Davros
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Davros (disambiguation)for other, similarly-named pages.
Davros, often referred to by his creations as the Creator and also known as the Dark Lord of Skaro, was originally the head of the Kaled Scientific Elite on the planet Skaro, but he became better known as the creator of the Daleks. The results of his attempts to bring the war on Skaro to an end were not as he envisioned, because the Daleks wiped out both the Thal and Kaled races, save for himself. Davros survived the centuries, using whatever medical assistance was available to sustain his life.
For a time, he sought to create a race of Daleks loyal to him, which led to the Imperial-Renegade Civil War, where he served as Emperor of the loyal Daleks, and later of the Dalek race as a whole. But his relationship with them was always a tense one. He was frequently hunted, maligned, or otherwise denigrated by one portion or other of the Daleks.
Davros had a brilliant scientific mind, and was constantly devising ways to give his creations greatness; often overlooking the fact they saw him as beneath them, and would often keep him imprisoned, either because he was a threat or for his genius. The only time they showed respect for him was when Davros neared death; Davros was kept alive by a machine that siphoned life energy off the Daleks. This let them trick the Doctor into donating regenerative energy, which renewed Davros and the Daleks.
Through his creations, many came to consider him responsible for trillions of deaths and innumerable wars across the universe. Despite the fact that he was not unquestionably the ruler of the Daleks, he was one of the Doctor's greatest enemies, rivalling the Master in both intellect and madness. Despite this, both Davros and the Doctor called each other friends on separate occasions. Davros considered the Doctor the closest thing that the scientist had to a familiar, even as they served as foes.
The Doctor described Davros as "an insane, paranoid genius who has survived amongst several billion trigger-happy mini-tanks for centuries." (TV: The Witch's Familiar)
Biography
Early life
Davros was born in the latter part of the Thousand Year War between the Kaleds and the Thals on the planet Skaro, the result of an adulterous relationship between Lady Calcula and Councillor Quested. He had an elder half-sister, Yarvell. It was considered a time when mercy and nobility were all but non-existent on Skaro and life was harsh and grim. The use of nuclear weapons and other agents of mutation produced Mutos, who resided in the Wastelands and were often used for slave labour by both the Kaleds and the Thals.
As a child, Davros claimed that only his mother believed in him. Others feared him and his determination. His stepfather, Colonel Nasgard, whom both believed to be his biological father, wanted him to become a soldier like his ancestors, but Davros was determined to become a scientist. (AUDIO: Innocence)
At some point in his childhood, he became lost on a battlefield. A soldier named Kanzo tried to help when he wandered across ground covered in Handmines, but was sucked into the ground by one of them. The Twelfth Doctor heard his cries for help and threw him his sonic screwdriver, which allowed them to hear each other. Although the Doctor had intended to help the child, when he learned that he was a younger Davros, he returned to the TARDIS and departed. Shortly afterwards, Davros heard the rematerialisation of the Doctor's TARDIS, and, confused and frightened, witnessed the Twelfth Doctor point a gunstick towards him, saying that he was trying to save his friend the only way he could, before yelling "Exterminate!", (TV: The Magician's Apprentice) killing the Handmines surrounding Davros and taking him by the hand and helping him get home. (TV: The Witch's Familiar)
During his childhood, he watched the propaganda television series Captain Croag and the Highland Rangers, as did Yarvell. (AUDIO: Guilt) He privately questioned the point of such propaganda given that they spoke of a pre-War Skaro that no one knew. (PROSE: Father of the Daleks)
As a child, Davros often read the Book of Predictions, which was written in the extinct language of the Dals. Although the book was banned by the Council of Twelve, he kept it in his possession for decades. (AUDIO: Innocence, Guilt)
Shortly after his stepfather's death, Davros joined the Military Youth before joining the Military Corps in his final year of college.
In Nasgard's will, the family finances were held in trust under Davros' name and his wife and daughter were forbidden access to it until Davros was married. Due to her connections with senior members of the Kaled judiciary, Calcula was successful in her attempts to have the terms of the will overturned. Prior to this, she had attempted to set Davros up with the daughter of Councillor Matros, another member of the Council of Twelve who belonged to one of the most influential and wealthy Kaled families. (AUDIO: Purity)
Scientific career
Having been inspired to reach for greatness by the inexplicable shock his name had produced on the strange man who'd rescued him from the hand-mines, Davros grew up to become "a brilliant scientist". (PROSE: Davros, Dark Lord of Skaro)
Davros vehemently disagreed with the ideas of his half-sister Yarvell, who had become a peace activist, of a compromise with the Thals. As he approached his thirtieth birthday, he regarded the only satisfactory outcome of the war as being the extermination of the Thals and the complete dominance of the Kaleds over all of Skaro. He was forced into the Military Corps, put in charge of developing new weapons and gadgets to help Kaled soldiers. After his mother killed his father, sister and aunt, Davros no longer had anyone to impress. In honour of Yarvell's death, he and his mother commissioned a statue to house her ashes. In reality, however, Davros used her body for his genetic research. (AUDIO: Purity)
Davros' first assignment in the Scientific Corps was in food processing. Consequently, he learned that the pills were made from not only waste vegetable matter but also the bodies of the dead. (AUDIO: Davros)
One month after the death of his mother, Davros was grievously wounded by a Thal bombardment of his laboratory in the Kaled Dome which cost him his taste buds, left arm and entire lower body and left his eyes with severe damage to the point where using them would cause great pain. As a result, he was forced to spend the rest of his life confined to a mobile life support system attached to a wheelchair, and an eyestalk-bulb in his forehead, giving him partial eyesight without the use of his own eyes.
