Mechanoid Incident
The Mechonoid Incident was the Time Lord designation for the event in which the Daleks pursued the First Doctor and his companions through time. (TV: The Chase, PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) One journalist later suggested the Daleks' chase against the Doctor to be the first skirmish of the Last Great Time War. (AUDIO: The Dalek Conquests)
The Black Dalek ordered a squad of Daleks to hunt down the First Doctor using a time machine in revenge for his role in the liberation of Earth in the 22nd century. The ensuing pursuit across time encompassed numerous planets and time periods, culminating on Mechanus where the Daleks engaged the native Mechanoids in battle. (TV: The Chase) Whilst identifying the Daleks' incursions in 1966, 1872 and 1996, the Time Lords indicated on their time scale of Dalek activity that the incident touched the 22nd century as well. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
History
Prelude
On his early travels, the First Doctor became a recurring enemy of the Daleks, (TV: The Daleks, AUDIO: Return to Skaro) notably being instrumental in the overthrow of their occupation of Earth in the 22nd century. (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth)
The Mechanoids and Daleks had first come into conflict early in the Dalek Empire's history, after the Mechanoids used a suspicion ray against the Daleks and warned them to stay out of their skies. (COMIC: Eve of War) War between the two forces was averted by the intervention of the Zerovians, who manipulated the Daleks into destroying the rogue planet Skardal, which the Daleks had set on a collision course with Mechanus, and then told the Mechanoids that the Daleks had saved them purposely. The Mechanoids called off the war, although they still considered the Daleks their enemies. (COMIC: Impasse)
The Daleks developed time machines of their own, however these early time machines relied on taranium creating a means of time travel that, while impressive, was highly unstable, (PROSE: The Chase) and expensive to use. (PROSE: Mission to the Unknown, The Mutation of Time)
According to human historians, the failure of the Daleks' plot with the Master, the Gold Dalek orchestrated a new invasion of Earth using time travel. Though this invasion failed, it inspired the Black Dalek to use time travel. The first time machine was developed following the conflict with the Combined Galactic Resistance which itself followed the Exxilon Gambit, some centuries after the 26th century collaboration with the Master. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) However, other accounts placed the chase to exterminate the First Doctor to be earlier in Dalek history, in the time before the Time Destructor Incident and the Great War. (PROSE: The Chase, Mission to the Unknown, The Mutation of Time, et. al) Indeed, the Time Lords indicated that the deployment of the time machine occurred relatively shortly following the liberation of Earth, within the 22nd century. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
By one account, the development of the time machine and the chase through time followed the plot with the Master and the Spiridon campaign, but preceded the Gold Dalek's "reinvasion" of Earth. (PROSE: The History of the Daleks)
According to the Dalek Survival Guide, these Daleks who pursued the Doctor were actually criminals forced to chronicle Dalek history as punishment. These prisoner Daleks noticed the Doctor using a Time-Space Visualiser before being pursued by a squad of Daleks they recognised as their future selves. They knew such a machine was scientifically impossible, but in order to ensure their future freedom, they built what would serve as an apparent Time-Space Visualiser that actually displayed recordings of the Daleks' human slaves performing reenactments of the events they knew the Doctor and his companions would view.
