"Metaltron"
"Metaltron" was the name given by Henry Van Statten and Adam Mitchell to a bronze Dalek soldier that fought in the Last Great Time War, and survived after falling through time to the Ascension Islands on Earth. Damaged, he passed through several collectors of alien technology, eventually becoming a living specimen in van Statten's Cage in 2012. It was also referred to as "The Object" during one of the illicit auctions it was sold at.
Biography
A day to come
In the early days of the Last Great Time War, the Time Lords foresaw this Dalek's encounter with the Doctor. Taking note of how the Dalek would regenerate itself using Rose's latent artron energy, the Eleventh General warned all his troops to never touch a Dalek while also commencing research on whether it was possible to replicate the transfer of Rose's emotions to other Daleks. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
Fighting in the Time War
A typical bronze Dalek drone fought in the Last Great Time War, being fielded during the Fall of Arcadia. It was told that it would be among the first casualties and that the Doctor would be there, with the Commander telling it to fear him. During the battle, the Dalek found itself alone after its comrades were destroyed and glimpsed the War Doctor in the smoke. Taken over by fear it fired aimlessly, missing him entirely. (PROSE: Dalek) Abandoning the conflict in fear, (TV: Dalek) the Dalek survived the War, falling through time and landing on the Ascension Islands in 1961, (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters) or 1962, (AUDIO: The Dalek Transaction) burning over the course of three days. (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters)
A prisoner on Earth
Insane and screaming, he passed through several collections in the 20th and 21st centuries. (TV: Dalek) Around 2006, (PROSE: Operation London, et al.) "The Object", as it was known, was sold at an auction for a very high price (including the P&P) that caught the interest of UNIT, (PROSE: Object Auction) though not for the first time — UNIT had been tracking it for a while. (PROSE: Object Auction, AUDIO: The Dalek Transaction) UNIT's interest seemed to drive up the price, already too high for them to reasonably afford. All this was discussed on a secure operations board on the UNIT website. (PROSE: Object Auction) The buyer was billionaire Henry van Statten, (TV: Dalek) who was invited to a private auction over the internet; the entry fee to the website alone cost $1000000. (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters)
UNIT lost track of the "Code D" as it entered Utah; (AUDIO: The Dalek Transaction) Henry had placed him in the Vault. Lacking any idea on his name, van Statten claimed to have come up with the name "Metaltron", (TV: Dalek) but according to one account, it was already known by that name, (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters) although another account stated that Adam Mitchell was the one to devise this name, with van Statten initially calling it "Pepperpotnik". (PROSE: Dalek) Sven tidied up the museum in anticipation of its arrival, (WC: Sven and the Scarf) and the "Metaltron" was kept locked in the Cage, restrained by tensile steel chains attached to stabilising pillars. He instructed another of his staff, Simmons, to make the Metaltron talk. When Doctor Yevgeny Kandinsky touched it without any gloves, he "burst into flames", according to what Simmons said. Although tortured, all the Dalek did was scream. (TV: Dalek)
Facing the Ninth Doctor
With the intention of reaching other Daleks, he sent out a distress signal which was detected by the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler. Initially unaware of the source of the distress signal, the Doctor came to face-to-face with him. Having thought all of the Daleks destroyed, he was shocked to find one alive. He moved his gun to exterminate the Doctor, but had insufficient power to do so. After a hostile and bitter conversation between them about the end of the Time War, the Doctor attempted to murder the Dalek, pulling a lever which sent electricity through his casing. The Doctor was stopped by van Statten, who ordered two guards to "get him out", pulling the Doctor out the room. Simmons managed to turn the electricity off before the Dalek was destroyed. Henry van Statten was pleased to know what the "Metaltron" was really called. (TV: Dalek)
Upon meeting Rose, who had not witnessed the exchange between the Dalek and the Doctor, he seemed to be a harmless victim. Rose, in an attempt to comfort him, touched the right part of the Dalek's dome (to the left of the eye stalk, from Rose's perspective). As she did so, he absorbed artron energy, biomass and DNA from her. The Dalek privately mused that Rose had travelled in the TARDIS and had picked up the artron energy within it, allowing it to extrapolate the energy and use it to regenerate himself and escape the Vault. (PROSE: Dalek) He then downloaded all the data available on the Internet and killed Simmons, Bywater, De Maggio, and numerous others. He pursued both Rose and Adam Mitchell through the GeoComTex facility and killed 200 of van Statten's security.
However, when the Dalek cornered Rose, it was unable to kill her; as the human DNA that he had absorbed from Rose had given him emotions, (TV: Dalek) "infecting" it with the "human factor". (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) The Dalek and Rose finally made their way to Van Statten’s office, where the Dalek corners van Statten and demands to know why he tortured him. A terrified van Statten admitted he just wanted the Dalek to talk. The Dalek then angrily states to hear him talk, while preparing to exterminate him. Rose, however is able to stop him. As the Dalek hesitates and turns to Rose, she states that he doesn’t need to kill anymore, and asks what he wants; besides killing. The Dalek turns back to van Statten, but then turns back to Rose and replies that he wants freedom.
The Dalek and Rose travel to the top floor of the base, where he blasts a hole in the ceiling and opens his battle armour to feel the sunlight. The Doctor then appeared, armed with an alien energy weapon, with the intent to kill the Dalek. Upon seeing the Dalek able to feel, the Doctor lowered the weapon at Rose's request.
