Dalek-Movellan War
The Dalek-Movellan War, also called the Movellan War or Wars, was a galactic war fought between the cyborg Daleks and the android Movellans. The Dalek Empire and the Movellans were each expanding to control the galaxy when they met and fought to destroy each other. According to the human historian Njeri Ngugi, it was "the most disastrous military campaign the Daleks fought." (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks)
Another historian, Lorraine Baynes, whom the Sixth Doctor once wrote off as a Dalek apologist, (AUDIO: Davros) doubted the idea that the Daleks were ever actually threatened by the androids, though even she admitted the Daleks had resorted to drastic plans during the war and that the Movellans caused major disruptions to the Dalek Empire's operations. Baynes claimed to be working from "a modern perspective." (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters)
Historical overview
Dating
Different conflicting dates have arisen concerning the conflict, as the war lasted for centuries and both sides could time travel, (AUDIO: The Dalek Gambit) Movellan ships having time warp capabilities, (TV: Destiny of the Daleks) and Daleks having time corridor technology. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks) The Time Lords were aware that the war was waged at various points in history, potentially as far back as the ancient history of Earth and the early history of the Daleks themselves, prior to the 2nd century. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
The Twelfth Doctor described the conflict as "the past" to 21st century native Bill Potts after returning from millions of years in the future. (TV: The Pilot) Maurice Vallan came from a point in time before its conclusion. (AUDIO: The Dalek Gambit)
The Fourth Doctor encountered time travelling Movellans in 1980. (AUDIO: The Movellan Grave)
In 4000, Gordon Lowery recalled the Movellan Wars as one of the last instances of Dalek activity in the galaxy, a thousand or more years before then. (PROSE: Mission to the Unknown) According to another account, the Daleks only engaged in the Movellan War after their failed invasion of Earth's galaxy in the year 4000. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) The Tenth Doctor's involvement in the conflict supported the Time Lords' finding, the war taking place after the 41st century, in an era where the Space Security Service had been disbanded. (AUDIO: The Triumph of Davros)
The Time Lords indicated that, for the Daleks, their retrieval of Davros on Skaro amidst the war with the Movellans came some centuries after the Daleks were forced off Skaro by their war against the humanised Daleks, which itself followed the incident of the year 4000. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)
The Movellan War was included in Vol XIX of Ngugi's The Children of Davros, a Short History of the Dalek Race, published in 4065. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks)
Movellans attempted to take Davros prisoner in 4500 on Skaro, (TV: Destiny of the Daleks) with Gustave Lytton stating in 4590 that the war was over, (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks, PROSE: Resurrection of the Daleks) Indeed, the Time Lords dated the retrieval of Davros from Skaro as being in the 46th century. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) Davros being retrieved by TAI, formed in the 38th century by Arnold Baynes' Great Ancestor, "shortly after" the war. (AUDIO: Davros)
The Matrix on Gallifrey recorded that Dalek and Movellan fleets were engaged in star system 4-X-Alpha-4 in 4949. (AUDIO: Neverland)
It is possible that some dates could be related to the later campaign fought by the Daleks, known as the Pa Jass-Gutrik, the "war of vengeance" against the Movellans. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks)
Foreseeing
Published on Earth around the turn of the 21st century, the Dalek Survival Guide had future intelligence which foretold the Movellan War among other incidents. (PROSE: Dalek Survival Guide)
After foreseeing a time when the Daleks would become the dominant lifeform in the universe, the Time Lords sent the Fourth Doctor on a mission to avert their creation. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) The Doctor's mission failed, although one account claimed he did delay the Daleks' development enough to alter their history. The Time Lords observed the Dalek Empire diminish significantly as thousands of worlds became free from their rule once the new timeline overwrote the old. Yet, with millions more worlds still under Dalek control, the Time Lords sought to make good on the Doctor's shortfall by diverting him to the weapons research facility of Deepcity. The Doctor's exploits there were more successful and the Time Lords were able to predict that his actions in Deepcity would eventually lead to the rise to a race of synthetic robots capable of bringing about the downfall of the Dalek Empire. In line with these predictions, (PROSE: A Device of Death) the Daleks engaged in a war with the robot Movellans. (TV: Destiny of the Daleks)
The war
Early action
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According to the CIA's research into the Daleks, at the start of the war, the Dalek Empire had expanded to such a size that it needed to be ruled by two different Dalek Emperors, one of whom remained based on Skaro. The second Emperor was killed by the Movellans, leaving the entire Dalek species under the command of the Skaro-based ruler.
