Time Destructor Incident
The Time Destructor Incident was the Time Lord designation for the attempted Dalek conquest of Earth's solar system in the year 4000. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan, PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
Under the leadership of the Black Dalek, the Daleks attempted to construct a superweapon, the Time Destructor, to aid their planned invasion of Earth's solar system. They allied with various powers from Outer Galaxies towards this goal and worked with the Guardian of the Solar System Mavic Chen, who was actually exploiting the alliance to realise his ambitions to rule the universe. Their plans were disrupted by the interference of the First Doctor. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan)
History
Background
Over the course of the five hundred years leading up to the year 4000, the Daleks were known by Earth to have seized control of over seventy planets in Ninth Galactic System and forty more in the constellation of Miros. (TV: Mission to the Unknown) Human historians postdating the Last Great Time War understood what the limited observation technology of the Earth Empire did not, that the Daleks had conquered the Second, Third and Ninth Galaxies in a war across the Outer Galaxies. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
In the 40th century they turned their attention back to Earth, coming into frequent conflict with the Space Security Service (SSS) charged with maintaining humanity's security. (PROSE: The Outlaw Planet, COMIC: Sara Kingdom: Space Security Agent, AUDIO: The Destroyers) This included an invasion of Earth which met with defeat due to the actions of SSS agent Sara Kingdom. (COMIC: The Brain Tappers)
In 3950, (AUDIO: Neverland) Mavic Chen was elected Guardian of the Solar System. He began a secret mining operation of taranium, a rare mineral found on Uranus, (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan) as he was seeking a replacement source of energy for space travel, as Earth's empire was currently dependant on the Great Clock which bent spacetime to aid travel. In 3999, the Great Clock was destroyed due to the meddling of the First Doctor, Steven Taylor and Sara Kingdom, who had time travelled from a later point in the conflict to come. This hastened Chen turning to more radical means. (AUDIO: The Guardian of the Solar System)
By one account, the Time Destructor Incident and the later Human Factor Incident took place following the Dalek Civil War between the Supreme Dalek and Davros, who had created a new race of Daleks on Necros. (PROSE: The History of the Daleks) Most other accounts indicated that the civil war postdated these events. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks, PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe, PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
Conflict
Formation of the alliance
In 4000, Space Security Service agent Marc Cory travelled to Kembel to investigate reports of Dalek presence at the planet, without informing his superiors of his suspicions. He discovered the Daleks were forming an alliance, known as the Galactic Council, with various powers from Outer Galaxies. Overseen by the Black Dalek, the alliance targeted Earth with the intent of invading the solar system. Marc recorded a message for Earth warning of his discovery but was found and exterminated before he could send it. (TV: Mission to the Unknown)
Guardian of the Solar System Mavic Chen agreed to join the Daleks' alliance in secret, supplying taranium that the Daleks needed to construct the Time Destructor. Chen planned to betray the Daleks as soon as he had the superweapon, intending to send a fleet at Venus to destroy the alliance. Chen believed he would have an inevitable rise to greatness as "First Ruler of the Universe", and had allies on Earth supporting his scheme, including the head of the SSS, Karlton.
Six months after Marc Corey's discovery, Chen travelled to Kembel to deliver the taranium to the Galactic Council, with his arrival coinciding with two SSS agents, Bret Vyon and Kert Gantry, crash landing on the planet after travelling there in search of Corey. Kert fell victim to a Dalek patrol whilst Bret escaped, encountering the First Doctor who had just arrived on the planet in his TARDIS along with Steven Taylor and Katarina. Despite the Daleks' efforts to flush out the intruders by setting Kembel's jungle alight, the Doctor and Bret were able to infiltrate their city. Whilst Bret, Steven and Katarina went to hijack a ship so Bret could reach Earth, the Doctor posed as delegate Zephon, who Bret had incapcitated, at the Galactic Council meeting where Chen presented the taranium core. The Doctor stole it and escaped with his companions in Chen's own ship, the Spar. The Daleks subsequently exterminated Zephon for his failure. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan)
Pursuit of the Doctor
The Daleks pursued the Spar, using randomiser to disable the controls of the ship and eventually force land it on Desperus with a Dalek ship in hot pursuit. Despite an attempt by prisoners stuck on the planet to hijack the vessel, the Doctor and Bret managed to effect repairs takeoff again. A prisoner from Desperus, Kirksen, revealed himself onboard however and held Katarina at knifepoint to force them to travel to the nearest planet, Kembel, ignoring their protests of the danger there. Katarina opened the airlock she and Kirksen were standing in front of, sending herself and her captor out into space, sacrificing herself to ensure the others might reach Earth. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan) Katarina's body was eventually recovered from space by River Song. (AUDIO: Companion Piece)
The Spar subsequently escaped the Daleks in pursuit, so the Black Dalek ordered the pursuing forces be killed for their failure, with Chen now ordered to use his influence on Earth to intercept the trio.
