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Daleks
Alien Race
First Appearance	The Daleks
Homeworld	Skaro
Notable Members	The Dalek Emperor; Alpha; Dalek Sec; Dalek Caan

This page covers the pepperpot-shaped monsters who say "exterminate" a lot. For other meanings of the word see Daleks (Disambiguation)

Contents 1 Description 2 Hierarchy 3 Technology 4 History 5 References

Description

Dalek casings are roughly five feet tall and roughly conical in shape. The top of their heads are domes with two lights, and they have a single eyestalk. They have two limbs - one is a gun, and the other functions primarily as a hand, and is shaped much like a sink plunger.

The "plunder" arm can be replaced with other appendages. These include cutting tools.^[1], a device known as a "seismic detector" or a "perceptor", which is capable of locating a TARDIS^[2] and tracking people^[3], an "electrode unit"^[4], or a flame-thrower^[5]

The gun can also be used to burn through ropes^[6] and Daleks at least sometimes call them neutralisers^[7] and ray-guns^[8] These weapons are capable of destroying a spaceship if they are concentrated.^[9]. They are not, however, capable of damaging a TARDIS.^[10]

The exact form of the organic creature inside the shell has varied over their timeline.

The Daleks have a xenophobic hatred for anything that is not a Dalek.

The Daleks confined to their city on Skaro were dependent on Static electricity, and their movement created a smell similar to that of dodgems at a fairground. These Daleks could be shut down by insulating them from the ground beneath them. Their organic forms were dependent on the background radiation of Skaro.^[11] Those in the force which occupied the planet Earth during their invasion had discs on their back, which supply their power.^[12] These Daleks were capable of operating underwater.^[13]

Hierarchy

The Dalek hierarchy appears to have changed over the centuries.

The forces occupying Earth in the 22nd Century answered to a Black Dalek, who was in charge of their mining operation in Bedfordshire.^[14]

The Daleks plotting to overthrow Earth in the year 4000 answered to a Supreme Dalek who, in turn, answered to "the homeworld" (presumably Skaro)

Technology

In the 22nd Century, the Dalek forces occupying Earth used saucer-shaped vehicles to fly around the planet. These ships took off after a countdown, had weapons that could destroy a truck from the air, and had disposal chutes which were big enough for a human body to fit in. During this period, they used electronic mind-control devices to directly control some humans. These Robomen were used to control human slaves. The robomen were armed with crude machine guns, and would attempt to commit suicide if their conditioning wore off.

By the year 4000, the Daleks had developed (or, possibly, stolen^[15]) advanced time travel technology akin to TARDISes, including being bigger on the inside than on the outside.^[16]

By 4000 AD, the Daleks had also developed the ability to make duplicates of human beings, although they were clearly mistaken in their belief that such duplicates were indistinguishable from the original.^[17]

The Daleks of this era also had a fleet of pursuit spaceships, as well as a homing beam for time machine, a neutronic randomiser capable of scrambling spaceship instruments at long range, and a magnetise beam, which could draw spacecraft towards their base. They had also developed a weapon known as the Time Destructor which could accelerate or reverse the flow of time in a particular area, ageing people to death.

History

Timeline

Genesis of the Daleks

The Daleks

Lucifer Rising

Godengine

The Dalek Invasion of Earth (Story)

Legacy of the Daleks

Frontier in Space

Planet of the Daleks

Death to the Daleks

Day of the Daleks

The Chase

Mission to the Unknown

The Daleks' Masterplan

Destiny of the Daleks

Resurrection of the Daleks

Revelation of the Daleks

Remembrance of the Daleks

War of the Daleks

Power of the Daleks

The Dalek Factor[18]

Evil of the Daleks

Dalek

Bad Wolf

The Parting of the Ways

Army of Ghosts

Doomsday

Daleks in Manhattan

Evolution of the Daleks

The Stolen Earth

Journey's End

The Planet Skaro produced two sentient races, the Kaleds (sometimes known as the Dals) and the Thals who engaged in a thousand-year war. Some of the weapons used in the war caused mutations in both races, the mutants being cast out into the wilderness of Skaro. A gifted, but insane, Kaled scientist called Davros predicted the course these mutations would ultimately take on the Kaleds, and created mutants resembling this end result, devising a travel machine in which they could continue to live. However, he began removing some of the kinder emotions from them, emphasising hate and a disdain for the unlike.^[19]

