks destroyed the rebels. Both Davros and the Doctor unleashed the virus and the Dalek ship was destroyed by Stien. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks)
Davros escaped to Necros and began to turn intelligent cryogenically frozen people into Imperial Daleks to conquer the universe. However, Takis called the Renegade Daleks to take Davros to stand trial. The Renegades fought their way past the Imperials to take Davros. He tried to get them to take the Sixth Doctor, but they didn't recognise him. The Renegades' attempt to recondition the Imperials failed because of the Imperials' destruction by the Doctor and Orcini. (TV: Revelation of the Daleks)
En route to Skaro, the ship carrying Davros crashed on the planet Lethe. Davros was rescued, and he set himself up as 'Professor Vaso' and attempted to create a new machine, a Juggernaut based on a Mechanoid design.
Lethe's atmosphere prevented the Supreme Dalek retrieving Davros directly, but its forces intercepted the Sixth Doctor's TARDIS, forcing him to serve as an agent of the Daleks and stop Davros' researches and manipulations. The Doctor discovered two of Davros' Necros Daleks had survived the crash, but were destroyed following Davros' final gambit on the colony and the Supreme Dalek's intervention. (AUDIO: The Juggernauts)
While on Skaro, the Sixth Doctor rescued Davros just before the Daleks carried out their sentence of death. The Doctor took Davros to Spiridon, where he could lick his wounds and bide his time. The Doctor intended to lay the groundwork for a Dalek civil war and spoke to Davros of his future destiny as Emperor Dalek.
When the Renegades led by the Supreme Dalek landed on Spiridon with the Seventh Doctor, Davros set his army of Imperial Daleks against them, along with a Special Weapons Dalek. The Supreme Dalek died. The Imperials then took over Skaro. (COMIC: Emperor of the Daleks!)
The Imperial and Renegade Daleks both headed to Earth in 1963 to claim the Hand of Omega. The Imperials controlled H. Parson, while the Renegades used Judith Winters as their battle computer and "allied" with the Association. The two factions waged a lengthy battle at Shoreditch. Aided by the Special Weapons Dalek, the Imperial Daleks won, almost wiping out the Renegades aside from the Supreme. The Imperial Daleks took the Hand of Omega, as the Seventh Doctor had planned all along. Davros (as "Emperor" of the Imperials) plotted to (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) detonate the second sun of the Daleks' homeworld Skaro with the Hand, (PROSE: The Stranger) giving the Daleks the power of unlimited time travel. In the Imperial Daleks' time zone, he did so, causing it to go supernova. This action, however, destroyed the planet and the Imperial fleet. On Earth, the Doctor talked the last Renegade Dalek, the black Supreme Dalek, into self-destructing. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
A new empire
From the ashes of the civil war
Following the destruction of Skaro, Dalek battlecruisers continued to protect the area of the galaxy where Skaro used to be, even though it was now desolate. The Doctor briefly visited this part of space after encountering peace-loving Daleks in an alternate universe. (PROSE: The Ripple Effect)
The Renegades survived this battle and began calling themselves Imperials. One account states that Davros' escape pod was acquired by a garbage ship, the Quetzel, which the Eighth Doctor and Sam Jones also ended up on. A group of Thals arrived, with the intention of using Davros to effectively turn them into Daleks so they could fight the Daleks better. A Dalek force arrived and took the Quetzel to a planet called Skaro. The Dalek Prime claimed that this was the original Skaro, and that the planet the Doctor had destroyed was a decoy called Antalin. The Dalek Prime knew that some of its own Daleks were loyal to Davros and put Davros on trial to flush them out. A battle ensued and the Dalek Prime emerged victorious. A Dalek factory ship was lost to the Time Vortex, while Davros was apparently executed, though a Spider Dalek loyal to him had promised to pose as his executioner and teleport him to safety, (PROSE: War of the Daleks) which Davros's later survival would appear to confirm. (Journey's End et al.)
The factory ship crashed on Vulcan, where it lay for three hundred years until a human scientist named Lesterson recovered and penetrated the capsule. Once activated, the surviving Daleks in the capsule decided to pose as obedient robotic servant drones, claiming to be the colonists' willing servants. The Daleks took advantage of the colonists' naive trust to establish a reproduction plant - on a conveyor belt system - with which to increase their numbers. The Second Doctor eventually destroyed the Daleks by turning the colony's power source against them, but not before the Daleks killed a vast number of the colony's inhabitants. (TV: The Power of the Daleks)
Another account states that Davros' escape pod entered the time vortex and was found by a Nekkistani ship. The Eighth Doctor, Samson Griffin and Gemma Griffin found the Nekkistani ship in the vortex and the Griffins boarded the ship to investigate. Davros exacted his revenge by sending them back to Earth, wiping the Doctor's memory of them and operating on the TARDIS. Samson was sent home and Gemma became part of the "resistance" to the new race of Daleks Davros made on Earth. They conquered the planet, leaving only the area where Samson lived free from Dalek control. When the Doctor, Charley Pollard and C'rizz returned from the Divergent Universe, Davros was waiting for them. Davros' mind had become fractured between his own personality and that of "the Emperor". A series of events led to the Doctor actually giving the Daleks their Emperor and letting them leave Earth. Davros left Earth with his Daleks, the Emperor personality dominant. (AUDIO: Terror Firma)
A third account stated that Davros' escape pod crash-landed on Azimuth, where he attempted to make contact with other Daleks in the universe. There, he encountered the Seventh Doctor again. He contacted Daleks that took over planet and created a clone of his younger self Falkus as Davros' son. When learned about the Persuasion machine from Will Arrowsmith, Davros wanted it to reassert his control over the Daleks. (AUDIO: Daleks Among Us)
Renewal of the Dalek Empire
On the first stage of their new empire, the Daleks invaded Kar-Charrat to gain knowledge data from the Library on Kar-Charrat with their Test subjects. They created the first test subject, but it went insane. However, the second test subject was able to gain knowledge from the Wetworks facility and gained a respect for non-Dalek life and refused to obey orders to kill and destroy. It was destroyed by the Special Weapons Dalek. The Daleks were stopped by the Seventh Doctor and his companion Ace who planted explosives which killed the Daleks and destroyed the Wetworks facility, freeing the Kar-Charratans. However the Dalek Supreme retreated to its mothership and reported failure to the Emperor Dalek, who was infuriated and ordered it to self-destruct. It did and the Emperor decided another plan would be completed. (AUDIO: The Genocide Machine) Unknown to the Doctor, the Daleks gained information which they would use in their invasions including about the human mind and Project Infinity. (AUDIO: Invasion of the Daleks, Project Infinity)
The second stage of the Dalek Empire was to take control of Gallifrey. The Daleks led by the Black Dalek removed the Etra Prime from time and space so that they could mine the Apocalypse Element from the planet kidnapping a Monan and Time Lord delegation including Lady President Romanadvoratrelundar. Twenty years later the Daleks sent Etra Prime on a collision course with the planet Archetryx, which was hosting a temporal treaty attended by twenty of the Temporal Powers. The Dalek force invaded Gallifrey and added their own mental energy to the Eye, which did contain the Element. The Daleks were defeated by the Sixth Doctor. Despite that defeat, The Daleks detonated the Element in the Seriphia Galaxy, destroying everything within it, and allowed the Daleks to establish a power base and to control over a million Skaros for their new empire. (AUDIO: The Apocalypse Element)
During the early days of the Dalek invasion and occupation of Earth in 22nd century a lone Dalek in 2158 Kansas had been damaged by weapon fire which penetrated its casing, allowing for a parasitic wasp to enter the body. Once the Dalek returned to base, it was deemed damaged and sent to the repair bay where its genetic material was to be analysed. This was part of the Daleks' standard practice of taking the DNA to the reproductive factories for the breeding of more Daleks. It was at this point that the Dalek Emperor from an alternate future arrived and informed them of a great catastrophe that would befall them and provided them a cure; an insecticide that would prevent a so-called "Mutant Phase" from occurring. The Fifth Doctor and Nyssa arrived to help a Thal professor Ptolem and his friend Ganatus for the research over the Mutant Phase. This had caused the Daleks transformation into nearly indestructible creatures. The Dalek Emperor forced the Doctor to return to the 22nd century to stop the mutant phase's origins and destroyed Skaro by exploding the planet in the 43rd century when it came under attack by the Mutant Phase. The Emperor implanted his mind into Ganatus' to make sure Ptolem and the Doctor did their work. It was the Emperor who was the cause of implementing an ineffective pesticide paradox. The Doctor convinced him not to change the past. The Emperor listened and negated the alternate timeline and the Mutant Phase and the Emperor was erased from existence. (AUDIO: The Mutant Phase)
The final stage of the Empire began when the Daleks launched over a thousand Dalek Saucers into the Time Vortex. A Temporal Extinction Device was deployed in a time fissure by a Dalek vessel within the Time Vortex. This caused instability. The Dalek time ship was swamped by a tidal wave of temporal energy. They were trapped in a Time loop however one pilot and two strategists arrived to General Mariah Learman after using an escape Time corridor. The Daleks injected her with drugs and transformed her into a Dalek. They invaded Earth in the 17th century. These forces were stopped by the Doctor, who left them trapped in the vortex. (AUDIO: The Time of the Daleks) The Time Lords later made a deal with the Daleks that allowed them to leave the Time Vortex. (AUDIO: Neverland)
Second Great Dalek Occupation
- Main article: Second Great Dalek Occupation
Having learnt of Project Infinity from the Library on Kar-Charrat, the Emperor planned to hijack it and bring forth an army of alternate Daleks who had conquered their own universe. (AUDIO: Project Infinity) To this end, he ordered the conquest of Mutter's Spiral, beginning with the invasion of Vega VI, from which he mined veganite (AUDIO: Invasion of the Daleks) to boost the power of Project Infinity when the time came. (AUDIO: Project Infinity) The Daleks’ invasion was opposed by the Earth Alliance, resulting in a massive war. (AUDIO: Invasion of the Daleks, The Human Factor, The Fearless: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) This period was known as the Second Great Dalek Occupation. (AUDIO: Return of the Daleks)
The Emperor and the Dalek Supreme used Susan Mendes to give the new human slaves hope and increase their productivity, with her becoming known as “the Angel of Mercy” among the slaves, (AUDIO: Invasion of the Daleks) although they were suspicious of he, and her friend Kalendorf, and suspected some deception. (AUDIO: Project Infinity) The Daleks duplicated Susan to divert Alliance assassins. (AUDIO: The Fearless: Part 3) On Zaleria, the Dalek Scientific Division attempted to reverse-engineer the Zalerians' invisibility and awaken the Dalek army on their planet. On his and Suz’s visit to Zaleria, Kalendorf discovered the army and attempted to destroy it with the Seventh Doctor. However the Daleks surrounded them and the Doctor surrendered to save Kalendorf, promising to help the Scientific Divsion’s research. (AUDIO: Return of the Daleks) Despite the failure of their first invasion attempt, (AUDIO: The Fearless: Part 4) Earth eventually fell to the Daleks once more. (AUDIO: "Death to the Daleks!")
