Dalek
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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) who 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, (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 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)
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 true 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 don't die naturally, but they do age, the body decaying. When a Dalek reaches this point, they exit their armour and confine themselves to the tunnels beneath Dalek cities. (TV: The Witch's Familiar)
Anatomy
Exterior battle armour
The Dalek casing, originally called "Mark III travel machine", (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) 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 telescope-like eyestalk in the middle. This was attached to the midsection by a "neck".
On the Dalek's midsection, 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 swiveling. Most of the mass of the Dalek mutant was located inside the midsection.
The bottom was the Dalek's means of mobility, consisting of a sturdy base with a skirt-like structure of plates studded with 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, which could serve as a self-destruct system. (TV: Dalek)
The Dalek creature had no visible vocal apparatus as such and their voices were electronic. 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. 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 use concepts such as friendship, mercy and servitude 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)
The casing was booby-trapped, when someone touched the Dalek in Utah they combusted into flames. (TV: Dalek) Even dead Daleks were 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. (GAME: City 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. (TV: Destiny of the Daleks) Some models were able to hover, or fly under their own power like small spacecraft. (TV: Revelation of the Daleks, 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)
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. (TV: The Chase)
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 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 the City 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)
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 does 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 is broken, the Dalek can in fact learn possitive emotions like friendship and kindness. (TV: Into the Dalek)
Mutant
The creatures inside true Daleks were Kaled mutants, which the Seventh Doctor once described 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)
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)
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 hat 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: 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)
The Daleks were also vulnerable to viruses and sickness like 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)
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)
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Origin of name
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) Davros heard the word in the proposed "Dalek Solution", presented to him by assistant Shan; he soon stole her idea, and adapted it into what would become the creation of the Daleks. (AUDIO: Davros)
According to one account, "Dalek" was an anagram of "Kaled", the race from which the Daleks were genetically engineered. 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 and then, hours later, Davros himself uttered it. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)
Space travel
Information from The Dalek Chronicles and the Dalek annuals needs to be added.
There were several conflicting accounts over how the Daleks came to be. (TV: The Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks, COMIC: Genesis of Evil)
- Main article: Creation of the Daleks
The Daleks, being led by the Dalek Emperor and the Dalek Council, forged an interstellar (and later intergalactic) Dalek Empire, (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan) leaving behind several Daleks on Skaro. (TV: The Daleks)
In 2069, according to the Eighth Doctor, most Daleks were scattered around the edges of the Mutter's Spiral trying to build a galactic powerbase, while the Daleks left on Skaro entered their static electricity phase of development. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)
The Daleks had conquered and occupied 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. However the First Doctor foiled the plan and a volcano eruption killed the 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)
At one point, the Daleks left on Skaro were stranded in their city, where they found that the Thals had also survived what was known as the neutronic war. After discovering they became 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. (TV: The Daleks)
Over the course of their history, the Daleks developed time travel (TV: The Chase), and factory ships for conquest. (TV: The Power of the Daleks) 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.
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.
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, 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)
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)
The Daleks decided to exterminate the human race by channeling 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 Daleks invaded Trodos and 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 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 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 allied with the Renegade Time Lord Shazar and planned to build a fleet of TARDISes to conquer the galaxy. The Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith foiled the plan and the Dalek space station was nearly close to a sun. The Daleks escaped with their TARDIS fleet but all ships exploded by cirenium, destroying them. (COMIC: Return of the Daleks)
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
Daleks led by the Emperor began working on more advanced time travel technology in conjunction with Theodore Maxtible. The Daleks wanted humanised Daleks, so they forced the Second Doctor to implant the Human Factor into three Daleks. This would also identify the Dalek Factor, which they would spread through Earth's history and prevent the Great War from happening. However, the Second 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 reimplant 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)
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)
Under orders from the Dalek Prime, the Dalek Supreme sent an execution squad in a Dalek time machine to pursue the TARDIS and kill the First Doctor and his companions throughout history. 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. (TV: The Chase, PROSE: The Chase)
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)
