Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War
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The Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War, also known as the Skaro Civil War, (COMIC: Liberation of the Dalsks) was a schism between Davros's faction of Daleks and of that of Dalek Prime's in the aftermath of the Dalek-Movellan War. The civil war was one of the causes of the Last Great Time War.
Despite the earlier rebellion of the humanised Daleks, some historians referred to this conflict as the first Dalek Civil War. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
History
Origins
- Main article: Dalek-Movellan War
The Daleks broke into two factions shortly after the creation of the Daleks and the destruction of the Kaled City. The Daleks realised that Davros was impure as he was not 100% Dalek and was not their leader, so they turned against him and exterminated him. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) The Dalek who fired on him was the Dalek Prime, who later became the Dalek Emperor. (PROSE: The Evil of the Daleks, War of the Daleks)
However, Davros survived and his body remained hidden beneath the ruins of the Kaled City. A group of Daleks decided that they needed Davros' help once again when the Daleks faced battle with the Movellans and the two sides found themselves at an impasse. The Dalek expedition force pledged itself to Davros shortly after he was awoken by the Fourth Doctor.
Davros, incensed to learn that the Daleks were led by a "Supreme Dalek", vowed to "dispute [the title] most vigorously" and claim the position of Supreme Commander, (TV: Destiny of the Daleks) and ultimately Emperor, (WC: Risen) of his creations for himself. This created a faction of Daleks who recognised the legitimacy of Davros' claim to leadership and professed their loyalty to him. Nonetheless, the Doctor defeated most of the Daleks and had Davros frozen in suspended animation. (TV: Destiny of the Daleks) Davros was taken to a prison station, the Vipod Mor, where he remained frozen for 90 years. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks)
During Davros' imprisonment, the Movellans broke the impasse by releasing a virus which devastated the Dalek Empire, leading to its collapse across Mutter's Spiral. In the aftermath, several remaining Dalek commanders tried to reorganise what was left of their own isolated sectors. The result exacerbated the existing factionalism. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks) Becoming aware of the schism in their empire and how it hampered their effectiveness and conquests, some Daleks began to believe they needed to rescue Davros to provide them direction, (AUDIO: Innocence) whereas other Daleks remained certain their creator should not be given a position of leadership. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks)
Beginning
Rescue of Davros
- Main article: Duplicate Incident
In a bid to restore the Daleks to power, the Supreme Dalek concocted an ambitious plan to enact revenge on several of the Daleks' enemies. The three main objectives were:
- Rescue Davros and manipulate him into finding a cure for the Movellan virus.
- Infiltrate Earth using duplicates to destabilise the planet in preparation for another invasion.
- Send duplicates of the Doctor and his companions to Gallifrey to assassinate the High Council of the Time Lords.
Davros was released by Gustave Lytton and his mercenaries recruited by the Supreme Dalek. Learning of the Daleks' defeat by a Movellan bio-weapon, Davros used his virus research as a means to secretly convert humans and Daleks to his cause, eventually building up a small army. He sought to release the virus against the Supreme Dalek's forces and create a new race of Daleks loyal to him in its place. He claimed to the Fifth Doctor that he had made mistakes in making the Daleks completely ruthless and unable to think illogically, and he decided to make them understand emotion, but only in order to make them better killers.
