Operation Human Factor
Operation Human Factor, known to the Time Lords as the Human Factor Incident, (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) was a plot by the Daleks, ostensibly to isolate the Human Factor. However, the incident ultimately kicked off a Dalek Civil War, (PROSE: The Evil of the Daleks) earning it the title of the Dalek Factor fiasco. (PROSE: A Brief History of the Daleks)
Dating
The Dalek Survival Guide was unable to identify the date of this event on Skaro. (PROSE: Dalek Survival Guide) One account dated Operation Human Factor and the ensuing Dalek Civil War as taking place over 1000 years into a Great War which began with the Dalek defeat in the Time Destructor Incident of the year 4000. (PROSE: The Evil of the Daleks) However, the Time Lords' time scale of Dalek activity placed these events following the 41st century but before the recovery of Davros during the Dalek-Movellan War in the 46th century. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
By one account, the Human Factor Incident and the prior Time Destructor Incident took place following the Dalek Civil War between the Supreme Dalek and Davros, who had created a new race of Daleks on Necros. (PROSE: The History of the Daleks) Most other accounts indicated that the civil war postdated these events. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks, PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe, PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
History
Background
The Dalek Emperor, formerly designated Genetic Variant Two-One-Zero, was inspired to seek the human factor through an encounter with Steven Taylor. Intrigued by his behaviour, the Emperor gave the Daleks a prime directive to discover the human factor. (AUDIO: Across the Darkened City)
The Operation
In a transmission recovered and recorded in The Dalek Conquests, the Daleks located the Doctor's space-time track, positioning him in London, England on the planet Earth in the 20th century time zone, 20 July 1966. Immediately, after the Daleks commenced what they termed Operation Human Factor. (AUDIO: The Dalek Conquests)
The Daleks recruited the Second Doctor, against his will, to isolate and identify the human factor, using Jamie McCrimmon as a test subject. The Daleks claimed that they wished to distill the most important qualities from the factor and use it to make themselves more deadly. The Daleks, in fact, planned all along to use the Doctor's work to identify the Dalek factor. (TV: The Evil of the Daleks)
Once the human factor was identified, it was experimentally transferred to test Daleks, creating three humanised Daleks. The Doctor gave them the names Alpha, Beta, and Omega. He later sabotaged a Dalek machine so that it instilled the human factor into any Dalek that passed through it, converting them into humanised Daleks as well. The humanised Daleks refused to obey commands without question and, at the urging of the Doctor, worked to defend themselves, kicking off a Dalek Civil War between the humanised and loyal Daleks.
In the ensuing conflict, the Dalek City was devastated. The Doctor hoped the incident would spell the "final end" of the Daleks. (TV: The Evil of the Daleks) The Time Lords believed that the humanised Daleks were the first instance of a Dalek splinter group, and that the civil war resulted in a temporary absence of Daleks from Skaro. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) The human factor Daleks fled Skaro and later created a whole colony the planet Kyrol. (COMIC: Children of the Revolution)
Aftermath
Section needs to cover the aftermath of the civil war
The Dalek Empire was forced to lie low for a time after the Dalek Factor scheme had failed. (PROSE: A Brief History of the Daleks)
During the Last Great Time War, the Time Lords made a tactical analysis on Operation Human Factor. With the Doctor having granted them access to the details of his experimental results via the telepathic circuits of his TARDIS, they conducted tests to determine the possibility of distilling a similar "Gallifreyan Factor" whilst research was under way to determine whether any of Humanised Daleks survived, with operatives following up on reports of their potential presence on Kyrol. Though the "Type I" Emperor was thought destroyed in the civil war, the Time Lords acknowledged the possibility that, given the Daleks' extraordinarily long lifespan, the organic part was retrieved and would eventually "form the basis" of the "Type II" Emperor whom they faced in the Last Great Time War. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
In the post-Time War universe, this incident was covered as a part of known Dalek history in The Dalek Conquests, a documentary which was itself produced following the Van Statten Incident on Earth in 2012. (AUDIO: The Dalek Conquests)
Behind the scenes
The Discontinuity Guide
The Discontinuity Guide claimed that the Human Factor Incident and the resulting Civil War on Skaro occured somewhere between the 19th century and the mid-22nd century, resulting in the departure of the Daleks from Skaro and leaving the Thals in peace, and that one of the ships that survived the destruction on Skaro crashed on Vulcan in the 21st or early 22nd century, preceding the 22nd century Dalek invasion. Eventually, at some point between the years 3500 and 4000, the Daleks returned to Skaro.[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. The Discontinuity Guide speculates that, whilst under interrogation, the Fourth Doctor had told Davros about the Human Factor Incident which would later influence him to convert humans into Daleks on Necros, Davros' conclusion being that, by possessing some of the Human Factor, the Daleks will not be slaves to logic and thus not drawn into an impasse as they had with the Movellans. It is further suggested that Davros was made aware that the Daleks were led by an Emperor, and so was inspired to name himself Emperor of the Imperial Daleks.[2]
Other matters
- DWM 77's History of the Daleks dates the Human Factor Incident and the resulting Dalek Civil War to c. 7500, which is eventually followed by the Movellan Incident in 8740.
- Long before the Sixth Doctor suggested that Davros could become Emperor of the Daleks in Revelation of the Daleks, the original second volume of The Doctor Who Programme Guide (1981) suggested that the Emperor seen in The Evil of the Daleks was not only the "last Emperor Dalek", indicating the existence of a predecessor, but also "the final incarnation" of Davros before his Daleks were usurped by the Humanised Daleks created by the Second Doctor.
- The Terrestrial Index (1991), which stated that the Dalek Civil War was in fact the Final End of the Daleks, continued the claim that the Evil Emperor was the final form of Davros, achieved by self-inflicted mutations long following the so-called destruction of Skaro. Incidentally, Terror Firma would depict an Emperor Davros now with elements of The Evil of the Daleks casing.
- The Dalek Handbook claims that the Operation Human Factor and the subsequent uprising on Skaro took place in the 41st century following the Time Destructor Incident of 4000, with a Dalek timeship from this period fleeing Skaro before crashing on Vulcan prior to the 21st century.
- NOTVALID: Daleks vs Daleks! presents The End of the Daleks by Dokktor Whit-Arkker a historical account of the Dalek Civil War which occured around the time of the Seventh Dalek Armada's defeat at the Battle of Gurnian. The attackers are depicted as flying bronze Daleks, with the Emperor likewise seen as his Time War iteration.