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)
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)
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)
The Dalek Time Controller was retrieved by the Daleks, though it was decaying from its experience. They contacted the Monk due to his temporal knowledge, and he was able to repair it. The Dalek Time Controller took control over Dalek operation and orchestrated the second Dalek invasion of Earth in the 22nd century, forcing the Monk to release another plague to weaken humanity. It planned to use Earth as a spaceship containing the viruses from the Viral 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. Ultimately, the time controller, and all Daleks on its ship, were dragged into a time warp thanks to Lucie Miller crashing a Dalek Saucer containing a bomb into the mine. (AUDIO: Lucie Miller / To the Death)
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, 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
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. Davros was apparently executed but may have been teleported to safety by a loyal Spider Dalek. (PROSE: War of the Daleks)
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)
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 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 was 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)
Project Infinity
Settling down to more general use of their time travelling abilities, the Daleks proceeded on a grand effort to create a permanent base of operations. Using knowledge from the library of Kar-Charrat and the power of Gallifrey, the Daleks obliterated the entire Seriphia Galaxy, remaking it to their own designs. From there, the Daleks staged several major invasions of the Mutter's Spiral, notably in the 42nd and 67th centuries. (AUDIO: Dalek Empire)
The Daleks intend to unearth their ancient army under the surface of Spiridon and make it invisible. An army of Daleks from the Seriphia Galaxy began the second occupation of Zaleria. Although the Zalerians fully cooperated with the Daleks, the Daleks began to handle the natives with more aggressive methods backed by Ogron troops. It soon became apparent that the Daleks realised they could revive the army and continue their invisibility experiments. Daleks of the Dalek Scientific Division experimented on the Zalerians by placing them in light-wave chambers, hoping to reverse their visibility and reverse-engineer the secret. Although Kalendorf and Susan Mendes attempted to stop them, the Seventh Doctor agreed to help the Daleks unlock the secret to invisibility in exchange for Kalendorf's life. Years later, the Zalerians' invisibility was restored when the Doctor released a contagion. The same contagion gave the Daleks a fatal light wave sickness which the Spiridons thought also killed the Doctor. However the Dalek army that was revived already was destroyed and the invisibility was reclaimed to Zaleria's inhabitants. (AUDIO: Return of the Daleks)
Conflict with the Time Lords
However, the 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 Controller from the remains of Adelaine Dutemps. (AUDIO: Eye of Darkness)
The Time War
- Main article: Last Great Time War
The Last Great Time War was known as the "final battle" between the Time Lords and the Daleks. (TV: Dalek) After protracted violence, the War Doctor planned to use a weapon known as the Moment to wipe out virtually all of 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 destroyed. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
Surviving the Time War
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The Ninth Doctor incorrectly assumed that "the entire Dalek race" was "wiped out". (TV: Dalek) But there were exceptions:
The first of the Time War survivor Daleks 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, and considered itself 'infected'. It went on a rampage and ultimately self-destructed. (TV: Dalek)
The Dalek Emperor who had reigned during the Time War 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. He used the Jagrafess and The Editor as puppets in circa 199,909. 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.
This Emperor, having recreated the Dalek race, saw itself as an immortal god, and so was literally worshiped by the new Daleks. These and other religious concepts such as blasphemy were new to Dalek psychology.
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, 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, 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 Long Game, Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways)
The Cult of Skaro survived the war by hiding in a Void ship, living between alternate realities in the similarly named dead space. When they leaked back into 21st century Earth, they were revealed to having acquired a Time Lord prison ship which contained millions of Daleks captured during the war. Through the efforts of the Tenth Doctor, the majority of these Daleks became trapped in the Void, imprisoned permenantly. (TV: Doomsday)
While Davros and his fleet ship had initially been destroyed in the first year of the war when he fell into the jaws of the Nightmare Child, Dalek Caan used his emergency temporal shift feature to break through the Time Lock and rescue him, at the cost of his sanity. Davros then used his own body cells to recreate the Dalek race. (TV: The Stolen Earth)
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 of her 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 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 enter the building and 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 was trapped in the Matrix under Gallifrey. The Twelfth 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)
Cult of Skaro
The Cult of Skaro was created by the Dalek Emperor and had given names to its members Dalek Sec the leader of the cult, Dalek Caan, Dalek Thay and Dalek Jast. They were "above and beyond the Emperor himself" and designed to "think as the enemy thinks" and to imagine new ways of survival and also imagine new ways of killing. (TV: Doomsday) The Cult were just four ordinary Daleks. Dalek Sec was the 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 Thirteenth 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) The Cult survived the Last Great Time War by hiding in the Void Ship and fleeing to the space between universes, the Void, with the Genesis Ark. However the void ship travelled to Earth in 2007 in London. An army of 5 million Cybermen from a Parallel universe followed the void ship and invaded the Earth. (TV: Army of Ghosts)
The void ship opened and the cult held Rose Tyler and Mickey Smith hostage. The Cybermen and Dalek Thay met each other. The Cybermen proposed an alliance with the Daleks to conquer the universe. Thay refused and killed two Cybermen. The Cyber-leader declared war on the Daleks, which the Cult declared "pest control".
