B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (272 page)

The Dalek Outer Space Book
story “The Dalek Trap” features a “leader” who is a gold Dalek, of apparently a standard design (he may be a little larger than the average Dalek, and like the Supreme Dalek in “The Living Death”, he might be the Golden Emperor drawn by someone without reference material).

The fact that the Daleks have a Council doesn’t contradict the idea they have an Emperor. We see the Dalek Emperor in command of a council in
The Dalek World
.

In
The Dalek Outer Space Book
, we see the most elaborate set up - below the Emperor (also referred to as “the golden Dalek”), there’s the Black Dalek, possibly that odd Supreme Dalek with a globe head, a Dalek Council (including the Gold Dalek see in “The Dalek Trap”?) and a separate group, a conclave of senior Dalek commanders, such as the red Dalek who leads Red Extra Galactic Squadron. There are other Red Daleks, as well as Blue Daleks. In “The Secret of the Emperor”, the blue/gold Daleks appear to be scientists. As noted, on the battlefront, a Dalesub has a Black Dalek and a Supreme Dalek in command.

The Doctor Who: Aliens and Enemies
book (2006), published in close cooperation with the production team of the time, describes the set up in
The Parting of the Ways
as the Emperor in charge with a High Council, also known as the Emperor’s Personal Guard. Some of these have black domes, some have two gunsticks.

There are other Dalek ranks: In
Destiny of the Daleks
, the leader of the squad sent to recover Davros has black central slats. We never learn this Dalek’s title. In other stories (
The Daleks
,
The Power of the Daleks
,
Death to the Daleks
,
Planet of the Daleks
) we see groups of Daleks able to function perfectly well with leaders in ordinary casings.

While the Black Dalek, the Dalek Leader (black with red details) is in command in “The Planet of the Daleks” (
TV Action
), his senior subordinate on the Dalek planet is a white Dalek with red detailing. The commander of the Earth expedition is also referred to as Dalek Leader and is black with gold detailing. There are Daleks with red domes that seem to outrank the standard Daleks.

War of the Daleks
states that the Dalek hierarchy - at least at that point in their history - runs: Grey Daleks, Blue Daleks, Red Daleks, Black Daleks, Gold Daleks, with the Dalek Prime as absolute authority. The Dalek Prime is described as “slightly larger than the others, with a bulbous head. It was a burnished gold colour, and had about a dozen lights about the expanded dome instead of the average Dalek’s two” - in other words, it strongly resembles the Golden Emperor.

In
Prisoner of the Daleks
, the overall leader of the Daleks is the Supreme Dalek and there is a chief interrogator Dalek X, the Inquisitor General, who is black and gold.

Victory of the Daleks
introduces a “new Dalek paradigm”, with five colour-coded classes of Dalek. These are red (Drone), orange (Scientist), yellow (Eternal), blue (Strategists) and white (Supreme).

The Davros Era

Four consecutive Dalek TV stories (
Destiny of the Daleks, Resurrection of the Daleks, Revelation of the Daleks
and
Remembrance of the Daleks
) form a linked series in which the creator of the Daleks, Davros (first seen in
Genesis of the Daleks
), is revived. In due course, he’s captured and imprisoned by Earth before re-engineering the Daleks and gradually taking control over his creations. The series ends with the ultimate destruction of the Daleks’ home planet of Skaro, although the novel
War of the Daleks
, set shortly after
Remembrance of the Daleks
, significantly reinterpreted those events.

Three Big Finish audios (and
The Davros Mission
, an audio story exclusive to
The Complete Davros Collection
DVD set) occur in gaps between the television stories, and act as bridges between them -
Resurrection of the Daleks
is followed by
Davros, Revelation of the Daleks
is followed by
The Davros Mission
and
The Juggernauts
, and
Remembrance of the Daleks
is followed by
Terror Firma
. The comic strip “Emperor of the Daleks” depicts Davros becoming Emperor between
Revelation of the Daleks
and
Remembrance of the Daleks
. Here, for the sake of convenience, we refer to the events of these stories as “the Davros Era” - a term that is never used in any of the stories themselves.

It is never stated exactly when the Davros Era is set, although it is clearly far in Earth’s future.

The key story here is
Remembrance of the Daleks
. Before
Remembrance
, it was widely felt that
The Evil of the Daleks
really was, as the Doctor said, “the final end” of the Daleks (even though the draft script
of Day of the Daleks
explained that the Daleks had survived their civil war)
. Remembrance of the Daleks
changed that, by ending with the destruction of Skaro. Clearly, taking
Remembrance of the Daleks
at face value, it - and by implication the rest of the Davros Era - has to happen after
The Evil of the Daleks
(the climax of which was set on Skaro).

Even before that, the first two editions of
The Programme Guide
set
Destiny of the Daleks
“c.4500” (as did the earlier versions of this chronology and
Timelink
). Following
The Programme Guide
’s lead, the script of
Resurrection of the Daleks
referred to the year as 4590, although that’s not established on screen.

