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The Dalek-Movellan War, also called the Movellan War or Wars, was a galactic war fought between the cyborg Daleks and the android Movellans. The Dalek Empire and the Movellans were each expanding to control the galaxy when they met and fought to destroy each other. According to the human historian Njeri Ngugi, it was "the most disastrous military campaign the Daleks fought." (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks)
Another historian, Lorraine Baynes, whom the Sixth Doctor once wrote off as a Dalek apologist, (AUDIO: Davros) doubted the idea that the Daleks were ever actually threatened by the androids, though even she admitted the Daleks had resorted to drastic plans during the war and that the Movellans caused major disruptions to the Dalek Empire's operations. Baynes claimed to be working from "a modern perspective." (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters)
Historical overview
Dating
Different conflicting dates have arisen concerning the conflict, as the war lasted for centuries and both sides could time travel, (AUDIO: The Dalek Gambit) Movellan ships having time warp capabilities, (TV: Destiny of the Daleks) and Daleks having time corridor technology. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks)
The Twelfth Doctor described the conflict as "the past" to 21st century native Bill Potts after returning from millions of years in the future. (TV: The Pilot) Maurice Vallan came from a point in time before its conclusion. (AUDIO: The Dalek Gambit)
The Fourth Doctor encountered time travelling Movellans in 1980. (AUDIO: The Movellan Grave)
In 4000, Gordon Lowery recalled the Movellan Wars as one of the last instances of Dalek activity in the galaxy, a thousand or more years before then. (PROSE: Mission to the Unknown)
The Movellan War was included in Vol XIX of Ngugi's The Children of Davros, a Short History of the Dalek Race, published in 4065. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks)
Movellans attempted to take Davros prisoner in 4500 on Skaro, (TV: Destiny of the Daleks) with Gustave Lytton stating in 4590 that the war was over, (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks, PROSE: Resurrection of the Daleks) Davros being retrieved by TAI, formed in the 38th century by Arnold Baynes' Great Ancestor, "shortly after" the war. (AUDIO: Davros)
The Matrix on Gallifrey recorded that Dalek and Movellan fleets were engaged in star system 4-X-Alpha-4 in 4949. (AUDIO: Neverland)
It is possible that some dates could be related to the later campaign fought by the Daleks, known as the Pa Jass-Gutrik, the "war of vengeance" against the Movellans. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks)
Foreseeing
After foreseeing a time when the Daleks would become the dominant lifeform in the universe, the Time Lords sent the Fourth Doctor on a mission to avert their creation. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) The Doctor's mission failed, although he did delay the Daleks' development enough to alter their history. The Time Lords observed the Dalek Empire diminish significantly as thousands of worlds became free from their rule once the new timeline overwrote the old. Yet, with millions more worlds still under Dalek control, the Time Lords sought to make good on the Doctor's shortfall by diverting him to the weapons research facility of Deepcity. The Doctor's exploits there were more successful and the Time Lords were able to predict that his actions in Deepcity would eventually lead to the rise to a race of synthetic robots capable of bringing about the downfall of the Dalek Empire. In line with these predictions, (PROSE: A Device of Death) the Daleks engaged in a war with the robot Movellans. (TV: Destiny of the Daleks)
The war
According to the CIA's research into the Daleks, at the start of the war, the Dalek Empire had expanded to such a size that it needed to be ruled by two different Dalek Emperors, one of whom remained based on Skaro. The second Emperor was killed by the Movellans, leaving the entire Dalek species under the command of the Skaro-based ruler. However, the Empire's tactics were impacted by this Emperor being unable to keep track of the forces previously under the other Emperor's jurisdiction. (PROSE: The Dalek Problem) Later in the war, Skaro was known to be abandoned, (TV: Destiny of the Daleks) though the Emperor claimed it to be the world of Antalin. (PROSE: War of the Daleks) The Dalek Supreme also served as a Dalek leader during the war. (TV: Destiny of the Daleks)
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After visiting a distant planet in the future, the Twelfth Doctor arrived at some point during the war, and piloted his TARDIS to a war zone during a skirmish. He did this in order to sterilise the being that was following him, Nardole, and Bill. Nardole succeeded in sealing the area the Daleks were in. (TV: The Pilot)
Seeking to better understand their robotic foes, the Daleks engineered themselves into quasi-robotic beings, dispensing entirely with any organic-based decisions and slaving themselves to their predictive algorithms. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) This led to a centuries long stalemate, each side's purely logical battle computers keeping them in deadlock. Hundreds of Dalek and Movellan battlecruisers flew across space, without a single shot being fired. To resolve this, the Daleks returned to their homeworld of Skaro to search the ruins of the Kaled dome for their creator, Davros. They believed that his unpredictable biological mind would allow them to re-program their computers to make unanticipated manoeuvres against the Movellans. The Movellans followed the Daleks to Skaro and ultimately learned of their plan. The Fourth Doctor, landing by chance on Skaro, was captured by the Movellans for the same reason. He later defeated both the Movellans and the Daleks, as well as the resurrected Davros. Davros was taken by Tyssan, a rescued Dalek slave worker, to Earth for trial. The Movellan expedition had probably made their leaders realise the stalemate could not be broken for their battle computers, but they could find other ways to work on the problem. (TV: Destiny of the Daleks)