After he was crippled, the Scientific Corps gave Davros a projectile poison injector to allow him to kill himself. He kept it but refused to use it. (AUDIO: Davros, Corruption) In his life-support system, Davros was identified as a mutant. (TV: Destiny of the Daleks)
Thirty seconds without his life support would have killed him. The life support system was controlled by a switch on the panel of buttons on his system. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) His chair acted like an iron lung and pacemaker in that it monitored and maintained his body. (AUDIO: Davros)
He did not require nourishment due to his life support system, although he did occasionally eat. (AUDIO: Davros, Guilt)
After he assassinated the Supremo and the other members of the Council of Twelve, Davros became the de facto Kaled head of state as their deaths left him as the most senior surviving civilian in the Kaled Dome.
Davros began experimenting with organisms and teaching them to speak. In particular, he taught them to say his name. For his first experiment, he used a Thal brain, that of a spy named Baran, instead of a Kaled one. (AUDIO: Guilt)
Creation of the Daleks
By another account however, Davros' crippling had led to him being shunned and given small-scale scientific projects. With half his body crippled, Davros began working on implanting organic brains into mechanical shells to serve as semi-autonomous attack drones, being assisted by Gharman. Witnessing the fear that his first malfunctioning prototype had instilled within General Ravon and Security Chief Nyder, Davros divested a significant amount of his delegated resources into his own life support, choosing to command respect through fear. When his first successful prototype instilled greater fear, Davros used it to acquire further political power. (PROSE: Davros Genesis)
With his equally ruthless aide, Nyder, Davros ascended to a high rank in the Kaled Scientific Elite and ultimately presided over the creation of the Daleks. Having foreseen that over time the Kaleds would mutate and degenerate into mutants who could not live on their own, Davros set about accelerating this evolution, (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) leading the Daleks to come into existence earlier than they would have in the normal course of historical events, (PROSE: War of the Daleks) having decided that victory over the Thals was meaningless unless the future of the Kaleds was preserved. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) He also made alterations of his own to the Dalek genome, filtering out qualities Davros deemed "weak" to make his creations the ultimate warriors. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)
According to another account, destroying conscience in the Kaleds had been the original purpose of his experiments, and the fact that his test subjects degenerated into mutants who needed machines to even survive — let alone move around and fight — was an unintended side effect. (PROSE: Davros, Dark Lord of Skaro)
At any rate, since the mutant creatures could not survive on their own, Davros created mobile casings for them, also making sure that they were equipped with fearsome weapons, as Davros's true ambition was to create the ultimate warrior lifeform, able to dominate Skaro forever. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) The travel machines he built were based on designs stolen from other scientists, (PROSE: War of the Daleks) the Dalek War Machine having been developed by the inventor Yarvelling in the early days of the war against the Thals. (COMIC: Genesis of Evil) However, another account held that the Mark I Travel Machine was based on Davros' own chair. (AUDIO: Guilt)
However, an intervention by the Time Lords began a chain of events after that. The Fourth Doctor was sent to Skaro at this time when Davros first demonstrated the Daleks to the Kaled Scientific Elite. With the presence of the Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan contradicting his claim that only Skaro could support life in the galaxy, (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) Davros was enlightened to the wider universe and changed his ambitions from conquering Skaro to mastering the universe. (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords) Davros imprisoned the Doctor. He used a lie detector to force the Doctor to reveal the details of the Daleks' future defeats, so that he could learn from them and so his creations, the Daleks, could avoid them (the Doctor later had this record destroyed). Davros refused to listen to the Doctor when he begged him to make the Daleks peaceful creatures of good, rather than the evil exterminators they would become. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)
"Death" and revival
Upon activation, the Daleks exterminated Nyder. However, Davros soon became their next victim, ironically because of the programming that he himself had given them: to exterminate all those who were not pure Dalek. He begged them to have pity on him but they stated that were incapable of doing so as he had not programmed them to feel pity. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)
Unbeknownst to the Daleks, they had actually only damaged his primary life support system. The secondary and backup circuits switched on immediately, placing him in suspended animation while his life support worked to regenerate him. (TV: Destiny of the Daleks) During this time, Davros hoped that his creations had not forgotten him, and that he would be found once more and would rule the Daleks as he had originally planned. (AUDIO: The Lights of Skaro)
After a lengthy time had passed, the Daleks, now a major galactic power, sought to revive Davros so that he might offer them a way out of the impasse in their war with the Movellans. Both sides were in a stalemate because they were androids that relied solely on logical moves, so Davros' organic mind would be able to think of ways to circumvent the situation.
Davros' suspended body was eventually found in the underground remains of the crumbled bunker and he was revived. Davros opted to help the Daleks in their war against the Movellans. He devised a plan to destroy a Movellan ship. After this failed, he was captured by the Doctor and the escaped Dalek slaves, and imprisoned in a cryogenic freezer as "a block of ice". As anticipated by Tyssan, Davros was to stand trial for "crimes against the whole of sentient creation". (TV: Destiny of the Daleks)
Liberation
The humans decreed an indefinite sentence of suspended animation while Davros retained full consciousness. After ninety years, the Daleks, led by the Dalek Supreme, liberated Davros from his prison station in space, and revived him again. They believed he might help them to find a cure for the virus with which the Movellans defeated them, a virus that attacked only Dalek tissue. Pretending to research the cure, Davros experimented on Daleks to bring them under his control. The Doctor, now in his fifth incarnation, attempted to kill Davros at this time, though he lacked the resolve to do so directly. His treachery discovered by the Dalek Supreme, Davros released the Movellan virus onto the prison ship, killing all the Daleks on board.
