ABOUT THE AUTHORS

George Mann is the author of the bestselling Doctor Who: Engines of War and Newbury & Hobbes steampunk mystery series, as well as numerous other novels, short stories and original audiobooks. He has edited a number of anthologies including The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, The Solaris Book of New Fantasy and a retrospective collection of Sexton Blake stories, Sexton Blake, Detective. He lives near Grantham, UK, with his wife, son and daughter.

A celebrated writer and Creative Consultant to the BBC Books range of Doctor Who books, Justin Richards lives and works in Warwick with his wife and two children. When he’s not writing, he can be found indulging his passion for inventing, reading and watching far too much television.

Number One Bestseller Cavan Scott has written for such popular series as Star Wars, Star Trek, Vikings, Warhammer 40,000 and, of course, Doctor Who. He’s the writer of Titan Comic’s ongoing adventures of the Ninth Doctor and was one of the 2016 World Book Day authors.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Dalek is the never-before-told history of the Doctor’s most dangerous enemies, the famous ‘Outer Space Robot People’ of the planet Skaro – from their genesis in the thousand-year conflict between Thals and Kaleds, to their survival of the Time War and (as foreseen by the Time Lords) their conquest of the universe. Along the way, the authors also reveal all-new stories about these legendary creatures – terrifying near-mythical adventures, startling visual recreations of never-before-seen conflicts, and more. Each of them helps shed new light on what has become the most feared alien race in the universe.

With full-colour illustrations, concept art, cutaways, diagrams, comic strips and more, Dalek is a dramatic retelling of the ascent of the ‘supreme race’, and the story of the mysteries that lurk in unexplored corners of the universe. It is the ultimate celebration of all things Dalek.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to our editor Bethany, my agent Jane, Titan comic book editor Andrew James for sparing some blushes, and Clare, Chloe and Connie for putting up with me talking Daleks more than usual. Above all, thanks to Terry Nation, Raymond Cusick and the other creators who, over the course of 50-plus years, have developed such a wonderfully evil race for the Doctor and his friends to fight!

Cavan

I’d like to thank Beth and Albert at BBC Books, Edward Russell, Jane Willis and my family, for all of their support. Most of all, a huge debt of gratitude to all the writers, designers, artists and actors, starting with Terry Nation and Raymond Cusick, who’ve contributed to building such a wonderful mythology for the Daleks over the years. It’s an honour to work in their shadow.

George

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THE ORIGINS OF THE DALEK RACE

The Dalek race was forged in a crucible of war, hate and genocide.

Such inauspicious origins are perhaps unsurprising, given the Daleks’ proclivity for such violent endeavours, but the truth behind their creation can, in part, help to explain some of what drives them as a species.

Surviving records from the Daleks’ home planet of Skaro are scarce and fragmented, and at times contradictory. What is certain is that once, many thousands of years ago, Skaro was home to two dominant species – the Kaleds and the Thals.

Both the Kaleds and the Thals were bipedal humanoids, although their internal physiology differed greatly from the people of Earth, whom they outwardly resembled. It is thought that both races stemmed from a common ancestry, and that at some point in their prehistory the species diverged. It is this division that inevitably gave rise to the escalating hostilities between them, as they competed over land, resources and differing ideologies, each becoming increasingly isolationist as time went on.

In appearance the Thals were tall, fair and muscular, typically blond, with startling blue eyes, whilst the Kaleds were shorter, slimmer, with a genetic bias towards dark hair and pale complexions. Where the Thals were initially aggressive and militaristic, the Kaleds were more thoughtful and studious. They were renowned as teachers and philosophers, but over time this thoughtfulness gave way to wretched bitterness, and in turn, that bitterness evolved into a rampant xenophobia, directed at the Thals.

The Kaleds became ever more inward-looking and suspicious of the Thals. When they saw that the Thals had erected a massive protective dome over their capital city, they followed in kind, furthering their isolation, committing themselves to centuries of subterranean living, from which they rarely emerged.

It is no longer clear which side committed the first act of outright aggression, with some legends claiming the warlike Thals were responsible, while others cited a pre-emptive strike by the Kaleds. The two races engaged in a series of tireless wars that spanned a thousand-year period – a terrible, world-shattering conflict that left Skaro desolate and irradiated, and both Kaleds and Thals depleted, desperate and irrevocably changed.

During this Thousand Year War, the Kaleds turned their keen scientific intelligence to developing increasingly horrific chemical, biological and nuclear weapons to use against the Thals, and an arms race ensued, as each side struggled to gain the upper hand. Over time, however, their weapons became increasingly less sophisticated as resources became scarce, and the effects of the conflict began to have a noticeable impact on the physiologies of both species. This was compounded when the Kaleds began detonating nuclear warheads, which exposed combatants on both sides to the mutating effects of the ensuing radiation.

The Kaleds hunkered down and continued in their quest to devise even more devious weapons. They had evolved into a fascistic, intolerant race, supremely self-confident and convinced of their own superiority over the Thals. After all this time, they would not be satisfied with anything but the total annihilation of the Thal race.

