Dalek
Exterminate! Exterminate!
The Daleks are a fictional race of mutants who are collectively the greatest enemy of The Doctor in the British television series Doctor Who. They are the mutated remains of the Kaled people of the planet Skaro, who travel around in robotic bodies. Their catchphrase is "EXTERMINATE!", screeched in a frantic mechanical voice.
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2 History of the Dalek concept 3 Other appearances 4 Dalek history within the show 5 Culture |
Daleks bear a suspicious resemblance to overgrown pepper shakers, with a single mechanical eye stalk, a gun stalk containing a directed energy weapon (or "death ray"), and a telescoping arm. Usually, the arm is fitted with a device for manipulation that, to the amusement of generations of viewers, resembles a plunger, but various episodes have shown Daleks whose arms end in a tray, a mechanical claw, or other specialised equipment. The Doctor has described them as "little green blobs in bonded polycarbide armor," referring to the mutated creature inside the Dalek casing.
Due to their gliding motion Daleks were notoriously unable to tackle stairs, which made them scary yet easily overcome under the right circumstances. An often-copied cartoon shows a flight of stairs with a sign saying "To Earth" at the top; at the foot of the stairs a Dalek says "Well, that mucks up the invasion plans". In Remembrance of the Daleks it is shown that Daleks can go up stairs after all using a sort of limited antigravity, but their awkward forms still limit their mobility in tight quarters. In a classic scene from Destiny of the Daleks, the Doctor and companions escape from Dalek pursuers by climbing into a ceiling duct. The Doctor (Tom Baker) calls down "if you're supposed to be the superior race of the universe, why don't you try climbing after us? Bye bye!" The Daleks generally make up for their lack of mobility with overwhelming firepower.
The Daleks were actually operated from inside by short actors who had to manipulate their eyestalks and arms, as well as flashing the lights on their heads in sync with the actors supplying their voices. Unfortunately, as well as being hot and cramped the Dalek casings also muffled external sounds, making it difficult for the operators to hear the director's commands or studio dialogue.
The Dalek cases were built in two pieces; once an operator stepped into the lower section the top would be lowered onto him. This had advantages and disadvantages. Operators were often able to eavesdrop on private conversations between people who thought the casings were empty, but the top sections were too heavy to move from inside which meant that the operators could be trapped in them if the stagehands forgot to let them out.
Early versions of the Daleks were either rolled around on castors or propelled by wheels connected to hand cranks by bicycle chains. Later versions had more efficient wheels and were simply propelled by the operators' feet. Even so, they were so heavy that when going up ramps they often had to be pushed by stagehands out of camera shot.
In scenes where many Daleks had to appear some of them would be represented by wooden replicas or even (in early black and white episodes) by life-size photographic enlargements; in scenes involving armies of Daleks models were used, with the models actually being commercially-available toy Daleks on some occasions.
The scriptwriter who devised them, Terry Nation, stated that he was inspired by watching ballet dancers in long dresses glide as if on wheels; and for many of the shows the Daleks were "played" by retired ballet dancers sitting inside the Dalek wearing black socks. He also said that the name came from a volume of a dictionary or encyclopedia who spine read "Dal - Lek". He later admitted that he had made this up as a reply to a question by a journalist and that anyone who checked out his story would have found him out. The name had in reality simply rolled off his typewriter.
Nation was pleasantly surprised to discover that in Serbo-Croatian the word "Dalek" means "far and distant thing".
Later the Daleks were seen as an analogy to the Nazis, particularly in The Dalek Invasion of Earth and Genesis Of The Daleks.
The Daleks were first introduced in December 1963 in the second Doctor Who serial, called variously, "The Survivors" (the story's pre-production title), "The Mutants" (its official title at the time of production and broadcast, later taken by a second, unrelated Doctor Who story), "Beyond the Sun", "The Dead Planet", or simply "The Daleks". (The reason for this confusion is that in the show's early years each individual episode had a different name and overall story titles were used only by the production office; subsequently several different overall story titles were circulated by fandom without being able to access the correct records.) They immediately became a hit, and were featured in many subsequent serials.
Two movies starring Peter Cushing spun off from Doctor Who featured them as the main villains: Doctor Who And The Daleks, and Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD, both based on serials from the television series. However, the movies made several changes to the original concept; for instance, Cushing's Doctor is not an alien, merely an inventor. The movies used brand new Dalek props, based closely on the original design but with a wider range of colours. Because the special effects on the films did not run to the creation of death-rays, their Daleks' weapons emitted jets of deadly vapour instead.
In addition to the movies, their popularity has extended to books and stage shows and a one-page regular feature in the children's comic TV Action.
Daleks have been the subject of many parodies, including Spike Milligan's "Pakistani Dalek" sketch, and Victor Lewis-Smith's Gay Daleks. To an extent Doctor Who has itself parodied the Daleks from time to time. In 2002, BBC Worldwide published The Dalek Survival Guide, a parody of The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbooks.
Due to the popularity the Daleks brought to the show, they may reappear in the upcoming Doctor Who series set for 2005.