Reaching Earth, the Doctor, Steven and Bret sought out a friend of Bret's, Daxtar, who they discovered was actually involved in the conspiracy leading to Bret killing him. With Chen having branded the trio traitors, Karlton assigned Bret's sister, Sara Kingdom, and her partner Borkar to hunt them down. Tracing them to the facility where Daxtar worked, Sara gunned down Bret and pursued the Doctor and Steven, following them into a molecular dissemination experiment which teleported them to Mira. Chen reported the development to the Daleks, pretending this was intentional as Mira was closer to Kembel, who sent a salvage team to Mira.
On Mira, the Doctor and Steven were able to convince Sara of their innocence and fended off attacks by the invisible Visians. The Dalek forces sent to capture them also came into conflict with the Visians, enabling the trio to steal their ship. The Daleks attempted to use the autopilot to direct the hijacked vessel to Kembel, only for Steven to rip it out forcing them to use a magnetised beam to pull the ship instead. Whilst en route the Doctor and Sara worked together to fashion a fake taranium core. Steven's attempt to help using the ship's gravity field left him in a walking vegetative state with a force field around him, which the Doctor decided to use to their advantage on Kembel. Having Sara stay behind Steven, the Doctor bargained with Chen and the Daleks to give them the core at his TARDIS. Outside his ship he handed over the fake and then fled inside, shielded from the Daleks' attempt to exterminate him by Steven's forcefield, with the firepower also returning Steven to normal.
Together the Doctor, Steven and Sara fled Kembel in the TARDIS, with the real taranium core still in their possession, (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan) and subsequently spent months travelling together in time and space. (PROSE: The Mutation of Time) These travels included brief trips to 1965 Liverpool and 1921 Hollywood, (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan) a collision with an experimental Space-time vessel, (AUDIO: The Anachronauts) an encounter with Chen in the recent past at the Great Clock, (AUDIO: The Guardian of the Solar System) an attempt to aid colonists stranded on an asteroid, (AUDIO: The Drowned World) investigations of the house in Ely (AUDIO: Home Truths) and alterations to the Battle of the Somme, (AUDIO: Men of War) a period stranded in the 1950s, (AUDIO: An Ordinary Life) and an encounter with the Sontarans and the SSS in the past. After learning of their trickery and flight on Kembel from interrogating Steven, the Sontaran commander, Slite, was intrigued though deemed their actions cowardly. (AUDIO: The Sontarans)
Skirmish in Ancient Egypt
The Daleks prepared to test the Time Destructor, (AUDIO: The Sontarans) only to discover the taranium core was a fake. The Black Dalek sent for a Dalek time machine, (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan) commanded by a Red Dalek, (PROSE: The Mutation of Time) to hunt down the Doctor and ordered that Chen accompany them. The Daleks located the time travellers in Ancient Egypt and forced the Monk, who was in the midst of attempting to exact his own revenge on the Doctor, to help them.
Capturing Steven and Sara, the Daleks forced the Doctor to handover the taranium core to save his friends. The barter was interrupted by ancient Egyptians, enabling the Doctor, Steven and Sara and the Monk to flee, though Chen was able to seize the core first. The Daleks attempted to hunt down the Doctor, however mistakenly targeted the Monk's TARDIS instead as the Doctor had changed its appearance to match his ship's exterior. After the Monk dematerialised, the Daleks returned to Kembel with the core. Using a directional unit he'd stolen from the Monk's TARDIS, the Doctor piloted his TARDIS to Kembel in pursuit. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan)
Final confrontation
On Kembel, the Daleks and Chen turned on the Galactic Council delegates, sealing them in a room to be destroyed in the first test of Time Destructor, and began preparing the five thousand-strong invasion force. Having becoming separated from the Doctor in the dense jungle, Steven and Sara infiltrated the Dalek city and freed the delegates, who now swore to rally their forces against the Dalek invasion.