There have been other attempts to place it.
The Terrestrial Index
took the Doctor’s speech to the Black Dalek in
Remembrance of the Daleks
that the Daleks are “a thousand years” from home literally, and respectively set the stories in “as the twenty-seventh century began”, “towards the end of the twenty-seventh century”, “as the twenty-eighth century began” and “about 2960”.
The TARDIS Logs
chose “8740 AD” for
Destiny of the Daleks
. Ben Aaronovitch’s novelisation of
Remembrance of the Daleks
and his introduction to the
Abslom Daak - Dalek Killer
graphic album had extracts from a history book,
The Children of Davros
, published in “4065” - apparently well after
Remembrance of the Daleks
.

John Peel’s
The Official Doctor Who & the Daleks Book
- written with Terry Nation’s approval - offers a complete Dalek timeline, although it stresses it’s not “definitive” and could change in the light of a new story (p209), and it was written
before Remembrance of the Daleks
was broadcast. In Peel’s version,
Genesis of the Daleks
comes first, followed by
The Daleks
[c.1564], there are Dalek survivors in the Kaled Bunker and after five hundred years they emerge and force the Thals to flee Skaro. The Daleks discover space travel after about a hundred years, and launch
The Dalek Invasion of Earth
[2164]. The Dalek Wars begin, after several hundred years of Dalek preparation, leading to
Frontier in Space
and
Planet of the Daleks
[2540]. The Daleks developed time travel, as seen in
The Chase
. The Daleks and Mechanoids fought the Mechon Wars, and one Dalek capsule from that conflict ends up crashing on Vulcan where it is unearthed in
The Power of the Daleks
[“several centuries” after 2010]. The Daleks went back in time to reinvade Earth (
Day of the Daleks
). The Daleks were then attacked by the Movellans (
Destiny of the Daleks
) and the two races were deadlocked for “decades”.

Ninety years later followed
Resurrection of the Daleks
(by which time, Earth and Draconia had defeated the Movellans). The Daleks exploited a space plague (
Death to the Daleks
). Davros had survived, but was captured by the Daleks at the end of
Revelation of the Daleks
, and he was taken to Skaro and executed. Weakened, the Daleks needed allies to conquer the galaxy, as seen in
The Daleks’ Master Plan
[4000]. This led to the Dalek Wars, that lasted “the next couple of centuries” after which the Emperor Dalek initiated the events
of The Evil of the Daleks
[c 4200], which ended in a civil war that wiped out the entire Dalek race, once and for all.

No firm dates for the Davros Era are given, but working backwards, this timeline would seem to place
Destiny of the Daleks
somewhere in the thirty-ninth century.

War of the Daleks
, also written by Peel, attempted to reverse the destruction of Skaro in
Remembrance of the Daleks
, and - unsurprisingly - it broadly follows the timeline in Peel’s earlier book. Ironically, though, it undermines the case for setting the Davros Era before 4000 - first, the SSS explore Antalin (the planet the Daleks trick the Doctor into destroying instead of Skaro) after the events of
The Daleks’ Master Plan
. Secondly, for the Dalek plan to work, the Doctor has to think Skaro was destroyed in
Remembrance of the Daleks
, and he wouldn’t if he knew it still existed in the year 4000. (
About Time
has suggested that while the Daleks report to Skaro in
The Daleks’ Master Plan
, the Doctor doesn’t
see
them doing that, so he might not realise they do.)

Some fans have speculated that the Daleks might move to “New Skaro” after
Remembrance of the Daleks
, but no evidence exists for this on screen, and on the occasions when we see Skaro it is clearly the same world - the Doctor knows his way around in
The Evil of the Daleks
and
Destiny of the Daleks
. In the Time War shown in the EDAs, the Time Lords created duplicate home planets and it’s possible that the Daleks might do the same.

In two New Adventures by Andy Lane (
Lucifer Rising, Original Sin
) we discover that the Guild of Adjudicators eventually becomes the Grand Order of Oberon referred to in
Revelation of the Daleks
, yet the Adjudicators are still active in
Original Sin
, so
Revelation of the Daleks
must take place well after the thirtieth century.

Mission to the Unknown
established that the Daleks hadn’t been a military force in Earth’s galaxy for a thousand years prior to 4000 (and in one of the scenes where “galaxy” seems to mean “galaxy”, not “solar system”). This - and perhaps the presence of the Galactic Federation - would seem to rule out the Davros Era taking place between 3000 and 4000. Humans from the time of
Destiny
,
Resurrection
and
Revelation
all know and fear the Daleks, and see them as an active threat - whereas in
Mission to the Unknown
, Gordon Lowery only knows that the Daleks invaded Earth “a thousand years ago”, and needs their renewed interest in Earth space spelled out for him. The Daleks have been deadlocked for “centuries” with the Movellans before
Destiny of the Daleks
(tellingly, Peel has to reduce this to “decades” in his timeline). The preminence of the Earth Empire in the centuries before 3000 seems incompatible with the idea the Daleks are a major galactic power. All in all, it seems likely that
Destiny of the Daleks
is set at least “centuries” after 4000. As we know the
Dalek Empire
series is set in the first half of the millennium, the case for
The Programme Guide’s
4600 AD date, while not indisputable, is certainly persuasive.