User:Scrooge MacDuck/Sandbox Alpha

The first Dalek reveals itself.

In 2025, the Doctor attributed the creation of the Daleks to "a near lethal cocktail of war, hatred and technology". (AUDIO: Energy of the Daleks)

It was, at any rate, an event which had become shrouded in legend when the Doctor first visited Skaro, saw the rise of the metal-encased mutants known as the Daleks from the ashes of a humanoid species. Many accounts saw a scientist of this race, the Kaled Davros, play a central part in the creation of the Daleks, although others painted it as a fortuitous consequence of the neutron war.

Forebears of the Daleks

The organic Dalek creatures within the metal casings were the mutated descendants of a humanoid species which had once inhabited Skaro alongside the Thals and fought a terrible neutronic war with them. (TV: The Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks, PROSE: War of the Daleks, COMIC: Genesis of Evil et alt.)

Nature

When asked about their race's history by the First Doctor, long after the end of the neutron war, the Thals Dyoni and Temmosus identified the Daleks' forebears as the Dals. Thal lore told of the Dals of old as great thinkers and philosophers. Both the Thals and the Dals were humanoids then; the neutron war had caused both species to mutate, but where the Thals had (according to the Doctor's conclusions) eventually "refined" themselves back into a bipedal form resembling their original one, the Dals had not, instead entombing themselves in their city and becoming the Daleks. (TV: The Daleks)

However, some accounts instead told of the Dals as a third people on Skaro while the Thals' war was fought against the Kaleds. (AUDIO: Guilt, Purity) The Dals still served as precursors to the Daleks in a more conceptual ways, as a prophecy was recorded in the Dals' ancient and forbidden Book of Predictions which read: "...and on that day, men will become as gods". In the original language, the final word was pronounced "Dal-ek". (AUDIO: Guilt) A dissenting account held that "Dal" was simply a Kaled word for "warrior". (AUDIO: The Lights of Skaro)

Many accounts stated that the Daleks' ancestors and nemeses of the Thals were the Kaleds, a species externally identical to humans, and distinguishable from the Thals only by the Thals' fair hair which the Kaleds did not share. By the time of their transformation into the Daleks, the Kaleds were already a profoundly militaristic and racist society with little time for philosophy, (TV: Genesis of the Daleks, AUDIO: Purity, Corruption, PROSE: War of the Daleks et alt.) although Kaled artists still existed, living a shunned existence. (AUDIO: The Lights of Skaro)

Yet other accounts painted the Daleks' ancestors as having presented significant physical difference from the Thals: where the Thals were tall and light-skinned, they were short, had bluish skin, and were, by Thal standards, considered ugly. This race already called themselves the Daleks prior to becoming the familiar armored conquerors, later referring to their descendants as "the Metal Daleks" as opposed to them, "the Humanoid Daleks". (COMIC: Genesis of Evil, Legacy of Yesteryear, Return of the Elders)

One solitary account held that the Daleks were the result of an experiment by the Halldons, who transplanted humans from Earth to Ameron; many thousand years later, the human settlers' descendants had somehow become the Daleks. (PROSE: We are the Daleks!)

The neutron war

Archeological evidence found by the First Doctor on Skaro showed that the Thals had once been the oppressors and the Daleks' ancestors the oppressed, despite the Thals' later turn to pacifist ways. (TV: The Daleks) When the neutron war broke out, the Thals' opponents' leader, Drenz, was indeed a pacifist, (COMIC: Genesis of Evil) and by the latter stages of the war, however neither side could remember why it had started. (AUDIO: Davros)

According to one account, the Thals were as peaceful as their neighbors, whom they feared. These fears turned out to be justified when, after the Daleks discovered large amounts of cobalt in a mountainous region later known as the Radiation Range, the Daleks' bellicose War Minister Zolfian used it to manufacture a "mighty neutron bomb" which which he hoped to "destroy the Thals for all time". After trying to stop the war, Drenz was murdered by Zolfian, who made himself the leader of his people and had them redouble the war effort. This war, during which one of Zolfian's scientists, Yarvelling, developed a war machine which would later be repurposed as the Dalek travel machine, lasted for all of two weeks before a meteor shower detonated the neutron bomb by accident, seemingly dooming both races on Skaro. (COMIC: Genesis of Evil)