The virus began affecting Davros, who promptly fled in an escape pod before Stien caused the station (and the prison ship) to explode. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks)
23rd century invasion of Earth
In the hundred years leading up to the Earth year 2254, Davros and the Daleks witnessed the human race advance their scientific knowledge to the point of becoming a threat. Ultimately, Davros decided that this problem needed to be rectified and so launched an invasion of Earth, intending to turn it into a Dalek production planet. (GAME: Dalek Attack)
Davros genetically tested a group of humans. Modifying their brains to remove their emotions of compassion, love and pity, Davros converted them into drones; as such, these drones were, like the Daleks, Davros' children. As the Daleks continued their 23rd century bombardment of the Earth colony of Phobos, Drone 77 and Drone 69, formerly a human male and female respectively, were questioned by Davros. When they behaved in a fashion indicating disgust for him, both moving away when he went to touch them, and demonstrated fear by seeking comfort in each other's arms, Davros ordered their extermination. As he left, he wondered if the same behaviour that he so despised also existed in the Daleks. (PROSE: An Incident Concerning the Continual Bombardment of the Phobos Colony)
Back on Skaro in 2254, Davros addressed the Battle Commander Daleks in the presence of the Emperor Dalek, commencing the invasion of Earth. However, the Seventh Doctor led a resistance against the Daleks on Earth. Confronting Davros on Skaro, the Doctor informed Davros that his invasion of Earth had been foiled and that the Time Lords would ensure that he would never threaten the universe again. Davros was then frozen in time. (GAME: Dalek Attack) According to one account, this was the Doctor's cathartic simulation created by fictional energies. (PROSE: Head Games)
A new enterprise
Davros was somehow picked up by a different space station and imprisoned in a vault. Arnold Baynes and his wife, Lorraine, extracted him and helped in his restoration. At this very same moment, the Sixth Doctor arrived after being called in by some friends. He demanded Davros be immediately placed in suspended animation, but as Davros was fully conscious he goaded the Doctor into doing the job himself. The Doctor couldn't. Feeling Davros deserved a chance for redemption, Baynes offered him a job at his company, TAI. The Doctor also offered a working relationship with Davros.
Davros gained a foothold and claimed to be working on a way to combat famine. He held great interest in the stock market and planned on closing it down by broadcasting a pattern he discovered, the results completely disrupting the Galaxy and enabling Davros to gain a military foothold. However Davros began to be haunted by his past, particularly the time before his accident when he had betrayed a female Kaled scientist named Shan whom he perhaps had loved. The Doctor halted his plan but Davros escaped in a ship. The Doctor took control of the ship from the TAI control room and made it crash while Davros screamed Shan's name. (AUDIO: Davros)
Emperor of the Imperial Dalek Faction
Davros survived and set himself up as "the Great Healer" on the planet Necros, operating through a fake head as a lure for assassins, and lured the Sixth Doctor there. Using the bodies of the dead at Tranquil Repose, Davros created a new race of Daleks with white and gold livery. These became "Imperial Daleks". The new faction was totally loyal to him. However those who weren't intelligent enough were converted into concentrated protein to combat famine.
After Kara hired Orcini, a knight of the Grand Order of Oberon, to assassinate Davros, they destroyed his fake head, and the real Davros subdued them. Davros then brought the Doctor to him, gleefully informing him that, while his allies, Natasha and Grigory, had destroyed the lab, they had been killed, and his main force of Daleks was elsewhere. During this encounter, Orcini's squire, Bostock, destroyed Davros' hand. The Supreme Dalek's forces arrived on Necros after being called in by another Tranquil Repose worker Takis and captured him to put him on trial, with his army being destroyed by Orcini. (TV: Revelation of the Daleks)
En route to Skaro, the ship carrying Davros crashed on the planet Lethe. Davros was rescued. He 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, forcing him to serve as an agent of the Daleks and stop Davros' researches 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)
Trial
According to one account, Davros was then taken to Skaro, where he was put on trial by the ruling Dalek Emperor. Before a sentence could be passed, however, the Sixth Doctor released a virus onto the Daleks, saved Davros, taking him on board his TARDIS. (COMIC: Emperor of the Daleks!)
By suggestion of the Doctor, (COMIC: Up Above the Gods) Davros hid himself on Spiridon, along with his empire of Daleks. The Daleks who had put him on trial before came to return him to Skaro, but his Daleks held them off. Davros detonated the planet, killing the Daleks. He woke highly injured, four days into the Dalek civil war, in a new casing as the Dalek Emperor. (COMIC: Emperor of the Daleks!)
- For more background information on, and an account of, the war that followed between Dalek factions, see Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War.
According to another account, Davros encountered the Thal Lareen while en route to Skaro. Lareen was using a stealth suit that made her invisible to Dalek scanners. Lareen attempted to find Davros' "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' 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)
Emperor of the Daleks
One of Davros's earliest actions as Emperor was to order the assassination of the First Doctor, but his plot was foiled by the Seventh Doctor during his hunt for the Key to Time. (COMIC: Time & Time Again)
At some point while Emperor, Davros developed mind-transfer technology and formed an alliance with Napoleon in the hope of changing history by altering the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo, planning to replace Napoleon's mind with that of a Dalek and use Napoleon's mind for the Dalek battle computers. The Sixth Doctor found Davros in 1815 and transferred minds with him. Davros' mind was transferred back but the Doctor revealed the deception to Napoleon, who deliberately lost the battle. (AUDIO: The Curse of Davros)
By the time of his attempt to recover the Hand of Omega from Earth in November 1963, Davros had proclaimed himself the Dalek Emperor. He was completely encased within an Imperial Dalek-like shell, though his head and upper body still appeared to be at least partially Kaled. He was nearly killed when his ship was destroyed by the Hand of Omega, but survived once again in an escape pod. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
- For more details on this, see the Shoreditch Incident.