However, the Empire's tactics were impacted by this Emperor being unable to keep track of the forces previously under the other Emperor's jurisdiction. (PROSE: The Dalek Problem) Later in the war, Skaro was known to be abandoned, (TV: Destiny of the Daleks) though the Dalek Primelater claimed this Skaro was actually be the world of Antalin. (PROSE: War of the Daleks) Multiple Dalek Supremes also served as Dalek leaders during the war. (AUDIO: The Triumph of Davros)
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After visiting a distant planet in the future, the Twelfth Doctor arrived at some point during the war, and piloted his TARDIS to a war zone during a skirmish. He did this in order to sterilise the being that was following him, Nardole, and Bill. Nardole succeeded in sealing the area the Daleks were in. (TV: The Pilot)
The Movellans defeated the Daleks in a battle of Traxana's sector of space. (AUDIO: Alien Heart)
Seeking to better understand their robotic foes, the Daleks engineered themselves into quasi-robotic beings, dispensing entirely with any organic-based decisions and slaving themselves to their predictive algorithms. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) This led to a centuries long stalemate, each side's purely logical battle computers keeping them in deadlock. Hundreds of Dalek and Movellan battlecruisers flew across space, without a single shot being fired. (TV: Destiny of the Daleks)
During the war a Dalek faction led by a Supreme based on Kembel sought to regain lost Dalek knowledge in time travel. (AUDIO: The Triumph of Davros) Indeed, the war would develop into one where both sides made use of time travel. (AUDIO: The Dalek Gambit, et. al) The Kembel faction utilised a time bubble to send a Dalek back in time to attempt to assassinate the First Movellan, (AUDIO: The Triumph of Davros) however it only succeeded in destroying the Space Security Service's time machine. (AUDIO: The Wrong Woman)
The Movellans created a human/Movellan hybrid, Kamen Vers, as a weapon however Kamen's emotions caused nearby Movellans to malfunction. He was discovered aboard a crippled Movellan ship by River Song who attempted to keep Kamen under control, posing as a Movellan herself. Kamen began using a tractor beam to capture ships to attach to his original one, forming Mto, including a human colony ship whose inhabitants he tricked into obeying him. (AUDIO: The First Son)
Recovery of Davros
To resolve the stalemate, the Daleks returned to their homeworld of Skaro to search the ruins of the Kaled dome for their creator, Davros. They believed that his unpredictable biological mind would allow them to re-program their computers to make unanticipated manoeuvres against the Movellans. The Movellans followed the Daleks to Skaro and ultimately learned of their plan.
The Fourth Doctor and Romana, landing by chance on Skaro, was captured by the Movellans for the same reason. He later defeated both the Movellans and the Daleks, who were approaching the Movellan starship as suicide bombers, as well as the resurrected Davros. After being placed in suspended animations, Davros was taken by Tyssan, a rescued Dalek slave worker, to Earth for trial. The Movellan expedition had probably made their leaders realise the stalemate could not be broken for their battle computers, but they could find other ways to work on the problem. (TV: Destiny of the Daleks) Tyssan arranged for Davros to be transferred to the custody of the Earth Protection Corps, still in suspended animation. (AUDIO: The Dalek Defence)
After performing a time jump to stabilise their spaceship’s warp drive, the Tenth Doctor and Anya Kingdom found themselves in the middle of a skirmish between Dalek and Movellan forces, (AUDIO: The Lost) having been diverted by River who lured them to Mto. There they exposed Kamen's schemes and helped the humans escape, though exposed Mto to nearby Dalek and Movellans forces who descended on the structure. As they invaded, River finally lost all control of Kamen, causing him to be fatally overloaded by his emotions. After the weary River fled via vortex manipulator the Doctor and Anya broadcast her Space Security Service codes, (AUDIO: The First Son) attracting the attention of the Earth Protection Corps vessel currently transporting Davros. The pair were teleported onboard but the vessel was pursued by the Daleks.
As the Daleks closed in on the ship, the crew chose to awake Davros in hopes of ensuring their survival. A spy onboard also alerted the Movellans who attacked just as the Daleks had the ship in a tractor beam, resulting in the Earth vessel crashing on Kembel. The Movellans forces, led by the First Movellan personally, pursued and captured the Doctor and Davros whilst the Kembel Daleks apprehended Anya and the ship's captain, Colonel Keelan. (AUDIO: The Dalek Defence) The First Movellan put the Doctor and Davros to work devising strategies against the Daleks while at the same time the Dalek Supreme ordered Anya and Keelan to infiltrate the Movellan ship having had bombs attached to them. The Movellans exposed them and threw them out along with the Doctor, only for the Supreme to disable the bombs. After Davros feigned a possible Dalek alliance with the Movellans against Earth and attempted to broadcast the news to all Supreme via the pathweb, the Kembel Daleks agreed to work with the Doctor against Davros.
