Space capsule (The Power of the Daleks)

A space capsule crewed by three silver Daleks crash landed in the mercury swamp of the planet Vulcan. (TV: The Power of the Daleks)

History

Origins

According to one account, the craft was an experimental capsule fielded during the Mechon Wars, fought in the aftermath of the Mechonoid Incident, in order to test time warping on their enemies. Damaged by the Mechanoids, the craft was sent hurtling through time and space to Vulcan. By this account, Vulcan's human colonists were from a sleeper starship which set off from Earth in the early 21st century. Upon awakening the crew opted to begin their dating system from the time they entered deep sleep and so acknowledged the year as 2010 despite the passing of several centuries. (PROSE: The History of the Daleks)

By another account, during the renewed civil war between the Daleks loyal to the Dalek Prime and those loyal to Davros, the former faction planted a dimensionally transcendental factory ship aboard a Thal ship returning to their own space. This was discovered by the Eighth Doctor who, aware that this would enable the creation of a new Dalek army in enemy territory, used the TARDIS to expel the factory ship through interstitial space, claiming that he had already dealt with it "in another time, and another place." (PROSE: War of the Daleks)

According to human historians in the post-Time War universe, the capsule on Vulcan was a factory ship, one of thousands sent out in the early days of the Dalek Empire. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) According to the Time Lords' Dalek Combat Training Manual, published during the Last Great Time War, it was a scout craft used for reconnaissance missions. Intelligence further identified it as a short-range exploratory vessel, explaining its crew's reliance on static electricity. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)

On Vulcan

In a transmission recovered and recorded in The Dalek Conquests, the capsule was on a course which entailed traversing the orbital path of the planet Vulcan when its engines were hit by a meteor strike, disabling maneuvering controls. As a result, the capsule was caught in Vulcan's gravitational pull. Though the Dalek crew attempted to transmit a distress signal to their home planet, Skaro, they found that their transmitter was non-functional as main power shut down, leading to a crash landing on Vulcan. (AUDIO: The Dalek Conquests)

Two hundred years later, a human colony had been established on the planet Vulcan. The Daleks were found in their space capsule underground and then reactivated by a scientist called Lesterson. This overlapped with the rebellion against Hensell led by Bragen. The rebellion failed after the Daleks began an indiscriminate slaughter of the colonists but the Second Doctor overloaded their temporary static circuit from the colony's electricity supply. (TV: The Power of the Daleks)

Legacy

Human historians following the Siege of Trenzalore observed that the Dalek factory ship that landed on Vega IV was significantly more advanced than the capsule found on Vulcan, containing the raw materials required to build over 3,000 Daleks. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)

At some point, the "Vulcan Factory", as it was dubbed, was displayed in the Dalek Dome in the Vulcan Factory Zone as one of the greatest moments in Dalek history. (COMIC: Liberation of the Daleks)

Behind the scenes

• The Terrestrial Index claimed that the Dalek capsule crashed on Vulcan following the First Dalek War, and that the Vulcan Incident took place around the year 2220.
• The Discontinuity Guide claimed that the ship was one of those which escaped the destruction caused by the Dalek Civil War on Skaro before crashing on Vulcan in the 21st or early 22nd century, preceding the 2150s Dalek invasion of Earth. It is further noted that, since the Fourth Doctor inadvertently changed Dalek history so that Davros survived, this event would have occurred vastly differently if it happened at all in the new timeline.
• The Dalek Handbook claimed that the capsule was a timeship which fled Skaro in the Civil War, which is dated to the 41st century, before crashing on Vulcan in the past, explaining how the Daleks recognised the newly regenerated Second Doctor but were themselves not recognised by the humans.