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The Thal-Dalek battle (AUDIO: Return to Skaro) was a defining confrontation in the conflict between the Thals and the Daleks on the planet Skaro. While important to Skaro's history, the battle was of much greater significance as the event in which the Doctor first encountered the Dalek race. (TV: The Daleks)
One account suggested that it took place in or around January 2064, or eighteen months prior to 31 July 2065. (PROSE: Peaceful Thals Ambushed!
History
Origins
In the centuries following the Thousand Year War, (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) the Thals became pacifists, unwilling to risk another destructive war on Skaro. For years, they struggled to survive in the planet's hostile environment and were threatened with starvation. There only source of hope lay inside the Dalek City, and with their old enemies, the Daleks. Many Thals distrusted them but others, in the Thals' desperate situation, were willing to believe the Daleks may have changed just as they themselves had. Ultimately, the Daleks had not changed and still feared and hated the Thals as much as ever.
Prelude
The First Doctor, Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright first arrived on Skaro in the petrified jungle. They were captured and imprisoned by the Daleks while exploring the city. The Daleks briefly allowed Susan to return to the TARDIS, where she made contact with Alydon of the Thals and befriended him. After learning of this, the Daleks had her write a message intended to lure the Thals into the city with the promise of food, so they could be killed. To save the Thals, the Doctor and his companions broke out of their prison cell and escaped the city, destroying a few Daleks along the way. Ian stayed behind as the Thals entered the city and warned them of the trap, but not before the Thal leader, Temmosus, was killed by the Daleks.
Retaliation
During their imprisonment, the time travellers had lost the TARDIS's fluid link to the Daleks, and were stranded on Skaro until it was recovered. They had disagreements over the moral question about whether the Thals should help them recover it. They were able, however, to convince the Thals that their own survival was worth fighting for. Alydon, as new Thal leader, rallied his people to fight.
Meanwhile, the Daleks had also recovered some of the Thals' anti-radiation drugs. Several Daleks died after testing the drugs, leaving the rest to conclude that they needed radiation to survive. They began planning to detonate another neutron bomb to increase the radiation levels on the planet, and wipe out the Thals in the process.
Assault
The Thals divided their forces to perform a two-pronged attack on the city. Ian, Barbara, Elyon, Kristas, Ganatus, and Antodus ventured through the Drammankin Mountains via the Lake of Mutations, although Elyon and Antodus did not survive. The rest of the Thals disrupted the Daleks' video and radio equipment, but in the process, the Doctor and Susan were captured again.
Both bands entered the city as the Daleks began the countdown to the detonation and attacked the Daleks head-on, with both sides suffering casualties. (TV: The Daleks) Earth's Space News Agency had been monitoring the planet Skaro from afar using the hyper-space video-phone (COMIC: Power Play) and the BBC was subsequently able to report on the Daleks' ambush of the Thals while the battle was still ongoing. (PROSE: Peaceful Thals Ambushed!)
In the end, the Thals cut the power supply to the city, deactivating the Daleks. (TV: The Daleks) As Ian also recounted, the Thals hacked to bits the glass casing housing the Dalek leader. (PROSE: Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks) However, not all the Daleks were destroyed. The Dalek Supreme and some others sought refuge in the underground incubation level, which ran on its own separate power supply. (AUDIO: Return to Skaro)
Aftermath
With the Dalek City now under their control, the Doctor suggested the Thals move in. It contained food and technologies such as artificial sunlight which would help the Thals with agriculture. (TV: The Daleks) Ian also recalled that the Thals threw a celebratory feast. (PROSE: Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks)
Alydon became High Leader of the Thals and married Dyoni. Succeeding generations of Thals were told the story of the battle and the part played by the Doctor and his companions, who quickly passed into Thal legend. Ultimately, the Thals chose to not to inhabit the Dalek City and constructed the Thal City instead. The Dalek City was placed off-limits to all but scientific research teams and vegetation eventually reclaimed much of it in the ensuing fifty cycles. (AUDIO: Return to Skaro)
Reprisal
Unknown to all but the Thals' chief scientist, Tryana, the Thal City was built with the cooperation of the Dalek Supreme and the surviving Daleks. After encountering her during one of her surveys of the Dalek City, the Dalek Supreme manipulated her into believing they could help rebuild Skaro. In particular, they helped Tryana build ionisation towers to clear the radiation from the atmosphere. In return, Tryana provided them with power from the Thal City and kept their presence a secret.