After the delegates left in their ships, Chen found Steven and Sara and held them at gunpoint, forcing them to move deeper into the Dalek base, now believing they were seeking to replace him as the Daleks' ally. Chen presented them to the Daleks however the Black Dalek turned on him and ordered his extermination, with Chen delusionally proclaiming his immortality as they killed him.
The Doctor emerged from hiding during the distraction and ordered Steven and Sara back to the TARDIS whilst he seized the Time Destructor and activated it, using it as a shield to prevent the Daleks killing him. Sara disobeyed and came back to aid him as he tried to retreat back to his TARDIS, now struggling with the accleration of time caused by the Time Destructor. Sara herself succumbed to the effects, ageing to death in moments, as the jungle around them withered. The Doctor finally collapsed outside the TARDIS and was helped to safety by Steven. From within the ship they watched as the Destructor continued to devastate Kembel, killing the Daleks frantically trying to destroy it and reducing the landscape to a wasteland. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan) The Dalek invasion fleet was destroyed. (PROSE: The Mutation of Time) Finally the Destructor destroyed itself, enabling the Doctor and Steven to exit the ship and survey the devastation, noting their struggle was finally at an end, at a terrible cost. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan)
On Earth, Marc Corey's message was discovered among Bret Vyon's possessions, exposing the treachery of Chen and Karlton. Karlton was arrested whilst SSS agents made their way to Kembel in pursuit of Chen, though only found a lifeless planet. (PROSE: The Mutation of Time) The exposure of the Daleks' plot triggered the Great War. (PROSE: The Evil of the Daleks)
Aftermath
The Incident was a huge failure for the Daleks. The Dalek Prime regarded the invasion fleet and Black Dalek as irreplaceable. (PROSE: The Mutation of Time) According to human historians, the Black Dalek was recovered alive by attendants, though was badly damaged and in critical condition, and returned to Skaro. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) Dalek survivors of Kembel were also among the inmates of the Dalek Asylum's intensive care, as they'd been driven mad after their encounter with the Doctor. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks) The Great War that ensued from the Incident saw many further losses sustained by the Daleks, culminating in the Dalek Civil War instigated by the Second Doctor. (PROSE: The Evil of the Daleks)
According to the Celestial Intervention Agency's files, the Monk, who they believed to be the sixth incarnation of the Renegade Time Lord known as the Master, was found by the Daleks soon after allying with them and exterminated for his failure to aid them in their master-plan, forcing him to regenerate. (PROSE: CIA File Extracts) Other accounts, however, put this Monk as being the first incarnation (PROSE: The Mutation of Time) of another Renegade Time Lord (AUDIO: The Bekdel Test, Divorced, Beheaded, Regenerated) who met a different fate. (PROSE: No Future)
According to one account, the failure of the 4000 invasion attempt led the Dalek Supreme to return to Skaro and order that Dalek forces retreat from "the human galaxy", preparing a new strategy as the Daleks expanded their empire across the Outer Galaxies. The Dalek Wars ended, for a time, though further conflicts awaited in the Dalek-Movellan War, the Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War and the Last Great Time War. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
In the aftermath of the Incident, the SSS fought the Daleks in a war. Sara's true fates remained a mystery, however her service did inspire her niece, Anya Kingdom, to join the SSS. (AUDIO: The House of Kingdom) In the course of her service Anya would become an associate of the Fourth, (AUDIO: The Perfect Prisoners) and Tenth Doctors. (AUDIO: Buying Time) The Tenth Doctor dated the "old saying" "never turn your back on a dead Dalek" to "about 4000". (PROSE: I Am a Dalek) Visiting Station 7 during the 41st century conflict between the SSS and the New Dalek Paradigm, the Eleventh Doctor told Tranter, the station commander, that he had worked with Bret Vyon and Sara Kingdom, prompting the commander to comment that the Doctor had impeccable credentials but must have started fighting Daleks at a young age. (COMIC: The Only Good Dalek)