Soon, Davros's converted army came into conflict with the Supreme Dalek. Both sides nearly wiped each other out, and were ravaged by the virus. Davros himself was also infected by the virus (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks) but survived and fled. (TV: Revelation of the Daleks) The Supreme Dalek had also fled the station and survived the explosion. (PROSE: Resurrection of the Daleks)
The Daleks ultimately cured themselves of the virus which, by one account, granted them immunity to a space plague which they made an ill-fated attempt to exploit in the Exxilon Gambit. (PROSE: The History of the Daleks) Other accounts indicated that this incident took place earlier in the Daleks' timeline. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe, Dalek Combat Training Manual)
Necros
- Main article: Necros Incident
Davros escaped to the planet Necros, where he began creating a new army of Daleks from human tissue. The Daleks led by the Supreme Dalek were alerted to Davros' presence by the rebels Takis and Lilt, two employees at Tranquil Repose. The Dalek Supreme's forces considered Davros a criminal. When they arrived, a short engagement between Davros' and the Supreme Dalek's forces ensued. Following his capture, Davros attempted to reveal the identity of the Sixth Doctor to the Daleks, but he was not recognised by them (who had encountered his previous incarnation). Davros was then arrested and taken to be transported to the Dalek homeworld of Skaro to stand trial for crimes against the Daleks. (TV: Revelation of the Daleks)
Journey to Skaro
En route to Skaro, the ship carrying Davros crashed on the planet Lethe. Davros was rescued and set himself up as "Professor Vaso", altering the perceptions of the humans on the colony so they would not recognise him as the "Great Healer". He 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 and forced him to serve as an agent of the Daleks to stop Davros' research 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) Other Necros Daleks may have survived, however. The Time Lords would later question if it was the presence of Necros Daleks on Skaro that helped Davros establish the Dalek faction he ruled over as Emperor. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
The New Emperor
- Main article: Davros's trial (Revelation of the Daleks)
While on Skaro, the Sixth Doctor rescued Davros just before the Daleks carried out their sentence of death and spoke to him of his future destiny as Emperor Dalek. (COMIC: Emperor of the Daleks!, Above the Gods) 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 Dalek Emperor.
When the Daleks led by the Supreme Dalek landed on Spiridon with the next incarnation of the Doctor, Davros set his army of white and gold Daleks (later known as the Imperial Daleks) against them, along with a Special Weapons Dalek. The Supreme Dalek died and in the aftermath of the battle, Davros found his wheelchair damaged. He suffered amnesia, remembering only his ambition to make himself the new Emperor. (COMIC: Emperor of the Daleks!)
According to another account, Davros was en route to Skaro when he encountered the Thal Lareen. Lareen was using a stealth suit that made her invisible to Dalek scanners. Lareen attempted to find Davros's "good side," and believed she had succeeded. She gave Davros a capsule containing an enhanced version of the Movellan virus and asked him to release it during his trial. This would destroy all Daleks on Skaro, and make Davros a hero.
Upon arriving on Skaro, Davros found that the Supreme Dalek had a new casing created. The Supreme Dalek planned to be moved to the new casing and named Emperor of the Daleks after Davros's execution. During his trial, Davros told the Daleks of the Movellan virus, and proved his loyalty to the Dalek cause by refusing to release it. He then told them that Lareen was on Skaro and ordered them to exterminate her. The Daleks were impressed with this show of loyalty, and named Davros Emperor of the Daleks. (AUDIO: The Davros Mission)
Davros declared the Daleks who refused to recongise his rule "Renegades". (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
Conflict on Earth
- Main article: Shoreditch Incident
In Remembrance (audio story), The Slyther of Shoreditch (short story)
By the Shoreditch Incident, the Renegade Daleks were fragmented, with certain factions not engaged in the conflict with the Imperium; (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks) indeed, some of the Dalek Prime's Daleks, even after the war, were sympathetic to Davros's side. (PROSE: War of the Daleks) The Supreme Dalek at the time hoped to rally them by killing the Seventh Doctor. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks)
The war ended after a final battle on Earth in 1963. Davros' Imperial Daleks defeated the Renegades with the aid of the Special Weapons Dalek. Further pursuing the plan he had already developed, the Seventh Doctor destroyed the Imperial Dalek mothership, and Skaro itself, using the Hand of Omega. The Doctor convinced the last of the Renegades on Earth to destroy itself by telling the Dalek that it no longer had a purpose. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) The Time Lords' time scale of Dalek activity placed the destruction of Skaro as occurring in the far future following the 47th century. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
The Civil War had briefly become part of the Last Great Time War when, after being manipulated by a Dalek duplicate, Susan Foreman arrived in the Shoreditch Incident to take the Hand of Omega. Though she was confronted by the renegade faction, she was saved by the Eighth Doctor. The incident played out as it was supposed to, and he returned her to Time War-era Kasterborous. (AUDIO: The Shoreditch Intervention)
Conclusion of hostilities
Daleks Among Us (audio story), The Restoration Empire (short story)
A damaged New Paradigm Supreme Dalek was found by historians in a renegade base on Thule, leading to speculation that the later faction had interfered in the Imperial-Renegade Civil War. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
The Daleks ultimately survived the Shoreditch Incident. Accounts disagreed, however, on which side could be said to have emerged victorious from the Civil War.