Davros and his creations, the Daleks, were directly responsible for the destruction of the majority of both the Daleks and the Thals, despite the fact that the Time Lords had sent the Fourth Doctor to interfere in the creation of the Daleks. However, the Doctor did manage to entomb the Daleks for a thousand years, and destroy their gestation chamber, meaning that they had to start again with the task of creating new Daleks. Although the Daleks exterminated their creator, the Doctor's warnings about the future of the Daleks prompted him to install devices which would later prove to have saved his life.^[20]

When the Daleks eventually emerged from their entombment, the first group of Daleks either built or took over a city on the planet's surface. These Daleks confined themselves to this city, drawing their power from physical contact with its floors. These Daleks were rendered inactive by the first Doctor in his first encounter with the species, and a group of Thals, who had mutated into blond, blue-eyed humanoids, took over the city. The Thals obviously learnt from the Dalek technology, as they left Skaro when the rest of the Daleks emerged from hiding.^[21]

The Daleks developed space travel and became conquerors. By the late 21st Century, Earth time, Dalek forces had become scattered around the edge of Mutters' Spiral, with the aim of building up a decent galactic powerbase. Meanwhile, Dalek forces left behind on Skaro were beginning to think about putting together a Dalek Galactic empire of their own. Dalek technology at this time was very much based on static electricity.

By the mid-22nd Century, Earth time, the forces in Mutters' Spiral attacked several planets known to the newly expanding race called humanity. In time this mysterious "Black Fleet" would attack humanity's native solar system, beginning in 2157. The Dalek occupation of Earth would last for ten years. The Daleks also invaded Mars, Earth's neighbouring planet. Mars had once been ruled by a race called the Ice Warriors, until the humans had invaded the planet. A small group of Ice Warriors hiding on Mars contacted the Daleks, offering them a deal - return Mars to the Ice Warriors, and they would give the Daleks an ancient device known as the Ssor-arr duss Ssethissi, which translates as "Godengine". The Godengine would - amongst other things - allow the Daleks to pilot a planet through space, as long as its magnetic core was extracted. The Daleks would spend the rest of their occupation of Earth trying to remove its core, even though they lost contact with those Ice Warriors.^[22]

The Dalek occupation of Mars was defeated when the humans engineered a virus that could eat through the wires in the Dalek casings. Their plan to extract Earth's core was defeated by the first Doctor, and Earth was liberated by the arrival of a colonial warship named Dauntless on the same day. Humanity proceeded to win their war against the Daleks, who retreated from that sector of space, at least for the time being. Meanwhile, they continued a war against the Thals. It was probably during this era that they first discovered the Ogrons, an ape-like species with little brains, but much muscle, and began using them as slaves.^[23]

However, the Daleks had left behind a large number of Dalek artefacts on Earth. One of these contained a Dalek factory, which could turn out an army of Daleks if it was only connected to a power source. The machinations of the Master and a local power struggle almost reactivated this artefact. However, the intervention of the Eighth Doctor and his grandaughter Susan, who the first Doctor had left on Earth after the invasion, defeated this Dalek force.^[24]

In 2540, the Daleks again interfered in Earth's sphere of influence, allying with the Time Lord known as the Master, they and their Ogron slaves attempted to disrupt a peace conference between the Earth Empire and the Draconian Empire. The intervention of the Third Doctor revealed their interference and provoked a war between the Daleks and an alliance of these two Empires. Immediately following this, the Doctor traced the Daleks to a planet called Spiridon, where they had hidden an army of Daleks and had been experimenting with technology that might make them invisible. The Doctor allied with a party of Thals who had been dispatched to investigate the Dalek presence and destroyed both the Dalek army and the experiments.^[25]

