Dalek Prime Strategist
The Dalek Prime Strategist, (COMIC: Defender of the Daleks) often referred to simply as the Dalek Strategist, (AUDIO: The Enemy of My Enemy et al) was a Time-Sensitive Dalek who served as advisor to the Emperor of the Restoration in the Restoration Empire that had never fought in the Last Great Time War, (COMIC: Defender of the Daleks) created by the Tenth Doctor's alterations to history during the Dark Times. (PROSE: The Knight, The Fool and The Dead) He claimed to be the oldest Dalek in existence. (COMIC: Defender of the Daleks)
Physical appearance
Mutant
The Dalek Prime Strategist's Dalek mutant form was purple with a single yellow eye. (COMIC: Defender of the Daleks)
Casing
When the Tenth Doctor first encountered the Prime Strategist, the Dalek operated a battered and rusted Dalek War Machine casing. This casing was predominantly silver, which grew rusty over time, with blue sensor globes and weapons platform squares.
The Dalek Prime Strategist did not upgrade this casing for a newer model with flight capabilities, claiming to be wearing the relic with pride, and repeatedly explained to the Doctor that he viewed its wear and tear as his battle scars. However, the Doctor came to believe that this was a lie the Prime Strategist told himself to make it easier on him, when actually, being confined to his painfully damaged casing was a punishment ordered by the Dalek Emperor for the catastrophic failure of one of the Prime Strategist's old plans. (COMIC: Defender of the Daleks) At other points in his history, however, the Dalek Prime Strategist's casing was capable of limited hovering, (WC: The Sentinel of the Fifth Galaxy) and was capable of limited flight even with the Eighth Doctor clinging to it. (AUDIO: The Enemy of My Enemy) Another account suggests that the Strategist deceptively led the Doctor to believe the damaged casing was a punishment, when in fact the Strategist used the patched-up casing as a way to show that it relied more on its wits rather than defences. (DWFC TLV 3)
Biography
Origins
The Dalek Prime Strategist once claimed to the Tenth Doctor that he was "older than the Emperor himself", to which the Doctor replayed with a skeptical quip, (COMIC: Defender of the Daleks) in accordance with accounts which portrayed the Golden Emperor as the first-ever Dalek. (COMIC: Genesis of Evil) However, some accounts held that the Dalek Emperor who ruled the Empire following the Civil War, and who acted as the Prime Strategist's superior, was not the same individual as the original Golden Emperor, but a later pretender to the throne, the Emperor of the Restoration. (PROSE: The Guide to the Dark Times) Melody Malone merely recorded in The Dark Times Times that he had "existed for a very long time", calling him "ancient". (PROSE: The Guide to the Dark Times)
The Tenth Doctor suspected that, at some point, one of the Prime Strategist's schemes failed spectacularly. The Emperor, as punishment, confined the Strategist to his old, ruined casing, forbidding him from upgrading to a more modern and sturdier travel machine. (COMIC: Defender of the Daleks) However, another account suggests that the Strategist led the Doctor to believe this in order to gain his confidence. (DWFC TLV 3)
Invasion of Islos
The Prime Strategist advised the Emperor during the invasion of Islos. Once the Archivians appeared to surrender, he and the Executioner accompanied the Emperor into the Archive of Islos, only to find it emptied. The Chief Archivian revealed they had bargained with an Entity from outside of time and space for the safety of the Islosian population and the Archive. It showed them what the Strategist recognised as a portal through space and time and revealed it had offered their rescuer the Daleks in return. The Entity emerged from the portal (WC: The Archive of Islos) and began attacking the Daleks, forcing them to flee Islos. (WC: The Sentinel of the Fifth Galaxy)
Flight from the Entity
The Daleks withdrew to Skaro, pursued by the Entity. The Entity began attacking the planet, forcing the Emperor to order the evacuation of all forces when the Daleks’ weapons proved ineffective. The Strategist advised that the evacuation was failing and the Daleks had to escape. With the Emperor silent after realising the home planet had been lost, the Strategist organised the Daleks‘ flight.
In search of reinforcements, the Strategist activated the Sentinel of the Fifth Galaxy who guided him to a dormant army of ten thousand Daleks. He was alarmed by the Sentinel insistent referring to him as the Emperor, and stated that he believed the android programming was defective. When the Sentinel awoke the army the Strategist ordered it to set the base to self-destruct.