The criminal Daleks smuggled themselves out of prison, but were allowed to continue their plan by the Dalek Supreme, who knew they were incompetent and broadcast their attempt for the amusement of other Dalek chroniclers. The criminal Daleks left their fake visualiser on the Xeron Space Museum for the Doctor to find. One of the Daleks was killed by a Morok curator due to not paying admission and became an exhibit, while the rest were indeed those that chased the TARDIS crew through time. (PROSE: Dalek Survival Guide)
Conflict
The Black Dalek tasked a squad of Pursuer-Daleks with hunting down the Doctor. (AUDIO: The Daleks) They located him on the planet Aridius, along with his companions Barbara Wright, Ian Chesterton and Vicki Pallister. The Doctor and Barbara learnt of the Daleks' imminent arrival via the Time-Space Visualiser which showed them the Black Dalek issuing its commands to the assassins. After a long chase, the Dalek time machine was destroyed by Ian and Barabara after they used it to return to 1965, while the Dalek squad was caught in conflict with the Mechanoids on Mechanus. (TV: The Chase)
Aftermath
On Skaro, the destruction of the time machine was noted. (PROSE: The History of the Daleks) The operation had consumed all of the Daleks' taranium supply and this with the destruction of the time machine, (PROSE: The Chase) severely crippled the Daleks' existing time travel research. (PROSE: Mission to the Unknown) Through strenuous, long-term efforts the Daleks eventually harvested sufficient quantities of taranium to continue to use the time machines. (PROSE: The Mutation of Time) The Daleks would later pursue the Doctor using a time machine again after he stole a supply of taranium vital for their Time Destructor superweapon. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan)
The Daleks and the Mechanoids would continue to come into conflict. The Daleks invaded the Mechanoid City again after discovering the Mechanoids had created a Mechanical Planet which had endangered Skaro. The Dalek forces were defeated, however still managed to use an atom divider to destroy the city. (COMIC: The World That Waits) Dalek forces also battled Mechanoids on Hesperus. (PROSE: War of the Daleks) By one account, an experimental capsule damaged by the Mechanoids was sent hurtling through time to the planet Vulcan, leading to the Vulcan Incident. By the close of the Mechon Wars, the Daleks had developed the Time Vortex Magnetron which the Gold Dalek used to stage an ill-fated "reinvasion" of Earth. (PROSE: The History of the Daleks)
When the Restoration Empire was being destroyed by an entity, the Dalek Emperor intentionally lured it to attack the Mechanoids, (WC: Planet of the Mechanoids) who proved able to defeat it. The Mechanoid Queen swore revenge on the Emperor for this. (WC: The Deadly Ally) She led an invasion of Skaro in the belief that the entity had left the Daleks few in number. In the ensuing battle, the Emperor revealed his forces were much greater than he had let the Mechanoids believe and the Dalek Prime Strategist trapped the invading Mechanoids in the entity's dimension, including the Queen. (WC: Day of Reckoning) Not long before the outbreak of the Last Great Time War, the Daleks saw to the final extermination of the Mechonoids on Magella. (PROSE: Birth of a Legend)
The Dalek Conquests put forward that this incident was the "first skirmish" of the Last Great Time War between the Time Lords and the Daleks. (AUDIO: The Dalek Conquests) This incident, among others, was tactically assessed by the Time War-era Time Lords, who learnt that Dalek time capsule technology was more sophisticated than first thought; not only were they capable of precise navigational control, but they also seemed to be able to track our Gallifreyan time capsules with ease. The Time Lords lamented Ian and Barbara's destruction of the Dalek time machine, which deprived them of an opportunity to study Dalek time technology. Technical teams were dispatched to look for ways to block the temporal signature of all operational TT capsules in order to prevent the Daleks from tracking them. The Time Lords also identified the Mechanoids as an effective example of anti-Dalek weaponry, noting that reprogrammed Mechanoids could provide an excellent line of defense against Dalek attacks. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
During the Time War, Romana II acknowledged Aridius as a planet which had been invaded by the Daleks. (AUDIO: Beyond)
Behind the scenes
- The Terrestrial Index claimed that the Mechanus conflict was fought in the early 27th century, and that the Dalek time machine was from somewhere between the 32nd century and 38th centuries; the 27th century native Daleks being engaged in the Dalek-Movellan War at the time.
- The Discontinuity Guide claimed that the Daleks, following their defeat in the 22nd century Dalek invasion of Earth, completed their time travel program, which they had began with Theodore Maxtible, before successfully invading Earth in the late 21st century, whilst they themselves came from no later than the 23rd century, long before the Draconian Gambit. When their work was undone by the Third Doctor, the Daleks pursued the First Doctor in an attempt to neutralise his "future intervention".[1] It is further noted that, since the Fourth Doctor inadvertently changed Dalek history so that Davros survived, this event would have occurred vastly differently if it happened at all in the new timeline.[2]
- The Dalek Handbook claimed that, from the Daleks' perspective, their pursuit of the Doctor took place at some point between the failure of the invasion in 2167 and c. 2265. It is suggested that the Time Lords had ignored the Daleks' original wave of conquests and their development of time travel technology before the combination of the Daleks' large-scale efforts to alter history along with the Master's alliance with them and the Doctor's subsequent appeal for help motivated the Time Lords to notice the Daleks, foreseeing the potential future which led them to enacting the Genesis Incident.
- AHistory dates the launch of the Dalek mission to roughly 2170, a few years following the failure of the invasion.
- NOTVALID: Mechanoid Mayhem presents a historical account of the Daleks' fight in the Mechonoid City. The attackers are depicted as flying bronze Daleks.
- According to non-narrative information in DWBIT 41, the Daleks later returned to Aridius, still remembering their encounter with the Doctor there. They wanted revenge on the Aridians and wiped them all out along with the Mire Beasts.