After the trial, Davros was placed in a cryogenic freezer in a space station which served as his prison. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks) To break the impasse, the Daleks introduced organic matter into themselves once again. Now able to make intuitive organic decisions, the Daleks were able to secure small advantages in the war for the next ninety or so years. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
The Movellans defeated the Daleks in a battle of Traxana's sector of space. (AUDIO: Alien Heart)
At some point during the war, the Movellans decided to create a new model to break the stalemate. These models had emotional programming as well as the robotic programming. Chenek was the prototype with human emotions programmed in. These emotions were taken from a set of human slaves. When the Doctor and Romana II met Chenek in 1980, they realised that the emotional programming and the robotic logic couldn't work together and that was why Chenek was attacking the other Movellans. It was also due to the slave emotions being that of fright so all of the fights the Movellans observed was methods to escape. The Doctor and Romana reprogrammed Chenek to stop the conflict. Chenek decided to round up the Movellans on Earth and set their spaceship to self destruct. (AUDIO: The Movellan Grave)
During the war they became a time active race and a battalion of Movellans, lead by Maurice Vallan, travelled to the 1970s Earth, where they planned to invade to give the Movellans a strategic post to further the war. They changed their invasion plans changed upon meeting Lady Suzanne Clare to invade by stealth. They wanted to use a model of the Movellans that could duplicate people but once the Intrusion Counter-Measures Group learnt of their involvement Vallan advanced their plans to invade in a more typical way, but Allison Williams stopped them with an Electromagnetic pulse. (AUDIO: The Movellan Manoeuvre) The Daleks detected this and came after them to destroy them and anyone that helped them. After exterminating the Movellan forces, they planned to use a bomb to exterminate all life on Earth. With the Dalek and Movellan forces destroyed, Rachel Jensen contained the bomb in the Dalek's forcefield. (AUDIO: The Dalek Gambit)
After performing a time jump to stabilise their spaceship’s warp drive, the Tenth Doctor and Anya Kingdom found themselves in the middle of a skirmish between Dalek and Movellan forces. (AUDIO: The Lost)
The Daleks’ deviance from pure logic eventually allowed the Movellans to realise that the Daleks were organic creatures. Seizing on this weakness, (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) the Movellans developed a virus that could permeate the Dalek casings and destroy their organic components from within. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks) According to Volume XIX of Ngugi's history, the Daleks, who had used biological weapons before, such as on Spiridon, failed to consider their own vulnerability to such an attack. The Movellan virus became therefore so effective, because it took them completely by surprise. Overall, the Daleks suffered a casualty rate of 83% and much of the Empire in Mutter's Spiral collapsed. According to Lytton, the Dalek fleet was destroyed and those who survived retreated to other parts of the universe to escape the risk of infection so they could work on a cure. Various sector commands began trying to reorganise in the remaining isolated sectors, leading to increased factionalism that would plague Dalek politics into the 41st century. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks)
Aftermath
The Dalek casualties necessitated the recruitment of Dalek troopers to fight for the Empire. The Supreme Dalek recovered Davros from his prison so he could find a cure for the Movellan virus. During this time, the Daleks began using a different form of time travel — time corridors — although attempts to use the technology to prevent the losses of the war proved unsuccessful. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks) They also used these to place duplicates to manipulate events for the Daleks' best interests. Following his revival, filled with more hatred than ever, Davros turned the Daleks on the Prison Station against each other, (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks) accentuating the factionalism which had resulted from the Movellan War. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks) Wide-scale hostilities between the factions sparked the Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks, Revelation of the Daleks, Remembrance of the Daleks)
In later years, the Daleks launched the campaign Pa Jass-Gutrik, the "war of vengeance" against the Movellans, in which the Special Weapons Dalek participated. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks)
A point that Time Lord scholar, Benncuiq IV, noted, was that this was the only war in history where the Daleks had failed. (PROSE: When It Was Fun)
Supposed non-existence
The Dalek Prime claimed it had contrived a hoax of a war with the Movellans (whom the Daleks had created for the specific purpose of having an "enemy") as well as the Imperial-Renegade civil war as part of a plan to save Skaro from the Hand of Omega. (PROSE: War of the Daleks)