After ten years, Susan instigated a huge rebellion by the slaves across the Empire. This had been organised by Susan and Kalendorf via his telepathy, and had been anticipated by the Emperor (AUDIO: "Death to the Daleks!") who used to the cover of the rebellion to travel with the Dalek Supreme to Lopra Minor with their supply of veganite to make contact with another universe. Susan was stunned and placed in suspended animation aboard the Emperor’s vessel. (AUDIO: Project Infinity) After hearing word of the rebellion, the Doctor realised history was playing out as it should and released a virus on Zaleria, which infected all the Daleks there with light wave sickness and restored the natives’ invisibility. (AUDIO: Return of the Daleks) The Earth Alliance, revived by the rebellion, attempted to defend Project Infinity but ultimately failed. The Emperor made contact with the the Mentor's Daleks. However the alternate Daleks judged the Daleks as evil and attacked (AUDIO: Project Infinity) and the Emperor entered a state of inertia to keep himself from being interrogated, leaving the Dalek Supreme to lead the Dalek Empire. (AUDIO: Dalek War: Chapter One)
War with the Mentor
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- Main article: Enemy-Alliance Dalek War
The Mentor allied her Daleks with the Earth Alliance and together their forces pushed back the Daleks. After 6 years, the Daleks had fallen back to Earth’s solar system. Kalendorf, now commander of the Earth Alliance, became uncomfortable with the Mentor’s Daleks, believing they‘d merely swapped one dictatorship for another, albeit a more outwardly benevolent one. (AUDIO: Dalek War: Chapter One)
Kalendorf made a deal with the Daleks for a truce and to turn on the Mentor, in return for which he arranged the retrieval of Susan Mendes whose body the Emperor had transferred its mind to. As Alliance forces were about to engage the Daleks in the solar system, he had Susan declare that the Angel of Mercy had returned and order the Earth Alliance to turn on the Mentor’s Daleks. (AUDIO: Dalek War: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three)
Years of war ensued, with the Daleks and Earth Alliance slowly forcing the Mentor’s forces back into their own universe. Kalendorf surrendered Susan to the Daleks, so they could retrieve the Emperor’s mind, Eventually the Mentor herself summoned Kalendorf to her universe where she conceded defeat, deciding that the war was pointless, and withdrew her forces back to her universe. The war over; an uneasy truce remained between the Daleks and Earth Alliance.
Kalendorf travelled to Dalek-occupied Earth to confront the Emperor. He discovered that it had chosen to remain in Suz’s body permanently and had fully possessed her. Kalendorf grabbed her, telepathically initiating a command he’d implanted in Susan’s mind before surrendering her: Victory or Death. This triggered a signal across the entire Dalek command net, ordering all Dalek technology to self-destruct. This devastated the Daleks, killing the Emepror and Supreme, and much of the Galaxy, becoming known as the Great Catastrophe. Kalendorf survived, believing the Daleks were defeated for good. (AUDIO: Dalek War: Chapter Four) Many years later, he and the Eighth Doctor encountered a surviving Dalek in a museum on Vega VI dedicated to the Second Great Dalek Occupation. (PROSE: Museum Peace)
Revival of the Dalek Empire
In the Seriphia Galaxy, a Dalek outpost survived the Catastrophe by containing the signal to a single Dalek drone. This resulted in the Dalek’s mind absorbing the Emperor and Susan’s minds. It was declared the new Dalek Supreme. (AUDIO: The Demons)
Approximately two thousand years after the Catastrophe, the Daleks had rebuilt and were plotting their return to Mutter’s Spiral. (AUDIO: Dalek War: Chapter Four) The Daleks triggered a crisis in the Galactic Union by spreading the NFS Plague in the Border Worlds. The Border Worlds eventually seceded from the Union to a form their own Confederation, and the Daleks approached them offering help with the Plague. (AUDIO: The Exterminators) The Daleks arranged the geoforming of the Graxis System for treatment facilities, bringing them into conflict with the Graxis Wardens, (AUDIO: The Healers) In truth, the Daleks‘ NFS treatment, Variant 7, mutated Humans into Daleks to replenish the Daleks’ forces. (AUDIO: The Warriors) As the Daleks tightened their hold over the Confederation, the surviving Wardens worked with Galactic Union agents Siy Tarkov and Galanar to gather evidence to warn the Union about the Daleks. (AUDIO: The Survivors, The Demons, The Warriors) They eventually travelled to Velyshaa to gather Kalendorf’s psychic recordings, which Siy had previously witnessed, to evidence the Daleks’ past conquests. The Supreme personally led forces to stop them, having been alerted by a traitor in the group, though they managed to transmit their evidence to Georgi Selestru, a sympathetic Union Security Commander who they hoped could convince the Union to act. (AUDIO: The Future) The Daleks eventually outright occupied the Border Worlds entirely, leading to a Cold War between the new Dalek Empire and the Galactic Union. (PROSE: Mutually Assured Survival)
Conflict with the Time Lords
Asking to see his future while looking into a Tomorrow Window, one of the sights the Eighth Doctor saw was a city in ruins with a Dalek flying saucer above. Below, Daleks scanned the ruins. (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows) In the post-War universe, with the Time Lords no longer present to quell time travel development in the lesser species, the Daleks had begun greatly growing in prominence, (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles) although the Time Lords were eventually restored to power. (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows)
The Dalek Time Controller was saved from destruction by Kotris. (AUDIO: X and the Daleks) From then it oversaw the chasing of the Eighth Doctor and Molly O'Sullivan through time and space, (AUDIO: Fugitives) by using a relativity map and a Temporal Chamber to create a Space-time projector. Using retro-genitor particles implanted inside Molly, it and Kotris planned to destroy the Time Lords. (AUDIO: Tangled Web, X and the Daleks) After Straxus killed himself, he erased Kotris from history. The Dalek Time Controller's plans involving Kotris were therefore erased. The Dalek Time Controller was aware of the change in history while it occurred, and swore to Kotris before he was erased that he would destroy the Time Lords. (AUDIO: X and the Daleks)
The Dalek Time Controller oversaw the invasion of Nixyce VII, and created mines in the planet to create a Dalek superweapon. The Doctor detonated a bomb located on a nearby Dalek in the time controller's chamber, damaging the Time Controller and causing him to flee to his ship in orbit above the planet. (AUDIO: The Traitor) Rather than destroying the weapon, the Doctor asked for the Dalek Time Controller's help in defeating the Eminence, who posed a bigger threat to the Daleks than the Doctor. (AUDIO: Eyes of the Master) The Dalek Time Controller agreed, and used the weapon to destroy the Eminence fleet. (AUDIO: Time's Horizon)
The Time Controller later arrived in Paris, where it created Adelaine Dutemps from its own DNA. The controller then created Dalek Time Strategists from the criminal minds that Adelaine dealt with. It used the power of the Time Vortex to create them. It wanted to create a new Paradigm so that it could control Daleks throughout all time. The Controller asked Liv Chenka some questions about The Eminence war, and the Doctor's involvement. The Controller opened his casing to show Liv it's eye, it was dark like Molly's. The Controller used the Red Pagoda and the TARDIS to create a larger shell. (AUDIO: The Monster of Monmartre)
The Controller travelled with the Reborn Master to the control centre. The Controller wanted to find Markus Schriver. The Master told the Controller that they were running out of humans to convert to Daleks so they were now using Sontarans. The controller planed to betray the Master if the Doctor was well enough. After the Master's Dalek mutiny, he escaped with Liv and Molly in the TARDIS. (AUDIO: Master of the Daleks)
The Dalek Supreme came to believe that the Controller was no longer a pure enough Dalek, having lived outside time through so many time shifts. The Supreme believed him to have been destroyed, when in actuality the Dalek Time Controller had transferred its consciousness to the gas created by Markus Schriver, joining its personality with Schriver's and thus creating the Eminence. The Dalek Supreme then commissioned the creation of a new Dalek Time Strategist from the remains of Adelaine Dutemps. (AUDIO: Eye of Darkness)
The Daleks sponsored Free Time, (AUDIO: Ascension) a terrorist organisation which attacked the Time Lords during President Romana’s tenure. (AUDIO: Weapon of Choice, Insurgency, Imperiatrix) After Free Time weakened the Time Lords by unleashing the Dogma Virus, (AUDIO: Panacea) the Daleks invaded the Axis to plunder alternate Gallifreys, including one that Romana, Narvin and Leela from the proper timeline has settled on. The trio managed to close the Axis’ portals, denying the Daleks access to anymore timelines and trapping them in any alternate timelines they had entered, and returned to Gallifrey proper. (AUDIO: Extermination) The Supreme Dalek led an invasion of Gallifrey via the Matrix with Slyne, a resident of an alternate Gallifrey who formed an alliance with them, sent ahead to prepare for their arrival. Romana was able to trap the Daleks’ invasion force in a Matrix projection with the aid of a projection of her future self. (AUDIO: Ascension)
Dalek saucer X-K Beta-19 invaded the planet Galacton to energise its core to create fuel for the Seventh Fleet. As they drilled to the core, the Daleks were attacked by local lifeforms. In the skirmish one Dalek fell down the hole to the core and used its gunstick to fire on the core, sacrificing itself to achieve the Daleks’ goal. (PROSE: Mission to Galacton)
The Daleks began attacking the Temporal Powers, exterminating the Monan Host, Sunari and Nekkistani. (AUDIO: Desperate Measures) After the fall of Phaidon, the Time Lords formally declared war on the Daleks. (AUDIO: Celestial Intervention)
The Time War
- Main article: Last Great Time War
From the perspective of humanity, the Daleks vanished (TV: The Parting of the Ways) after the Tenth Dalek Occupation. (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords) In reality, they left to fight the Last Great Time War, which became known as the "final battle" between the Time Lords and the Daleks. (TV: Dalek) The Daleks were mainly commanded by the Dalek Emperor. (TV: The Parting of the Ways) who was guided by the Time Strategist. (AUDIO: Desperate Measures) The Time War saw the creation of many new Dalek variants of questionable purity, from the Skaro Degradations (PROSE: Engines of War) to secret societies of Daleks with increased creativity, placed beyond the control of the Emperor, such as the Cult of Skaro (TV: Doomsday) and the Volatix Cabal. (COMIC: Downtime, The Organ Grinder et al.)