However, after the army likewise proclaimed that the Strategist was their emperor, he quickly realised the Entity had arrived before him and compromised the Sentinel, and now the army. The Strategist accelerated the self-destruct and fled, pursued by the compromised reinforcements. As the Executioner’s forces engaged the Entity’s army, the Strategist advised the Emperor to withdraw again as they couldn’t sustain these losses. He defended his failure, believing the self-destruct had claimed some of the army and a portion of the Entity with them, making it weaker. He acknowledged that there would have been away to prevent this loss (namely, accepting the mantle of Dalek Emperor) but that it would not have been "acceptable… to you". (WC: The Sentinel of the Fifth Galaxy)
The Strategist then prepared a new strategy to defeat the Entity; he reasoned that the Mechonoid Empire was also a threat to the Daleks, so the logical move would be to pit the two against each other. (WC: Day of Reckoning) By arriving at Mechanus in a single damaged ship with only a few Dalek drones as guards, (WC: Planet of the Mechanoids) the Prime Strategist understood it would look like the Dalek Empire had been nearly totally destroyed. (WC: Day of Reckoning) When he and the Emperor arrived, they claimed to want the aid of the Mechonoids. Whilst the Emperor spoke with the Queen, the Strategist demanded to speak with a scientist but was ordered to wait by Mechanoid guards. He grew impatient resulting in the guards firing on him however Mechanoid 2150 arrived and agreed to speak with him. She took him across the City, which he admitted was efficient, to inspect the status of the orbital defence grid. He insisted they be repaired after the Daleks had breached them however they realised the power grid was beginning to be drained, resulting in the Mechanoids being left defenceless. (WC: Planet of the Mechanoids) He revealed to Mechanoid 2150 that the Daleks had led the Entity there to force the Mechanoids to work with them against it. When the Entity arrived and a part of it took over a Mechanoid, he and Mechanoid 2150 were able to identify the Entity’s unique energies and devise a way to create a portal to force it back to its original dimension. After successfully banishing the part of the Entity within the Mechanoid, they reconfigured the orbital array to target the entire Entity, as the Emperor was distracting it, managing to banish it to its original realm. The Strategist reunited with the damaged Emperor and they were ordered to leave Mechanus by the Queen, who declared that the Mechanoids were coming for the Daleks. (WC: The Deadly Ally)
Reckoning with the Mechanoids
The next phase of the Strategist's plan came after he and the Emperor returned to Skaro, as the Mechanoids followed under the false idea that they were the only two Daleks alive. Thus, after an army of Dalek units were ordered out of hiding, which he and the Emperor had recalled to Skaro, the Mechanoids were overwhelmed. Mechanoid 2150 and the Queen tracked him down and he revealed his deceptions. They attempted to convince the Strategist that he was not being given enough credit from the Emperor for his plan and that he should rule. He pretended to agree and they escorted him through the battlefield to another chamber. There he and Mechanoid 2150 planned to use a beam projector to open a portal to the Entity's dimension to send the Emperor through. However, to the horror of 2150, the Strategist instead used the portal to remove the Mechanoid army from Skaro and then closed the portal. Meeting with the Emperor, he praised the Strategist's plan, though he warned him that “superior beings” would not be as easy to manipulate. Suddenly, the Entity possessed a ruined Mechanoid, telling the two that another threat was coming to attack then. (WC: Day of Reckoning)
War with the Hond
When the new threat emerged in the form of the Hond, the Restoration Empire found itself unable to stem their advance. At the advice of the Strategist, the Emperor sought out the Doctor for aid, a group of Silver Daleks bringing the Tenth Doctor to Skaro. The Prime Strategist met the Doctor in the Dalek City, leading him into the Vault of Obscenities, which the Strategist was older than even himself. As the two made uneasy conversation, the Prime Strategist saved the Doctor from a creature the Doctor did not glimpse clearly.
Soon, they came across a Hond, who was unharmed when the Prime Strategist immediately opened fire on it. The Doctor had to trap it in an energy cage he made out of an energy weapon found in the Vault. Shortly after, the Doctor apparently deduced the truth about the Strategist's casing, which had become even more battered in his battle with the Hond, exposing part of the Dalek mutant's face.
Eventually, the Doctor succeeded in defeating the Hond by linking together all the defence systems in the Vault of Obscenities and using them as a transmitter to relieve the Hond's pain, causing them to evaporate (as they were embodiments of suffering itself). The Daleks immediately declared that, having served his purpose, the Doctor would be exterminated.