The Tenth Doctor arrived and confronted the Cult. He allowed the Cybermen and The Preachers to enter the sphere chamber via his Sonic screwdriver. However the Cybermen threat was defeated and the Ark was accidentally activated by Mickey. The Daleks made their way out of Torchwood One while Sec oversaw the freeing of millions of Daleks who attacked the Cybermen and humans in the Battle of Canary Wharf. The Doctor opened a breach in the universe which sucked all Daleks and Cybermen into the Void. Unknown to the Time Lord, the Cult initiated an emergency temporal shift (TV: Doomsday) to escape to 1930 in New York City. (TV: Daleks in Manhattan)
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 and cause the Daleks to "evolve", by creating human-Dalek hybrids with human emotions, after experiments with Dalek embryos had failed. Sec believed that the Daleks' creator was wrong in thinking that removing a Dalek's emotions made them stronger. (TV: Evolution of the Daleks) The Daleks created new servants called pig slaves to kidnap humans from the sewers under New York. Those who had high intelligence would be part of the Experiment while the ones who had low intelligence would become more pig slaves. Sec became a human-Dalek. (TV: Daleks in Manhattan)
The Tenth Doctor worked with Sec to make the kidnapped humans in the Experiment into hybrids that were more humanlike than Sec, and believed that changing everything that made a Dalek a Dalek and moving them to a home away from the Earth in his TARDIS might change the course of history. The Doctor and Sec worked on the gene feed while waiting for the lightning from the gamma strike to hit the conductor and create the new race. The rest of the cult sabotaged the project and fit the new bodies with pure Dalek DNA. The pig slaves restrained Sec while the Doctor escaped and tried to remove Dalekanium from the tower's mast, but he failed. The lightning hit the transmitter and the Doctor and awakened the human-Dalek army. Caan realised the Doctor survived the pig slaves' attack, and ordered the army, Thay and Jast to kill him. Sec sacrificed himself to save the Doctor's life. The army took aim at him but they questioned their orders. The Doctor revealed that the lightning had caused his Time Lord DNA to mix with the human-Daleks and that gave them freedom. Thay and Jast killed a few human-Daleks but were killed in the process. Caan committed genocide by killing the army. The Doctor confronted Caan and offered help, claiming not wanting to cause another genocide after seeing one already, but Caan used a temporal shift to escape the Doctor. (TV: Evolution of the Daleks)
New Dalek Empire's creation and destruction
Despite the time lock, Caan shifted himself to the time war and was able to save Davros from the Nightmare Child on the first year of the Last Great Time War at the Gates of Elysium. But it cost him his sanity. Davros recreated the Dalek race out of using his own Kaled cells and built two hundred ships for the Dalek Fleet.
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)
New Dalek Paradigm
Three Daleks survived the encounter with the Doctor in their ship. After falling through time to 1941, the trio found a surviving Progenitor, which contained pure Dalek DNA, which they intended to create new Daleks with which to restore their race. However, it didn't recognise them as pure Daleks. They started 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 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 London. Five new, larger Daleks were created, with pure DNA, a new colour-coded rank. The Supreme Dalek told the old Daleks they were impure which they accepted and allowed themselves to be disintegrated with no resistance. The new Daleks discovered the 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)
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)
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)
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)
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 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)
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)
At some point the Combined Galactic Resistance formed to battle the Daleks and captured a damaged Dalek that was later named Rusty. 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)
Return to Skaro
Several Daleks joined Davros (who survived the Crucible's destruction) on a rebuilt Skaro, where Davros was dying of advanced age. These Daleks, 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 the Dalek chamber, 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 has "a very clever idea." (TV: The Witch's Familiar)
Society and culture
The Daleks were known to write poetry (PROSE: The Also People), and some of the more elaborate Dalek battlecries 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)
The Daleks were a warlike race who waged war across whole civilisations and 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)
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", (which meant the "Bringer of Darkness" or "Destroyer of Worlds"). (COMIC: Bringer of Darkness) The Ninth Doctor claimed that the Daleks also called him "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)
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.
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). 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 on the recreated Skaro were capable of excitement and anticipation, preferring to wait for their victims to run before exterminating them, as well as concern and pity towards Davros, even allowing him to siphon their life energy to sustain himself (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)
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) Some Daleks even claimed there was no God. (AUDIO: The Final Phase)
Legal system
Although the Daleks had no regard for due process and galactic law, there were at least two occasions on which they took enemies back to Skaro for a "trial" rather than killing them on the spot; the first was their creator Davros (TV: Revelation of the Daleks) and the second was the renegade Time Lord known as the Master. (TV: Doctor Who)
Accounts differ as to whether the retrieval of Davros was for a "trial" in the criminal sense, (COMIC: Emperor of the Daleks!, PROSE: War of the Daleks) or a test to see if he was in fact worthy of becoming the supreme leader of the race. (AUDIO: I, Davros)
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)
Cultural effect
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)
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) These Daleks could 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
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) The Fourth Doctor once theorised the absence of the Daleks in alternate universes as an explanation for realities in which the Krotons, Quarks and Ogrons respectively emerged as dominant powers. (COMIC: The Lost Dimension)
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. A Dalek can be also seen in the Looney Tunes: Back in Action movie during the Area 52 scene. A Dalek appears as one of the inhabitants of the Phantom Zone in The Lego Batman Movie. A Dalek appears in the movie Ted 2, where it fought Robbie the Robot.
Other matters
The Daleks were dubbed by Yusaku Yara in the Japanese dub. 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
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