After the declaration of the Time War, the Daleks recruited Davros to aid them, giving him a command ship. (PROSE: Father of the Daleks) Davros was asked by the Emperor to make a new creature for use against the Time Lords. The result was the Nightmare Child. The Child quickly went out of control, wanting to consume everything, so Davros lured it to the Gates of Elysium to destroy it. With him aboard, his command ship was swallowed by the Child as it fell into the Gates. (PROSE: The Third Wise Man) Davros was believed dead. (TV: The Stolen Earth)
Early in the war, a Dalek ship received a call telling them that a cache of Gallifreyan weapons was being hidden at a station in the Obscura. When the fleet arrived, they discovered it was a trap by Irving Braxiatel, who wanted Danna to use her skills to destroy them. Danna was unable to fulfil his trap, so Braxiatel was forced to expose the station to the Obscura to destroy the Daleks. (AUDIO: Soldier Obscura)
After undoing his scheme to rewrite time by replacing Davros as the Daleks’ creator, the Time Strategist ordered the Daleks to capture the Master. (AUDIO: He Who Wins) They bombarded his TARDIS and extracted him by transmat beam. He agreed to work for them in return for allowing him to retrieve his TARDIS from where it had crashed, the Dalek-occupied world of Gardezza. He ultimately betrayed them, using the damage to his TARDIS to destroy the Dalek saucer occupying the planet. (AUDIO: Beneath the Viscoid) The Daleks continued to pursue him, following him to Arcking. The Daleks invaded the planet, having to utilise unusual methods due to its state of temporal grace. (AUDIO: The Good Master)
Two months into the War, the Daleks discovered Project Revenant, a War Council facility that was resurrecting Time Lords, and launched an invasion of its pocket dimension. During this time, CIA Coordinator Romana opened secret negotiations with the Emperor, unsuccessfully attempting to convince it to end the War. The CIA prevented the Daleks capturing Project Revenant, by arranging its destruction just as they boarded the facility. (AUDIO: Desperate Measures)
The Daleks pursued Time Lord agent Aymor in his search for an erased superweapon, following him to the starship Theseus which they boarded. (AUDIO: The Starship of Theseus) Cardinal Ollistra subsequently lured a Dalek fleet to a trap at the planet where the Theseus crashed. (AUDIO: Echoes of War) The Daleks subsequently attacked the Time Lord facility on the Moon of Tenacity, deploying a reversal wave through the Tenacity System to erase its defences. They pursued the Doctor’s TARDIS from Tenacity, battling a Time Lord fleet over Jedris where it eventually crashed. (AUDIO: The Conscript, One Life)
After being alerted by an agent that the Time Lords had occupied it and were building an arsenal of rockets, the Daleks invaded Derilobia. They captured Commander Carvil‘s TARDIS, however it self-destructed after he was exterminated and the distraction it caused enabled the Time Lord forces to evacuate. (AUDIO: The Lords of Terror)
A Dalek force led by the Overseer occupied The Planet and enslaved the Ogrons. The Overseer conducted numerous experiments on the Ogrons, including retrospectively adding them to past Dalek battles. When the Doctor and the Twelve investigated the Planet, the Overseer created Doctor Ogron by mixing the Doctor with an Ogron. Doctor Ogron led a revolt against the Daleks, during which a task force arrived to relieve the Overseer of command as its experiments had been deemed an animation to Dalek purity. The Doctor, the Twelve and Bliss were also captured (AUDIO: Planet of the Ogrons) and taken to a prison camp on Sangrey for interrogation, though they managed to escape. (AUDIO: In the Garden of Death) Based on information from the Twelve’s interrogation, the Admiral led a Dalek expedition to Uzmal to find the legendary Ourashima. Battling resistance forces led by the Doctor and Ollistra, the Daleks found the Ourashima but were unable to communicate with it. To prevent it falling into the Time Lords’ hands, the Admiral sacrificed the entire taskforce to kill it. (AUDIO: Jonah)
At one point after Davros was lost, the Daleks, with the exception of the Time Strategist which escaped through a rift, were erased from history by the Valeyard. (AUDIO: The War Valeyard) The Time Strategist used dimensional engineering and a parallel universe version of Davros to restore the Daleks. (AUDIO: Palindrome, Restoration of the Daleks)
The Daleks employed a Time Destructor in order to gain the upper hand in the war, destroying Polymos and creating a temporal shockwave which affected systems from the Farflung Rift to the Wolf's Heart Nebula. (PROSE: Natural Regression)
The Daleks began feeding the Time Lords intelligence in order to lure them into an ambush on Skaro. Their plan succeeded, with a fleet of Battle TARDISes assaulting Skaro, only to fall victim to a new Dalek superweapon. However, the War Doctor and Petrella survived the ambush and were able to warn the Time Lords of the Dalek superweapon. (COMIC: Ambush)
Late in the War, the Daleks assembled a huge fleet of timeships to invade Gallifrey. The fleet was intercepted by the Time Lords, who deployed a Time Destructor to annihilate it. The War Doctor replaced the assigned Time Lords and fired it himself, barely escaping with his life. (AUDIO: The Innocent)
Several Daleks from late in the War travelled back in time to attack a munitions factory in the Mountain of Serenity where Gallifreyan children were being kept safe, with the intent of killing them before they could take part in the War. The War Doctor evacuated the children, and Tahl sacrificed himself by detonating explosives in the mountain, causing a collapse that buried the Daleks. (PROSE: The Stranger)
At one point, the Daleks managed to amass an enormous fleet and launch an overwhelming assault on Gallifrey. Facing annihilation, and with no other options left, Cardinal Ollistra had Councillor Voltrix open a rift in space, releasing the Great Vampires, which destroyed the Dalek fleet. (COMIC: The Bidding War)
On the last day of the Time War, the Daleks broke the defences of Arcadia, Gallifrey’s second city, and invaded it. Unable to to breach the Capitol’s sky trenches, the Dalek fleet surrounded and bombarded Gallifrey. The War Doctor planned to use a weapon known as the Moment to wipe out both the Time Lords and the Daleks. However, this option was not taken, and "all thirteen" incarnations of the Doctor teamed up together to hide Gallifrey and the Time Lords in an unknown pocket universe, leaving the Dalek fleet to wipe itself out in its own crossfire. In outward appearances, the result of this action was the same as if the Moment had been used: Gallifrey disappeared and the Daleks were (mostly) destroyed. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
Surviving the Time War
The Ninth Doctor incorrectly assumed that "the entire Dalek race" had been "wiped out" by the Time War. (TV: Dalek) There were, however, numerous exceptions.
Runaways
In his book on the end of the Last Great Time War, the Doctor's future incarnation the Curator acknowledged the unlikelihood of so few Daleks as later encountered by the Doctor having survived the blast that ended the Time War, no matter how great an explosion that was. He stated that his personal belief was that upon witnessing, at the moment of what should have been their final victory, the skies of Gallifrey being filled with a veritable swarm of versions of their worst enemy the Doctor, most of the Daleks who did not die were struck with such unimaginable amounts of fear that they ran way in terror to parts unknown, and were "probably still running now". (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
Scattered survivors
The first of the Time War survivor Daleks encountered by the Doctor fell through time and crashed like a meteorite "on the Ascension Islands". The Dalek lay in its burning crater for three days, screaming the entire time, before it was retrieved. Its weapon systems inactive and its outer armour heavily damaged, the Dalek was sold at private auction and passed through several hands over the next fifty years. In 2012 it was acquired by billionaire Henry Van Statten who nicknamed it Metaltron. It sent a distress signal to the Ninth Doctor and his companion Rose Tyler. Upon Rose's touch it absorbed a small amount of her DNA, using the artron energy of a time traveller's DNA to revivify itself. Breaking out of confinement, it went on a rampage, only to realise that its absorbing Rose's DNA had caused it to begin mutating into "something different… something new", a Dalek-human hybrid with the swirling thoughts and emotions, and the reluctance to kill, of a human. Refusing to become impure, and unable to cope with the independence of mind that was coming to it, it ultimately self-destructed. (TV: Dalek)
Toward the end of the Last Great Time War the Daleks sent a time capsule to 70 AD Earth in order to spread the Dalek Factor amongst the humans to use humans to build more Daleks as back-up for the Time War. The capsule's engine failed during the trip and the Dalek inside ejected, crashing on Earth. It died shortly thereafter and released only a small amount of the Dalek Factor, leading to only one in five hundred million humans having it. The Tenth Doctor discovered the dead shell which had been a Roman exhibit until the British threw it into some caves and gave the Dalek gunstick to Frank Openshaw. However, the unearthing of the Dalek activated the Dalek Factor in Kate Yates who developed a Dalek personality and touched the dead casing, causing her Dalek life-force to grow a new Dalek in the casing from the casing's databanks. The Dalek hunted down Frank and killed him to retrieve its gun arm and then went on a rampage, killing many people before finding Kate. When the Doctor arrived, the Dalek offered the Doctor a deal: if he gave it a way to travel in time and space, it would spare Earth and go to another planet to rebuild its race and spread across the universe. If the Doctor refused, it would destroy the Earth. With no way to destroy the Dalek, the Doctor agreed to the deal and provided it with an old Time Ring he had stored in the TARDIS. The Dalek revealed its plan to be to travel to the year 500 million where humanity was peaceful and had no knowledge of the Daleks. There he'd get Kate to convince the humans to give it the materials it needed to rebuild its race. As the Dalek prepared to exterminate the Doctor, Rose reached out to Kate's human side, trying to get her to fight her Dalek side by reminding her of the good of humanity. After a mental struggle, Kate's human side regained control and she used her Dalek knowledge to set the Time Ring to self-destruct. The Dalek, trapped by Kate in a force field to protect the Doctor during her mental struggle, was caught in a warp implosion caused by the Time Ring self-destructing and was atomised. The Dalek Factor in Kate then deactivated without the Dalek there to stir it up and she lost everything the Dalek Factor had given her including her increased intelligence and Dalek personality. (PROSE: I Am a Dalek)
A group of surviving Daleks unleashed their proton cannon on 22nd century Earth, resulting in all life becoming intangible (unable to touch solids). The plan was that, unable to eat, humans would soon just waste away from the Earth and the Dalek survivors would rebuild war ships and attack. The Tenth Doctor used the Krikoosh to reach the proton cannon. Unhurt by the Daleks' rays, the Doctor made some adjustments and turned the weapon against the Daleks. The humans became solid again and the Daleks with their 'protective' shields were left intangible. The Daleks judged this an unacceptable outcome and self-destructed. (COMIC: Extermination of the Daleks)
One Dalek, trapped in the Matrix under Gallifrey, was encountered by the Twelfth Doctor after Gallifrey's restoration. The Doctor speculated it had been there since the Cloister Wars. It begged to be exterminated when it was ensnared by the Cloister Wraiths. (TV: Hell Bent)
The Dalek Emperor's "long game"
The Dalek Emperor barely survived the "inferno", and fell through time in his damaged flagship. Damaged, but rebuilding slowly, the Emperor influenced the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire as a cover for his plans. (TV: The Parting of the Ways) He used the Jagrafess and the Editor as puppets in circa 199,909. (TV: The Long Game, Bad Wolf) It rebuilt the Dalek race using human cells to create an army of just about half a million Daleks. It also built 200 flying saucers containing more than 2000 Daleks each. (TV: Bad Wolf) The Emperor, having recreated the Dalek race, saw itself as an immortal god, and so was literally worshipped by the new Daleks. These and other religious concepts such as blasphemy were new to Dalek psychology. (TV: The Parting of the Ways)
The Emperor's pawn, the Controller, hated her masters and transmatted the Ninth Doctor and his allies to the Game Station to help defeat them. When he discovered the fleet and the new Daleks, (TV: Bad Wolf) the Doctor realised that the Daleks hated their own existence since they were partially human. Additionally, they had been driven mad by hundreds of years of solitude. Jack Harkness led a small human resistance to stop the Daleks. Thanks to Rodrick, the humans on Floor 000 didn't help him. On Floor 500 The Doctor decided to create a Delta Wave to destroy the Daleks, but didn't have enough time to refine it so that it could distinguish between humans and Daleks. The Doctor decided to turn his chance down to use the delta wave to kill humans and Daleks alike, even though the Daleks had just bombed Earth heavily, wiping out entire continents. The Emperor thought he was victorious, but he and his entire fleet were atomised by Rose Tyler after she had absorbed the energies of the time vortex and became the Bad Wolf. (TV: The Parting of the Ways)
Schemes of the Cult of Skaro
The Cult of Skaro had been created by the Dalek Emperor and were given names. Dalek Sec was the leader of the cult, and the others were named Dalek Caan, Dalek Thay and Dalek Jast. They were "above and beyond the Emperor himself" and were designed to "think as the enemy thinks" and to imagine new ways of survival as well as new ways of killing. (TV: Doomsday) By one account, the Cult was formed before the Time War and were just four ordinary Daleks originally. Dalek Sec was the Dalek Commander of the Seventh Incursion Squad sent to wipe out the remnants of the Mechanoids on Magella which they succeeded in doing. Dalek Caan was an Attack Squad Leader of the Thirtieth Assault Group. Dalek Thay was the Commandant of Station Alpha, the most secret Dalek research facility. Dalek Jast was the Force Leader of the Outer Rim Defensive Battalion. After doing this, they were promoted to become the Cult of Skaro. (PROSE: Birth of a Legend) A group of researchers later claimed the Cult had been formed during the war. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
The Cult, foreseeing a disastrous end on the Daleks' side by the end of the Time War, built a Void Ship for themselves, which allowed them to hide away outside the universe, in the Void between parallel realities. They had acquired a Time Lord prison ship, the Genesis Ark, which contained millions of Daleks captured during the war. (TV: Doomsday) They leaked back into 21st century Earth, inadvertently allowing five million Cybermen from a parallel world to follow in the "wake" of their Void Ship and invade the Earth. (TV: Army of Ghosts) After emerging from the Void Ship, the Cult held Rose Tyler and Mickey Smith hostage while Dalek Thay confronted the Cybermen. Thay turned down an offer of an alliance from the Cybermen, prompting the Cyber-leader to declare war on the Daleks, while the Cult, confident in the ability of even one Dalek to destroy the "inferior" species, stated that he deemed the wiping out of the Cybermen to be nothing more than "pest control".
