Doctor Who: The Ultimate Enemy – Daleks Explainer
If you’re unfamiliar with the Doctor’s deadliest foe and scourge of the Time War, allow me to, in their words, “EDUCATE! EDUCATE!”
GREETINGS, PITIFUL HUMANS! *cough* Sorry, I mean, welcome, fellow Whovians! Over the many years he’s been adventuring, the Doctor has faced many foes. From sentient planets to his own personal Moriarty, the Master, the Doctor has tangled with all manner of villains and emerged victorious. However, there is one creature that always seems to bring out the worst in the Doctor. Whether out of fear, hatred, or anger, the one enemy that always seems to unbalance the Doctor is the Daleks.
These psychopathic cyborgs are perfectly engineered warriors devoid of emotion or individuality. They were created for a single purpose: the subjugation and destruction of all non-Dalek life. Engineered on the planet Skaro by the mad engineer Davros, they have presented themselves throughout the Doctor’s timeline as the ultimate adversary. They even grew mighty enough to challenge the Time Lords in multiversal combat, causing the temporal calamity that was the Time War.
Of all his many challenges, the Daleks are my favorite of the Doctor’s enemies. While I do not “like” them in the strictest sense, I love the idea of a race engineered only for war and conquest. As a villain, it makes for a compelling foil, and it helps that the Daleks are worthy enemies. They are strong, intelligent, and ruthless, pushing the Doctor past his limits time and again and challenging his morals and ideals. They are confidant, unyielding, and deadly foes, and every defeat they suffer is at great cost to their enemy. The Daleks are pure evil given perfect form, and even in defeat, they are resolute in their superiority.
History of the Daleks
The Daleks were first theorized for the Doctor Who serial in 1963 by Terry Nation and Raymond Cusick. Nation said of his design that he wanted to move away from the typical “man in a suit” villains he’d seen in other sci-fi serials. He was inspired by the Georgian Ballet, in which dancers in long skirts would seem to glide effortlessly across the stage. As such, he theorized a creature with no legs that smoothly glided from place to place. Nation, a survivor of World War II, wanted his creatures to represent ultimate evil, and so based their personality design on Nazis.
There was a long-standing rumor that the name for Daleks came from an encyclopedia volume that read “Dal-Ek”. However, Nation quickly dismissed this, saying it was simply a word that rolled off the tongue. He wanted a villain with a unique name, and that was what sounded best in his head. Years later, he was pleased to learn that “dalek” was a real word in Serbo-Croatian, meaning “distant” or “far”. Given the Daleks’ removal from human ideals, it was a fitting title.
Raymond Cusick was hired to create the physical design of the Daleks when Ridley Scott, then the president of the BBC, became unavailable. Cusick was only given an hour to create the design and based his idea loosely on a pepper shaker sitting on his table. He gave the Daleks their signature wide base as an homage to the wide dresses of the ballet dancers, and the war suits we know today were born.
Last Survivors of Skaro — The Dalek Race
In universe, the Daleks were the last remnants of the population of Skaro. A planet devastated by war, it was originally inhabited by the humanoid Thals and Kaleds, both at war. After constant bombardment, the planet became uninhabitable without constant anti-radiation injections. One Kaled, a scientist named Davros, had been doing research on the effects of radiation on the local plants and animals. Concluding that the Kaleds would have to evolve to survive life on Skaro.
Davros secretly met with the leaders of the Thals, giving them the means to destroy the Kaled biosphere. Faced with annihilation, the Kaleds were forced to turn to Davros and his “Dalek” army, a force of mutants wrapped in an armored shell. Davros had been perfecting these new lifeforms over his years of study, and they proved to be everything he’d hoped.
They were without fear, emotion, or even individuality, making them the perfect soldiers. When the Thals were defeated, Davros turned his creations on his fellow Kaled, ushering in a new age of Dalek Supremacy. Some Thals survived and endured on Skaro, but it was primarily a Dalek planet now.
Davros continued to improve his creations, giving them better weapons, armor, and mobility. In time, they even gained their own form of time travel. They began a universal campaign of conquest, seeking the destruction of all inferior life, i.e., anything non-Dalek. Their power became so great that they even took the fight to the Time Lords, beings thought too powerful to engage. They fought the Time Lords to a stalemate and nearly destroyed the universe in the process. Had it not been for the decisive actions of the War Doctor, they likely would have.
READ MORE: Doctor Who: It’s Bigger on the Inside — The Tardis Breakdown
More Than a Walking Trash Can
The Dalek design is a thing of beauty. They have a single rotating eye stalk in the center of their upper dome, allowing them to process the outside world. Their body is made of bonded polycarbide called Dalekanium, which is incredibly tough. The suit also has an in-built kinetic field that slows physical projectiles, further protecting the Dalek within.
The lower body of the suit is outfitted with a pair of mechanical arms. The right arm ends in a plunger-like appendage, which the Dalek can use to interface with things outside its suit. The arm has proven surprisingly multi-functional and strong, able to crush a person’s skull, interface with technology, or scan sentient beings. The left arm ends in a whisk-shaped beam emitter, which deals instant death to however it shoots. When struck by the beam, the target briefly flashes blue, and their skeletal structure is visible before they collapse.
Inside the suit, the Dalek resembles a brownish squid with a single eye. It is incapable of speech on its own and communicates using the suit. Outside of its shell, a Dalek is surprisingly fragile, which is why it rarely reveals itself.
The suit, once thought to be unable to traverse stairs, is actually capable of flight. As the Daleks evolved and improved, they went from being bound to metallic tracks on their homeworld and ships to being able to fly in space. Even the Doctor was caught unawares when a Dalek flew for the first time in his presence.
How Do You Kill a Dalek?
Daleks are notoriously hard to kill thanks to their advanced suits and superior weaponry. Even a single Dalek is more than a match for a battalion of human soldiers. However, outside their suit, they are vulnerable, and shutting down their suit incapacitates them entirely.
Covering their eye stalk or damaging one of their weapon arms also neutralizes them for a short time, but they can regenerate their injuries, so it won’t last long. Heavy explosives or simply detonating the building or vessel the Daleks reside in is the best course of action.
Daleks Worth Knowing
- The Cult of Skaro – A group of four Daleks selected by the Dalek Emperor, the supreme ruler of their kind. These Daleks were allowed to take names, and evolved the ability to imagine. Though this was thought of as anathema to a Dalek, these four were able to engineer new ways to combat the Doctor and nearly succeeded in overwhelming Earth. Two of their members, Sec and Caan, survived being thrust into the Negative Zone and returned, each with a different plan. Sec wanted to create the next evolution of Daleks by merging with humans, while Caan sought to rescue Davros from the Time War. His journey through the Time Void ravaged his mind, and he became a mad prophet.
- The Ironsides – A group of Dalek war machines used by Prime Minister Churchhill during World War II. Though the British thought they were in control of the machines, they eventually turned on their creators. They lured the Eleventh Doctor to them, causing him to inadvertently begin the New Dalek Paradigm
- The Dalek Emperor – The leader of the Daleks as created by Davros. This Dalek is much larger than the others and has an extended carapace. Sources differ on whether there have been multiple Dalek Emperors or only one. Either way, it is a creature of extraordinary power and intellect.
