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Flying saucers were the most common spaceships used by the Daleks from their early history, through the Last Great Time War and beyond, proving to be an integral part of the Dalek war machine.
History
In their first attempts to obtain space travel, the Daleks built prototype ships such as Proto 1, 4, and 9. Proto 13 had a flying saucer design, was successful in take off, space flight, and entering/exiting hyperspace. It became the standard Dalek ship. (COMIC: The Amaryll Challenge)
The Daleks used saucers when invading planets, including the 22nd century Dalek invasion of Earth. Each saucer was under the command of a Dalek Saucer Commander. (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth)
The saucers were also used by the Dalek Empire during the Second Dalek War of the 26th century. At the very beginning of the war, the Supreme Dalek's saucer was stolen by a group of Thals who used it to escape Spiridon, causing the Supreme Dalek to send for a rescue craft. (TV: Planet of the Daleks) Another saucer, named the Exterminator, was a supreme Exterminator-class flagship belonging to the Dalek Inquisitor General, Dalek X, and containing 510 other Daleks. When the Exterminator was destroyed at the end of the war, the Dalek fleet was pushed right back from Earth-Space. (PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks)
After the Dalek war, a Dalek saucer travelled to the planet Exxilon in search of parrinium. All of its power was taken by the Exxilon City. When the power was restored, the ship took off. It was 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 launched over a thousand Dalek Saucers into the Time Vortex. 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)
During the Last Great Time War each sphere contained over two thousand Daleks each and were small and bronze-coloured, the same colour as the drone Daleks of that time. The flagship was the same colour but many times larger and contained both Dalek drones and the Emperor's Personal Guards. (TV: Bad Wolf) On Gallifrey during the last day of the Last Great Time War, dozens of crashed Dalek saucers lay near the badly damaged Capitol of the Time Lords. (TV: The End of Time)
At the end of the Time War, the Doctors froze Gallifrey in time, causing the Dalek fleet firing on the planet from all directions to blast itself apart, although everyone would believe they all burned with the planet. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) The Emperor's flagship survived and fell through time to the the turn of the 2002nd century. The Dalek Emperor built two hundred ships of his fleet and created half a million new Daleks to rule. These were all destroyed by the Bad Wolf entity. (TV: Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways)
The New Dalek Empire used saucers with a modified appearance in their 2009 invasion of Earth. Though the Daleks themselves could fly and had personal weaponry, smaller versions of the saucers served as fighter craft. (TV: The Stolen Earth)
One of these ships survived the the conclusion of the 2009 invasion of Earth, and fell through time to 1941. This ship hid behind the Moon. When the three surviving Daleks onboard were confronted by the Doctor, they used a beacon on the ship to activate all the lights in London, leaving it vulnerable to the German blitz. Enhanced Spitfires were sent to destroy the beacon. Three were destroyed by the Dalek defence guns mounted around the saucer, but the Eleventh Doctor disabled the ship's shields and the dish was destroyed. When their plan to detonate the Oblivion Continuum failed, the new Daleks left in their ship through a Time corridor. (TV: Victory of the Daleks)
A single Dalek saucer was used by a platoon of Daleks to recover their lost Time Axis from the SS Lucy Grey. The ship was fired into the sun. (GAME: Return to Earth)
Dalek saucers were used in the attack on Station 7 when the Daleks conducted a search for "the Abomination". They disguised their saucers as asteroids which they discarded when the attack began. All were destroyed — save one, which was used by an SSS officer to travel home — when caught in a deliberate volcanic eruption. (COMIC: The Only Good Dalek)
When the Daleks joined the Alliance formed to imprison the Eleventh Doctor in the Pandorica to save the Universe, many Dalek Saucers were part of the Alliance fleet which arrived at Stonehenge in 102 A.D. (TV: The Pandorica Opens)
The Doctor guessed the Daleks had a minimum of twelve thousand ships, but this has not been confirmed. He may have been confused by the many other ships present.
A fleet of Dalek saucers waited above Earth in 2106 when the New Dalek Paradigm invaded London using a piece of the Eternity Clock. The fleet was lead by a Dalek Flagship owned by the Dalek Emperor. (GAME: The Eternity Clock)
A contingent of Daleks - in Survey Ships Sigma, Delta and Epsilon - sent on a mission through human history to learn how humans fought war were caught in a Vortex storm and were stranded in 1908, with Ship Delta being destroyed. Still proceeding with their plan, they were foiled by the Eleventh Doctor and the combined armies of the First World War in 1917 and Ship Sigma was sent crashing to the ground. One hundred years later, some archaeologists discovered the saucer underground and accidentally powered it back up. The Eleventh Doctor arrived just in time and connected the ship up to a power line, overloading the reviving Daleks and their ship. (COMIC: The Dalek Project)
When the Doctor, Amy and Rory were captured by Dalek puppets, several saucers were present around the Dalek Parliament. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)
On the Dalek Foundation world of Carthedia, the Eleventh Doctor assumed the Daleks would not fire on him and the Blakely children while they stood close to a Dalek saucer, as they risked damaging it. The Doctor was proved wrong as the Daleks opened fire on them, tearing the saucer apart in the process. The Daleks continued to persue the Doctor across the Sunlight Worlds in other saucers and the Dalek Time Controller retreated in one when it was attacked by Jenibeth Blakely. (PROSE: The Dalek Generation)
Weaponry
- Particle beam weapons. (TV: Victory of the Daleks)
- Magnetise beams (to trap escaping ships) (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan)
- Missile launchers. (TV: The Parting of the Ways)
- A hypnosound device to make targets see what they most feared or desired. (TV: Frontier in Space)
Pre-Time War Dalek saucers could destroy entire planets with ease. Davros threatened to destroy Earth with his killcruiser, (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) while Terakis was successfully destroyed by a saucer attack. (PROSE: War of the Daleks)
Behind the scenes
- Dalek flying saucers first appeared in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. The DVD release of the story featured a new and more convincing CGI special effects version of the saucer as an alternative to the original. On the same DVD they also appeared in the entire story's title sequence at the beginning of part one.
- Dalek saucers featured prominently in the action of The Dalek Chronicles comics and other print-based Dalek stories.
- The theatrical film Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (based on The Dalek Invasion of Earth) featured a Dalek command craft, the front section of which resembled a saucer. A drawing of this "saucer" appeared on the cover of the Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth novelisation even though the book's content drew from the television version.
- A Dalek flying saucer (post-2005) appears in the online game Doctor In A Dash as one of three enemy ships, along with a Slitheen craft and a Judoon rocket, that race along with the Doctor's TARDIS (the player) to find a Space-Time Manipulator. Like the other enemy ships, the Dalek flying saucer can fire energy weapons to immobilise the other ships temporarily. Assuming the player completes the game, the Tenth Doctor claims the Space-Time Manipulator and destroys it to prevent it falling into the wrong hands.
- The interior of the flying saucer seen in Victory of the Daleks was not specially made for the show - it was in fact filmed in the storage room of an empty cigar factory.