Sec then oversaw the pulling of the Ark out of hibernation with the touch of a time traveller, allowing the liberated Daleks to fight the Cybermen (as well as human Torchwood One personnel) for dominion over the Earth in the Battle of Canary Wharf. Through the efforts of the Tenth Doctor, however, the majority of these Daleks were sucked back into the Void, with the only the four members of the Cult of Skaro themselves managing to escape through an emergency temporal shift. (TV: Doomsday)
The Cult emerged in 1930 in New York City, where their first concern was to breed new Dalek embryos. However, they soon abandoned them to die in the sewers, as "their flesh was too weak". This failure led Dalek Sec to determine that the Daleks' obsession with purity and supremacy had brought them to near-extinction, and that the only way for the Daleks to survive was by forcing them to evolve. Sec thus created the Human-Daleks, even going so far as to splice his own body with that of a human ally of theirs, Mr Diagoras. To do so, the Cult infiltrated the construction of the Empire State Building and set up a Transgenic Laboratory beneath it, (TV: Daleks in Manhattan) from which they planned to use Dalekanium placed on the mast as an energy conductor for gamma radiation from a solar flare to power the Final Experiment.
The other three Daleks, however, ruled that Sec had gone too far and had betrayed the Dalek ethos; they stripped him of his authority and eventually killed him. Their attempt to make an army out of Sec's Dalek-Humans was foiled by the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones, after the Doctor had agreed to work with Sec to make the kidnapped humans in the Experiment into hybrids that were even more humanlike than Sec. Sec sacrificed himself to save the Doctor's life from Thay, Jast and Caan, who then ordered their Dalek-Humans to take aim at him. The hybrids, however, questioned their orders and refused to fire. The Doctor revealed that his getting in the way of the lightning-strike had caused his Time Lord DNA to mix with the human-Daleks and that gave them freedom. Still stunned, Thay and Jast killed a few human-Daleks but were killed in the process. Caan, declaring the Human-Daleks a "failure", exterminated the new species. The Doctor confronted Caan and offered help, claiming not wanting to cause another genocide after seeing one already, but Caan once again used a temporal shift to escape. (TV: Evolution of the Daleks)
Caan, seeing no better way to bring the Dalek race back to its former glory, broke the time lock on the Last Great Time War to rescue Davros from the jaws of the Nightmare Child. Davros then used his own body cells to recreate the Dalek race and rebuilt a Dalek Fleet of two hundred ships. (TV: The Stolen Earth)
Creation and destruction of the New Dalek Empire
The planet-sized station known as the Crucible was the flagship of the New Dalek Empire. The Supreme Dalek was created and locked Davros and Caan inside the Vault while guarded by Vault Daleks. The new fully-formed Empire transported 27 planets to the Medusa Cascade and took control over the planets. In their attack on Earth, they took many humans aboard their ships, and wiped out any resistance that they met. (TV: The Stolen Earth) During the Dalek invasion, a Dalek was observed by a young Adelaide Brooke as it passed by her house. This Dalek spared her life, flying off to space. This inspired her to go to space, not for revenge, but to explore. The Tenth Doctor believed it recognised her as a fixed point in time. (TV: The Waters of Mars)
The new Empire planned to use the 27 planets in conjunction with the Crucible's energy source to power a reality bomb created by Davros who intend to make the destruction of all existence and allow the Daleks to be the sole inhabitants and masters of the universe. The Supreme Dalek made an arrangement with Davros; the creator of the Daleks would ensure their domination of the universe if they allowed him to live. The plan failed by the interference of the DoctorDonna, who closed off all of the Z-Neutrino energy relay loops of the reality bomb by using an internalised synchronous back-feed reversal loop, locked the Daleks' weaponry in a self-replicating energy blindfold matrix through macrotransmission of a K-filter wavelength and interfered with the Daleks' systems with a trip stitch circuit-breaker in the psycho-kinetic threshold manipulator. The Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor destroyed the fleet and the Crucible by maximising the Dalekanium power feeds and blasting them back. The destruction of the Void by the reality bomb (which through Donna and the Meta-Crisis Doctor's interference, was reversed through dimensional retroclosure), (TV: Journey's End) caused Daleks who were sucked into the Void to be destroyed and allowed a handful of Cybermen to escape with the stolen Dalek technology the Dimension Vault. (TV: The Next Doctor) Rose Tyler claimed that "[e]ven the Void was dead," (TV: Journey's End) while the Tenth Doctor said that a "greater battle" than the one that locked the Daleks and Cybermen into the Void rose up, which was "[s]o great that everything inside the Void perished." (TV: The Next Doctor)
A New Dalek Paradigm
The restoration of the Daleks
A trio of drones from the New Dalek Empire, (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) survived its fall in their flying saucer, falling through time to 1941.
There, the trio picked up the trace of a surviving Progenitor, which contained pure Dalek DNA, which they intended to create new Daleks with which to restore their race. However, as their DNA was so mangled as to be "unrecognisable as Dalek" to the Progenitor, they were forced to start a scheme called the Ironside Project and created an android named Edwin Bracewell to claim they were his inventions and two of the three Daleks pretended to be ironsides for the British Army during World War II to ensure Winston Churchill would contact the Eleventh Doctor to trick him into delivering his testimony to the Progenitor. Despite their cover blown, the Daleks successfully obtained the Doctor's testimony and returned to their ship to commence their plan. The Doctor used a Jammie Dodger to fool them into thinking it was a TARDIS self-destruct. To counter this, the Daleks activated a beacon to turn the lights of London on to allow German bombers to destroy the city. Five new, larger Daleks were created, with pure DNA and a new colour-coded rank. The Supreme Dalek told the old Daleks they were impure, which they accepted and they allowed themselves to be disintegrated with no resistance. The new Daleks discovered the Doctor's deception and that the TARDIS self-destruct was fake. The Doctor told Danny Boy to destroy the ship after he destroyed the beacon. The Daleks threatened to destroy the Earth with the Oblivion Continuum inside Bracewell unless the Doctor called off his attack. He complied and returned to Earth to disarm the bomb. After the bomb was disarmed, the new Daleks escaped in a time corridor to rebuild their empire based on the New Dalek Paradigm. (TV: Victory of the Daleks)
Following their escape, the Daleks discovered the lost Time Lord artefact, the Eye of Time, allowing them to alter time as they saw fit. The Daleks returned to Skaro, rebuilt their capital city of Kaalann, appointed a new Dalek Emperor and began rebuilding their Empire. In this new timeline, they killed every member of the human race. However, the Eleventh Doctor and Amy undid these events, leaving Earth unconquered and Kaalann still abandoned. (GAME: City of the Daleks)
Plaguing the universe once more
The Dalek Supreme led an attack on the SS Lucy Gray to recover the Daleks' lost Time Axis. The Eleventh Doctor defeated them by firing their ship into the sun. (GAME: Return to Earth) The Dalek ship escaped by making a random jump several hundred years into the past. The Daleks attempted to force the Doctor to fix their ship by attaching his TARDIS to their ship; the Doctor escaped and used his TARDIS to fling their ship into a black hole. (GAME: Evacuation Earth)
A Scientist Dalek sent an alien family plummeting through time and space to collect all the Time orbs. The Scientist recruited many Strategist Daleks and Drones. It also recruited big armies of Cybermen and Silurians as a distraction for the Eleventh Doctor and Amy. (GAME: The Mazes of Time)
At the beginning of the 40th century, the Daleks began another war with humanity which continued into the 41st century. The Eleventh Doctor and Amy encountered a group led by the Chief Strategist who had been sent on a mission to find a Dalek mutant being experimented on by a scientist who tried to make them less aggressive creatures. The Daleks referred to this mutant as "the Abomination". They attacked and destroyed Earth's top secret space station, Station 7, and chased the survivors to the planet Strantana below. After slaughtering all resistance, they finally found the Abomination in a hidden base, but it escaped its container and disabled the base reactor's safety measures. An explosion destroyed the base, the Daleks, the Abomination, and all the Dalek ships that had landed on the planet. The Doctor, Amy and Jay, an SSS officer, watched from a safe distance. The Dalek mission was a failure but the war continued. They had agents working in the SSS. (COMIC: The Only Good Dalek)
The Daleks joined the Alliance to imprison the Eleventh Doctor in the Pandorica in 102 to save the universe. (TV: The Pandorica Opens) As the Doctor was not responsible for the Total Event Collapse as they thought, the Daleks, along with almost the rest of the universe, were destroyed, leaving only two Stone Daleks, one of which hindered the Doctor and his companions' efforts to save the universe in 1996. Nevertheless, they were successful and the whole of reality, including the Daleks, were restored. (TV: The Big Bang)
The Doctor had an encounter with the Daleks during which they exterminated Albert Einstein's toothbrush. (TV: Death is the Only Answer)
Searching for information on the Silence before going to what he assumed was his death, the Doctor found a badly damaged Supreme Dalek and used it to look up information on the Silence. (TV: The Wedding of River Song)
A new Emperor
Led by a new Emperor Dalek, the Daleks planned to remove Gallifrey from existence and become the new Lords of Time. They used a piece of the Eternity Clock to put a time lock around a large part of London in 2106. Once they perfected their time lock technology, they planned to use it to put temporal bubbles around other planets, making them unstoppable. The Eleventh Doctor and River Song infiltrated the Emperor's Flagship and managed to take back the piece of the Clock. (GAME: The Eternity Clock)
At some point, a small contingent of bronze Daleks were sent on a mission to travel through Earth's history and analyse how humans made war so that weaknesses could be found and exploited in future conflicts with the Daleks. They called this the Dalek Project. The Eleventh Doctor encountered these Daleks in the First World War in 1917 where he sent their ship crashing to the ground by ramming a plane into it. The remaining Daleks were destroyed by the combined armies of the war who had formed a very brief alliance to defend themselves. The Dalek saucer remained underground for one hundred years before it was found and accidentally reactivated by a team of archaeologists. The Eleventh Doctor arrived in time to save them and connected the ship up to a power line, overloading the Daleks. He called this "unfinished business". (COMIC: The Dalek Project)
Forgetting the Doctor
The Daleks were notable customers of the information regarding the Doctor held by the Inforarium. When the Eleventh Doctor discovered the Daleks, as well as the Cybermen and Sontarans, had been purchasing this information, he infiltrated the Inforarium and memory-proofed their database using methods he learned from the Silence. The information sold was thus instantly forgotten. (HOMEVID: The Inforarium)
When a human starliner, the Alaska, crashlanded on the Dalek Asylum planet, the security of the insane Daleks contained there was compromised. Fearing what would happen if these Daleks were to escape, the Prime Minister ordered the abduction of the Doctor, who he knew as the predator of the Daleks, so he could be sent to the Asylum and lower its impenetrable force field so the Daleks could destroy their derranged brethren, despite their wish to preserve them and their "beautiful" hatred. Understanding that the Doctor was best assisted by his companions, his most recent ones, Amy Pond and Rory Williams, were abducted as well.