Humanity and their Draconian allies again beat the Daleks, though there was a second Dalek war later in the century. It was probably during this second Dalek war that the Daleks released a space plague that could only be cured with the rare element Parrinium. The Daleks discovered that a supply of Parrinium was available on the planet Exxilon, and attempted to secure the supply. Their attempts to do this were defeated by the Third Doctor, who helped some human Marine Space Corps to secure a supply to fight the plague.^[26]

At some point after losing this second Dalek war, the Daleks began to discover the secrets of time travel. Their first use of the technology was an attempt to reverse their defeats at the hands of humanity. They travelled back in time to invade Earth in the mid-21st Century, a hundred years before their original invasion. Their arrival triggered a temporal paradox which meant that Earth was devastated by a 20th Century war caused by humans who had used stolen Dalek time travel technology to try to prevent the war from happening. This alternate timeline was erased by the actions of the Third Doctor, who had been exiled to Earth at the time and place that triggered this global war.^[27]

Around the year 3500 AD, the Daleks began a series of conquests that would, over the next five hundred years, give them control of seventy planets in ninth galactic system and forty in the constellation of Miros. By the end of this period, they assembled representatives of seven planets, forming an alliance with the seven great powers of the Outer Galaxies against Earth.^[28]

The Daleks' grasp of time travel technology had advanced considerably by the human year 4000, when they developed time machines almost on a level with the Time Lords' own TARDISes. Their first use of this technology was to send a crew to chase and exterminate the first Doctor, in revenge for the damage he had done to their cause. The Doctor, however, defeated the Daleks sent after him.^[29]

Their next and, indeed, final use of these powerful timeships came as part of a complicated plot launched in the year 4000AD, when they attempted to destroy the Galactic Federation - a political entity consisting of numerous species which had stepped into the chaos caused by the rapid collapse of the Earth Empire approximately a thousand years earlier. Their planned weapon, the Time Destructor, was sabotaged and turned against them by the first Doctor. The plot caused a major war between the Daleks and the Federation, and the Federation won.^[30]

At some point after this, the Daleks took notice of something that they had discovered during their occupation of Earth in the 22nd Century. Records existed that said that their creator Davros had used a Gallifreyan device called the Hand of Omega, found on Earth in 1963, to destroy Skaro's sun. The Dalek Prime decided to enact a series of complicated plots in order to ensure that Skaro was not destroyed, but the Daleks' previous experience of time travel had shown that changing recorded history could not be done. Therefore, he decided to ensure that Davros would be revived and fooled into destroying a planet he believed to be Skaro, rather than destroying Skaro itself.^[31]

The details of this plot are not clearly laid out, but Davros was revived on a planet which the Thals believed to be called Antalin, and which the Dalek Prime later claimed was a constructed world. However, the world on which Davros was revived had radiation levels similar to that which Skaro possessed, whilst the "Skaro" the Dalek Prime managed to preserve had no radiation at all. Some have theorised that the Dalek Prime actually moved the Daleks to a new Skaro, managing to alter Thal records about the position of their homeworld in the process. Another factor in this deception was the approach of a race known as the Collectors, who even the Daleks were reluctant to face.^[32]

When the Daleks revived Davros, they convinced him that they had been at war with a robotic race known as the Movellans for centuries, and that both sides had been locked in a stalemate situation by their battle computers. The Dalek Prime would later claim that the Movellans were created by the Daleks - possibly for the purpose of fooling Davros. The Daleks said that they wanted Davros to break the impasse. However, the intervention of the Fourth Doctor led to Davros becoming a prisoner of the humans.^[33]

90 years later, the Daleks attempted to rescue Davros, claiming that they need him to find an antidote to an anti-Dalek virus created by the Movellans. Their plan also involved giving him access to time travel technology, secretly hoping that he would find the Hand of Omega in Earth's past, and use it to destroy the planet he believed to be Skaro. They also had a plan to invade Gallifrey using duplicates of the fifth Doctor. However, the Doctor's intervention again defeated them.^[34]

