Hover position

An Imperial Dalek ascends the stairs to attack the Seventh Doctor. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)

Hover position was the Dalek act of ascension, (COMIC: The Penta Ray Factor) also known as independent hover mode. (PROSE: Dalek Survival Guide) Achieved by the elevation unit and antigravity mechanism beneath the base unit of the Dalek motor casing, (PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks) it allowed individual Daleks to take flight without the use of a hoverbout. Much like how the Daleks fired their gunsticks after exclaiming "exterminate!", a Dalek would generally exclaim "elevate!" before taking flight. (TV: Dalek)

History

Pre-Time War

Daleks could ascent by using an anti-gravitational disc, giving them lift-off capacity. (TV: Planet of the Daleks)

Davros uses the power to hover. (TV: Revelation of the Daleks)

Davros' chair could hover by the time he acted as the Great Healer on Necros. (TV: Revelation of the Daleks) Human historians believed that that the anti-grav pods were developed by Davros on Necros and then bestowed to his Imperial Daleks, giving them a distinct advantage in their civil war against the Renegade Daleks who were still hampered by uneven terrain. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)

During the Shoreditch Incident of 1963, an Imperial Dalek ascended the stairs of the Coal Hill cellar to pursue the Seventh Doctor. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)

Time War

On the last day of the Time War, the Daleks penetrated the sky trenches above Gallifrey while in hover position, allowing them to attack Arcadia. (TV: The Last Day)

Post-Time War

At the Vault in 2012, a Dalek nicknamed "Metaltron" seemingly found itself at an impasse when faced with a flight of stairs that Rose Tyler, Adam Mitchell and De Maggio had ascended, with Adam mocking its plight. The Dalek, however, soon began to elevate up the stairs, leaving De Maggio to cover Rose and Adam's escape at the cost of her life. (TV: Dalek ^[+]Loading...["Dalek (TV story)"])

Daleks freely hovered throughout the Dalek Flagship. (TV: Bad Wolf) The Emperor's Personal Guard hovered in a stationary position around the Dalek Emperor. In 200,100, thousands of Daleks flew through space to the Game Station. Aboard the station, they flew through the ventilation shafts to access the various floors. (TV: The Parting of the Ways)

The Cult of Skaro took flight with the Genesis Ark as they disembarked from the Void Ship into the sphere chamber of Torchwood Tower in 2007, leading to the Battle of Canary Wharf. (TV: Army of Ghosts) Fighting their way to Torchwood One's artefact room, the four Daleks, having overriden the roof mechanism, elevated outside of Torchwood Tower. With a minimum area of thirty square miles, the Genesis Ark was opened, unleashing the millions of Daleks imprisoned within into the sky around Canary Wharf. Proceeding to spread across Earth, the Daleks attacked humans and invading parallel universe Cybermen alike. When the tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler opened the Void, the void stuff-contaminated Daleks were sucked back into the breach en masse along with the Genesis Ark. Dalek Sec, in a stationary hover position, escaped using an emergency temporal shift (TV: Doomsday) along with the rest of the Cult. (TV: Daleks in Manhattan)

In 1930, two members of the Cult of Skaro launched an aerial attack on Hooverville in New York, exterminating Solomon when he attempted to reason with them. When the irate Tenth Doctor attempted to goad the Daleks into killing him next, Dalek Sec ordered them to stop and bring him back to their base. (TV: Evolution of the Daleks)

Numerous Daleks took flight during the invasion of Earth in the 2000s, most notably during the attack on the aircraft carrier Valiant. (TV: The Stolen Earth) The Daleks later returned to their base in the Medusa Cascade, the Crucible. (TV: Journey's End) Among them was a Dalek which spotted Adelaide Brooke, whose life it spared as it recognised her as a fixed point in time. (TV: The Waters of Mars) Within the Crucible, the Daleks flew freely before the New Dalek Empire was destroyed by the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor, resulting in Daleks exploding en masse while in hover position. (TV: Journey's End)

In an alternate timeline created using the Eye of Time, the Drone Daleks of the New Dalek Paradigm flew through a rift in the sky to Earth in 1963, where they proceeded to exterminate humanity. (GAME: City of the Daleks)

In an alternate timeline following total event collapse, a weakened Stone Dalek slowly hovered as it menaced the Eleventh Doctor and his companions. (TV: The Big Bang)

On the rebuilt Skaro, numerous Dalek residents took flight out of the Dalek City on a search for the Twelfth Doctor as Davros was apparently endangered, only for the Doctor reveal himself at the Supreme Dalek's room in Davros' chair. (TV: The Witch's Familiar)

In 2019, a reconnaissance scout Dalek took flight to the Government Communications Headquarters after rebuilding its casing at Dinkle's farm. Along the way, it stopped to exterminate a British Army squad that had intercepted it. (TV: Resolution)

The Defence Drones, which were derived from the Reconnaisance Dalek, had the ability to fly which they used in their attack on the humans in early 2021. Death Squad Daleks flew as they disembarked from their ship before setting down on Earth to exterminate all the Defence Drones in the 2021 Dalek civil war. Whilst their ship and those who remained onboard were destroyed by the Thirteenth Doctor's allies, she lured the remaining Daleks to fly into what appeared to be her TARDIS but was actually a spare from Gallifrey which she had sent to the Void as it collapsed in on itself, destroying the Daleks. (TV: Revolution of the Daleks)

Later that year, in the wake of the first Flux event, Bel observed a patrol of Daleks hovering just above ground in the Dalek Sector. (TV: Once, Upon Time)

Behind the scenes

• In the video game The Last Dalek, based on the events of Dalek, the Metaltron gains the ability to ascend over stairs and manholes only after acquiring an anti-gravity device.