Once the planet's defences were lowered by the human-turned-Dalek, Oswin Oswald, the Parliament launched an attack to destroy the Asylum, but not before Oswin wiped out all memory of the Doctor in the minds of every Dalek. When the Doctor came back to their ship, he was bombarded with "the First Question" ("Doctor Who?") by the entire Parliament. He left shortly after, but not before taunting the bewildered Daleks that they'd never stop asking. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)
Siege of Trenzalore
The Daleks - along with the Cybermen, Sontarans, Slitheen, Terileptils, Silurians, Judoon, Weeping Angels and many other species - were driven to Trenzalore by a mysterious message, a question asked by the Time Lords through a crack in the universe with the answer being the Doctor's true name. If it was answered, the Time Lords would return and the waiting fleets would fire on them, beginning another Time War. The Papal Mainframe arrived at the planet first and set up a force field which locked all the other species out of the planet and the Siege of Trenzalore began.
While the other species attempted to sneak past the force field, the Daleks called for reinforcements, preparing for war. Eventually they attacked the mainframe, killing everyone before converting them into Dalek puppets. Information regarding the Doctor was harvested from Tasha Lem, resulting in the Daleks remembering who he was. They also revived, tortured, and killed Tasha "several times" in an effort to learn how to break the force field. The Daleks then arranged for the Doctor to be lured into a trap, but Tasha managed to break free from her conditioning and destroyed the Daleks sent to kill the Doctor.
Despite the trap failing, the Daleks managed to breach the force field, and the Siege of Trenzalore grew into a war as the species orbiting the planet followed the Daleks through the force field. After much fighting, many of these species were killed or retreated. The Doctor and the Mainframe's Silent priests acted as the last line of defence against the Daleks but they too were overpowered and the Doctor, having used up all twelve of his regenerations, grew too old to continue fighting.
With the resistance dealt with, the Daleks (who had, by then, either remembered or rediscovered his identity) began looking for the Doctor in the town of Christmas with Dalek fighter pods firing on the town and a huge flying saucer descending upon it. However, Clara Oswald pleaded to the Time Lords to grant the Doctor a new regeneration cycle, and the Doctor began regenerating into his twelfth incarnation. The energy released was enough to destroy some of the attacking Fighter Pods and the final burst destroyed the saucer. The shockwave blew apart the Daleks ground forces, ending the war. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
The Cradle of the Gods
At an unknown stage of their history, the New Dalek Paradigm discovered the superweapon known as the Cradle of the Gods and learned of its ability to create or destroy on a massive scale. To make use of the weapon, the Daleks used a huge galactic recession to their advantage and created 400 planets to provide homes to the billions of people affected, which were collectively referred to as the Sunlight Worlds. It was governed by the Dalek Foundation, with the planet Carthedia of the Earth Alliance acting as a head of state. While a generation of people believed the Daleks had created a welfare state, it was in fact a plan headed by the Dalek Time Controller and the Dalek Supreme to transform the 400 worlds into copies of Skaro.
However, the Daleks were unable to activate the Cradle and so they sent an anonymous message in the form of a hypercube to the Doctor's TARDIS with the intention of manipulating him into activating the Cradle instead. The Doctor's investigations resulted in shock when he learned the Daleks were considered a force for good and he was placed on trial while trying to convince the citizens of Carthedia that they were evil, which the Daleks had declared a hate crime. He was put on trial by the Dalek Litigator, who was really the Dalek Time Controller posing as a law enforcer, and when he pleaded guilty in a failed attempt to anger the Dalek and was sentenced to imprisonment, he escaped off-planet with three orphaned children, Sabel, Jenibeth and Ollus Blakely, whose parents, Terrin and Alyst, had killed themselves to prevent the Daleks from obtaining the information on the Cradle they possessed.
After learning more about the Cradle on the desert planet of Gethria and losing Jenibeth, the Doctor tried to spark a revolution on Sunlight 349 to cause the collapse of the Dalek Foundation but he could not gather the necessary support. The Dalek Litigator arrived and subjected the Doctor to another public trial. Sabel and Ollus were taken away from the Doctor's care and he was exiled from the Sunlight Worlds. However he returned to Gethria 90 years in the future and encountered an elderly Jenibeth who had been transformed into a Dalek puppet after the Daleks took her prisoner as a child. The Dalek Time Controller arrived and forced the Doctor to activate the Cradle but Jenibeth's childlike mind allowed her to resist her conditioning and she fired on the Daleks, destroying numerous drones and forcing the Time Controller to retreat and the Doctor set the Cradle to self-destruct.
Before the Cradle exploded, it reverted the Sunlight Worlds to how Jenibeth remembered them as a child, as well as turning her and her siblings back into children and recreating their parents, although their memories were reverted too. The Daleks abandoned the plan. (PROSE: The Dalek Generation)
Resistance from within
When the Daleks tracked Patient Zero to the Amethyst Viral Containment Station in the past, the Dalek Time Controller commanded a mission sent there, planning to move the station through time to the Daleks. The Sixth Doctor damaged their operations and left them trying to fend off an explosion. However the Time Controller realised the explosion at the Amethyst Viral Containment Station had caused the viruses to be scattered through time and allowed it to happen. The Doctor believed the Time Controller had been destroyed in the explosion, (AUDIO: Patient Zero) It was actually blasted back in time. (AUDIO: Lucie Miller / To the Death)
At some point the Combined Galactic Resistance formed to battle the Daleks and captured a damaged Dalek that was later named Rusty. (TV: Into the Dalek) Human historians would later claim Rusty was part of the pre-Time War Dalek Empire, (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) but the Dalek unit had access to memories of post-Time War events, implying that it was a member of the New Dalek Paradigm. After the Twelfth Doctor rescued Journey Blue, the Resistance asked him to help fix Rusty as he had been turned good. The Doctor, Clara Oswald, Journey and two soldiers travelled into Rusty and located a crack in his power source that was spewing radiation and killing him, losing one soldier along the way. The Doctor repaired the crack with his sonic screwdriver, but the radiation had been causing the Dalek's change and it turned evil again, breaking free of its restraints and calling in more Daleks to destroy the Aristotle. At the insistence of Clara, the Doctor, Clara, Journey and the remaining soldier attempted to turn Rusty good again by reactivating his suppressed memories, particularly that of a star being born which would open him to the Doctor's influence. Clara succeeded in reactivating the memories, opening Rusty's mind and the Doctor telepathically linked with him to get him to see the good in the universe through the Doctor. However, the "beauty" that Rusty saw was the destruction of the Daleks by the Doctor in the past and realising they were evil, Rusty turned on the Daleks who were attacking the human resistance fighters and slaughtered them. Telling the Doctor that he wasn't a good Dalek but the Doctor was, Rusty ordered the Dalek flying saucer that was docked with the Aristotle to retreat, claiming that the humans had activated the ship's self-destruct then left with them to continue his war against his own kind. (TV: Into the Dalek)
The Daleks engaged in a race against the Cybermen to obtain the Orb of Fates, the key to a Time Lord warship and superweapon called the Starbane. One Dalek managed to obtain one piece of the Orb and hid it inside its casing after it was taken prisoner by two Cybermen and interrogated as to the artefact's whereabouts. The Dalek sent a distress signal which was answered by the Twelfth Doctor who flattened the interrogating Cybermen with his TARDIS. The Dalek, whom the Doctor called "Lumpy", claimed its nature had been altered by the Cybermen during its imprisonment and it expressed a desire to see both the Daleks and the Cybermen thwarted in their attempts to gain control of the Starbane.
The Doctor and Lumpy teamed up in an unlikely alliance. They discovered the two remaining elements of the Orb of Fates on Telos and on Sontar respectively - with the Doctor repairing Lumpy partially. Upon piecing back together the Orb, the TARDIS was transported directly to the Starbane. However, by that point it was already under the occupation of the Dalek forces. As Lumpy proceeded deeper into the Starbane, he and the other Daleks soon revealed that Lumpy had never been changed and that the Daleks had tricked the Doctor into literally giving them control of the Starbane. However, the Twelfth Doctor revealed that when he was repairing Lumpy he fitted in a device to control Lumpy's armour and managed to get Lumpy to the core while he piloted his TARDIS away - with the Daleks pursuing Lumpy unable to catch him. Forcing Lumpy to throw the orb into the core, the Starbane and the Dalek forces inside were destroyed - although Lumpy survived in a badly damaged state, screaming the Doctor's name as the Doctor bid farewell to his unlikely companion. (GAME: The Doctor and the Dalek)
Rusty, meanwhile, spent millions of years destroying the Daleks, eventually retreating to a tower in Villengard where he stood watch, killing all the assassins sent by the rest of the Daleks to kill him. When the Twelfth Doctor, who was nearing the end of his life, arrived in Villengard, he convinced Rusty to help him learn about the Testimony Foundation via the pathweb, citing that helping him in any way would hurt the rest of the Daleks. (TV: Twice Upon a Time)
Return to Skaro
Several Daleks joined Davros (who survived the Crucible's destruction) on a rebuilt Skaro, where Davros was dying of advanced age. The Daleks, due to Davros having no control over them, captured and appeared to exterminate Missy and Clara after the two tried to escape imprisonment on Skaro. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice)
Later, the Twelfth Doctor stole Davros' chair and trundled into Dalek control, brandishing a severed gunstick. The Daleks attempted to exterminate the Doctor but failed, as the force field on Davros' chair still held after its owner left. The Daleks and Davros were later given some of the Doctor's regeneration energy to be fashioned into Time Lord-Dalek hybrids, but were defeated when the Dalek City was destroyed by the decomposing Daleks in the sewers below the city, whom had also been healed by the regeneration energy and revolted against the Daleks. The City was all but reduced to rubble and in the midst of the chaos Missy tried to escape, but was cornered by a large group of Daleks. Then she informed her captors that she had "a very clever idea." (TV: The Witch's Familiar)
Some time after this, Missy stated that the "word among the Daleks" was that the Doctor was retired and on Darillium, (TV: Extremis) following the Twelfth Doctor indeed spending twenty-four years on Darillium living a quiet married life with River Song. (TV: The Husbands of River Song) During his travels with Bill Potts, the Twelfth Doctor encountered a Dalek harvest ship. (COMIC: Harvest of the Daleks) The Thirteenth Doctor would later imply she thought she was free from the threat of the Daleks. (TV: Resolution) After a King wanted her dead, the Thirteenth Doctor ran across hills and hid behind a Dalek. (PROSE: The Death List)
Hypothesised final defeat
The Final Dalek War was a hypothesised future war that was supposedly started by Skaro's penultimate destruction. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors) According to one account, Skaro was destroyed via an implosion in the "unforeseeable future", by which time Zone X Daleks existed. (COMIC: The Test of Time) Some historians had believed that the Daleks' final defeat had been at the Siege of Trenzalore. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) Alternatively, Jack Harkness believed that, thanks to Davros's engineering, the Daleks would be able to survive until the end of time itself. (WC: Monster File: Davros)
Other realities
Missing info from COMIC: Fire and Brimstone..