Considering all the new emotions to be "sickness", the Dalek asked Rose to order him to self-destruct, preferring death to a life with emotions. She refused at first, but eventually gave the order, and he destroyed himself. (TV: Dalek)
Legacy
This was the first time the Doctor had found a survivor of the Time War. Although he believed that this was the last Dalek, he would soon find out how wrong he was. The Dalek Emperor himself survived, when his heavily-damaged flagship was flung through time before the time-lock occurred. (TV: The Parting of the Ways) Likewise, the four-member Cult of Skaro survived aboard their Void Ship, having in their possession a prison vessel loaded with millions of Daleks (TV: Army of Ghosts/Doomsday)
Rose would later recall her restoration of the "Metaltron" Dalek with her touch when the Cult of Skaro demanded that she open the Genesis Ark. She explained to Mickey Smith that the Dalek was broken and dying but when she touched him she brought him back to life, as the Daleks had evolved to use as a power supply the background radiation one "soaked up" from travelling through time in the TARDIS. (TV: Doomsday)
Van Stattan mysteriously disappeared, (PROSE: The Whoniverse) as his employees wiped his memories and dropped him off elsewhere in the world to punish him for the Dalek massacre. (TV: Dalek) At that time, a rumor that he had a Dalek in his collection had spread. Its origin of falling down to the Ascension Islands was also rumored. Though UNIT could find no trace of the Metaltron when they cataloged van Statten's collection, (PROSE: The Whoniverse) they were aware of its existence, classing it as a Code D, but lost track of it once it was relocated to the Vault. (AUDIO: The Dalek Transaction)
It was from the Vault that The Dalek Conquests was recorded, recounting the Metaltron incident as part of what they knew of Dalek history. (AUDIO: The Dalek Conquests) Later human historians included a brief mention of this Dalek and its tragic fate in a book looking back on the history of the Dalek Empire. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) An account of the history of N-Space recounted that van Statten was rumored to have the Dalek. (PROSE: The Whoniverse) A Time Lord author later noted that the Metaltron had been the first Dalek to be seen after the Time War and disproved the belief that they had been rendered extinct at the Fall of Gallifrey. (PROSE: A Brief of History of Time Lords)
Personality
While he was a prisoner, the "Metaltron" refused to speak when Henry van Statten's staff were torturing him, although he did scream. He was enraged by the appearance of the Doctor and tried to exterminate him, but couldn't because his gun had been damaged. The Dalek demanded to be ordered what to do, ironically using orders himself in an attempt to receive them. However, he also begged to be shown pity when the Doctor attempted to destroy him, despite the Doctor coldly pointing out "you never did".
After absorbing Rose Tyler's DNA, the Dalek started feeling human emotions for the first time. Although he gunned down van Statten's staff, he was unable to kill Rose out of mercy. As Rose observed, he began to doubt and question himself. Although he initially wanted to kill Van Statten out of revenge for his suffering, he let him survive on Rose's plea. He also craved freedom. He felt sickened and declared its own life 'sickness', begging for Rose to order him to self-destruct. When she reluctantly gave the command to end his misery, he asked if she was frightened, hinting affection and compassion for Rose Tyler, the only person who'd treated him with kindness. After hearing that it had burned in his crater for days, the Doctor believed that the Dalek had gone insane. (TV: Dalek)
Despite Dalek ideals, the drone, even before its meeting with Rose, found itself looking for a father; it considered its commanders to have such a role and then, upon seeing the Ninth Doctor, thought the word again. After failing to kill the Doctor during the fall of Arcadia, the Dalek became obsessed with killing him, killing the death of Yevgeny Kandinsky examining it after hearing him being called "Doctor". It later wondered that killing the Doctor had been the only thing it had wanted for itself. After gaining human emotions, it repudiated the Doctor when he claimed to have "misjudged" it, affirming that it was still a Dalek, and its act of self-sacrifice was simply an attempt to preserve the purity of its race. (PROSE: Dalek)
Behind the scenes
Prop
The first Dalek seen in the revived Doctor Who television series, the Metaltron was depicted by a prop which was created specially for use in Dalek. The prop which originally portrayed the Metaltron would be reused on several occasions, first returning among the Emperor Dalek's army in Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways.[1]
Most notably, the prop was painted black and used to depict Dalek Sec in Army of Ghosts/Doomsday and Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks.[2][3]
Invalid sources
- This Dalek also acts as the player character in the online game The Last Dalek. It presents an alternate version of the events of Dalek. In the game, the Dalek fights through the Vault, faces van Statten's forces and eventually the Doctor, who is exterminated by the Dalek. The game is completed when the Dalek finds and destroys the Doctor's TARDIS.
Other matters
- In The Day of the Doctor, as Gallifrey vanishes and the Dalek fleet is destroyed, one Dalek seems to survive as it spins off from the explosion. Although this would be consistent with the general backstory of the "Metaltron", there is no clear indication that it is the same Dalek.
- Rusty, a Dalek captured by the Combined Galactic Resistance was similar to "Metaltron" in the sense that he is presented as a potentially moral Dalek. In the end, Rusty instead hones in on the Doctor's hatred of the Daleks to fuel his rampage against his own race in the time of the New Dalek Paradigm.
- The Metaltron was adapted from a Dalek in the audio story Jubilee, on which Dalek was based.
