The Great (and final) Time War
A long time ago, in a
universe so far away from our own, a war existed between two mighty forces, the
Daleks from Skaro and the Time Lords from Gallifrey. As we’ve already discovered in Genesis of the
Daleks, the 4th Doctor was sent to Skaro to destroy the Daleks
before they were created, because this way they could stop the terror before it
began. Although the Doctor failed in his
mission, he knew that future races would become allies in the war against the
Daleks and together they would join forces with the Time Lords. But as the Dalek Empire grew in strength they
became aware of the Time Lords plans and retaliated, negotiations broke down
and a full scale war erupted within the Time Vortex and beyond that in the
Ultimate Void. The Time Lords with their
ability to reach into history for the ultimate deadly weapons, deployed a fleet
of Bowships, Black Hole Carriers and N-Forms gathered from their own history
and fired the first shot. The Daleks
unleashed the Deathsmiths of Goth
with a weapon called the Apocalypse
device and the War began.
In the first year of the
war, Davros the creator of the Daleks was killed when his command ship flew
into the jaws of the Nightmare Child at the Gates of Elysium.
The Time Lords
resurrected the Master, an insane Time Lord whose criminal plans and schemes
had eventually cost him his life. He was
sent to fight on behalf of the Time Lords, who classed him as the perfect
warrior. However after witnessing the
Dalek Emperor taking over the Cruciform the Master fled and hid disguising
himself as a human child in the Silver Devastation 100 trillion years in the
future in the hope he’d never be found.
Many species and planets
were destroyed in the War, some had their histories changed and unchanged. The Cult of Skaro fled the war taking with
them a prison ship containing millions of Daleks. They travelled through the Void between
realities and waited for an opportunity to ‘re-emerge into this universe.’
The Great Time War
reduced both Skaro and Gallifrey to rubble, and inhabitants dead on both
sides. Only the Time Lord known as the
Doctor survived, or so he thought...
The Time War Daleks were
designed by Davros to fight in the War.
They were the ultimate Daleks.
Their head and weapon sections could fully rotate and its force shield
could protect it against most enemy fire, only the eye maintained its weakest
point up until The Stolen Earth
episode. Their lights atop their metal dome however were taller, very much like
the purple lights upon the Supreme
Council Dalek from 1973.
These Daleks appeared in
many episodes from Dalek, Bad Wolf, Army
of Ghosts, Daleks in Manhattan, The Stolen Earth and Victory of the Daleks.
These Daleks were also
taller than previous. They were bronze,
with bronze balls around their skirts, their shoulders around which held their
weapons had none of the meshed wire behind the metal struts that ran around the
entire Dalek shoulders of old. At the
front of the struts was a square plate with four rivets (one on each corner)
which didn’t appear on any other Dalek.
In between their weapon
and sucker arm was a semi hexagonal depressed shape which replaced the
hexagonal and often diamond welded sheet between the arms. Their weapons also fired white laser unlike
coloured laser fire of old. Its metal
eyestalk was white behind the eye, not blue as seen in previous. The eye itself was black with a blue
centrepiece. Everything about this Dalek
was new and menacing and commanded a greater audience than those of
previous.
In the episode ‘Dalek’, written by Robert Shearman, directed by Joe
Ahearne, broadcast 30th April 2005, featuring Barnaby Edwards as the Dalek Operator
and Nicholas Briggs the voice of the
Dalek, the Doctor now into his 9th regeneration played by Christopher Eccleston, and companion
Rose Tyler played by Billie Piper,
had discovered in Utah a ‘Metaltron’
in a museum of alien artefacts. It had
landed in the 1960’s like a meteorite, crashing to Earth on the British
Overseas Territory of Ascension Island, St Helena and Tristan da Cunha in the
South Atlantic Ocean. After passing
through many hands before it reached Van Statten, it was tortured and
experimented upon in order to open its metal casing.
One touch of the
‘Metaltron’s metal casing was said to cause a person to burst into flames. Yet when Rose Tyler touched its casing, it
merely burnt her hand. The Dalek fed off
her DNA. The radiation from her time
travel with the Doctor had been enough to restore the Dalek, it regenerated all
of its systems, restoring its casing, its eyestalk, sucker and ray gun to
working and gave life to the creature that lived within the metal shell.
