Kaled
Kaleds were one of the humanoid races which originally inhabited the planet Skaro. Many accounts held them to be the ancestors of the Dalek race.
Biology
The Kaleds could be distinguished from Thals by their dark hair and eyes. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)
Internally, Kaleds also differed from both humans and Thals. Blood tests showed that humans and Gallifreyans were biologically very dissimilar to them. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) Kaleds had purple tissue and their ribs were more widely spaced than those of humans. (TV: The Stolen Earth) They had thicker lungs than the Thals and they had a copper-based blood with a green tint. The Kaled heart was grey. (AUDIO: Corruption)
Towards the end of the Thousand Year War, the life expectancy of Kaled females had declined to 52, an age which Davros' mother Lady Calcula had long since surpassed by the time of her death. According to Davros, she was one of the oldest living Kaleds. (AUDIO: Corruption) By that time, few Kaleds had died of old age in ten generations. (AUDIO: Davros, Corruption)
Bernice Summerfield claimed that the Kaleds were the "same species" as a Dalek mutant, (AUDIO: The Lights of Skaro) with the War Doctor noting that the Kaleds had the same DNA as the Thals. (AUDIO: Temmosus)
Culture
In the era prior to the Thousand Year War, Kaled culture was one of paranoia. According to Varna, the government scapegoated the Thals for anything that went wrong. (AUDIO: The Lights of Skaro)
During the Thousand Year War, the Kaleds lived under a totalitarian government in which the military was very powerful, although unlike their descendants they understood and approved of the concept of democracy. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) They were led by the Supremo. (AUDIO: Purity) Beneath him were the Scientific Elite and the Military Elite and Elite Guards, who lived in special bunkers. The majority of the population lived in the Kaled Dome, most of the other cities having long been destroyed. Later on, the Kaled dome was reinforced with a substance many times stronger than reinforced concrete for additional protection, though the dome was eventually destroyed with the city underneath it. Kaleds mutated by radiation and chemicals, the Mutos, were exiled into the wastelands, (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) joined by deserters from the military, who also succumbed to the toxic conditions and mutated. When Davros and his team fled a Thal factory, they were attacked by Mutos from the wastelands. (AUDIO: Purity)
All young Kaleds were expected to serve in the Military Youth. According to Lady Calcula, this provided the young with "skills and opportunities to progress... should they live long enough to take advantage of them". When Davros was 16, he was still considered to be a boy, while 18-year-old Yarvell was regarded as "almost a woman, no longer a child". Yarvell herself considered this to be "trapped in the middle of nowhere". (AUDIO: Innocence) As time passed and the war grew more intense, while joining the Military Youth was still technically voluntary, societal attitudes had made joining compulsory to the point where children were beaten or even killed for failing to join or questioning the war effort. At this time, there was no clear lower age limit on joining, as children as young as 8 had joined. (AUDIO: Corruption)
The Kaleds believed that in all the "seven galaxies" they were able to study, only Skaro was capable of supporting intelligent life. They were consequently surprised to find that the Doctor and his companions were not from Skaro and they disbelieved it at first, although the Kaleds were advanced enough to carry out scans of anatomy and DNA. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)
The Kaled god of war was a "horned beast" which was thought to have been inspired by the Beast. (TV: The Satan Pit) The God of War was part of a pantheon of deities. (PROSE: The Time Traveller's Almanac [+]Loading...{"chaptname":"The Great and Bountiful Human Empires","page":"160","chaptnum":"4","1":"The Time Traveller's Almanac (reference book)"}) Captain Croag and the Highland Rangers was a popular children's programme on Kaled television. Calcula also mentioned that they showed children footage of battles in classrooms to persuade children to join the military, although she considered the edited highlights "too sanitised". (AUDIO: Corruption)
In the final days of the Thousand Year War, art was still being produced, but the artists were shunned by the majority in the Kaled Dome. (AUDIO: The Lights of Skaro)
History
Origin
The Kaleds externally resembled Thals, but their last common ancestor had diverged some 100 million years previously. This was very shortly after the development of multi-cellular life on Skaro. (AUDIO: Corruption)