The Doctor betrayed the party of Daleks he was leading into the Movellan rocket, by activating its anti-Dalek defences, whilst the Supreme and Anya went to meet the First Movellan and Davros. Davros revealed his true plan by using a handshake to officiate the alliance to infect the First Movellan with a virus, knowing it would spread to all Movellans. The Doctor contained the virus and set the rocket to leave Kembel before the Movellans aboard rebooted whilst Earth Protection forces summoned by Keelan invaded Kembel, overwhelming the Daleks present and recapturing Davros. Inspired by his experience, the First Movellan decided to investigate a virus that could attack the organic component of the Daleks. (AUDIO: The Triumph of Davros) Human historians atttibuted this decision to the Daleks’ deviance from pure logic eventually allowing the Movellans to realise that the Daleks were organic creatures. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
After the trial, Davros was placed in a cryogenic freezer in a space station which served as his prison. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks) To break the impasse, the Daleks introduced organic matter into themselves once again. Now able to make intuitive organic decisions, the Daleks were able to secure small advantages in the war for the next ninety or so years. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
20th century skirmishes
At some point during the war, the Movellans decided to create a new model to break the stalemate. These models had emotional programming as well as the robotic programming. Chenek was the prototype with human emotions programmed in. These emotions were taken from a set of human slaves. When the Doctor and Romana II met Chenek in 1980, they realised that the emotional programming and the robotic logic couldn't work together and that was why Chenek was attacking the other Movellans. It was also due to the slave emotions being that of fright so all of the fights the Movellans observed was methods to escape. The Doctor and Romana reprogrammed Chenek to stop the conflict. Chenek decided to round up the Movellans on Earth and set their spaceship to self destruct. (AUDIO: The Movellan Grave)
During the war, they became a time active race. A battalion of Movellans, lead by Maurice Vallan, travelled to the 1970s Earth, where they planned to invade to give the Movellans a strategic post to further the war. They changed their invasion plans changed upon meeting Lady Suzanne Clare to invade by stealth. They wanted to use a model of the Movellans that could duplicate people but once the Intrusion Counter-Measures Group learnt of their involvement Vallan advanced their plans to invade in a more typical way, but Allison Williams stopped them with an Electromagnetic pulse. (AUDIO: The Movellan Manoeuvre) The Daleks detected this and came after them to destroy them and anyone that helped them. After exterminating the Movellan forces, they planned to use a bomb to exterminate all life on Earth. With the Dalek and Movellan forces destroyed, Rachel Jensen contained the bomb in the Dalek's forcefield. (AUDIO: The Dalek Gambit)
Defeat of the Daleks
As the First Movellan had hoped, (AUDIO: The Triumph of Davros) the Movellans developed a virus that could permeate the Dalek casings and destroy their organic components from within. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks) According to Volume XIX of Ngugi's history, the Daleks, who had used biological weapons before, such as on Spiridon, failed to consider their own vulnerability to such an attack. The Movellan virus became therefore so effective, because it took them completely by surprise. Overall, the Daleks suffered a casualty rate of 83% and much of the Empire in Mutter's Spiral collapsed. According to Lytton, the Dalek fleet was destroyed and those who survived retreated to other parts of the universe to escape the risk of infection so they could work on a cure. Various sector commands began trying to reorganise in the remaining isolated sectors, leading to increased factionalism that would plague Dalek politics into the 41st century. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks)
Aftermath
The devastation inflicted on the Daleks was so great that the Time Lords' Celestial Intervention Agency hoped it had spelt the end of typical Dalek conquest for the time being, with Qualen claiming that the Daleks would be less likely to rely on planetary invasions against technological powerful cultures or attacks with overwhelming numbers. Indeed, the Qualen Commission's research into the Daleks found that most Dalek expansion in the aftermath of the Movellan war was carried out through time travel incursions or deception. He credited this to their low numbers and status as being scattered, (PROSE: The Dalek Problem) with the Daleks also finding that the growing factionalism in their ranks contributed to the failing conquests and wars. (AUDIO: Innocence)
Nonetheless, Qualen revealed at the First Clandestine Symposium to Consider Policy Regarding the Dalek Expansion that the APC Net's best estimates showcased there was still a risk of the Daleks managing to conquer locations like the Mutter's Spiral, so he warned his fellow "interventionists" to stay vigilant because the Daleks remained a great danger to the Great Time Line. (PROSE: The Dalek Problem)
