Tuesday, 29 October 2013

The Mothership The Daleks Pt 3


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 episodeDalek’, 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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