Information from the Matrix on Gallifrey stated that the Kaleds were descended from the Dals. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) Historians who studied the Dalek timeline speculated that the Kaleds might have been the descendants of humanoids who had been transplanted onto Skaro by alien powers. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)
There was an ancient city north of the Kaled Dome that had evidence of Thals and Kaleds living together and even mating with each other in the distant past. (AUDIO: Purity)
Prior to or during the Thousand Year War, the Kaleds mastered alchemy. (AUDIO: The Lights of Skaro)
By the time of the Thousand Year War, the two other sentient humanoid races, the Tharons and the Dals, were both extinct as a result of a programme of genocide orchestrated by the Kaleds. (AUDIO: Purity)
Thousand Year War
Originally, the Kaleds and the Thals lived together in peace, archaeologists discovered the ruins of ancient cities containing artwork depicting Kaleds and Thals even intermarrying on occasion, though this research was suppressed by the Kaled government for political reasons. (AUDIO: Purity) Due to unknown circumstances, the Kaleds and Thals engaged in the Thousand Year War. Both sides originally used advanced energy weapons, but the materials and industrial equipment required to make them became scarce. By the end of the conflict, the majority of soldiers were armed with weapons similar to those on early 20th century Earth such as bolt action rifles, submachine guns or even bows. At this point, only two cities on Skaro remained intact. These domed cities overlooked a polluted wasteland brimming with sand and radiation as well as booby traps such as handmines and conventional landmines. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks, The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar)
Near the end of the war, Davros was studying the effects of radiation on Skaro's flora and fauna. He concluded that the Kaleds would have to mutate into a new form of life, the Daleks, to survive Skaro's decimated biosphere. When he discovered the ultimate form of his people, Davros devised travel machines and conducted experiments to refine the design. He placed some of the genetically engineered mutants inside an incubation room for implantation into the machines.
Some of his tests were to refine movement, and to see how effective the weaponry was. Other experiments were to test their optical systems and their sensory circuits.
In order to achieve the eventual outcome for his people, he gave the Thals the means to destroy the Kaled city to justify the creation of the first Dalek army, which he then sent to destroy the Thals. When a large portion of the remaining Kaleds objected to the continuation of the Dalek experiment, Davros ordered his Daleks to exterminate them. The Daleks subsequently rebelled against their creator and proceeded to exterminate his remaining followers and nearly the scientist himself. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)
Fate of the Kaleds
When the Kaled Dome was bombarded by the Thals, Davros had declared "the Kaled race has ended," but that the Daleks would arise "from [the Kaleds'] ashes." (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) Indeed, one historical text stated that the Kaled species had been destroyed in the assault, with the exception of Davros and his followers. The Daleks then would slaughter those surviving Kaleds, marking the end of the species. Davros himself would survive, (PROSE: The Whoniverse) marking him as the last of his species. (PROSE: Father of the Daleks) While the Daleks had originally been conceived as a way to keep the Kaled species alive, (TV: The Power of the Doctor) Davros came to see the Daleks as a superior species (PROSE: Father of the Daleks) even though he did talk to the Twelfth Doctor about how he had tried to "protect [his] own" via the Dalek program. (TV: The Witch's Familiar) In addition to seeing the Daleks as their own, better race, (PROSE: Father of the Daleks) he saw himself as their father. (TV: The Witch's Familiar; PROSE: Father of the Daleks, et. al)
Whilst Thal survivors remained on Skaro and would endure for generations, (TV: The Daleks, Planet of the Daleks) human historians understood that the Kaleds were utterly eradicated by the fledgling Daleks, with only Davros himself being known to have survived. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) Indeed, one Dalek would later observe that the Daleks, having originally been devised as a way to preserve the Kaleds, had failed in that mission. (TV: The Power of the Doctor)
According to one account, the purported two origins of the Daleks were actually distinct events within a single history. After Davros's Daleks were buried for a thousand years by the Doctor's efforts, the Kaleds evolved into the humanoid Daleks, with the Thousand Year War having come to an end. However, after the neutronic exchange that wiped out the "humanoid Dalek", or Dal, civilisation, the Dalek Prime created by Davros reemerged from underground, and, passing itself off as a new mutation, directed the new, "natural" mutant Daleks to climb into Dalek War Machine casings, seeing it as an easy way to expand its fledgling race. It then set itself up as the new race's leader. The Dal-descended Daleks remained subservient to the Dalek Prime and the other few Daleks made directly by Davros, as programming within the casings directed them to act so. (PROSE: The History of the Daleks)