The Dalek casualties necessitated the recruitment of Dalek troopers to fight for the Empire. The Supreme Dalek recovered Davros from his prison so he could find a cure for the Movellan virus. During this time, the Daleks began using a different form of time travel — time corridors — although attempts to use the technology to prevent the losses of the war proved unsuccessful. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks) They also used these to place duplicates to manipulate events for the Daleks' best interests. Following his revival, filled with more hatred than ever, Davros turned the Daleks on the Prison Station against each other, (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks) accentuating the factionalism which had resulted from the Movellan War. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks) Wide-scale hostilities between the factions sparked the Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks, Revelation of the Daleks, Remembrance of the Daleks)
Bernice Summerfield recalled that the universe looked like a "disco" after the Movellans' victory. (AUDIO: Death and the Daleks) Indeed, by one account, the Movellans had moved into the humanoid sectors of space after defeating the Daleks. This led them unexpectedly into a conflict with the allied forces of Earth and Draconia who pushed back the Movellans, annihilating them as they went. It was as a result of this conflict that the Prison Station containing Davros was vulnerable to attack in the Duplicate Incident. Though the Movellans were ultimately destroyed, the victory was not achieved without many losses on the human side, and the Draconians were also very much weakened. In the aftermath, humanity returned to their own areas of space, hoping to begin a new alliance to stand against the inevitable return of the Daleks. (PROSE: The History of the Daleks)
By one account, it was the new viral technology developed to cure the Movellan virus which granted the Daleks an immunity to a space plague which struck the galaxy, which they made an ill-fated attempt to exploit in the Exxilon Gambit. (PROSE: The History of the Daleks)
In later years, the Imperial Daleks launched the campaign Pa Jass-Gutrik, the "war of vengeance" against the Movellans, in which the Special Weapons Dalek participated. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks) According to records, though unsubstantiated ones, recovered from the Space Security Service archive on Micawber's World, this conflict came about when the Daleks managed to use their duplicate program to infiltrate and sabotage the Movellan power pack production facilities, linking them all to the Pathweb. After some time had passed, the Daleks sent out a command for the Movellans to turn on each other, sparking a civil war that left them vulnerable to be wiped out by the Imperial Daleks. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
A point that Time Lord scholar, Benncuiq IV, noted, was that this was the only war in history where the Daleks had failed. (PROSE: When It Was Fun)
On Red Rocket Rising, the Eighth Doctor mockingly asked a Dalek Supreme if the Daleks were currently fighting the Movellans, amongst other enemies. (AUDIO: Blood of the Daleks)
Supposed non-existence
The Dalek Prime claimed it had contrived a hoax of a war with the Movellans (whom the Daleks had created for the specific purpose of having an "enemy") as well as the Imperial-Renegade civil war as part of a plan to save Skaro from the Hand of Omega. (PROSE: War of the Daleks)
Behind the scenes
- The Terrestrial Index claimed that the Daleks came into conflict with the Movellans by the end of the 26th century, following the Third Dalek War. Eventually, the Daleks lost the war after making an ill-fated attempt to retrieve Davros from Skaro in the early 27th century; incidentally, it was during this time period that time-travelling Daleks from the future, between the 32nd and 38th century, engaged the Mechanoids on Mechanus during their pursuit of the First Doctor. It was towards the end of the 27th century that the Daleks recovered Davros from the Prison Station.
- DWM 77's History of the Daleks dates the Movellan Incident to c. 8740, long following the Dalek Civil War of 7500.
- The Dalek Handbook indicates that the Dalek-Movellan War started during or after the 42nd century before ending in the 46th century. It goes on to speculate on the origins of the Movellans, acknowledging their disappearance after apparently prevailing over the Daleks. Noting their exterior appearance, one theory suggests that they were created by a humanoid race who they likely turned against and destroyed. Acknowledging their enmity towards the Daleks, another theory suggests that they were created to fight them, potentially by the Time Lords. A third theory, acknowledging the Movellans' extensive knowledge of their enemy, claims that the Movellans were a slave race connected to the Dalek duplicate program which had gone rogue, likening them to the Robomen.
