Howling:Genesis of the Daleks already an alternate timeline?
I used to think that Dalek history didn't diverge from how it had previously gone until the exact moment the Time Lords sent the Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry to ancient Skaro. But is it at all possible that history had already been rewritten when they arrived? One thing that suggests to me that this could be the case is the fact that in "Genesis", the Daleks are considerably more advanced than those in "The Daleks" and "The Dalek Invasion of Earth", being able to freely move outside without a need for static electricity. Could some unknown party have travelled back into Skaro's past and given Davros some helpful hints? If we want to get really wild, perhaps in the original timeline, Davros didn't create the Daleks at all, and they weren't designed until much later, after the remnants of the Kaleds had retreated inside the city in "The Daleks." (Incidentally, I have a theory that what the Thals say in "The Daleks" about the city being that of the Dals is true; the Dals were a third group that lived on Skaro at the time of the war, possibly allied in some way with the Kaleds, and after the Kaled city in "Genesis" was eventually destroyed/rendered uninhabitable, the surviving Kaleds went to live with the Dals in their city. The Dal cities' lack of a protective dome is a bit of an oddity, though, I do admit...) Also, if we assume that someone did travel back in time to make the Daleks more powerful, who could it have been? I did think maybe the Master, but I'm not sure even he would do a thing like that, and besides, that would make him ultimately responsible for the Time War. 82.2.136.93 08:38, August 2, 2011 (UTC) 
This is why I personally never include the Peter Cushing movies in my own Dr Who canon. The way the Daleks were portrayed in those movies is so contrary to the tv shows that it's impossible to marry the two together. I know Steven Moffatt is a huge fan of these movies and is one of his reasons for re-introducing the many coloured Daleks but so many anomalies occur when one tries to include the movies that it isn't worth the effort. The Doctor is a different species, his family are not only magically included but they differ from one film to the next, and as pointed out above the Daleks are an inferior species to their television counterparts. Apart from all that, let's be honest here, the movies are actually crap, aren't they?
2.27.154.67 09:20, August 2, 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, I agree with you about the Cushing films, they are pretty awful. I personally don't know any DW fans who count them in their personal canons. However, many (such as myself) do count the TV series stories "The Daleks" and "Genesis of the Daleks" in their personal canons, and both stories present noticeable discrepancies in their accounts of the war on Skaro and the creation of the Daleks, hence my attempt to rationalise said discrepancies above. For me, the big indication that history has already been derailed when the Fourth Doctor arrives, is that the Daleks in "Genesis" are significantly more advanced than those in "The Daleks". My query is, who could have been responsible for rewriting history in such a way? 82.2.136.93 18:52, August 2, 2011 (UTC)
- Well, there are two popular explanations for this.
- Maybe Genesis erased, or at least modified, all of the previous Dalek stories, so those low-tech Daleks don't exist on this timeline. (But RTD says the 22nd-century invasion was critical to the future history of humanity, it's been indirectly mentioned on TV, and it's been directly referenced in the novels…)
- Or maybe they both happened, on the same timeline, but in the centuries since Genesis, the Daleks who'd been trapped in the city became degenerate. Since they couldn't leave the city anyway, and they were in desperate straits, they switched to low-tech, low-energy solutions like static electricty. These Daleks later died out (in Destiny the city is ruined and uninhabited, except for hibernating Davros), while other Daleks outside the city went on to build a galactic empire. (But those later Daleks appear to remember that first story; how?)
- Anyway, your theory about someone traveling back in time to help the Daleks doesn't seem too much worse to me than either of them. And there's an obvious culprit that you overlooked: the Daleks themselves. At some point in Dalek history, they have time travel, they know that the Time Lords have tried to interfere with their creation, and they're plotting a war with the Time Lords as a result. And there's plenty of evidence of them interfering in their own history, from the pre-Genesis days up to City of the Daleks. So, why not go back in time to buff themselves before starting the war? (If you accept the novels, it makes perfect sense for them to do this between the Second War in Heaven and the Last Great Time War, while there are no Time Lords around to stop them. There was supposed to be a plot arc about the Daleks in the EDAs, but it had to be canceled because they couldn't get the rights to the Daleks—but that doesn't mean it couldn't have happened, just that we never got to read about it.) --173.228.85.118 03:04, August 3, 2011 (UTC)
- What could have prevented the Daleks from leaving their city before their dependence on static electricity? And there's some evidence to suggest that the city seen in that first story was a leftover from the war years, rather than having been built after the war ended. Hence my idea about the Dals being a third nation, distinct from both Thals and Kaleds, but possibly having some ties to the latter group. 213.121.200.42 13:34, August 4, 2011 (UTC)
- Well, if the city from The Daleks is the city that gets bombed in Genesis, that means (a) it _is_ a leftover from the war years, and (b) the inhabitants could easily have been trapped inside; the Daleks survived for centuries by converting to static electricity, while the Kaleds (except for Davros) died out. --173.228.85.118 08:40, August 7, 2011 (UTC)
- Hmmm. I should think that the dome collapsing would have completely crushed any buildings underneath it. And there's no trace of a dome in THE DALEKS; what could have happened to it? This is the chief reason I reckon the city in that earlier story is a different one to the one in GENESIS. 82.2.136.93 13:18, August 7, 2011 (UTC)
- Yes, as I said, both explanations have their problems. You have to make some pretty big assumptions to make it work, but they're not entirely implausible. If it's the same city, the Daleks obviously dug their way out, replaced the floors with metal, built the static electricity system, completely redesigned the interior (e.g., see the doors), and cannibalized the wrecked dome while doing so. And the must have finished this relatively recently, because they've clearly only recently discovered how bad their resource shortage is, and the fact that they can't survive outdoors for long periods of time because it isn't radioactive enough outside the city. That's all possible, but it's also all speculation.
- If you assume that the science bunker was far enough from the city that it wasn't affected by the rocket, but was destroyed separately, that answers some of the questions (like "where was the dome?"), but opens others (like "why was it radioactive?"), so it's just as problematic. Terry Nation and John Peel thought this version of the story was the best answer, and they might have established it in the season-27 story they never got to write, but they didn't. By the time their ideas finally surfaced in Peel's EDA War of the Daleks, he'd gone so far over the top retconning all of Dalek history that the only way to make sense of it is to assume that either the Daleks had gotten confused about their own history or the Dalek Prime had made most of it up for propaganda purposes. Either way, it's still no more incompatible with your story than with the ruined-city, ruined-separate-bunker, or altered-timeline stories. --173.228.85.118 23:36, August 7, 2011 (UTC)