The Dalek Survival Guide believed that the Hand of Omega affair and the resultant destruction of Skaro resulted in the entire Imperial Dalek faction being wiped out, leaving only surviving Renegade Daleks. (PROSE: Dalek Survival Guide) Indeed, according to some accounts, the Imperial Dalek fleet was destroyed alongside Skaro and the mothership, (PROSE: War of the Daleks, AUDIO: Terror Firma) leaving Davros, sole survivor of the Imperial faction, to create a new race of Imperial Daleks loyal to him, with him once more their Dalek Emperor, on Earth. (AUDIO: Terror Firma) Another account suggested that only Davros had been lost at the end of the Shoreditch Incident. Hence, the Imperial Daleks had simply elected a new Emperor before moving forward with Davros's long-held plan of moving against Gallifrey — beginning with the Etra Prime incident and ultimately leading to the Last Great Time War. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
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According to the events leading up to the Battle of Mordeela, the new Imperial Emperor had been a member of Davros' Supreme Council who exterminated all of the other members to become the new ruler. Becoming the Emperor of the Restoration, the Dalek would then forge the Restoration Empire and based its new casing upon that of (PROSE: The Restoration Empire) the Dalek Prime who had led the Renegade Daleks. (PROSE: War of the Daleks) Coming across a warning from a future Dalek unit regarding the Time Lord Victorious, the Emperor Dalek would enter into an uneasy alliance with the Eighth Doctor and enter the Dark Times, where they would enter a war with the Tenth Doctor's Victis Fleet in an attempt to stop him from changing history. (PROSE: The Restoration Empire, The Knight, The Fool and The Dead et al)
Another account, however, held that Davros awoke from stasis in his escape pod to find that Skaro was still whole and under the control of the Daleks of the Dalek Prime — those who had been designated Renegade Daleks during the Civil War, although, now that the "illegitimate" Emperor Davros was believed dead, they had reverted to calling themselves the true Imperial Daleks. The Dalek Prime further succeeded in weeding out those of his Daleks who, while genetically pure, were swayed by Davros's side politically. With Davros even seemingly being executed by the Prime's Daleks, the once-Renegades emerged the clear victors of the Civil War, forty years following the apparent destruction of Skaro. (PROSE: War of the Daleks)
On Red Rocket Rising, the Eighth Doctor mockingly asked the Dalek Supreme if the Daleks were currently fighting other Daleks, amongst other enemies. (AUDIO: Blood of the Daleks)
During the Last Great Time War, the Time Lords reflected that Davros's ambition to lead the Daleks created a huge schism in the Dalek hierarchy, with the resulting infighting severely reducing the expansion rate of the Dalek Empire, for which they were grateful. They investigated using the split in the Dalek hierarchy to their advantage, considering an alliance with a single Dalek faction. They were dismayed to learn from their tactical team that the Daleks were once more united and that there was no possibility of engineering division within their ranks.
In their chronology of Dalek variants they identified early Necros Daleks and the refined Imperial Daleks respectively as "Type VI" and "Type VII", following the grey Type IV Daleks and silver Type V Daleks and preceding the Type VIII Bronze Daleks, believed by the Time Lords to have been developed for the Time War. These Bronze Daleks sported gold sense globes (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) which were previously a distinguishing feature of the Necros Daleks. (PROSE: Revelation of the Daleks)
At some point, the Civil War was displayed in the Dalek Dome as one of the greatest moments in Dalek history. (COMIC: Liberation of the Daleks)
Behind the scenes
According to The Doctor Who Role Playing Game: The Master, it was in 82,450 TL (11,742 AD) that Davros was "liberated" by the Tremas Master as the Daleks were taking him to Skaro following the Necros Incident. Davros and the Master forged a brief alliance in which the Master committed himself to supply the means of controlling the Daleks in exchange for the cooperation of Davros in creating new and more powerful Dalek forces for the conquest of Mutter's Spiral. This plot was defeated by the Colonel, with the Daleks of Skaro themselves doing much to checkmate the schemes of the two villains. Davros was recaptured by the Daleks, while the Master retreated to his hidden base.
AHistory dates the basetime of the Daleks in the Shoreditch Incident and the apparent destruction of Skaro to c. 4663, followed by Davros's trial forty years later and Emperor Davros's invasion of Earth in c. 4703.