After the Hand of Omega
Eventually making his way to Azimuth, Davros attempted to make contact with other Daleks in the universe. There, he encountered the Seventh Doctor again. After Will Arrowsmith told him about the Persuasion machine, he wanted it to reassert his control over the Daleks. Davros revealed that the main reason he had returned to Azimuth was to track down an old experiment he had carried out to clone himself, but learned that the clone had developed its own consciousness after it was activated by the remaining Daleks. The clone had assumed the identity of Falkus, and now considered himself Davros' 'son'. Falkus attempted to torture the Doctor for information about his past victories and brainwash his companion Elizabeth Klein to power the Persuasion machine, but Klein was actually a duplicate of herself who used the machine to destroy the Daleks and Falkus. Davros was able to escape in a Dalek time machine, but was trapped again when the Doctor diverted his escape pod to a planet occupied by the Wraiths of Lamuria, a group of spirits dedicated to punishing criminals. (AUDIO: Daleks Among Us)
Davros was eventually able to escape his punishment, but he was left drifting in space in another escape pod that was eventually discovered by a garbage ship called the Quetzel. The Eighth Doctor and Sam Jones landed on the Quetzel. A Thal force later took control of the ship. They wanted Davros to alter their race so they could better fight the Daleks. A force of Daleks arrived and took Davros, the Doctor, Sam, the Thals, and the Quetzel engineer Chayn to Skaro, which Davros had believed destroyed by the Hand of Omega. The planet destroyed had in fact been a decoy world named Antalin. The Dalek Prime wanted to remove any supporters of Davros from the Dalek race and a trial was held. Those Daleks loyal to Davros turned on the Dalek Prime and a civil war broke out. In the end, the Doctor and his allies escaped from Skaro, Davros' forces were defeated, and Davros was apparently executed by matter dispersal, although the Spider Dalek responsible for Davros's sentence had actually been converted to his cause earlier. (PROSE: War of the Daleks)
Now alone in space, Davros created a virus capable of killing all living things, which the Doctor had hypothetically compared the Daleks to during their first conflict on Skaro. He was found by a Nekkistani ship. They helped him, and he rewarded them by killing them. The ship with Davros on board was found drifting in the Time Vortex by the Eighth Doctor, Gemma Griffin and Samson Griffin. Davros took control of Gemma and Samson and operated on the TARDIS after Samson had rendered the Doctor unconscious. Davros established a link to the TARDIS. He sent Gemma and Samson home and left the TARDIS to be damaged by the self-destruct of the Nekkistani ship. Davros conquered Earth by causing mutations and creating new Daleks. By the time he met the Doctor again, Davros teetered on the edge of sanity, his mind split between two warring personalities — Davros and "the Emperor", his casing keeping the lower half of his Imperial Dalek casing mixed with the top half of the Dalek City Emperor fought by the Second Doctor. The Doctor struck a deal with the Daleks, who considered Davros an unreliable leader. They would leave Earth with their true Emperor if the Doctor did not release the virus. The Daleks accepted and left Earth with Davros, his Emperor personality dominant. (AUDIO: Terror Firma)
The Death Wheel
In the 26th century, the Emperor, having forgotten who Davros even was — to the chagrin of the Seventh Doctor, personally attended the construction of the Death Wheel in orbit of the planet Hell. Demanding to know why Helkogen production had dropped, the Emperor was answered by an Ogron, who reported that the Helkan slaves were working as fast as they were able but required food and rest. Enraged, the Emperor exterminated the Ogron and ordered the routine extermination of the Helkans until production increased, deeming completion of the Death Wheel imperative for Operation Genocide.