The Doctor seemed disappointed in the Strategist for betraying him — as he had hoped, somehow, that the Strategist really was different from the rest of its kind, to which the Strategist sheepishly stated that "in the end, [he was] still a Dalek". However, he wasted no time in triggering all the weapons in the Vault at once, causing a string of explosions to engulf the Dalek City.
When reprimanded by the Emperor about the apparent backfiring of its plan to enlist the Doctor, the Strategist noted that, despite the collateral damage, the Doctor had succeeded in saving the Daleks from the Hond — and added that perhaps the Doctor, albeit perhaps a different Doctor, could still be of use to head off another related threat to Dalek supremacy. (COMIC: Defender of the Daleks)
In the Dalek Time Squad
The Dalek Prime Strategist was a member of the Dalek Time Squad sent by the Emperor to rectify the divergent timeline and "return the situation to Dalek advantage". He served under the Time Commander, although Melody Malone suspected that as he had served under many Dalek Commanders in his day, his loyalty and obedience to this particular individual was questionable to say the least. (PROSE: The Guide to the Dark Times)
When the Dalek Time Squad captured the Eighth Doctor, (AUDIO: He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not) the Strategist saved him from being exterminated by the Executioner and brought him before the Time Commander to agree an alliance. With the Doctor, the Dalek Time Squad travelled to Wrax to analyse its altered timeline. The Prime Strategist accompanied the Doctor to the Wraxians’ gallery, rescuing him when he was caught in the Eye of Wrax. When the Wraxians sought to use the Devolver on the Daleks, the Strategist convinced the Time Commander to let the Doctor negotiate with the Wraxian President and later to agree to the Doctor's deal with the Wraxians, the Daleks withdrawing in exchange for the Devolver's dismantling. The Doctor had devised a theory that the temporal alterations originated in the Dark Times, which he only told the Daleks when they’d left Wrax. As the Time Lord hooked up his TARDIS to the Dalek time machine’s engines, the Strategist reported his confidence that the Doctor had been successfully manipulated, before the group travelled to the Dark Times. (AUDIO: The Enemy of My Enemy)
The Strategist was on the bridge of the Dalek ship when they arrived at Mordeela, directing the Doctor to communicate with his future self and improvise. The Doctor realised from his remarks the Daleks had been expecting to confront his future self and hadn’t told him the full truth. When the Tenth Doctor rejected his past selves’ pleas and his fleet destroyed Mordeela, the Strategist ordered the Daleks to exterminate, instigating the Battle of Mordeela. The Tenth Doctor’s fleet was reduced to one ship, which he escaped in after fulfilling his aim of sealing Mordeela’s gateway.
After the Battle, the Strategist began to work with the Scientist to experiment on life forms unique to the Dark Times to create a more biologically efficient form of Dalek, referred to as the “Symbiont”. Unknown to him, the Commander and Executioner had received new orders, the Ultimate End, from the Emperor. (PROSE: All Flesh is Grass)
The Dalek Time Squad visited Velosia, who were under imminent threat from the Kotturuh. The Time Squad used this to their advantage and promised to rescue the best and brightest of their race, leaving the others to face the judgement of the Kotturuh. The Velosians agreed and the Daleks took off. Unbeknownst to them, the agreement was a ruse and the Velosians upon the ship were slaughtered, leaving the last of the race at the hands of the Kotturuh. (COMIC: Tales of the Dark Times)
Shortly after, still accompanied by the Eighth Doctor, the Time Squad stumbled across an abandoned ship hanging empty in space except databanks and a vast supply of Huon particles. The Daleks ignored the Doctor's advice to learn from the long, lost species and decided to harness the Huon particles as a potential source of energy, despite the Doctor's warnings. When their ship responded negatively to the particles, the Doctor explained the difficulty of converting Huon particles into energy. After ejecting the particles, the Doctor explained that the ship belonged to a race that had been wiped out by the Kotturuh. The Huon particles were a test to weed out the greedy and the stupid. Those races who specifically wanted to learn of the long forgotten culture would instead have gone for the databanks. (COMIC: Tales of the Dark Times)