Alternate timelines
In an alternate timeline created when the Seventh Doctor's TARDIS got trapped in the Temporal Plexus, the Daleks were peace-loving academics, with Skaro being the universal centre of civilisation, philosophy, democracy and art. The Time Lords of this timeline were on good terms with these Daleks. Ultimately the Seventh Doctor erased this timeline from existence when it began to threaten the stability of the original timeline. (PROSE: The Ripple Effect)
In an alternate timeline created by the Black Guardian, in which the First Doctor never left Gallifrey and instead became Lord President, the Daleks had amassed an enormous empire that even the Time Lords feared. The Imperial Daleks were among the twelve species that invaded Earth at the same time. This timeline was erased when the Seventh Doctor acquired the Key to Time, on the instructions of the White Guardian. (COMIC: Time & Time Again)
In an aborted timeline, the War Master used the Anti-Genesis codes to travel from the Last Great Time War to Skaro during the Thousand Year War, where he killed Davros (AUDIO: From the Flames) and infiltrated the Kaled Scientific Elite to create his own race of Daleks. (AUDIO: The Master's Dalek Plan, Shockwave) In this timeline, the Daleks successfully conquered the universe, but gradually developed a resentment of their creator, (AUDIO: He Who Wins) as the Daleks had with Davros in the original timeline. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks et al) Ultimately, these Daleks were erased from existence in a combined effort from the Master's future self, a parallel universe Master, and the Dalek Time Strategist, as the Master's rewriting of the Daleks' history threatened to erase all of creation. (AUDIO: He Who Wins)
In a timeline created when the Tenth Doctor poisoned the Kotturuh in the Dark Times, (PROSE: The Knight, The Fool and The Dead) the Daleks did not fight the Time War. Instead, the Emperor presided over an Empire at war with the Hond. The Emperor’s strategies were guided by the Prime Strategist, which claimed to be the oldest Dalek. (COMIC: Defender of the Daleks) After the discovery of an ancient Dalek drone, (PROSE: The Last Message) the Emperor became aware of fluctuations in the Dark Times and sought to capitalise on them. (PROSE: The Guide to the Dark Times) To deal with the Hond‘s attack, the Strategist suggested the recruitment of the Doctor so the Daleks captured the Tenth Doctor and brought him to Skaro. Reluctantly convinced by the Emperor, the Doctor worked with the Strategist and identified a way to pacify the Hond. The Daleks turned on him, however he escaped with the help of the Thirteenth Doctor. The Strategist suggested the Daleks use other Doctors, such as the Eighth Doctor. (COMIC: Defender of the Daleks) The Emperor created a Time Squad to investigate the fluctuations and rectify them to the Daleks‘ benefit. (PROSE: The Guide to the Dark Times) The Daleks captured the Eighth Doctor’s TARDIS from Atharna, bringing him before them. (AUDIO: He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not)
In an alternate timeline where Rassilon and the Cybermen allied to conquer all of time and space, the Cybermen conquered Skaro and erased the Daleks from history. The Daleks were restored when the Twelfth Doctor and Rassilon used the Eye of Harmony on Gallifrey to restore the original timeline. (COMIC: Prologue: The Fifth Doctor, Supremacy of the Cybermen)
Alternate universes
In a parallel universe created by the Quantum Archangel, the Daleks were the Enemy in the War in Heaven. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel)
The Dalek Emperor once summoned Daleks from a parallel universe for assistance in conquering Mutter's Spiral. These Daleks, however, were appalled by the actions of their counterparts, who they termed "Enemy Daleks" as they sided with the remnants of the Earth Alliance against the Dalek Empire. (AUDIO: Project Infinity, Dalek Empire II: Dalek War)
The Thaleks existed in the universe of another Doctor. (AUDIO: Auld Mortality, PROSE: The Innocents)
In the universe of another Doctor, the Daleks split into two factions after the disappearance of their creator, Davros. One remained loyal to Davros and searched for him and the other went renegade and began an interstellar empire, encountering the Doctor. The loyalists eventually returned to Skaro to protect the Thals from the Quatch, the species responsible for the devastation of Skaro. The Doctor and Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart arrived and, after discovering the true purpose of the Daleks’ return home, helped the Thals and Daleks defend against the Quatch. The Doctor discovered Davros was working with the Quatch and persuaded him to turn on them, by revealing their role in Skaro’s devastation. After the Quatch defeat, the Daleks and Thals decided to live in peace together on Skaro, with Alistair staying to assist. (AUDIO: Masters of War)
The Fourth Doctor once theorised the absence of the Daleks in some alternate universes as an explanation for realities in which the Krotons, Quarks and Ogrons respectively emerged as dominant powers. Indeed, a leader of the Ogron Confederation of Planets was unfamiliar with the Daleks. (COMIC: The Lost Dimension)
The Skaro Degradations came from permutations of reality created in the Last Great Time War. (PROSE: Engines of War)
Society and culture
The Daleks were best-known as a warlike race who waged war across whole civilisations and with races all over the universe. (TV: The Daleks, Doomsday) When the Eleventh Doctor was on the Dalek Asylum he considered the Daleks the most advanced warrior race in the universe, (TV: Asylum of the Daleks) and the Twelfth Doctor later concurred that the middle of a Dalek war zone was the deadliest place he knew. (TV: The Pilot)
Appreciation of beauty
Although Daleks proudly proclaimed that they had "no concept of elegance" (TV: Doomsday) and the One in a Million Dalek's willingness to protect the perishable beauty of flowers was seen as an aberration by his Emperor, (COMIC: Shadow of Humanity) the Thals knew that the Daleks' forefathers had been "great thinkers and philosophers", (TV: The Daleks) and the Daleks were still known to write poetry. (PROSE: The Also People) Some of the more elaborate Dalek battle cries had an almost poetic quality about them (for example, "Advance and Attack! Attack and Destroy! Destroy and Rejoice!") (TV: The Chase) and repetition of words such as "Predict! Predict! Predict!". (TV: The Parting of the Ways) In an alternate reality, the Daleks showed a fondness for the works of William Shakespeare. (AUDIO: The Time of the Daleks)
More "disgustingly" (in the words of the Eleventh Doctor), the Daleks viewed pure hatred as beautiful and worth preserving even at a great cost, which was the reason for the existence of the Dalek Asylum, where Daleks so blithely hateful that they presented a danger to their own people were kept. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)
The Tenth Doctor believed that music was "all just noise" to the Daleks, an observation which inspired him to temporarily repel a few Daleks by amplifying a radio's harmonies into a screech that was already painful to human ears, but seemed downright unbearable to the Daleks. (TV: Evolution of the Daleks)
The Doctor
Due to their frequent defeats by the Doctor, he became a legendary figure in Dalek culture and mythology. They had standing orders to capture or exterminate the Doctor on sight, and were occasionally able to identify him despite his regenerations. The Daleks knew the Doctor as the "Ka Faraq Gatri", meaning the "Bringer of Darkness" or "Destroyer of Worlds". (COMIC: Bringer of Darkness) Indeed, after the Doctor had shattered the Daleks' ambition to wipe out all of creation save for themselves using a reality bomb, an enraged Davros screamed to the Doctor that he "named [him], forever, the Destroyer of Worlds!!…". (TV: Journey's End)
The Ninth Doctor told the human-born Daleks he met on Satellite Five that "the ancient legends of the Dalek homeworld" referred to him as "the Oncoming Storm". (TV: The Parting of the Ways) The Doctor was also referred to as the Predator of the Daleks. Shortly before the destruction of the Dalek Asylum, Oswin erased all knowledge of the Doctor from every Dalek's memory. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks) However, the Daleks regained their memory of the Doctor from Tasha Lem. (TV: The Time of the Doctor) Remembering their foe drove the Prime Minister of the Daleks insane. (PROSE: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
The Daleks had also been a vital part of the Doctor's growth, as he made it his mission to combat evil in the universe after meeting the Daleks during his First incarnation. (TV: Into the Dalek) Though the Doctor sometimes thought he had totally defeated his nemeses, the Tenth Doctor was angered by the belief that, while he would lose everything, the Daleks always survived. (TV: Daleks in Manhattan) After the years of combat between the time traveller and the Dalek race, Davros stated that the Doctor had "slaughtered" billions of Daleks. (TV: The Witch's Familiar)
The Daleks saw the Doctor as their greatest enemy. (TV: The Chase, Victory of the Daleks, Evolution of the Daleks) Even though he once referred to the Master as his archenemy, (TV: The Deadly Assassin) the Doctor also described the Daleks as his greatest foes (COMIC: Defender of the Daleks) and archenemies, going as far as to view them as the greatest sin in the universe. (TV: Victory of the Daleks) Similarly, during his Twelfth life, the Doctor stated Davros, the creator of the Daleks, was his arch nemesis. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice)
While talking with Rusty, the Twelfth Doctor stated that, if he was helped in any way, the Daleks would be hurt. (TV: Twice Upon a Time) The Thirteenth Doctor stated that encounters with the Daleks were personal. (TV: Resolution)
Psychology
Daleks had little individual personality and a strict hierarchy. They were conditioned to obey a superior's orders without question, even if these orders resulted in pain or death. (AUDIO: The Curse of Davros) The most fundamental feature of Dalek culture and psychology was an unquestioned belief in the superiority of the Daleks. Other species were either to be exterminated or enslaved, and then exterminated when no longer necessary. The default directive of a Dalek was to destroy all non-Dalek life forms. (TV: The Power of the Daleks, Dalek, et al.) They interestingly tended to project a similar mindset on other species; they found it difficult to understand that humans sometimes destroyed members of their own species, (TV: The Power of the Daleks) and several Daleks observed that there was something admirable about the Doctor's hatred of the Daleks and intent to wipe them out completely, even if they found it monstrous that this exterminating intent was directed at them. (TV: Dalek, Asylum of the Daleks, Into the Dalek)
Daleks even regarded "deviant" Daleks as their enemies and worthy of extermination. The civil war between the Renegade and Imperial Daleks was an example of this. Each faction considered the other a perversion despite the relatively minor differences. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) This belief also meant that Daleks were intolerant of such "contamination" even within themselves. (TV: Dalek, The Parting of the Ways, Evolution of the Daleks, AUDIO: The Mutant Phase) Despite this, Daleks felt offended by exterminating their own "divine hatred", and deviant Daleks would sometimes instead be sent to the Dalek Asylum, should their hatred be deemed pure enough. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)
Another result of this superiority complex was their complete ruthlessness. This was due to genetic modifications made to the original Kaled mutants by Davros. It was because of this that it was nearly impossible to negotiate or reason with a Dalek, and it was this single-mindedness that made them so dangerous.