The surviving members of the Galactic Council and their heirs later formed the Syndicate, though Zephon's son was denied membership, (AUDIO: Time's Assassin) aiming to control Earth and get revenge on the Doctor. They were systematically eliminated by Anya Kingdom who manipulated the Fourth Doctor using the sleeper persona of Ann Kelso. The Doctor discovered Anya had been brainwashed to do this by Zaal, head of the SSS and a member of the Syndicate, who was using Anya to eliminate his rivals. The Doctor freed Anya and tricked Zaal into confessing. (AUDIO: The Perfect Prisoners)
The losses sustained in the Incident had a profound impact on the Doctor. The Gwanzulum attempted to exploit his sentiment towards Katarina and Sara by assuming their forms to manipulate the Seventh Doctor to helping them escape Adeki. (COMIC: Planet of the Dead) Whilst inside the inner landscape of the Seventh Doctor's mind, Ace came across ghosts of Katarina and Sara. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Revelation) The Seventh Doctor was later subjected to visions of Katarina and Sara, amongst other past guilts, (COMIC: The Last Word) and the Tenth Doctor was reminded of them by the Lost whilst discussing his losses. (AUDIO: The Lost) Steven was equally affected, having nightmares about Sara and Katarina's deaths, (PROSE: Ash) and almost leaving the TARDIS after confronting the Doctor about their recent losses following the death of Anne Chaplet. (TV: The Massacre)
The devastated Kembel was later settled on by Zephon's son, Zephon. Following his rejection by the Syndicate he set up a resort in a force field around a newly-created jungle enclosure. He attempted to kill the Fourth Doctor there when he arrived with Ann Kelso, but was killed by Anya Kingdom after Ann reverted back to her persona. (AUDIO: The False Guardian, Time's Assassin) Centuries later, a faction of Daleks returned to Kembel during the Dalek-Movellan War, seeking to regain lost Dalek knowledge in time travel. After an Earth Protection Corps ship transporting Davros crashlanded there with the Movellan prime rocket in pursuit, the Corps sent an invasion force which destroyed the Kembel faction. (AUDIO: The Dalek Defence, The Triumph of Davros)
During the Last Great Time War, the Incident was among the Doctor's encounters with the Daleks which were tactically assessed by the Time Lords, who sought to prevent the Daleks creating another Time Destructor by locating and securing all potential sources of taranium. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) Nevertheless, the Daleks did wield a working Time Destructor in the war, with which they destroyed the Nestene homeworld and several other planets, with the shockwave affecting numerous other systems. (PROSE: Natural Regression) The Time Lords also deployed a Time Destructor against the Daleks, with the War Doctor using it to destroy a Dalek time fleet, then the largest ever assembled, which was approaching Gallifrey. (AUDIO: The Innocent)
Centuries before the Twelfth Doctor's regeneration, the Daleks lost their copy of the Daleks' master plan. The Doctor, on the other hand, kept a copy that had been recorded on a VHS tape. (PROSE: Twice Upon a Time) The eponymous master plan infact referred to the Daleks' attempt to develop the Time Destructor on Kembel, which they and the Doctor thought of as "the Daleks' masterplan". (PROSE: Mission to the Unknown, The Mutation of Time, The Evil of the Daleks) Indeed, the Time Lords were aware that the Supreme Dalek who pursued the First Doctor through time went on to oversee the master plan. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
Alternate timeline
In an alternate timeline accidentally created when the Second Doctor's TARDIS collided with that of the First Doctor in the Time Vortex, the First Doctor never arrived on Kembel, instead crashlanding on Urbinia. This resulted in the Daleks successfully developing the Time Destructor, which they deployed to devastating success during the Harvesting of Urbinia. The Second Doctor negated these events by using his TARDIS to avert the collision. (AUDIO: Daughter of the Gods)
Behind the scenes
- The Discontinuity Guide claimed the Dalek Civil War, far from following the Time Destructor Incident, took place before even the 22nd century Dalek invasion. The 4000 event itself was, from the Daleks' perspective, their last recorded encounter with the Doctor before the Fourth Doctor's interference with their creation[1] created a whole new timeline in which Davros survived, such that this event would have occurred vastly differently if it happened at all.[2]
