History of the Daleks
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The Daleks (pronounced "DAH-lecks"; IPA: /'dɑːlɛks/) are a fictional extraterrestrial race of mutants from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The mutated remains of the Kaled people of the planet Skaro, they travel around in tank-like mechanical casings, and are a race bent on universal conquest and destruction. They are also, collectively, the greatest alien adversaries of the Time Lord known as the Doctor.
As is common in long-running series whose backstories are not mapped out and which are also the product of many different writers over the course of years, the fictional history of the Daleks has seen many retroactive changes and these have caused some continuity problems.
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[edit] On screen
[edit] Origins
When the Doctor first encountered the Daleks in The Daleks (1963), they were the product of a nuclear war between the Dal and Thal races, and were more or less confined to their city, their motive power being static electricity conducted from metal walkways. At the end of this serial, the Daleks were seemingly wiped out, a fitting conclusion because it was not intended that they should be a recurring adversary for the Doctor. However, the popularity of the Daleks ensured their return.
They did so in The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964), which showed the Daleks having conquered and occupied the Earth in the mid 22nd century. The sight of the Daleks amid the familiar landmarks of London made their presence doubly effective by bringing the threat to home ground. The Doctor explained the presence of the Daleks by saying that the events were taking place "a million years" before The Daleks, and that what they were witnessing was the "middle period" of Dalek history. However, these Daleks as an invasion force were able to move without the need for metal paths, presumably drawing power through the use of what appear to be radio dishes on their backs. The question of why in the future the Daleks would be less advanced than these Daleks is never explained, and the "million years" answer is usually disregarded.
Over the course of their next few appearances, the Daleks developed, variously, time travel (The Chase, 1965), an interstellar empire in the year 4000 (The Daleks' Master Plan, 1965), and factory ships for conquest seen before the Earth occupation (The Power of the Daleks, 1966), growing more powerful and further removed from the (by comparison) almost pathetic monsters of the first serial. The radio dishes also vanished, and Daleks were able to move under their own power. Given the time travel nature of the series, whether these stories took place chronologically in the order they were transmitted is uncertain, and debate continues as to their proper sequence. The only given date is 4000AD for The Daleks' Master Plan, though some presume Power takes place before Dalek Invasion of Earth as none of the human characters recognise the Daleks.
A second attempt to end the Dalek saga was made in The Evil of the Daleks (1967), which also introduced a Dalek Emperor. In that story, the conflagration caused by a Dalek civil war was declared by the Second Doctor to be "the final end." This was because Terry Nation was in negotiations to sell the Dalek concept to American television. The sale did not succeed, but the Daleks did not appear again for five years.
The Daleks returned in the Third Doctor serial, Day of the Daleks (1972), where once again they used time travel technology. The Daleks were re-established as a species bent on universal conquest, as seen in 1973's Frontier in Space (which led directly into Planet of the Daleks) and later on in Death to the Daleks (1974). The Dalek Emperor was not in attendance, the Daleks being led by a Supreme Dalek instead, with references made to a Dalek High Council. Frontier and Planet are set in the 26th Century, while Death refers to the recent "Dalek Wars" and so presumably Death to the Daleks follows on from the other two.
It could still have been plausible that all this was taking place prior to the events of The Daleks, and that the creatures seen there were the remnants of a once great empire. However, Planet of the Daleks had Thals who had become a spacefaring race and also remembered legends of the Doctor's first encounter with the Daleks. Since the Daleks were an expansionist, interstellar power at this point, it marked a significant change to the "end" of the race shown in 1963 and contradicted the Doctor's reasoning in The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
[edit] Genesis of the Daleks
In 1975, Terry Nation revised the Daleks' origins in the serial Genesis of the Daleks, where the Doctor was sent to the moment of the Daleks' creation by the Time Lords (or possibly their Celestial Intervention Agency) in order to stop the Dalek race before it could begin. In that story, the Dals were now called Kaleds (an anagram of Dalek), and the Dalek design was attributed to one man, the crippled Kaled chief scientist and evil genius Davros.
Instead of a short nuclear exchange, the Kaled-Thal war was portrayed as a thousand-year-long war of attrition, fought with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. When Davros deemed the mutations from the fallout irreversible, he experimented on living cells, treating them with chemicals and accelerating the mutations to create the ultimate Kaled evolutionary form and ensure the survival of their race. This genetically conditioned forms were placed in tank-like "travel machines" whose design was based on his own life-support chair. The Mark III travel machines coupled with the mutants became the first Daleks.