Their reliance on logic and machinery was a weakness, albeit one that they recognised. Daleks considered illogical actions impossible. (TV: Destiny of the Daleks) They transferred emotions from other life-forms twice, in one case humans, having refined the Human Factor with the help from the Second Doctor to create humanised Daleks. (TV: The Evil of the Daleks) In another instance, they refined slyness from the Xxarqon, cruelty from the Tentrax and insane hatred from the Glarosus. (COMIC: Doctor Who and the Dogs of Doom)
One unintentionally humanised Dalek occurred after it used Rose Tyler's DNA to regenerate after sustaining injuries, involuntarily developing positive feelings. Its traditional Dalek psychology remained, however, and it ultimately self-destructed in disgust. The emotional capacity of Daleks was limited to largely negative emotions (hate being chief among them), as "human" emotions such as compassion and sentimentality were considered by them to be weaknesses. However, they were capable of comprehending these emotions, and often used them to exploit their enemies. A prime example occurred with the lone Dalek in Henry van Statten's vault; while talking with the Ninth Doctor, the Dalek chose its words carefully, hoping to goad the Time Lord into initiating a physical attack on the chained mutant. Later, the Dalek played on an unwitting Rose Tyler's feelings of pity and compassion, leading her to touch its battered casing and restore energy to the near-dead Dalek. (TV: Dalek)
Additionally, the Daleks used the greed of Theodore Maxtible to make him their ally. However, Daleks never formed permanent alliances; once their allies outlived their usefulness, they were usually exterminated on the spot. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan, The Evil of the Daleks, AUDIO: The Mutant Phase)
The Ninth Doctor claimed that Daleks were incapable of any emotion except hate, (TV: Dalek) and later that they had "removed all [their] emotions", though he speculated there remained "one little spark" of fear somewhere in their DNA. (TV: The Parting of the Ways) However, many Daleks were shown displaying a wider range of emotion, Missy claimed that Daleks used emotions such as hate and anger to fuel their weapons. (TV: The Witch's Familiar) The Cult of Skaro displayed fear of the Tenth Doctor, physically recoiling at the mention of his name, (TV: Doomsday) and another Dalek begged River Song in terror for its life. (TV: The Big Bang) The Daleks were also capable of anticipation, preferring to wait for their victims to run before exterminating them. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice)
According to the Tenth Doctor, Daleks were brilliant scientists and engineers. (PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks)
According to K9 Mark II's files, the Daleks' chief characteristics were "ruthlessness, cunning and implacable resolve." (AUDIO: The Dalek Contract)
According to the Eleventh Doctor, the Daleks were "the worst thing in all creation". They had "no conscience, no mercy [and] no pity". He claimed that "hate" looked like a Dalek and that "the Daleks [were] death". (TV: Victory of the Daleks)
Journey Blue of the Combined Galactic Resistance said a Dalek was a raging lunatic. The Twelfth Doctor described the cortex vault stoking the fire of a Dalek's hate as "evil refined as engineering". (TV: Into the Dalek)
Davros considered the Daleks to be single-minded, determined and ruthless. (AUDIO: The Lights of Skaro)
In the 27th century, Bernice Summerfield described the Daleks as "the most evil race the universe ever came up with". (AUDIO: The Lights of Skaro)
Children of Davros
The Daleks were willing to kill their creator, Davros, on a number of occasions. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks, Resurrection of the Daleks) However, as recounted by Jack Harkness, the Daleks repeatedly realised they needed their creator, specifically requiring his knowledge, genius, expertise, and creativity. (Webcast: Monster File: Davros) Davros stated that, thanks to a genetic defect he failed to remove, the Daleks showed respect and mercy towards him. This was why they allowed him to siphon their life energy to sustain himself while he was dying. (TV: The Witch's Familiar)
Religion
As noted above, the Daleks created by the manipulation and mutation of human genetic material by a demented Dalek Emperor were religious fanatics. They worshipped the Emperor as their god and even had a concept of blasphemy. Normal Daleks had no religion, other than their fanatic belief in their own supremacy, (TV: The Parting of the Ways) with some Daleks accordingly claiming there was no God. (AUDIO: The Final Phase) However, two Dalek organisations, the Cult of Skaro and the Volatix Cabal, did adopt names usually used to refer to religious groups. (TV: Doomsday, COMIC: The Then and the Now)
Legal system
Although the Daleks had no regard for due process and galactic law, there were a small number of occasions on which they took enemies back to Skaro for a "trial" rather than killing them on the spot. One such enemy was the renegade Time Lord known as the Master, whose remains they even allowed the Eighth Doctor to collect and carry back to Gallifrey. (TV: Doctor Who)
Another was their own creator, Davros, whom they put on trial on several occasions. (TV: Revelation of the Daleks, COMIC: Emperor of the Daleks!, PROSE: War of the Daleks, AUDIO: I, Davros) Accounts differ as to whether some of these instances were "trials" in the criminal sense, (COMIC: Emperor of the Daleks!) a test to see if he was in fact worthy of becoming the supreme leader of the race, (AUDIO: I, Davros) or, to some extent, both at once. (PROSE: War of the Daleks)
The Daleks on Vulcan once referred to the precept of Daleks' supremacy of humans as "the Law of the Daleks", which they would have to "teach" to the human colonists when they made their move. (TV: The Power of the Daleks)
Dalek hierarchy
- Main article: Dalek hierarchy
Although they saw their entire species as superior, the Daleks had a hierarchical system. This included a wide range of ranks bestowed upon selected Daleks. (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Evil of the Daleks, Victory of the Daleks)
Dalek writings
- Main article: Dalek writing
Daleks used inscriptions as recognition codes. They also measured time in rels. (TV: Doomsday) They were able to read human numerals and words, even using them upon occasion. (TV: Planet of the Daleks)
Names
In the early days of the Daleks' development on Skaro, some individual Daleks had actual names, as evidenced by the scientist Zeg. (COMIC: Duel of the Daleks) However, by the time of the Dalek Emperor's scheme to isolate the Dalek factor and implant it in all of humanity, it was a mark of the Humanised Daleks' oddness that they took on names — starting with Alpha, Beta and Omega. (TV: The Evil of the Daleks) The Tenth Doctor later noted that the Cult of Skaro's having names (Sec, Thay, Caan and Jast) was one of their unusual features. (TV: Doomsday)
In place of names, Dalek soldiers could be designated with a number by their superiors; the newly-created Daleks on Vulcan were referred to by the original three by designations such as "Dalek 9" and "Dalek 10". (TV: The Power of the Daleks) Daleks also referred to each other as such during their invasion of Trodos, (COMIC: The Trodos Ambush) and one one of the Daleks participating in the conquest of another planet was known as DK3. (COMIC: The Defeat of the Daleks)
Several other Daleks throughout history were granted names, not by themselves, but by the Doctor — including Dal, (AUDIO: Echoes of War) Rusty, (TV: Into the Dalek, Twice Upon a Time) and Lumpy. (GAME: The Doctor and the Dalek) The Space Security Service also assigned numbers to captured Daleks. (COMIC: The Only Good Dalek)
Cultural effect
- Main article: Daleks in popular culture and mythology
The Daleks had a devastating effect on the races and individuals that encountered them. For the most part they epitomised fear and danger, especially for the Doctor, who in their eleventh incarnation considered them to be his "enemy", and him theirs; (TV: Victory of the Daleks) upon arriving in 1966 and seeing the Post Office Tower that contained WOTAN, the First Doctor remarked to Dodo he had felt like that when the Daleks were near. (TV: The War Machines) The Second Doctor used his encounters with them to warn Zoe Heriot of what she might encounter. (TV: The Wheel in Space) The Second Doctor also later used a mental projection of a Dalek to show the Time Lords of his enemies. (TV: The War Games) A Dalek was one of many fears that assaulted the Third Doctor in the Keller Machine. (TV: The Mind of Evil) When he approached his fourth regeneration, a vision of a Dalek came to the Fourth Doctor. (TV: Logopolis) An amnesic Eighth Doctor once looked suspiciously at a pepper pot, which was similar to a Dalek's shape. (PROSE: The City of the Dead) The Eighth Doctor also described the Daleks as "the greatest threat this universe has ever seen." (AUDIO: Blood of the Daleks) Their power over the Doctor continued through his personality when he used a Chameleon Arch; his human self, John Smith, sketched a Dalek within his Journal of Impossible Things. (TV: Human Nature) Daleks were among the creatures in the Atraxi's files of races that invaded Earth. (TV: The Eleventh Hour)
Their danger was on occasion negligible compared to a greater threat; when speaking of his fellow Time Lords at his trial, the Sixth Doctor stated that "In all my travellings throughout the universe, I have battled against evil, against power-mad conspirators. I should have stayed here! The oldest civilisation, decadent, degenerate and rotten to the core! Power-mad conspirators, Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermen - they're still in the nursery compared to us! Ten million years of absolute power! That's what it takes to be really corrupt!" (TV: The Ultimate Foe) When Rassilon threatened to break the time lock on the Last Great Time War the Tenth Doctor warned the Saxon Master, that "not just the Daleks" would be unleashed if it were broken. (TV: The End of Time)
The Daleks' impact on those humans who encountered them had different effects on their psyches. They appeared in dreams or visions; Ace associated the Daleks with Nazis; a Dalek with a swastika chased her, chanting "Heil Doktor" following her time in an alternate universe populated by Nazis. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus) She later called the Daleks "the catch" to travelling with the Doctor. (AUDIO: Enemy of the Daleks) To Bernice Summerfield a Dalek appeared, also in a dream, alongside several other races such as Sontarans and Cybermen in which the nature of evil was dissected. (PROSE: The Also People) Sam Jones, on awakening from unconsciousness exclaimed, "Anyone get the number of that Dalek?". (PROSE: The Taint) Alternatively, encounters with the Daleks took a certain pride of place for some individuals. Rose Tyler and Sarah Jane Smith compared their experiences encountering Daleks (and, in Rose's case, the Dalek Emperor) upon meeting. (TV: School Reunion) During the 2009 invasion, upon hearing the transmission of "EXTERMINATE", Sarah Jane and Jack Harkness reacted with undiluted terror, crying and holding their loved ones close. (TV: The Stolen Earth) The Doctor's friend Winston Churchill originally saw the Ironsides as "our salvation" and as a weapon to use to kill the Third Reich with and for the Allies to win World War II due to their hostility. When the Eleventh Doctor attacked them with a spanner, Winston described the "machines" as "precious". (TV: Victory of the Daleks) Although most of the humans on the frontier world of Red Rocket Rising forgot about the Daleks, to the point where Acting President Eileen Klint initially believed them to be pitied and not feared, Tom Cardwell recognised them from the old records as "the worst of them all", and tried urging the other humans to run for the hills. (AUDIO: Blood of the Daleks)
The Testimony Foundation, a organisation that existed during the era of New Earth, knew of the Daleks and Davros. Encounters between the Doctor and the Daleks were among the events they showcased when confronting his First and Twelfth incarnations. (TV: Twice Upon a Time)
Dalek technology
The key item of Dalek technology was the casing, derived from the Mark III Travel Machines built by Davros. The casings of Davros' Imperial Daleks were made out of bonded polycarbide. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
The eyestalk of the casing bestowed superior vision to the Dalek creature. The plunger-shaped attachment functioned as a flexible and adaptable limb. (TV: Dalek) Dalek gunsticks could kill almost any sentient being (TV: The Daleks, et al.) and could paralyse their victims temporarily or permanently. (TV: "The Survivors")
On the Dalek Asylum there was a nanocloud virus that physically transformed organisms into Dalek puppets which removed all emotion except anger and hatred. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)
The Daleks' gunstick evolved alongside other aspects of Dalek technology. When the First Doctor met them in the Dalek City, the gunstick seemed to have the same qualities as a human gun. Daleks could also change the effects of their guns' energy projectiles; at the lowest level, they would merely temporarily disable an individual in the area the projectiles struck. (TV: The Daleks) The highest setting on a Dalek gunstick would reduce a human to atoms, but the Daleks rarely used that. Instead, they made certain to dial their guns down to the lowest possible setting that would kill a person - that way, Daleks would ensure that all of their victims died as slowly and painfully as possible. (PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks)