By the time that the Fourth Doctor visited Skaro on a mission to prevent the creation of the Daleks, however, the war between the Thals and and the Kaleds had stalled into a Thousand Year War; what remained of the two races lived in two domed cities overlooking a polluted wasteland marked by discarded war machines, corpses, and minefields. The Kaleds were led by a Scientific Elite, headed by Davros and his assistant Nyder, while a Military Elite hoped to create weapons that would finally bring victory. The use of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons had led to genetic mutations among both Thals and Kaleds, disparagingly referred to as Mutos. The Mutos were driven out by the Thals and the Kaleds to keep their races pure. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)

Rise of the Daleks

Mutations on a dead planet

The fallout from the neutron war left Skaro an inhospitable, wild ruin marked by high radiation levels, which caused rapid and drastic mutations in lifeforms touched by it. (TV: The Daleks)

Two years after the final neutronic blast which ended the war, Zolfian and Yarvelling climbed out of a fallout shelter to find a mutated Dalek, which Yarvelling described to Zolfian as having "a brain a thousand times superior to ours".

One of many such mutations, the Dalek had crawled inside one of Yarvelling's armored war machines and used it a shell, having realized that the armour would provide it with protection from the potentially lethal radiation. Before Zolfian and Yarvelling (having no such protections) died of radiation sickness, this first "machine Dalek" forced them to make more war machines for the other mutations, of whom it declared itself the Emperor. (COMIC: Genesis of Evil)

The beginnings of Dalek conquest

The Daleks built a Dalek City for themselves in two months, (COMIC: Power Play) with metal floors constantly transmitting the static electricity necessary to power their casings. Though originally believing the Thals had been completely eradicated, they were alerted to their survival, as well as to the existence of other lifeforms than Thals who could threaten Dalek supremacy, by the actions of the First Doctor, Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, who landed on Skaro shortly after the two humans had joined the TARDIS crew. The time travelers helped the Thals temporarily gain the upper hand on the Daleks by cutting off the City's power supply, immobilizing, and seemingly killing, all of the Daleks. (TV: The Daleks)

Susan Foreman later visited Skaro again on her own and found Daleks there who had not yet developed time travel but already had the ability to wander outside their metal City, (COMIC: The Message of Mystery) the Daleks having found ways to store power in their travel machines rather than requiring a constant power feed. (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Power of the Daleks) The Daleks worked to develop space travel and soon founded a sprawling space empire. (COMIC: Duel of the Daleks, The Amaryll Challenge, TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, etc.)

Davros and the Daleks

Although the events thus far recounted were the "destiny" of the Daleks, who were to arise as a consequence of the neutron war, (PROSE: War of the Daleks) the Kaled scientist Davros was renowned as the creator of the Daleks. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks, The Stolen Earth, The Magician's Apprentice) Davros's breeding of the first Dalek embryos and the subsequent unveiling of the first few Daleks to the Kaleds was witnessed by the Fourth Doctor and his companions when they were sent back to the "genesis" of the Daleks by the Time Lords in a futile effort to cut off Dalek expansion at the roots. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)

An explanation for this discrepancy was offered by the first Dalek himself, the Dalek Prime. According to it, Davros had foreseen the Daleks' true destiny and interfered, accelerating the evolution of the Daleks so that they would see him as their creator and be subservient to him. The Dalek Prime declared this to be the first time (and not the last by far) that the scientist attempted to usurp mastery over the Daleks. (PROSE: War of the Daleks) Davros himself, at any rate, never failed to remind the Daleks that they were his creations, and was known to speak of them as "his children", (TV: Genesis of the Daleks, The Magician's Apprentice, The Witch's Familiar) whereas the Cult of Skaro referred to the Daleks as "the children of Skaro". (TV: Daleks in Manhattan)

Sources and inspirations

Before he created the Daleks, Davros had read a prophecy found in the forbidden Book of Predictions, written in the extinct language of the Dals, which stated "...and on that day, men will become as gods". In the original language, the final word was pronounced "Dal-ek". (AUDIO: Guilt)

Shan, a young Kaled scientist, authored a paper which formulated a solution to the threats of perpetual war or mutually assured destruction. With both Kaleds and Thals competing for resources, she claimed that the only way out of this dilemma was through a process she called "the Dalek Solution". Davros presented the paper to the Kaled Council as his own, though he omitted several of Shan's more controversial conclusions, such as the fact that the Kaled race would be completely replaced by the new species. (AUDIO: Davros)

Though Davros boasted the armored travel machines later used by the Daleks, which bore great resemblance to his own life-support chair, were of his design, he had actually stolen the schematics of a machine created by other Kaled scientists separate from him and his project. (PROSE: War of the Daleks) Indeed, one another account identified what would become the Dalek casing as a war machine designed by the scientist Yarvelling for use against the Thals. (COMIC: Genesis of Evil)