Soon after, a cargo ship carrying intruders to the Death Wheel was intercepted. The Seventh Doctor and Kemlo, a Helkan, were presented to the Emperor aboard the Death Wheel. The Emperor recognised the first seven incarnations of the Doctor as an enemy of the Daleks. Subjecting the Doctor to interrogation with his Imperial Guard Daleks, the Emperor revealed his intention to cleanse the planet of Hell of "humanoid infestation". Alerted to another humanoid intruder, the Emperor ordered his Imperial Guards to exterminate the Doctor. However, the Doctor was rescued by Dalek Killer Abslom Daak, who killed the Imperial Guards before making off and freeing the Helkan slaves with the Daleks in pursuit. Ultimately, Daak, after ensuring the Doctor and the Helkans got to safety, destroyed the Death Wheel, seemingly at the cost of his own life. (COMIC: Nemesis of the Daleks) Later accounts indicated that Davros's actual personality became dominant once again. (TV: The Stolen Earth)
During the Last Great Time War
Immediately prior to the war, Davros had been, reluctantly, recruited by the Dalek Empire to aid in an invasion of a Krillitane outpost on Gryphon's Reach that was developing invisibility technology. When this invasion was foiled by the Eleventh Doctor, Davros was cast out. To redeem himself, Davros developed the invisibility technology himself and incorporated it into the Daleks. Luring the Doctor to Alacracis IV for one of their many Christmas truces, Davros had the Daleks ambush the Doctor only for the Time Lord to offer his own life if the Daleks killed Davros as well. When the Daleks readied to fire on Davros as well, they triggered Davros' fail-safe and self-destructed. Returning to his ship, Davros briefly considered abandoning his children before they asked for his help in the Last Great Time War. (PROSE: Father of the Daleks)
One of the events in the Last Great Time War was known as the "seven deaths of Davros". (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
During the "very first year" of the Time War, (TV: The Stolen Earth) Davros was promised his own legion by the Dalek Emperor. The Emperor asked him to build a new creature to use against the Time Lords. Davros created the Nightmare Child, which was what he termed "the perfect Dalek." The Nightmare child quickly became hungry, wishing to consume everything in its path. Left with no choice but to kill it, Davros tried to send it into the Gates of Elysium. He sent a distress signal to the War Doctor, but instead of wanting to be rescued, he really only wished for the Doctor to see him die, helpless to save him. Davros' command ship flew into the jaws of the Nightmare Child, and the Gates of Elysium closed behind them. Davros was believed to have been killed. (PROSE: The Third Wise Man) In actuality, Davros was saved when Dalek Caan broke the Time War's time-lock and took him to the post-war universe. (TV: The Stolen Earth) The Advocate followed Davros and Caan out of the Time War. (COMIC: Don't Step on the Grass)
Following the Last Great Time War
After Davros was rescued by Dalek Caan, he used cells from his own body to create the New Dalek Empire. This sacrifice left some of his internal organs and part of the skeleton exposed on his upper torso. At the epicentre of this new hidden empire was a planet-sized space station known as the Crucible, stationed within the Medusa Cascade but in a pocket of time one second out of sync with the rest of the universe. At some point, these new Daleks refused to recognise Davros as their leader, and installed a Supreme Dalek. They did not exterminate Davros, though, and he still considered them his "children". They made an arrangement to keep him under guard inside the vault room of the Crucible. In return, he helped them steal 27 planets from across space and time to fuel a reality bomb, which would leave them the sole inhabitants in all existence. (TV: The Stolen Earth)
The Tenth Doctor had lost the trail on the missing Earth, but the Children of Time used the Earth's phone network to contact him. Davros then hacked into the Subwave Network to speak to him, and soon the Doctor was brought in his TARDIS aboard the Crucible where they met face-to-face. Davros and the Daleks neutralised several threats (such as Sarah Jane Smith's warp star and Martha Jones' Osterhagen key) and prepared to detonate the reality bomb. However, the "DoctorDonna" intervened by shutting off the bomb by closing off all of the Z-Neutrino energy relay loops of the reality bomb by using an internalised synchronous back-feed reversal loop, returning most of the stolen planets, followed by the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor maximising the Dalekanium power feeds and blasting them back, destroying the Crucible and the fleet. Before fleeing the carnage in the TARDIS, the original Tenth Doctor offered to save Davros, but the creator of the Daleks refused, naming him "the Destroyer of Worlds" and choosing to stay aboard the exploding Crucible. (TV: Journey's End)
Remembering childhood
Having somehow survived, (PROSE: The Whoniverse) Davros, on the brink of death, remembered his encounter with the Twelfth Doctor in his childhood, and ordered Colony Sarff to bring him to him. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice) In what one account described as "the Last Night" of Davros's life (PROSE: Davros, Dark Lord of Skaro) and when he faced the Doctor again, Davros talked about the Daleks, calling them children. He admitted that even though he created them he couldn't control them, claiming he couldn't stop them from exterminating the Doctor's friends. During this meeting, Davros showed the Doctor that he had recorded all his foe's speeches about morality. Perhaps as a taunt, Davros singled out one about killing a child who would grow up to be a "ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives"; the Doctor had the chance to prevent Davros from ever creating the monster known as Daleks, but had failed because of his compassion. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice)
Davros revealed the cables connected him to the life force of every Dalek. While attempting to make the Doctor feel compassion for him as part of a plan to steal his regenerative energy, Davros learned that the Doctor had saved Gallifrey from destruction at the end of the Time War. Whether sincerely or not, Davros congratulated the Doctor on saving his people, referring to his own failure to save the Kaled race from extinction. Shutting down his eye implant, Davros told the Doctor that he wanted to see one last sunrise with his own eyes. However, when the Doctor, apparently driven by compassion, released regenerative energy into the cables, Davros was quick to act; using Colony Sarff to secure the Doctor, he began siphoning regenerative energy from the Time Lord and transmitting it into every Dalek across Skaro, using some of it to renew himself and remove his reliance on the life support for survival.