The Last Great Time War
During the Last Great Time War, Kaled clones were used to guard an alternate Davros during his imprisonment on Falkus. To keep Davros's mind active, in case the Daleks would need him, the clones engaged in war games based on the Thousand Year War. During his imprisonment, Davros managed to condition the clones to obey him when the time came. These clones all perished when Falkus was destroyed. (AUDIO: A Genius for War)
Later in the conflict, Daleks devolved back into Kaleds on the planet that the Neverwhen was used on as a result of time phasing. The War Doctor fought alongside several Kaled soldiers on the planet for a time, believing them to be early Gallifreyan soldiers. Perhaps inspired through observing the Kaleds here, as suggested by Cardinal Ollistra, (AUDIO: The Neverwhen) a faction of Dalek Scientists secretly plotted to retro-evolve Dalek mutants back into Kaleds on Asteroid Theta 12, in an attempt to gain a fresh perspective on the Time War from the Daleks' ancestors. Project K006 was the most successful test subject created by the Dalek Scientists before Dalek High Command discovered their project and ordered for the destruction of the Scientists' base. (AUDIO: A Thing of Guile)
Alternate timelines
In a perversion of history caused by the War Master's usage of the Anti-Genesis codes, the Master, having usurped Davros' role as the creator of the Daleks, developed a pulse inducer to quickly evolve Kaleds into Dalek mutants. After turning the Kaled Elrond into his first Dalek and automating the assembly of the casings, the Master left Elrond to turn all Kaleds into Daleks until he returned, at which point no Kaleds remained. (AUDIO: The Master's Dalek Plan) This timeline, due to the many paradoxes it was built on, was eventually undone, restoring the normal Kaled history. (AUDIO: He Who Wins)
Alternate universes
In a parallel universe where the Thousand Year War never happened on Skaro, the Thals and Kaleds lived in peace with each other for several centuries, after allying to destroy the Time Lords when they attempted to destroy the Kaleds at a point in time when they were an "infant species". As a result of this peace, the Davros of this universe initially did not create the Daleks, instead becoming an expert in dimensional engineering with his Thal wife, Charn. Ultimately, however, the Kaleds of this universe were converted into Daleks by the Dalek Time Strategist and Davros, the latter of whom was fused with echos of all of Davros's counterparts from the multiverse; this process was repeated on the echos of the parallel universes that the Dalek Time Strategist merged with Davros's native dimension (AUDIO: Palindrome) to create an infinite army of Daleks. (AUDIO: Restoration of the Daleks)
In the Unbound Universe, the Kaleds tentatively shared Skaro with the Thals before their tensions were escalated into open war when the Quatch attacked Skaro. Like in N-Space, the Kaleds of this reality were turned into Daleks by Davros. After the creation of the Daleks, Davros was left as the last Kaled before he later sacrificed himself to defeat the Quatch, rendering the Kaleds extinct. (AUDIO: Masters of War)
In the Warrior's universe, the Doctor had destroyed the incubation room during the Genesis Incident but failed to recover his Time Ring. When the alien technology was discovered, the Kaleds joined forces with the Thals and the already active Daleks into the Unified Skaroan Alliance. (AUDIO: Dust Devil, Aftershocks)
References
During the 2150s Dalek invasion of Earth, the Sixth Doctor mentioned the Kaleds and their relation to the Daleks to the Black Dalek Interrogator, shocking it enough to have it lower its guard. (AUDIO: Masters of Earth)
In the later history of the Dalek Empire, several sentients knew of the Kaleds as being the organic matter at the centre of each Dalek, casually referring to the Dalek mutants by the name of their ancestors. (PROSE: Engines of War, AUDIO: The Trojan Dalek)
Following the Last Great Time War, a Dalek noted that its species had been created to preserve the Kaled race but had deviated so far from that purpose that the Dalek believed its kind should be destroyed. (TV: The Power of the Doctor)
Behind the scenes
- The Doctor Who Technical Manual (1983) states simply that the Dals became known as Kaleds during their conflict with the Thals.
- The Discontinuity Guide claims that the name "Dal" was a contraction of "Dalek people", a term of contempt used by the Thals to refer to the Kaleds who remained following the creation of the Daleks before the end of the Neutronic war.[1]