The first Daleks

Davros, now crippled, became one of the Kaled Scientific Elite. He had begun experiments on living subjects and hoped to "deify" the Kaled race. Davros pushed through legislation enabling authority (and ownership) of all Kaled infants under the age of five years old to be delivered to Pediatric Facility K99, which he used as a laboratory for surgical experiments. Davros transplanted the brain from Baran, a captured Thal spy, into a Mark I Travel Machine, ironically meaning that the very first functional Dalek was technically Thal, rather than Kaled in origin. (AUDIO: Guilt)

Davros reveals the Daleks

Davros first public presentation of the Dalek to the Kaled Scientific Elite. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)

Davros did not immediately show the results of his Dalek experiments to the Kaled Scientific Elite. He improved and developed the shell for the organic components of the Daleks, housing them in tank-like and armed Mark III Travel Machines similar to his own life support chair. He maintained a nursery of embryonic Dalek young. As well as nurturing the physical form of his creations, Davros shaped their minds. The Daleks did not understand concepts such as pity, for it did not exist in their "vocabulary banks".

The Fourth Doctor was sent on a mission by the Time Lords to prevent the creation of the Daleks in the first place, or at the very least lessen the damage they would do in future. Arriving on Skaro, he discovered that many other members of Kaled Scientific Elite were against the project also. To prevent this, Davros arranged for the Thals to aim a missile at the Kaled Dome where his people resided. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)

The Daleks revolt against their creator

The Daleks turn on their creator. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)

The newly christened Daleks (apparently paradoxically called such due to the Doctor's claims that it was their name) were sent by Davros to exterminate the Thals, supposedly in retaliation for the attack on the Kaled Dome. They turned on Davros, as they were not programmed to recognise any creature as superior to them, apparently killing him, (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) although Davros survived his "death" in a state of suspended animation. (TV: Destiny of the Daleks) The Dalek that fired on Davros was none other than the Dalek Prime, who eventually proclaimed itself the first Dalek Emperor. (PROSE: The Evil of the Daleks, War of the Daleks)

Accidentally, whilst attempting to stop the Doctor, a Dalek triggered an explosion which destroyed the embryo room before the Thals sealed the bunker entrance and trapped the Daleks there. In the aftermath, the Doctor believed he had only held back their progress by about a thousand years or so, and that they would return. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)

The Eternity Circle later considered the Time Lords' act of trying to prevent their creation to be the beginning of the Last Great Time War. This act created the Skaro Degradations. (PROSE: Engines of War)

Behind-the-scenes history

As far as the vast bulk of continuity is concerned, Davros created the Daleks and the Fourth Doctor, Sarah and Harry nearly stopped it before it started. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)

However, prior to the writing of that story, Terry Nation, the real-life creator and copyright holder of the Daleks, elected to allow at least three separate origin stories for his creations. The reason for the multiplicity of origins is unclear, but it likely had something to do with the time in which they were written. In the 1960s and early 1970s, Nation and the rest of the Doctor Who team didn't really believe they were creating "permanent" works. Written long before the advent of home video, the internet, or even the existence of a robust market for reprinted comic strips, the various origins told during the first decade of Doctor Who were likely considered as disposable as the episodes themselves turned out to be. Hence, Nation contradicted not just other writers, but himself, when positing various origins for the Daleks.

The Daleks

The first Dalek story, The Daleks, gave viewers a tiny sliver of an idea of where the creatures came from. Far from a full-fledged origin, The Daleks tells us the Daleks came from a race called "the Dals" who had survived an atomic war. This narrative "plank" was certainly incorporated into Genesis of the Daleks, although the name of the parent race wasn't. The Dalek Handbook offers the explanation that Thals, who fought a war against the Dals, conflated the Dals with the Daleks in their legends.

TV Century 21 comic strips

Nation allowed writers David Whitaker and Alan Fennell to tell a Dalek origin in their 1965 TV Century 21 comic strip Genesis of Evil. This was the first published attempt to tell a more-or-less complete origin, and it posited that the Daleks were mutated from a race also known as the Daleks. There is no reference at all to any part of Genesis of Evil within televised Doctor Who, and very little more than an occasional, sly reference in other forms of Doctor Who fiction.

Short story

The TV Century 21 version went unchallenged by any other story for eight years until Nation himself was commissioned to write a short prose story for the Radio Times Doctor Who 10th anniversary publication in 1973. Entitled We are the Daleks!, the piece substantively contradicted Genesis of Evil and The Daleks, and the later Genesis of the Daleks. The most contradictory and surprising feature of this piece was the notion that Daleks were actually evolved from future humans.