The Fourth Doctor's appearance on the scene (to try to prevent the creation of the Daleks or at the very least lessen the damage they would do in future) led to the other Kaled scientists trying to shut down the Dalek project. To prevent this, Davros arranged for the Thals to wipe out his own people. The Daleks were then sent to exterminate the Thals, but later turned on Davros and apparently killed him. Sealing them in the Kaled bunker, the Doctor believed that he had only retarded their progess by a thousand years.
Much fan debate has revolved around pre- and post-Genesis Dalek history: what was changed, how it affects what was seen before, or even if the Doctor's involvement changed anything to begin with. An examination of the various theories is beyond the scope of this article, but suffice it to mention, many of the debates revolve around time travel, especially given that the Daleks themselves have tampered with time.
The most widespread fan theory, primarily because of its promulgation in The Discontinuity Guide by Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping, is that the Doctor did succeed in changing Dalek history.[1][2] However, other commentators (like Lawrence Miles in his reference work About Time, Lance Parkin in his chronology AHistory and John Rocco Roberto [3]) argue that it is possible to reconcile the pre- and post-Genesis stories without the need to invoke two versions of Dalek history.
In any case, it is accurate to say that Genesis of the Daleks marked a new era for the depiction of the species, with most of their previous history either forgotten or barely referred to again. Future stories, which followed a rough story arc, would also focus more on Davros, much to the dissatisfaction of some fans who felt that the Daleks should take centre stage, rather than becoming mere minions of their creator.
[edit] Post-Genesis history
In Destiny of the Daleks (1979), it was revealed that Davros had survived the Daleks' attack and lived on, buried in a bunker in suspended animation. During the time Davros was sleeping, the Daleks had abandoned the ruins of Skaro and established a vast interstellar empire, eventually encountering a hostile race of androids called the Movellans. The Dalek and Movellan warfleets were very evenly matched, and neither side's purely logical battle computers could find a successful strategy for an attack against the other. As a result, the two fleets remained locked in a standoff for centuries, constantly manoeuvering and probing for an opportunity to break the stalemate but without either side actually firing a single shot.
The Daleks sent an expedition to the ruins of Skaro to recover Davros and seek his help to upgrade their designs in the hope of finding a way through the impasse, and the Movellans sent an expedition to stop them. The Daleks succeeded in reviving Davros, who theorised that the extreme intelligence and rationality of the battle computers were to blame and that the first side to take a seemingly reckless gamble would tip the balance in their favour. However, the Doctor intervened and prevented either the Dalek or Movellan expeditions from returning with this insight. Davros fell into the hands of a Human space empire and was put back in suspended animation for indefinite imprisonment.
This impasse continued for nearly a century until the Movellans finally developed a weapon capable of breaking it — a highly virulent biological agent that targeted Daleks. In Resurrection of the Daleks (1984), having lost the war, the Daleks rescued Davros from the Human prison station where he had been frozen for ninety years and demanded that he develop a defence against the disease. This time it was Davros who double-crossed the Daleks, deciding to take personal command of the Dalek race rather than merely serving it. Davros's continuing influence eventually led to a schism among the Daleks, with one faction following Davros's leadership and another rejecting their creator to instead follow the Supreme Dalek.
By the time of Revelation of the Daleks (1985), Davros was in hiding at the Tranquil Repose funeral facility on the planet Necros, experimenting with physically transforming humans into Daleks. He was also placing those Daleks loyal to him into white and gold casings to distinguish them from the usual black and grey Daleks, but his plans were undone when a worker at the facility contacted the original Daleks. These Daleks arrived on Necros, exterminated the white and gold Daleks and captured Davros, who was returned to Skaro to face trial.
[edit] The final end?
Davros made his last televised appearance in the serial Remembrance of the Daleks (1988). Apparently, events had taken place off-screen, as he appeared in the guise of the Dalek Emperor, leading his gold and white Imperial Daleks. Davros had at this point modified the Imperial Daleks, adding cybernetic enhancements to their organic components. A new model "Special Weapons Dalek" was introduced with an enormously powerful cannon and armour capable of deflecting regular Dalek weaponry. Also for the first time, a Dalek was clearly seen on screen to hover up a flight of stairs.
Pitted against the Imperial Daleks were the Renegade Daleks, led by a black Supreme Dalek. The name "renegade" suggests that the tables had turned and Davros' side had the upper hand. Both Dalek factions became aware that the Hand of Omega, a Gallifreyan stellar engineering device, was hidden on Earth in the year 1963. Both factions sent expeditions to Earth, battling each other to retrieve it, hoping to use the Hand to create a power source that would refine their crude time travel technology.