However, after being saved by Missy, the Doctor revealed that he had known of Davros' plan, and had let him take the energy as part of his own plan to stop the Daleks. He then revealed that Davros' transmission of the energy into every Dalek on Skaro had included the decaying Daleks in the sewers beneath the city, who attacked the Dalek City and destroyed it, with Davros still inside when the roof of the infirmary collapsed on him. (TV: The Witch's Familiar)
Aborted timeline
In an aborted timeline, the War Master used the Anti-Genesis codes to travel from the Last Great Time War to Skaro during the Thousand Year War, and lured Davros into a trap; pretending to be Davros's uncle, the Master summoned the Kaled scientist into the observation room of the Kaled Dome, so that when the Dome was hit by a bomb, Davros died instantly, whereas in the original timeline, he survived the blast due to being in his secure laboratory, although he was significantly crippled after the blast. (AUDIO: From the Flames) This change in history allowed the Master to take control of the Kaled Scientific Elite in Davros's place and, by extension, create a race of Daleks obedient to him instead of Davros. (AUDIO: The Master's Dalek Plan) This timeline was eventually erased from existence by the Master's future self, a Master from a parallel universe, and the Dalek Time Strategist, restoring Davros's position as the true creator of the Daleks. (AUDIO: He Who Wins)
Parallel universes
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In one parallel universe, Davros lived with his Thal wife, Charn, on Skaro, centuries after the Kaleds and Thals had allied to eradicate the Time Lords for trying to destroy the Kaleds when they were but a "nascent species". This Davros initially did not create any Daleks, instead being a scientist of transdimensional engineering over genetics and warfare. However, when Davros tested a dimensional portal he had spent his lifetime creating, the Dalek Time Strategist travelled to Davros's universe from N-Space. Despite the efforts of the Eighth Doctor and Bliss, the Time Strategist successfully merged this Davros with echoes of all of Davros's alternate selves from throughout the multiverse, discarding this Davros's original personality in favour of a replica of the N-Space Davros, who assisted the Time Strategist in restoring the Dalek Empire to begin the Last Great Time War anew, (AUDIO: Palindrome) following the Daleks's erasure from existence by the Valeyard. (AUDIO: The War Valeyard) This Davros was eventually kept in stasis by the restored Dalek Emperor, who believed he would be of further use in the Time War. (AUDIO: Restoration of the Daleks)
In another parallel universe, Davros abandoned the Daleks at their creation out of disappointment for their failure to meet his expectations. Davros eventually allied with, and enhanced, the Quatch, whom he believed to be far more powerful than his Daleks. Eventually, Davros returned to Skaro and assisted the Quatch in their attempt to invade the planet, but betrayed the Quatch and sacrificed himself to forcefully send them back to their native dimension, after learning from the Doctor that the Quatch were responsible for both Davros's mutilated body and for starting the war between the Kaleds and the Thals that led to Davros creating the Daleks. (AUDIO: Masters of War)
Creations
Most notable of Davros's creations was the Mark III travel machine, which became known as a Dalek. Davros also experimented with other Dalek forms, such as a Dalek able to walk over rough terrain known as a Spider Dalek. (PROSE: War of the Daleks)
Davros also created an Imperial faction of Daleks to counter what he saw as a renegade faction of Daleks, as well as the cybernetic Juggernauts by combining human components and DNA with the robotic Mechonoids. (AUDIO: The Juggernauts)
The Twelfth Doctor would later poke fun of what Davros invented, saying that he couldn't even invent legs, and asking how the Daleks felt when everyone else had more than one eye. (TV: The Witch's Familiar)
Personality
Davros had a sound mind early in his life, but the incident that crippled him and his overall experiences in the Thal-Kaled war left him a depraved and insane megalomaniac. He became tyrannical and ruthless, tolerating no opposition to his will and dismissing fairness and democracy as "the creeds of cowards". (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)
Brilliant and driven, he relentlessly experimented to find the final form of the Kaled people. Although he respected the Fourth Doctor as a fellow scientist, he refused to make the Daleks into less vicious creatures, which almost resulted in his death. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) Over the years, Davros and the Doctor had several truces where they met with each other on Christmas. (PROSE: Father of the Daleks) Davros's respect for the Doctor had seemingly faded completely by the time of the war in the Medusa Cascade and he took a sadistic pleasure in reminding the Doctor of how many people had died for him and even implied that he considered the Doctor to be a coward, calling him "the man who keeps running". The final words Davros ever spoke to the Tenth Doctor was to insult him, calling him "the destroyer of worlds". (TV: Journey's End) During his scheme to trick the Doctor into giving his regeneration energy, Davros claimed he had always admired his nemesis and claimed to wish that they, at least once, could be on the same side. (TV: The Witch's Familiar)
Davros was malevolent and sadistic; it was his ability to command and delegate that was most forceful and cold. While his conversation with the Doctor following his awakening (TV: Destiny of the Daleks) suggested that he may have survived the extermination attempt through forethought, it seemed to have made Davros even more bitter. This led him to making the Imperial Daleks. (TV: Revelation of the Daleks) His sadistic side increased after the Time War as he demonstrated a desire to psychologically torment the Doctor, informing the Tenth Doctor that he turned his companions into soldiers and weapons (TV: Journey's End) and mocking the Twelfth Doctor by claiming that his compassion was the reason that he had lost his friends and his TARDIS due to his refusal to destroy Davros or the Daleks at their beginning. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice)
During the lead up to the Last Great Time War, Davros felt the pride of a father when the Daleks told him they had declared war on the Time Lords. (PROSE: Father of the Daleks) After his supposed death and rescue from the Time War, Davros arguably seemed less power-crazed and somewhat defeatist, perhaps due to having lost control over the Daleks yet again. He also seemed to have developed a dislike of pride and vanity: he admonished the Dalek Supreme for displaying pride, and distastefully noted "arrogance" in the Doctor's voice. (TV: The Stolen Earth) Davros was also a hypocrite which was shown when he himself displayed pride when he refused the Doctor's offer to save him from the exploding Crucible, choosing death over capture and by his statement, "Behold, the apotheosis of my genius", showing that he himself was as narcissistic as ever. He was also a complete maniac, even more than before, and was consumed by an insane desire to completely destroy the entire omniverse, whereas previously, he had wanted to rule it. (TV: Journey's End)
