Talk:Dalek Prime (rank)

Is this really a "rank"?

Having just listened again to The Four Doctors, I can't recall anything that strictly states that the Dalek Prime of that story was a rank, only lines stating that it was an individual. Assuming I've not slipped up somewhere, should this page be merged with Dalek Prime, and could the same be said for Dalek Prime (The Four Doctors)? Thalek Prime Overseer ☎ 23:07, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

We had a whole forum thread about this a short time before you showed up! The short of it is, central to the Dalek Prime's deal in The Four Doctors is that the Dalek Prime is a Dalek variant created fairly late in the Daleks' history. When the particular Dalek Prime encountered by the Doctors in the story is catapulted back in time, the earlier Daleks are unfamiliar with the designation "Dalek Prime" or with its casing type, and indeed are set on exterminating it until the Prime uses its casing's special abilities to assert control over them.

In contrast, the whole concept of the very name Dalek Prime, as created by John Peel to refer to the original Dalek Emperor, is that he's the First Dalek Ever. At no point in Dalek history should the Daleks be unfamiliar with this guy or his name; that's the point. Also, the "Golden Emperor" Dalek Prime is the leader of the Dalek Empire as a whole, whereas the guy in The Four Doctors seems to "just" have been the commander of a Dalek warship. Although I could be misrembering that last bit.

It's true that The Four Doctors mostly speaks about "the" Dalek Prime — but, I'd argue, in the same way that Planet of the Daleks mostly talks about "the" Dalek Supreme, or Enemy of the Daleks about "the" Black Dalek: it's the only one of its rank/kind in the story, and Daleks don't have individual names (usually). Also, another Big Finish audio, The Thousand Worlds mentions Prime Dalek as explicitly a rank, and while we're sticking to the "no speculation, however evident" rule by keeping the two pages separate, it's pretty likelyh this is meant to be the same thing, much like how Supreme Dalek = Dalek Supreme.

tl;dr, there may be room to argue that the Dalek Prime (The Four Doctors) is a unique individual, not a representative of a wider rank, although this is unlikely to be the authorial intent. But there is no logical way for him to possibly be intended to be the same thing as John Peel's Dalek Prime, because the narrative conceit of the Dalek Prime in Four Doctors (he's a new kind of powerful Dalek from the future) is the exact opposite of the narrative conceit of the Dalek Prime in Peel's books (he's the Oldest Dalek Ever). Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 23:20, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Ah yes, I remember that forum thread. Apologies for the redundancy of my question. I'm fully aware that the Dalek Prime created by John Peel and the Dalek Prime of The Four Doctors are incredibly contradictory of each other and realistically not the same individual. I guess what I should have asked, then, is whether there is anything from The Four Doctors that explicitly states that the Dalek Prime (The Four Doctorsà is part of a rank, rather than being a distinct individual - as far as I understand, although its designation isn't recognised by the old Daleks, and it overrides them, those features could very well be exclusive to this Dalek Prime, rather than being features of a new Dalek.

Furthermore, when the Sixth Doctor and Colonel Ulrich are imprisoned on Pejorica, the Doctor states that the ongoing battle predates the Dalek Prime, but this could also just as easily be referring to this individual Dalek Prime, not a rank.

Maybe I'm not understanding what authorial intent means - how exactly do we know what the author intended? Either way, I just get this strong impression that the Dalek Prime of The Four Doctors isn't a rank. Thalek Prime Overseer ☎ 00:01, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

If you're asking in general, we can know authorial intent from quotes in interviews and the like. In this particular case, there are no hard facts, but we do have some circumstancial evidence (in the form of Big Finish Productions having later namedropped "Prime Dalek" as a rank) as to what that intent might have been.

It's only very rarely relevant to Wiki policy in either case, but when determining character identity it can certainly be taken into account as a matter of common sense. To take my favourite go-to example: although there are other Masters fiting that description, if the Third Doctor is described in a 1970s short story as fighting "the Master, a man with a graying black goatee wearing a black Nehru suit", we can safely assert that this is Delgado's Master unless the story shows otherwise; we don't have to go place it in "Undated events" on The Master just because, on a textual level, there is a thin possibility that it's Gordon Tipple or a late-stage Anthony Ainley.

Anyway, as concerns the Dalek Prime: as I recall, the proposal to make a Dalek Prime (rank) page was made at an earlier point in the thread than it being highlighted that really, it would be speculative to flatly conflate "Dalek Prime" with "Prime Dalek". So I think it's technically not T:BOUND-breaking if you want to reexamine this question specifically, if other people agree with your reading of the story.

However, let's be clear that the question at hand is whether to merge Dalek Prime (rank) into Dalek Prime (The Four Doctors). It would be both inaccurate, and T:BOUND-infringing, to attempt to merge either into Dalek Prime. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 00:13, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Okay, I should've made my real query clear from the start. The question of whether to merge was a jump to conclusions on my part, apologies. Perhaps I'll start a separate discussion concerning the matter of this Dalek Prime being a rank some other time. Thalek Prime Overseer ☎ 00:21, 24 March 2021 (UTC)