Ultimately, the Imperial Daleks succeeded, not knowing that the Doctor had inserted a booby trap into the Hand's programming. When Davros activated it, Skaro's sun went supernova, and both the Dalek homeworld and the Imperial Dalek fleet were destroyed. Davros, however, apparently escaped his flagship's destruction in an escape pod. The Renegade Dalek Supreme self-destructed when the Doctor informed it that it was the last surviving Dalek.
Remembrance of the Daleks also marked the last on-screen appearance of the Daleks in the context of the programme until 2005, save for charity specials like Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death and the use of Dalek voices in the Doctor Who television movie in 1996.
[edit] Return of the Daleks
When a new Doctor Who series was announced for 2005, many fans hoped the Daleks would return once more to the programme. After much negotiation between the BBC and the Nation estate (which at one point appeared to completely break down), an agreement was reached.
Dalek, written by Rob Shearman, the sixth episode of the new series, was broadcast on BBC One on 30 April, 2005. The new Dalek exhibited abilities not seen before, including a swivelling mid-section that allowed it a 360-degree field of fire and a force field that disintegrated bullets before they struck it. In addition to the ability to fly, it was also able to regenerate itself by means of absorbing electrical power and the DNA of a time traveller. The "plunger" manipulator arm was also able to crush a man's skull in addition to the technology interfacing abilities shown by earlier models. The Doctor described the Dalek as a "genius", able to calculate a thousand billion lock combinations in seconds and to download the entire contents of the Internet. A more sophisticated model of the Dalek mutant was also shown.
In Dalek, it was revealed that the Daleks and the Time Lords were involved in a Time War, in which the Doctor obliterated the entire Dalek race — all ten million ships of their fleet. The same war destroyed the Time Lords as well, with the Dalek that appeared in the episode and the Doctor the only apparent survivors. The Dalek had somehow fallen through time, ending up on Earth in the 20th century. By 2012, it had passed into the hands of American billionaire Henry van Statten, who dubbed it a "metaltron" and kept it in a secret underground museum called the Vault along with other alien artifacts.
The Dalek was damaged, remaining silent and helpless until the Ninth Doctor arrived at the Vault. Absorbing DNA from the Doctor's companion Rose Tyler, it regenerated itself and went on a killing spree. However, having absorbed Rose's DNA, it continued to mutate and found itself beset with unfamiliar, human feelings. Realising it was now "contaminated," the mutant asked Rose to order it to destroy itself, rather than continue to live in that way. It then disintegrated itself with an energy field created by the spheres along its lower casing.
The two-part 2005 series finalé, comprising Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways revealed that this Dalek was, in fact, not the sole survivor of its race. The Emperor Dalek's ship had also survived, falling through time much as the lone Dalek did. Hidden, it began to rebuild, infiltrating Earth society over the course of centuries and using human genetic material to create a new Dalek race. This Emperor — which the script specifically stated was not Davros — also came to see itself as a god, and built its new society around the Daleks' worship of itself.
Subtly manipulating the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire of the year 200,000 by means of news programmes transmitted from Satellite 5 in Earth orbit, the Daleks installed the monstrous Jagrafess as mankind's keeper. The Doctor removed the Jagrafess in The Long Game, but was unaware that the Daleks were behind it. Over the next hundred years, the Daleks continued their scheme, recreating Satellite Five as the Game Station, acquiring more humans for mutation by subjecting them to twisted reality television games. The station's Controller was able to transport the Doctor and his companions into the station, where the Doctor discovered the Dalek presence. The race, now numbering close to half a million, were poised to invade Earth with a fleet of 200 ships.
The Doctor built a Delta Wave projector that would wipe out the Daleks, but would also eliminate all life on Earth as well, and found himself unable to trigger it. However, Rose had absorbed energies from the spacetime vortex by staring into the heart of the TARDIS and used those energies to reduce the Daleks and their fleet to atoms.
In the 2006 series finale, Army of Ghosts and Doomsday, it was revealed that members of the Cult of Skaro (led by a black Dalek named Dalek Sec) had escaped during the Time War into the nothingness between dimensions — the Void — taking with them a Time Lord prison, dubbed the Genesis Ark, which contained millions of Daleks. The Daleks' void ship finally emerged in 21st century Earth, where it was examined by the Torchwood Institute. The path of the void ship also left a breach in spacetime that allowed the parallel Earth Cybermen to cross over into the Doctor's universe.