When the time was right, the Daleks hijacked the towers and used them to attack the Thals in their own streets, in advance of a new Dalek army invading the city. With the return of the Doctor to Skaro, the Thals regained control of the towers and drove the Daleks back to their city. The Dalek Supreme ordered a second assault on the weakened Thals but Ian helped them overload the power feeding into the Dalek City. The excess of power destroyed the Daleks and much of the city. The Thals resolved to be more vigilant in the future and continue to defend their city. They worried that the Daleks still survived in other settlements elsewhere on Skaro. (AUDIO: Return to Skaro)
Legacy
The legend of the Doctor persisted in Thal culture into the 26th century, to the eve of the Second Dalek War. Abandoning their apathetic pacifism, the Thals continued to fight the Daleks on other planets. However, the Third Doctor warned Taron's party on Spiridon not to romanticise the conflict, lest the Thal culture revert to the opposite extreme leading them to develop a lust for war that would do more harm than good. (TV: Planet of the Daleks) Indeed, some Thals eventually did became more aggressive like their ancestors during the time of the Kaleds. Delani was a Thal commander responsible for the destruction of Terakis, sacrificing its native species in order to destroy the Dalek Eighth Fleet. (PROSE: War of the Daleks)
Eighteen months after the battle, a theatrical Technicolor film entitled Dr. Who and the Daleks was released on Earth in cinemas. It contained a fictionalised account of the Dalek ambush and of the subequent battle. (PROSE: Peaceful Thals Ambushed!)
After the two encounters with the Daleks on Skaro, (TV: The Daleks, AUDIO: Return to Skaro) the Doctor later encountered the Daleks again when they invaded Earth during the 22nd century. (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth) Its failure led the Daleks to recognise who the Doctor was, beginning a deadly rivalry spanning all of space and time (TV: The Chase, et al.) with massive consequences for the Daleks, Time Lords and the universe as a whole. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks, The Day of the Doctor, Dalek, The Parting of the Ways, et al) Yet the Twelfth Doctor considered that his original encounter with the Daleks changed his outlook on life for the better, by showing him that "the Doctor was not the Daleks." (TV: Into the Dalek)
The Dalek City itself became the site of future conflicts. Surviving Daleks within were briefly revived by human explorers who landed on Skaro, but they were deactivated once more. (AUDIO: The Curse of the Daleks) The Daleks later reclaimed and rebuilt the city. The Dalek Emperor resided within but it was devastated by an internal rebellion instigated by the Second Doctor. (TV: The Evil of the Daleks) The Dalek Prime later instigated another similar rebellion to weed out Davros' supporters so the Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War could be brought to an end. (PROSE: War of the Daleks)
According to Davros, the Daleks maintained a strong concept of home. Following the Last Great Time War, they returned to Skaro and rebuilt the Dalek City yet again, housing their dying creator. It was largely devastated once more after the Doctor's regeneration energy revived the dead Dalek mutants which swarmed the city. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar)
Though there existed multiple accounts of the Thal-Dalek battle, all of them agreed that Ian Chesterton had been the one who rallied the Thals against the Daleks. When the Time Lords sought to rally the Sensorites against the Daleks, they recruited Ian based on his previous success. (AUDIO: Sphere of Influence)
Behind the scenes
- The Dalek Handbook dates the events of The Daleks as taking place in 1963, operating on the assumption that the Doctor returned Ian and Barbara to the right time after An Unearthly Child but not the right place.
- An alternative account of the Thal-Dalek battle is given in the film Dr. Who and the Daleks.
- In DWM 206's Doctor Who? instalment, the prelude to the battle is explicitly named as the "Decoy Food Ambush of 1963". Thirty years later, in the 1990s, a policeman arrests the entire Dalek race for their parts in the murder of Thal 306 during the ambush.