Davros did possess a sense of humour, however rarely it was expressed. He coldly quipped that informing the beneficiaries of his Necros-produced protein that they would be eating their own relatives would have created "consumer resistance". (TV: Revelation of the Daleks) He once remarked to the Doctor that "your appearance is as inconstant as your intelligence", and when the Doctor reminded him that he had defeated him each time they had met, Davros laughed and replied, "You flatter yourself!" (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) He later seemingly parodied his own hyperbolic tendencies when listing the Doctor's failures, ending with the matter-of-fact statement, "Oh, the end of the universe has come." (TV: Journey's End)
Physical characteristics
By the Movellans' definition, Davros was a humanoid mutant. (TV: Destiny of the Daleks)
As a child, Davros had the skin tone similar to a Caucasian human, brown hair and two functioning blue eyes. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice / The Witch's Familiar)
Davros was originally seen by the Fourth Doctor sitting upright in a life-support chariot resembling the base of a Dalek. His skin was discoloured and his body crippled by some accident in his past, leaving him without the use his legs or his left arm. His Kaled body was humanoid, though a blue lens in his forehead replaced his lost vision, allowing him a semblance of sight. This appendage mirrored the look of a Dalek's eyestalk lens. A metal brace was attached to his head, and wires were plugged into his skull. Davros also had a throat microphone implant to enhance his damaged voice. He had only his right hand, which he used to operate controls on his chariot. These could perform functions for controlling doors, the Mark III travel machines, or his own life support system. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)
Davros's body was old and withered with parchment-thin skin and a shrivelled skull with sunken pits for eyes and a thin, cruel gash for a mouth. He was more machine than man, with his lungs, heart, speech, hearing and sight being mechanically or electronically aided. He had a helmet-like arrangement of wires and plastic tubes suspended over his head. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Destiny of the Daleks)
Following his cryogenic imprisonment, Davros's face gained a yellowish, sagging appearance. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks)
Davros' chair had anti-gravity gravitors that enabled him to hover, possibly an upgrade. (TV: Revelation of the Daleks)
On Necros, Bostock fired a gun which destroyed most of his right hand and with it his ability to operate independently. (TV: Revelation of the Daleks) For a short time after, his hand was replaced with a claw (COMIC: Emperor of the Daleks!) and finally with a prosthetic substitute. (AUDIO: The Juggernauts, TV: The Stolen Earth, Journey's End, The Magician's Apprentice, The Witch's Familiar) He was capable of projecting electric shocks from both his organic and mechanical hands and his eye, allowing him to ward off attackers and stun or even kill them. (AUDIO: Davros, TV: Revelation of the Daleks, Journey's End)
During the Dalek Civil War, Davros sat in a bloated dome. His head was cradled by metal braces from which wires trailed down into the hidden body of the Dalek shell. His eyes were hollow scars and the skin of his cheeks was withered and cracked. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks)
By the time that Davros had risen to become the Emperor of the Imperial Dalek faction during the Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War, his life-support chariot no longer featured a button with which he could deactivate his life support, (AUDIO: The Curse of Davros) as it had when he had first met the Doctor on Skaro. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)
At some point prior to, during or immediately after his rescue from the Time War, Davros dispensed with his skull wires and throat microphone. However, he retained his head brace. (TV: The Stolen Earth / Journey's End)
While tricking the Twelfth Doctor into using his regeneration energy to create a new Time Lord-Dalek race, it was revealed that while Davros didn't use his real eyes and hadn't in a long time, he was not blind and could still open his eyes and see. When he did this, he shut down his artificial eye in the middle of his forehead. (TV: The Witch's Familiar)
His artificial eye was evidently connected to his nervous system and susceptible to pain, as he visibly winced when Missy jabbed him in that eye. (TV: The Witch's Familiar)
Other information
In the video game Happy Deathday, played by Izzy Sinclair on the Time-Space Visualiser, Davros was among a host of "every single enemy" that the Doctor had ever defeated, who were assembled by the Beige Guardian and pitted against the Doctor's first eight incarnations. (COMIC: Happy Deathday)
The Ninth Doctor once referenced Davros (though not by name) to Henry van Statten, calling him a "genius" as well as a "man who was king of his own little world". He commented that van Statten would like him. (TV: Dalek) The Eleventh Doctor claimed that the TARDIS had a GPS with Davros' voice. (AUDIO: Trouble in Paradise)
Davros was also known as the Dark Lord of Skaro. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice) Along with the likes of the Cybermen, the Weeping Angels, and more, he was included in the Perils of the Constant Division, a series of vid-briefings on dangerous beings. (TV: The Tsuranga Conundrum) The Testimony Foundation also knew of Davros and the Daleks. (TV: Twice Upon a Time)
Behind the scenes
Actors
Michael Wisher (who had previously played the voice of the Daleks in several Third Doctor stories) portrayed Davros in his debut story Genesis of the Daleks. (He also contributed toward the voices of Daleks for the same story.) Wisher rehearsed with a paper bag on his head because of the limited vision he would have with the Davros mask makeup.
For Destiny of the Daleks, David Gooderson took over the role for the unavailable Wisher.
Subsequently, Terry Molloy, who first appeared in Davros' third story, Resurrection of the Daleks, has played the role on television and audio more times than any other actor, beginning in 1984. Rory Jennings played Davros as a child in an extended flashback sequence in the Big Finish Productions audio mini-series I, Davros, which examined Davros' life before creating the Daleks.