The Dalek accessed the
Geocomtex mainframe with its sucker arm after it had calculated 1000 billion
combinations per second in order to escape the Cage, and drained vast amounts
of power from the whole of Utah, then from the entire West Coast of America, it
also downloaded the content of the internet, connected to satellites but all
proved futile, there were no traces of Dalek life anywhere in the
Universe.
No human weapons were
able to prevent the Dalek from working its way through the base to make its way
to the roof. It could also hover, which
hadn’t been seen since the white and gold Imperial Dalek back in 1988.
When Adam and Rose saw
the Dalek at the bottom of the stairs, they felt a sense of satisfaction that
was sadly short lived.
Bullets couldn’t
penetrate its force shield. Having been
touched by Rose Tyler, the Dalek felt emotions that it hadn’t felt before. It felt an immense feeling of pain and
loneliness. It was the last of its kind
in the Universe. After firing a hole
into the roof to feel the sunlight, it opened its metal casing to reveal the
mutant within.
It had no orders, no
instructions, there were no wars for it to fight, and although it had taken
most of the men and women in the Van Statten underground base, it hadn’t killed
Rose. It didn’t want to kill Rose.
But a Dalek requires
orders to fight and without orders it is redundant. It was just a hunk of metal
machinery. So Rose Tyler accepted its
request and ordered it to self destruct.
The
Imperial Guard Daleks
were used to protect the Emperor of the Daleks and featured in ‘The Parting of the Ways’, broadcast
11-18th June 2005 (Bad Wolf starting the two parted episode). Unlike the previous Dalek this sports a black
domed head, has a purple hover light beneath its bumper and a purple eye
light. Other than that, this Dalek is no
different to the previous. In this
episode there are three Dalek operators – Barnaby
Edwards, Nicholas Pegg and David
Hankinson, the Dalek voice throughout is Nicholas Briggs.
Joe
Ahearne directs and Russell T Davies is writer, music for
this series Murray Gold.
The
Dalek Emperor also
underwent a complete change of appearance, appearing far taller, larger and a
power to be reckoned with.
Like its predecessor it
still bore the balls around its outer shell but unlike the other which was
wired and narrow and white, this Dalek Emperor actually resembles a Dalek of
the Time War.
Only one Dalek saucer
survived the Time War – the command ship.
It fell through time and the Emperor Dalek escaped complete annihilation
of his race. He hid in the dark space on
the edge of the Earth’s solar system slowly rebuilding his forces while he
watched the progression of the human race.
He began to harvest the human race, taking those from prisons,
criminals, refugees and the dispossessed, filleting their bodies, crushing and
sorting and separating to find the one cell that could be used to create the
new Dalek mutant, just as Davros had back on Skaro. But purging the human race had created a new
Dalek, and biding their time hidden in the dark between worlds had also driven
them insane, including the Dalek Emperor who began spouting words from the
human Bible.
In ‘Doomsday’ we were introduced to the Cult of Skaro – three bronze
Daleks and one black. Daleks officially
didn’t have names, but the Emperor Dalek decided to name these four. The three bronze Daleks were named: Caan, Jast and Thay, while the
black Dalek was called Sec, and was
the leader of the four. Their sole
existence was to imagine and to think like the Dalek enemies and find new ways
of killing and new means of survival.
They escaped from the Time War in the closing stages of war in a Void
Ship, taking with them the last surviving piece of Time Lord Science, the
Genesis Ark.
The
Void Ship carried the
Cult of Skaro and their Time Lord technology – the Genesis Ark.
The
Genesis Ark was the
last surviving piece of Time Lord technology a prison ship containing millions
of Dalek prisoners, but it could only be unlocked by the touch of a time
traveller, in the same way that Rose regenerated the Dalek in the Cage back in
2005. When the Genesis Ark is activated,
it then needs an area of 30 square miles before it can release its contents.
Dalek Sec was a black
Dalek and the leader of the Cult of Skaro.
Aside from the raised lights on his dome being white and the metal
around his sucker arm and ray gun, he was completely black. Black balls, black skirt, black bumper, black
everything. (He’s also my favourite
Dalek!)
Dalek
Sec appeared in the
episodes ‘Army of Ghosts’ and ‘Daleks in Manhattan’.