When the Daleks captured a Great Vampire, the Strategist oversaw the experiments on it. It’s DNA was extracted and put in a Dalek mutant, creating the Symbiont - an undying Dalek. This caused a massive drain to the ship’s power which the Commander blamed him for, claiming he had endangered the Ultimate End. The Strategist countered that he could not endanger plans he was unaware of and took the Commander to see the Symbiont. He revealed he knew the Tenth Doctor was observing them, and ordered the Symbiont to kill him. After the Doctor escaped and subsequently returned to rescue Brian from the engines, the Strategist realised he would have learnt the course of the Dalek ship was set for Gallifrey and would now seek to defend it. To ensure their success in the coming battle, he decided that the Symbiont DNA would be given to Drones, creating an army of undying Daleks. The battle went in the Daleks’ favour until Inyit judged the Symbiont hybrids, wiping them all out. This threw the Daleks into a panic, fearing the judgement could spread to pure Dalek DNA, so the Strategist’s demands to press the attack on Gallifrey went ignored. The Eighth Doctor returned to the ship and offered to help the Daleks return to their time period. When the Strategist refused, he detonated an explosive Brian had left in the engines, forcing the ship out of the Dark Times and into the Time Vortex. (PROSE: All Flesh is Grass)
Escaping the Dark Times
The Doctor was presumed dead in the explosion, however the Strategist suspected the subsequent chain of malfunctions was actually his sabotage. He and Commander were divided on how to respond to the crisis, with him working with the Scientist to stabilise the ship whilst the Commander gave the Executioner autonomy to purge the ship of aliens and having the Doctor’s TARDIS brought to him without the Strategist’s knowledge. The Doctor foiled the Strategist’s plan by stopping the Scientist’s work and the Executioner began to rampage through the ship, damaging it further and killing Daleks in its path with the Commander unable to stop it, causing the Strategist to lose faith in the Commander’s leadership. When the Doctor detonated an explosive he’d planted on the Scientist, the ship began to break apart so the Strategist sought him out and attempted to bargain for safe transport in his TARDIS. The Doctor agreed however exposed the deal to the Commander, prompting a firefight between the Strategist and Commander. The Strategist prevailed, however the Drones turned on him as a traitor whilst the Doctor escaped. (AUDIO: Mutually Assured Destruction)
As the ship finally fell apart, the Strategist observed Daleks being torn apart by the time winds and reflected on the events that had let him there, believing that if he had been aware of the Ultimate End he would have warned the Emperor against it. Foreseeing a bigger war between the Daleks and Time Lords, he resolved to escape to aid the Emperor, or to replace him if he proved ineffective, and used Kotturuh crystals he’d stored in his casing to power an emergency temporal shift. (PROSE: Exit Strategy)
Personality
Befitting his title, the Dalek Prime Strategist favoured planning and manipulation as opposed to simple extermination. During the invasion of Islos, he advised the Emperor to cease a simple bombardment in favour of blackmailing the Archivians. (WC: The Archive of Islos) He was confident that his talents allowed him to dupe the Doctor. (COMIC: Defender of the Daleks, AUDIO: The Enemy of My Enemy) As a result of this preference, he thought very little of the Dalek Executioner, dismissing it as a "thoroughly stupid creature". (PROSE: Exit Strategy) Nonetheless, the Tenth Doctor observed that the Strategist would, like any Dalek, blindly open fire when feeling threatened (COMIC: Defender of the Daleks) and when the Eighth Doctor’s pleas to his future self prior to the Battle of Mordeela failed, the Strategist quickly gave the instruction to exterminate. (PROSE: All Flesh is Grass)
Though somewhat annoyed that he was subordinate to the younger Emperor, (COMIC: Defender of the Daleks) the Strategist was loyal nonetheless, refusing to usurp his master when given the chance. (WC: The Sentinel of the Fifth Galaxy) Though after the failure of the Ultimate End, he gave serious consideration to replacing the Emperor for the coming war between the Daleks and Time Lords. (PROSE: Exit Strategy)
Unlike most Daleks, the Prime Strategist was not opposed to working with aliens, (WC: The Deadly Ally) or negotiating with them. (AUDIO: The Enemy of My Enemy)
TheDoctor come to believe that the Strategist's ruined casing was seemingly a source of great shame to him, so much so that he began telling the lie that he was proud of its battle scars as a coping mechanism. (COMIC: Defender of the Daleks) However, the Strategist in fact saw the use of his original casing as a way of announcing that it relied more on its wits rather than defences. (DWFC TLV 3)
Behind the scenes
- Speaking of his portrayal as the Dalek Strategist, Nicholas Briggs described him as "ancient and a little bit conniving".[1]