Julian Bleach played Davros on television in The Stolen Earth and Journey's End in 2008, and again in The Magician's Apprentice and The Witch's Familiar in 2015. Joey Price also portrayed Davros as a child in The Magician's Apprentice and The Witch's Familiar.
In the audio story The Curse of Davros, Davros was played by Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor switches bodies with Davros in an attempt to reform the Daleks.
Unreleased sources
The ending of Genesis of the Daleks would have shown a button on Davros' wheelchair flashing after his "death", hinting that he had not died. In the event, by mistake, this detail did not make it onto screen.
Davros would have appeared in the cancelled BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Enemy of the Daleks, but, by this point, he had been reduced to an artificial intelligence.
Purpose
Terry Nation saw Davros as a voice for the Daleks. In DWM #250, he commented:
The Daleks, when they have to make any kind of long speech, are immensely boring creatures. You can't have a Dalek doing four or five sentences in a row, so I wanted someone to speak for them. The thing that was half-man and half-Dalek was a perfect example of this, and I made sure he was not killed...he actually became a very good plot piece.
Genius or Madman
Davros: Genius or Madman, a feature in Terry Nation's Dalek Annual 1978, released between Genesis of the Daleks and Destiny of the Daleks, gave a backstory for Davros.
Davros was born on the very day the war which was to last seven hundred years started, also the first day of the fourth millennium (second galaxy calendar). Throughout his childhood, Davros knew only the hardship and deprivation of war as he grew up in the deep shelters that gave some protection from the constant air attacks. When he was only five years old, his father was killed leading an attack against the Thals. A year later, his mother died in a rocket raid. An embittered child, Davros nursed a violent hatred of the Thals and looked forward to the time when he could join the war effort.
With an inventive and adaptable mind, Davros showed a remarkable aptitude for science at school. Having absorbed all that his tutors could teach him very quickly, the now fourteen year old Davros passed the test that qualfied him as an entrant to the Secret Weapons Research Establishment, the youngest candidate ever accepted. Davros demonstrated an easy grasp of the most complex scientific subjects which overwhelmed his fellow scientists, becoming solely responsible for a number of highly sophisticated developments in Kaled weaponry.
Almost sixteen, the age at which he would be allowed to join the Kaled army, Davros' long-held ambition was shattered when a laboratory accident caused an explosion that crippled both his legs. After months of painful surgery, Davros was informed by his doctors that he would never walk again. Recovering from the operations in his hospital bed, Davros designed a special type of wheelchair that would give him complete mobility. With the aid of Kaled engineers the chair was built and he returned to work at the Establishment, continuing to invent weapons each more deadly than the last. Davros' success won him greater political power and prestige and before long he was appointed head of all research. Soon after, he established the Corps Elite, an entirely autonomous military and scientific body. Davros' growing power became a source of fear for even leading government ministers.
As the years went by and the war dragged on, Davros resented the hours he wasted in sleeping and developed a circuit that fed impulses into his brain, allowing him to do without sleep altogether. As he grew older, Davros came to despise the weaknesses of his own body and so devised mechanical and electronic substitutes to replace his failing organs; adding new parts into his chair which slowly became a total life support system, a mechanical pump replaced his heart, his eyes were substituted with an electronic scanner far superior to humanoid vision when his eyes failed, deafness was combated with a super sensitive audio system and chemical nutrients were fed automatically into his system, eliminating the need for eating and drinking.
While others of his generation reached the end of their natural life span, Davros lived on, now almost more machine than man. A throat disease robbed him of his voice, so he invented and installed a miniature vocalizer. Realising that the continued use of nuclear weapons in the war would result in the destruction of the Kaled race, Davros worked to develop a travel machine that could house the mutant creature the Kaled would ultimately become, based on his own life support system. Experimenting with genetic changes, Davros sought to eliminate conscience from the mind and creature that was totally ruthless with no pity. As he envisioned, this super-being would not only destroy the Thals, but go on to conquer the universe, with himself as their leader.
Davros gave his research a code name, Dalek made up from the letters of his race. Finally, at over one thousand years older, Davros perfected the Daleks only to be seemingly destroyed by them. His dream of universal domination living on through them, Davros was perpetuated in the savage, conscienceless machines as they terrified the galaxies. Davros' body was buried somewhere beneath the millions of tons of rubble caved in from the roof of his workships. A legend told in space claimed that Davros built into his life support system a device that would keep him in suspended animation; were he ever rrecovered, he could be brought to full life and the universe would be faced with a power for evil such as has never been known.
Anatomy
Terry Nation's Dalek Annual 1978 also provided an anatomy of Davros, naming the components in his life-support system:
- Vibro-sensor
- Omnipute
- Fatigue Eliminator
- Audio input
- Transmission controls
- Energiser
- Disc sensors
- Pacemaker controls
- Circuit monitor
- Veracity perceptor
- Power source indicators
- Fail safe defence
- Dalek voice control
- Telepathic receptor
- Super optic
Stage appearance
Davros appeared on stage, once more played by Julian Bleach, during the initial Doctor Who at the Proms. He dramatically appeared on-stage to welcome attendees to his Dalek Empire and claimed the Royal Albert Hall as his new palace and the audience would become his slaves. This wikia deems the Prom presentations, often a mix of in-universe and real-world guests, to be an invalid source for narrative.
LEGO appearance
Please help by adding some more information.
Davros appears in the Doctor Who level pack in LEGO Dimensions.
This wiki does not consider Dimensions to be a valid source due to role-play-like mechanics within the non-story elements of the game.