The Daleks rejected the Cybermen's proposal for an alliance to conquer the universe and the Ark was opened, releasing millions of Daleks to wage all-out war against the Cybermen across the planet. Ultimately, both armies were sucked back into the Void due to the actions of the Tenth Doctor. However, Sec managed to initiate an "emergency temporal shift" before being sucked in and its whereabouts are unaccounted for.
[edit] Spin-off media
The Daleks have appeared in many Doctor Who spin-offs, sometimes opposing the Doctor and sometimes on their own. All these spin-offs are of uncertain canonicity, and not all of them can be easily reconciled with the television series or with each other. Where they fit in the Dalek timeline is also unclear.
[edit] Comic strips
The first appearance of the Daleks beyond the television series was in The Dalek Book (1964), an illustrated volume written by Terry Nation and David Whitaker. It told the story of a Dalek invasion of Earth's solar system. In 1965, the comic book TV Century 21 began publishing The Daleks, which was written by Whitaker and included an account of the Daleks' origins (the comic strip was, years later, collected together in an edition titled The Dalek Chronicles [4]).
The TV 21 strips portrayed the opposing sides in Skaro's war as the Thals and the Daleks, shown as diminutive blue men with large heads somewhat similar in appearance to Dan Dare's Mekon. According to the comic, these humanoid Daleks built neutron bombs which were accidentally detonated by a meteorite storm. The Daleks' chief scientist, Yarvelling, had built Dalek casings as war machines prior to the nuclear holocaust. After the neutron bombs exploded, Yarvelling and Zolfian, the warlord of the humanoid Daleks, discovered that a mutated Dalek had survived in the war machine casing. This Dalek persuaded Yarvelling and Zolfian to build more Dalek casings for their mutanted descendants. Before the last two humanoid Daleks died, it declared itself the Dalek Emperor, and had a new casing built to reflect its new rank, slightly shorter than the other Daleks, with a disproportionately large spheroid head section and in gold rather than grey.
Later stories in the Dalek comic told of the expansion of the Daleks' empire, including a lengthy war against the Mechanoids. In the last published comic in this series, the Daleks learned the location of Earth, which they proposed to invade. Although much of the material in these strips directly contradicted what was shown on television later, some concepts like the Daleks using humanoid duplicates and the design of the Dalek Emperor did show up later on in the programme.
The Doctor Who Magazine comic strips pitted the 26th century Daleks against the formidable Dalek Killer Abslom Daak and several more times against the Doctor. Emperor of the Daleks (DWM #197-#202) revealed the Sixth Doctor had deliberately rescued Davros from his trial (at the end of Revelation of the Daleks) and that the Seventh Doctor (with help from Bernice Summerfield and Daak) helped ensure Davros obtained control of the thousands-strong Dalek army frozen on Spiridon and began the Dalek civil war that would lead to the events of Remembrance of the Daleks.
The Eighth Doctor faced the Daleks twice: once to stop them from taking control of all realities (Fire and Brimstone, DWM #251-#255), and a second time when he encountered the humanised Daleks created in The Evil of the Daleks, who were in hiding on the planet Kryol (Children of the Revolution, DWM #312-#317).
[edit] Novels
The Virgin New Adventures added background detail to both the Dalek Wars of the 26th century and the Daleks' 22nd century invasion of Earth, including detailing the events of the Dalek conquest of Mars (and a battle against the Ice Warriors) at that time in GodEngine by Craig Hinton.
The Eighth Doctor Adventures novel War of the Daleks by John Peel is set after the apparent destruction of Skaro in Remembrance of the Daleks, and reveals that the planet had not, in fact, been destroyed. A convoluted explanation included the revelation that the planet Antalin had been terraformed to resemble Skaro and destroyed in its place. It is also revealed the Dalek/Movellan war (and indeed most of Dalek history before the destruction of "Skaro") was actually faked for Davros' benefit. Davros is as put on trial by the Daleks under the Dalek Prime and disintegrated at story's end. Critically, War was badly received by some fans, who even disavowed it within the continuity of the novels. Others welcomed War for having the Daleks reassert their original independence from Davros.
The Telos novella The Dalek Factor by Simon Clark features a Dalek task-force using an amnesiac Doctor to trap and genetically re-engineer Thals with the "Dalek Factor" (the thoughts and instincts of a Dalek) so they can spread it throughout the Thal gene pool. Once this is accomplished, the Daleks plan to trigger the factor, wiping out the Thals by turning them into Daleks. The New Series Adventures novella I am a Dalek by Gareth Roberts has the Daleks attempting the same strategem on humans during the Time War, but on a smaller scale that infects only one 20th century human.