In Army of Ghosts, broadcast 1 – 8th July 2006 (Army of
Ghosts/Doomsday) Directed by Graeme
Harper, Written by Russell T Davies,
featuring Barnaby Edwards, Nicholas
Pegg, Stuart Crossman, Anthony Spargo, Dan Barrett and Dave Hankinson as Daleks with Nicholas
Briggs providing voices for Daleks and Cybermen. Dalek Sec arrived in the Void Ship, through
the Ghost shift generated by Torchwood One at Canary Wharf, London, behind it
came an army of Cybermen, or ‘ghosts’ initially.
The touch from a time
traveller this time in the guise of Mickey Smith from the Parallel Universe,
activated the Genesis Ark and released millions of Daleks that fought a battle
with the Cybermen and any who got in their way, including innocent
civilians. The Doctor, now into his 10th
regeneration played by David Tennant
reversed the ghost shift and sent the Daleks and the Cybermen back into the
Void, however the Cult of Skaro fled using the ‘Emergency Temporal Shift’.
In the episode ‘Daleks in Manhattan’ broadcast 21st
April 2007 directed by James Strong
and written by Helen Raynor, we saw
the Cult of Skaro in 1930’s New York at the time of the Great Depression. The 10th Doctor this time with
Martha Jones played by the wonderful Freema
Agyeman, discover that the Daleks are creating a new Dalek race, this time
with the minds of Daleks but the bodies of humans. And strange mutant pig slaves. The Daleks had segregated those of the human
race who were below average in intelligence and changed them into men with
pig’s faces with tusks and snouts; they had a shorter life span of only a few
weeks, as their hearts would give out.
Those with more intelligence were given the minds of Daleks fed through
wires hooked up to beds in a large chamber inside the Empire States Building
currently being built. Using Dalekanium on the roof around the
antennae, the Daleks hoped that when lightning struck, the pulse would hit the
antennae and feed down inside the building awakening all the Dalek mutants who
would in turn fight on the side of the Daleks.
But they hadn’t reckoned on the 10th Time Lord!
Prior to this however,
Dalek Sec tried out the experiment on himself by using Mr Diagoras, a businessman who wore spats and a dark suit, and who
was recruited by the Daleks to recruit men to work in the sewers – this was a
ruse by the Daleks to kidnap the men and use them in their experiments. Many people went missing!
Mr Diagoras was pulled
into Dalek Sec, the tentacles of the mutant wrapped around him and when he came
out from the shell, he was the ugliest creature out. With the body of the human, but the head and
hands of a mutant, the Dalek Sec mutant broke my heart. My favourite Dalek destroyed!
Dalek Sec was later
killed in the episode ‘Evolution of the
Daleks’ the second part of ‘Daleks In Manhattan’ broadcast 28th
April 2007, when his human side became stronger than his Dalek side and he had
upset his fellow Cult of Skaro Daleks.
He was paraded around the stage on a leash before his death.
In 2008 we saw The Supreme Red Dalek. This appeared in The Stolen Earth episode, broadcast 28th June, directed
by Graeme Harper, written by Russell T Davies. Dalek Caan had used the emergency temporal
shift one last time at the end of ‘Evolution of the Daleks’ and flew back into
the Time War to rescue his master Davros from the jaws of the Nightmare Child
and brought him back to create a new batch of Daleks. On the Cruciform however, the Supreme Red
Dalek kept Davros in the ‘basement’ and Davros appeared nervous of the new
leader.
The
Supreme Red Dalek was
different again. Red around the skirt
and shoulders and dome, it sported bronze balls around its skirt, and instead
of the usual struts above its weaponry, these now appeared in four large
jutting out sections in bronze. Because
of its superiority it seems like the Dalek Emperor, its voice also is deeper as
was the Emperor. The disks beneath the
dome are bronze, the eye stalk is blue as is the central eye light. Another difference with this Dalek to others
is the appearance of three lights atop the dome, two at the front and one at
the back.
It appears only in this episode.
In Pt 4 we’ll look at
the Daleks from the 11th Regeneration of the Doctor.
Reference
Sources:
The Doctor Who Time
Traveller’s Almanac
Doctor Who Files – The
Daleks
Doctor Who by Mark
Campbell
Doctor Who DVD Files
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