Over the twenty-six seasons of Doctor Who, the Daleks underwent a number of changes and elaborations, and arguably a retcon or two. In the revisionist origin story Genesis of the Daleks (1975), the creator of the Daleks was revealed to be the Kaled chief scientist Davros. The details of the Daleks' origin can be found in the article on their home planet Skaro.
Although Davros appeared to have been killed by his own creations at the end of Genesis of the Daleks, Destiny of the Daleks (1979) revealed that he had survived their attack in suspended animation, left buried in a bunker.
In the time while Davros slept the Daleks 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, however, 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 maneuvering 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 enhance their design, hoping to find a way through the impasse, and the Movellans sent an expedition to stop them. The Daleks succeeded in reviving Davros, who theorized 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 placed back into suspended animation for indefinite imprisonment.
The Dalek/Movellan impasse continued for several more centuries until the Movellans finally developed a weapon capable of breaking it; a highly virulent biological disease that targetted Daleks. Having lost the war, the Daleks rescued Davros from the Human prison station where he was frozen and instructed him to develop a defence against the disease. This time it was Davros who double-crossed the Daleks, however, deciding to take personal command of the Dalek race rather than merely serving it.
In Resurrection of the Daleks, Davros' continuing influence eventually led to a schism among the Daleks, with one faction following Davros' leadership (the Imperial Daleks, using white and gold colours on their casings) and another faction rejecting their creator to instead follow the Supreme Dalek (the Renegade Daleks, using the original grey and black colouration).
Revelation of the Daleks continued the storyline with Davros experimenting with physically transforming humans into Daleks. The Renegade Daleks captured him at the end of the story, intending to return him to Skaro to face trial.
Davros made his last televised appearance in the serial Remembrance of the Daleks, having somehow managed to escape the Renegade Daleks and once again in command of the Imperial Daleks. Davros had at this point modified Imperial Daleks somewhat from the original design with cybernetic enhancements for the organic components. Other apparently new features included the ability for Imperial Daleks to levitate up stairways (although in the comics they had flown around on flying platforms called "solar disks"), and a "special weapons Dalek" with an enormously powerful cannon and armor capable of deflecting regular Dalek weaponry.
Both Dalek factions became aware that the Hand of Omega, a Gallifreyan stellar engineering device, was hidden on Earth. Their respective expeditions battled each other to retrieve it and the Imperial Daleks succeeded, but the Doctor inserted a booby-trap into the Hand's programming so that when Davros activated it both Skaro's sun and the Imperial Dalek fleet were destroyed. Davros escaped his flagship's destruction in an escape pod.
It was later revealed in the novel The War of the Daleks that the planet the Imperial Daleks had referred to as Skaro was not in fact their original homeworld, which continued to exist elsewhere.
The most fundamental feature of Dalek culture and psychology is an unquestioned belief in the superiority of the Daleks. Other species are either to be exterminated immediately, or enslaved and then exterminated later once they are no longer necessary. This belief is thought to be the reason why Daleks have never significantly modified their mechanical shell's designs to overcome its obvious physical limitations; any such modification would deviate from the Dalek ideal, and therefore must be inferior and deserving of extermination. The schism between the Renegade and Imperial Daleks is a prime example of this, with each faction considering the other to be a perversion despite the relatively minor differences between them.
An offshot of this superiority complex is their complete ruthlessness and lack of compassion. It is because of this that it is nearly impossible to try and negotiate or reason with a Dalek and it is this single-mindedness that makes them so dangerous and not to be underestimated.
Daleks sometimes compensate for their physical limitations through the use of humanoid slaves. A species of slow-witted humanoids called Ogrons have made several appearances in this role, as have Humans.
Although the Daleks are well known for their disregard of due process (to wit: "You are an enemy of the Daleks. You will be exterminated"), there have been two occasions on which they have taken enemies back to Skaro for a "trial" rather than killing them on the spot; the first was their creator Davros in Revelation of the Daleks, and the second was the renegade Time Lord known as the Master in the Fox telemovie. Neither trial occurred on-screen, so it is not clear what was actually involved; one thinks of the show trials of totalitarian regimes rather than the workings of the modern justice system. (The Master's trial presumably took place before the destruction of Skaro, although the Doctor only learned of it later.)
The spin-off novels contain several mentions of Dalek poetry (and an anecdote about an opera based thereupon, which was lost to posterity when the entire cast was exterminated on opening night) but no actual samples. In the Big Finish Productions audio adventure The Time of the Daleks, the Daleks show a fondness for the works of Shakespeare.
Due to their frequent defeats by the Doctor, he has become a sort of bogeyman in Dalek culture. Somehow, they are able to recognize the Doctor despite his regenerations, and often have standing orders to capture or exterminate him on sight. In the comics and novels the Daleks know the Doctor as the Ka Faraq Gatri or "The Bringer of Darkness." The Doctor, in turn, has grown to be almost single-minded in his conviction that the Daleks are completely evil and unworthy of trust or compassion.Physical characteristics
Costume details
History of the Dalek concept
Other appearances
Dalek history within the show
Culture