At some point after this, Davros set himself up as "The Great Healer" on a human-controlled planet called Nekros. He intended to breed a new species of Dalek from the corpses of humans sent to a place called Tranquil Repose. He also made money by selling their remains as meat to other planets. However, his reign at Tranquil Repose was interrupted by an investigation from members of the Order of Oberon, the arrival of the Sixth Doctor, and his being handed over to the Daleks.^[35]

After this, Davros did succeed in building his own army of Daleks, recasting himself as the Emperor Dalek, his "Imperial" Daleks fought a war with the "Renegade" Daleks, and appeared to win. It was after that that he finally traced the Hand of Omega to Earth in the year 1963. He personally travelled back in time to that era to retrieve the Hand, though he would remain on his spacecraft whilst in that timezone. A small force of Renegade Daleks attempted to retrieve the Hand themselves, but the intervention of the Seventh Doctor ensured that all of the Renegades were destroyed. The Doctor also goaded Davros into using the Hand on Skaro's sun (or at least the sun around which the planet he believed was Skaro orbited), causing it to go supernova, destroying Davros's ship, along with all of his faction of Daleks who were in Skaro's Star System.^[36]

This was not the end for Davros, though. He somehow survived in an escape pod. When a party of space scavengers recovered it, they were intercepted by "Renegade" Daleks. Davros, along with the Eighth Doctor - who just happened to be onboard, and a party of Thal troops, who had also intercepted the ship, were taken to the planet Skaro (or at least the planet the Dalek Prime called Skaro). The Dalek Prime planned to try Davros and, by doing so, ensure that any Daleks who supported him were found and eliminated. Civil war broke out, and the Dalek Prime's troops were victorious, with Davros being put into a disintegrator.^[37]

During this incident, the Dalek Prime hid a Dalek factory onboard the Doctor's TARDIS. Whilst leaving "Skaro", the Doctor discovered this factory, and jettisoned it into the Vortex. It arrived on a planet called Vulcan, where early human colonists discovered it, and were tricked into activating it. However,the intervention of the second Doctor shut down the factory and destroyed all the Daleks.^[38]

At some point after this, the Daleks attempted to use their knowledge of time travel to identify "the human factor" from 19th Century humans, knowing that the humans had beaten them far too many times in the past, and to implant "the Dalek factor" into humanity, thus making them less able to beat the Daleks. The intervention of the Second Doctor meant that three Daleks were implanted with the human factor, and started a Dalek civil war.^[39]

When the civil war had finished, the Daleks again became the biggest threat in the universe. But then they just vanished from history, travelling into the vortex in order to fight the last great Time War against the Time Lords. The war ended when the Doctor managed to destroy the Dalek fleet, but he also destroyed the Time Lords' home planet. He thought that there were no other survivors. However, at a number of Daleks did survive.^[40]

One of these Daleks, an ordinary soldier, fell through time to the 1960s. Crashlanding on Earth, its power was drained, and it was a prisoner of various human institutions until the year 2012, when it encountered the ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler. When Rose touched its casing, her time-traveller biodata allowed it to regenerate itself, and it attempted to exterminate everybody in the compound, However Rose had corrupted the Dalek, and it eventually committed suicide.^[41]

Another Dalek to survive was the Emperor Dalek. It arrived in the far future of humanity, and manipulated humanity behind the scenes, keeping their technology backward and harvesting the scum of humanity (the prisoners, the refugees, the dispossessed, the reality TV contestants ;), nurturing selected cells to breed a new race of Daleks. The Emperor believed himself to be God, and the new Daleks shared his delusion, becoming his worshippers. Eventually, he launched an attack on Earth, but was stopped when the ninth Doctor's companion Rose Tyler became all-powerful and wiped him and his Daleks out of existence.^[42]

In addition to these two, the Cult of Skaro fled into the Void. They eventually escaped, confronting the Doctor in 21st Century London and 1930s Manhattan. One of them, Dalek Caan, managed to escape back into the time war and rescue a Dalek force, who attempted to destroy the universe, but were stopped by the Doctor.^[43]

References