On the surface of Skaro, within the confines of the Dalek City, the machines ran on static electricity fed from the city floor. They were incapacitated if removed from the floor. The casing technology changed over the years. The first Daleks to emerge from the bunker in which they had been entombed built a city and power from those. (TV: The Daleks) Those occupying Earth during the their 22nd century invasion had dishes on their backs. (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth) Later models of Dalek casing had internal power supplies, and even repulsor systems[additional sources needed] that allowed them to hover (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks, Dalek) and fly. (TV: The Parting of the Ways, Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, The Stolen Earth/Journey's End)
Throughout time and space, there were many Dalek variants that sported different casings. A Dalek's ability depended on what features its casing offered. (TV: The Daleks, The Evil of the Daleks) The default manipulator arm could be replaced with the likes of flamethrowers and seismic detectors. (TV: The Chase, The Daleks' Master Plan)
By the era of the Last Great Time War, Daleks had force-fields. Whereas previous versions of Daleks could be destroyed by a well-placed bastic bullet, such bullets could not get close to these Daleks' casings. (TV: Dalek, The Parting of the Ways) However, they could be penetrated by their own weaponry, and variations thereof. (TV: Evolution of the Daleks, Victory of the Daleks) They not only could hover, but travel independently through space. (TV: The Parting of the Ways) If an individual touched the casing, they could be burned alive. These Daleks could also use the DNA of a time traveller to regenerate their bodies just by virtue of the traveller touching the casing. (TV: Dalek)
The Daleks were also experts in biological warfare, and used (or attempted to use) biological weapons on several occasions. (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, Planet of the Daleks, Death to the Daleks)
Dalek travel technology varied over time. Dalek spaceships were (almost) consistently designed in a saucer shape, (TV: Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways, The Stolen Earth/Journey's End, Victory of the Daleks) and hoverbouts allowed individual Daleks to travel without using their own power. (AUDIO: Fugitives) They were also able to hack into virtual reality systems, creating attack ships in Puterspace, although they were not particularly good at it. (PROSE: Love and War)
The Daleks also developed time travel capabilities, usually in the form of time corridors which allowed limited transport between one era and another. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks) The Daleks also developed their own kind of time machine of similar capacities to the Doctor's TARDIS; though they could not change shape, they were also dimensionally transcendental. (TV: The Chase, The Daleks' Master Plan) Members of the Cult of Skaro could initiate 'emergency temporal shifts', which acted as teleports through time and space to let the Dalek escape a threat. (TV: Doomsday, Daleks in Manhattan, The Stolen Earth)
Dalek weaponry
- Main article: Dalek weaponry
The Dalek gunstick and manipulator arm could be re-purposed depending on what task was likely to face a specific individual, or removed altogether to render them defenceless and prevent mad Daleks from turning on them, particularly the ones in the intensive care in the Dalek Asylum. The alternatives were far ranging in the different functions they performed. (TV: The Chase, The Parting of the Ways, Asylum of the Daleks)
Other references
In the video game Happy Deathday, played by Izzy Sinclair on the Time-Space Visualiser, Davros and his Daleks were among a host of "every single enemy" that the Doctor had ever defeated, who were assembled by the Beige Guardian and pitted against the Doctor's first eight incarnations. (COMIC: Happy Deathday)
At some point after humans began colonising other planets, they made Dalek toys. Charlotte Eskdale had a toy Dalek in her bedroom. (COMIC: Sky Manor) The Eighth Doctor once used a small plastic Dalek toy to explain temporal physics to Sam Jones. (PROSE: The Scarlet Empress)
On Verticulus, one trick-or-treater wore a Dalek costume for Halloween. (COMIC: Wholloween)
After the Twelfth Doctor's mind was connected to a mind scythe, the "holiday snaps" the Doctor showed Kygon Brox included Rusty. (COMIC: The Instruments of War)
The Daleks were filed in the Fourth Doctor's memory files. (COMIC: Doctor Who and the Iron Legion)
As noted by the Twelfth Doctor in propaganda broadcasts to an occupied Earth in the late 2010s, the Daleks were among the menaces to humanity whom the Monks took credit for defeating. (TV: The Lie of the Land)
Ace compared one of the Robowardens on Parking to a "stunted Dalek". (AUDIO: The High Price of Parking)
When the Skith Leader scanned the Tenth Doctor's mind, the Daleks were among the alien creatures shown to him. (COMIC: The First)
Behind the scenes
Other appearances
Two Doctor Who movies starring Peter Cushing featured the Daleks as the main villains: Dr. Who and the Daleks, and Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., based loosely on the television serials The Daleks and The Dalek Invasion of Earth respectively. However, this wiki only considers the original televised stories by Terry Nation as valid sources. The movies used brand new Dalek props, based closely on the original design but with a wider range of colours. Originally, the movie Daleks were supposed to shoot jets of flame, but this was thought to be too graphic for children, so their weapons emitted jets of deadly vapour instead. They also appeared in the Doctor Who Comic Relief parody, The Curse of Fatal Death.
Outside of Doctor Who, Daleks also made an appearance in the film Looney Tunes: Back in Action and the Star Wars comic strip, Fett Club. A Dalek-based Transformer that would transform into a Mark III Travel Machine features in an issue of Marvel UK's Transformers comic, as well as the Decepticon Starscream picking up Dalek transmissions while flying over a field in England. Spike Milligan wrote a sketch which featured a working-class Dalek with a family of his own, and a Dalek-spoof race (known as the Deacons) made an appearance in a Futurama comic.
Story titles
Beginning with the 1965 stage play The Curse of the Daleks, the best-known title format for stories featuring the Daleks has been "... of the Daleks". This was first used on television in the 1966 serial The Power of the Daleks and was used most recently on TV in 2012's Asylum of the Daleks. In fact, if comic strips, audios and novels are included, more stories exist that do not use this title format, but "... of the Daleks" is considered ubiquitous enough that the spoof film Myth Runner includes a joking reference to an apparent future Who story entitled Deuteronomy of the Daleks.
The word Dalek has been titular to more Doctor Who televised story titles than any other noun, although Planet and Death are more ubiquitous if Hartnell-era adventures — which originally did not have story titles as such — are identified only by their episodic titles. Indeed, in the whole of the Hartnell era, Dalek was used exactly once as an onscreen title — for episode two of the adventure later re-christened as The Dalek Invasion of Earth, "The Daleks".
A Nazi by any other name
As he grew up during World War II, Terry Nation had vivid memories of the war and, in particular, the Nazis. The Daleks share many characteristics with the Nazi party deliberately. They both believe in the superiority of their race, whether it means the entire species, like the Daleks, or their ethnicity, like the German Nazis. Genesis of the Daleks is the most clear depiction of this parallel, with the Kaleds showing dedication to their cause and near-complete conformity. It also showed the killing of any opposed to their ideology; in this case, the Kaled scientists. Their shrieking voices were designed to parody the loud repetitive chanting and rants associated with Nazi rallies. The casting out or forced labour of the Mutos is comparable to the Holocaust, as is the Kaled consensus of them as lesser beings. Another comparison to the Holocaust appears in The Dalek Invasion of Earth, in which Daleks refer to the destruction of Earth as "the final solution", a phrase associated with Nazism. They even greet each other by raising their plungers vertically in a way reminiscent of the Nazi salute. Another blatant reference appears in Journey's End with Daleks chanting "Exterminieren!" as they invade Germany.
Contrariwise, other writers have pointed out the flaws in comparing the Daleks to the Nazis. John Peel noted in the introduction to The Official Doctor Who & the Daleks Book:
They have been compared over the years with Nazis, but this is a tenuous connection at best. Certainly there is a lack of individuality, an unquestioning obedience of orders and a willingness to die for the race - all of this epitomised the Nazi stormtrooper ideal. It isn't hard to see, though, even in the most evil member of the Nazi hierarchy, some spark of buried humanity. Even the elite had their fears and superstitions. The Daleks had none of these.
In aHistory, Lance Parkin expands on this idea:
Real life analogies quickly fail when applied to the Daleks. At times they're compared to the likes of Nazis, but in truth they're literally lacking in humanity. Even "conquest" as we generally understand the term doesn't really interest them - sometimes they put foes to work as slaves (as in Death to the Daleks), but this is almost inevitably in the interest of facilitating new atrocities and exterminations. The point is that one can (and should) hope to use reason against real-world governments, but there is virtually no chance of diplomacy succeeding against the Daleks. ... Basically, the Daleks collectively remain united behind one goal: kill everything that isn't a Dalek.
The catchphrase
The single word most associated with the Daleks is "Exterminate!", which has been uttered by generations of British children impersonating the creatures. However, although a variant of the word, "exterminated", can be heard from the very first appearance of the Daleks, it was not until the final episode ("Flashpoint") of their second story arc, TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, that a Dalek finally was heard uttering the word "Exterminate!"
Design
When Doctor Who was about to return in the mid-2000s, re-imagining how the Daleks would look was a hotly pursued job. On his first day as Doctor Who production designer, in 2004, one of the earliest tasks Ed Thomas had was to select art department staff members from a stack of portfolios on his desk, about which he later noted, "Everyone who had ever drawn a Dalek in their entire life had sent in their CV." The assignment of redesigning the aliens was ultimately given to Matt Savage, with whom Thomas watched The Dalek Invasion of Earth on Savage's very first morning of employment on the series. He remembered, "Ed said: 'We'd like you to spruce up the Daleks.' I was a massive fan. I couldn't believe it. I was grinning from ear to ear." Savage was thereafter instrumental to the redesign of the Daleks' exterior casing. "I put rivets everywhere and some text under the eyestalk, which was like their barcode," he said. (ImageFX magazine, October 2008, pp. 61 & 62)
Music
In the BBC Wales version, Murray Gold has given the Daleks multiple leitmotifs, with the first being in the form of the track identified as "The Daleks" on Doctor Who - Series 1 and 2. This track was heavily choral and the operatic elements were recorded with the Crouch End Festival Chorus in early 2005 at AIR Studios, London. The Confidential for the series 1 episode "Dalek" features a segment that shows the choir recordings taking place, as well as an interview with Murray Gold. Later Dalek music also continues the choral presence, with "Evolution of the Daleks" and "The Dark and Endless Dalek Night" containing similar chanting. In all of Murray Gold's Dalek leitmotifs, the lyrics are in Hebrew.
Cameos
Due to the popularity of Doctor Who, Daleks feature briefly in many other shows, movies, and popular culture. In The Simpsons episode "Holidays of Future Passed", for example, a blue Dalek briefly chases a woman in and out of a revolving door at the "Benny Hilton" Hotel, accompanied by the theme song from the Benny Hill Show.
In the comedy film Looney Tunes: Back in Action, the characters visit "Area 52", a government facility where numerous extraterrestrials (most of them modeled after 1960's theatrical and televisual aliens) are held. Among the most prominent are two Daleks (in a design based on the alternate-continuity film Dr. Who and the Daleks), who join the other aliens in trying to attack the protagonists, but end up blasting each other instead as their quarries escape.
In The Lego Batman Movie, a number of Daleks, coloured according to the New Dalek Paradigm, can be seen among the inhabitants of the Phantom Zone, alongside many famous villains from a number of fictional franchises. Like the others, they are unleashed upon Gotham City by the supervillain known as "the Joker" at the climax of the film, only to be defeated and sealed back inside the prison dimension. Archive audio of Nicholas Briggs exclaiming "Exterminate!" from The Parting of the Ways is used.
A Dalek appears in the movie Ted 2, where it fought Robbie the Robot.
Other matters
The Daleks were responsible for the destruction of Daxus and the genocide of nearly all Dax in The Corinthian Project
External links
- Dalek 6388 - A detailed history of the Dalek props 1963 to 1988 and beyond
- Dalek-related quotes at Wikiquote
- Project Dalek - build your own Dalek
- Dalek City - Dalek Building guides
- Dalek at the Doctor Who Legacy wiki
- Dalek at the Faction Paradox wiki
- Dalek at the LEGO Dimensions Wiki
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