[edit] Audio plays
The Daleks also appear without Davros in many of the Doctor Who audio plays by Big Finish Productions. The first four Doctor Who audio plays starring the Daleks were released under the "Dalek Empire" banner, and portrayed a territorially expansive Dalek army under the command of the Emperor (who did not appear to be Davros). Three of the four occurred consecutively (though not from the POV of the Doctor), and it's not entirely clearly whether they are before or after Remembrance. In The Genocide Machine, the Daleks invaded the Kar-Charrat Library to learn information they eventually use in The Apocalypse Element. In that play, the Daleks invade the Time Lords' home planet, Gallifrey, but are eventually defeated. They also use the eponymous "apocalypse element" to burn an entire galaxy, Seriphia, and plan to conquer the now-empty galaxy and use it as a new base for their empire. The final story, The Time of the Daleks, showed that the Daleks had gained much greater knowledge of time travel from their invasion of Gallifrey. The third play, The Mutant Phase, had few links with the others in the series and occurred around the time of Dalek Invasion Of Earth; the events of this story were erased at its conclusion.
The Big Finish audio Jubilee depicted an alternate Earth in which the Sixth Doctor had helped defeat a Dalek invasion in 1903. Most of the story is set a hundred years later, in a world in which Dalek technology and ideals have been used to create a fascist and sexist "English Empire". This timeline is largely erased at the story's end, but the Sixth Doctor warns that this nightmarish history will "live on, in the shadows." Jubilee was written by Rob Shearman, who used elements of it for his 2005 television episode Dalek.
Davros has also appeared in several Big Finish audios. He appears without the Daleks in the eponymous Davros, set between Resurrection of the Daleks and Revelation of the Daleks. In The Juggernauts, set between Revelation and Remembrance of the Daleks, the Daleks manipulate the Sixth Doctor for the purpose of recapturing Davros (who had escaped his Dalek captors after the end of Revelation). Davros adds human nervous tissue to robotic Mechanoids to create the Juggernauts of the play's title; he hopes to use these as an army to destroy the Daleks. At the end of the story, the self-destruct mechanism of Davros' life-support chair explodes, destroying an entire human colony. It is not clear how Davros survives to become the Dalek Emperor, as seen in Remembrance.
The Benny Summerfield audio Death and the Daleks features the Daleks of the 26th century secretly controlling the Fifth Axis, a military force based on ideals of human superiority and the extermination of aliens, using them as proxies to conquer various worlds the Daleks did not want to be seen conquering, including the Braxiatel Collection. Through the efforts of Benny Summerfield and her allies, the Axis was defeated and the Dalek control exposed.
By the time of the Eighth Doctor audio play Terror Firma (set after Remembrance), Davros is commanding a Dalek army which has successfully conquered the Earth. His mental instability has grown to the point where "Davros" and "the Emperor" exist within him as different personalities. His Daleks recognise this instability and rebel against Davros. By the story's end the Emperor personality is dominant, and the Daleks agree to follow him and leave Earth. How this can be reconciled with War of the Daleks is uncertain, and may support the proposition that the various spin-off media take place in their own respective parallel universes. It is possible this takes place (from the point of view of the Daleks) before the original Dalek Empire Doctor stories.
A spin-off series of audios, also titled Dalek Empire, is set after Time Of The Daleks and features a successful Dalek invasion of the Milky Way during an Earth Empire. The Daleks make great headway and manage to conquer their way up to Earth's solar system in a prolonged war against both humans and the Daleks of an alternate reality. They are finally defeated by a psychic attack that causes every piece of Dalek machinery to self-destruct in an ever-expanding wave which decimated their forces and kills the Emperor. However, this also decimates the Milky Way and sets galactic development back by a substantial amount. Centuries later, when only a handful remember the Daleks, the Dalek Empire attacks again under the command of a Dalek Supreme, which infects the borders of the galaxy with a virus that genetically re-engineers humans into Daleks. By the end of the third Dalek Empire series, the Daleks have a new giant army and are poised to go to war with the Galactic Federation, with the outcome uncertain.
[edit] References
- ^ The first history of the Daleks. BBC.
- ^ The second history of the Daleks. BBC.
- ^ John Rocco Roberto (2005). The History of the Daleks. The History Vortex.
- ^ David Whitaker. The Dalek Chronicles.