However, the genetic mutations caused by the fallout from the nuclear war were becoming increasingly severe, and the Kaleds soon realised that they had doomed themselves as well as their enemy. As their numbers dwindled, the Kaleds turned their attention to finding a means to survive, to reverse the mutations, but all seemed lost – the effects were too wide ranging, their DNA too corrupted. Their greatest scientific minds were at a loss, and their civilisation was on the brink of collapse. All they could do was focus on devising ever more heinous weapons in their quest to eradicate their enemy.

The Dals

It is sometimes postulated that there might, at one time, have existed a third intelligent species on Skaro, the Dals, which were later obliterated in the terrible Thousand Year War between the Kaleds and Thals. Over time the surviving Thals, reduced to a mere shadow of what they had once been, appear to have conflated the Dals and the Kaleds into a common enemy. However, the surviving Thal history slates are difficult to reconcile, referring to established facts alongside strange myths regarding visitors from other worlds.

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A lone Dalek patrols the Plains of Annihilation on Skaro, sifting through the remnants of a Thal settlement.

DAVROS

While Thal society essentially devolved during the Thousand Year War, the Kaleds continued to maintain a more authoritarian, scientific community, preserving their technological prowess despite the scarcity of resources. While many of their most capable scientists were deployed to research potential solutions for the genetic mutations that were now afflicting their people, their Chief Scientist, Davros, took an altogether different approach.

Davros was a man blighted by the War, horrifically scarred and disabled, forced to permanently exist in a life-support chair of his own devising. His list of afflictions was extensive, and might have proved the end of someone who lacked his fanaticism and innate desire to perpetuate the Kaled race.

His torso had been severed at the waist, meaning that he could not survive outside of his life-support chair for more than a few moments without his remaining organs going into fatal shock. He was missing his left arm, and the flesh of his face and upper body was terribly burned and scarred. This had resulted in his inability to open his eyes, effectively blinding him, and so a cybernetic eye had been installed in his forehead to afford some degree of compensation. His larynx had also been damaged in the attack, necessitating the electronic enhancement of his voice, and leaving him with a distinctive, sinister drawl.

Davros considered himself a futurist, outside of the morality of his, or any other, people. He was certain of his own superiority, and in the fascistic society that the surviving Kaleds had established, he thrived.

Over time he became convinced that the mutation of his people had become an unstoppable force and believed their DNA was now so corrupted that no matter the efforts of his colleagues, the Kaleds in their present form could not be saved. Following this line of thought to its logical conclusion, Davros began to experiment upon mutant Kaled embryos, instigating further alterations, attempting to follow the path of mutation through to its inevitable end. What he discovered was a creature so fragile, so helpless, that it changed his entire outlook on the war and the ongoing survival of his race.

Davros knew now that the future of his people lay not in the simple eradication of the Thals, but in orchestrating the survival of the future form of the Kaled race.

To do so, Davros devised a plan: he would accelerate the mutations en masse and build protective travelling machines to house the resulting life forms – the final form of the Kaled race. Then, without compunction, he would instigate the total annihilation of all other life on Skaro, including the remaining Kaleds – even if this entailed allying himself with the Thals to destroy the Kaled city.

The surviving mutants – Davros’s new ‘Daleks’, their name an anagram of ‘Kaleds’ – would be all that survived in the ashes.

As Davros set about the creation of his new race – as he had now come to see it – he designed a series of ‘improvements’, intent on equipping the Daleks with the many varied tools they would require to ensure their survival. He fitted their travel machines with powerful weaponry, but in a move that would prove even more contentious, he began to further manipulate the genetic structure of the mutants, isolating and removing any characteristics he deemed flawed or weak. Thus the first Daleks were forged from the remnants of the Kaled race, with no morality, no compassion, and no emotion save for hate. Imbued with Davros’s keen sense of self-belief and superiority, they saw themselves as the ultimate expression of the Kaled race.

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The Eye of the Creator – portrait by unknown artist (thought to have been exterminated upon completion of the piece), depicting Davros, creator of the Daleks.
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The inner workings of the early Dalek travel machines were complex and innovative – a triumph of design and engineering.

All was not well inside Davros’s bunker, however. A number of the other Science Officers were beginning to have grave misgivings about how far Davros was willing to go in his pursuit of the Dalek ideal. Trapped in the bunker, unable to get word out to the Kaled city, they found themselves powerless against Davros, who, now armed with a small force of Daleks, found it a simple matter to quash such rebellion. Davros had assumed complete command of the bunker – any and all who opposed him were marked for extermination.

It is during this period that the Doctor – a renegade Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey – visited Skaro on a clandestine mission. Thrown into the midst of the still-raging war, the Doctor had been tasked by his people with interfering with the evolution of the Dalek race.

The Time Lords were a race of time-travelling humanoids who, at some point during their history, had appointed themselves guardians of time and space. They had seen the terror which followed in the wake of Davros’s creations – the chaos and destruction they would wreak across the entire universe – and believed their only recourse was the complete destruction of the Dalek project during this, its fragile infancy. If they could be stopped now, billions of lives could be saved. Alternately, the Doctor’s presence might permit the Time Lords to learn of an intrinsic weakness within the Daleks that could be used against them later.

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When Davros looked to the moons of Skaro, he imagined a universe ringing with the sound of extermination.
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Deep inside the bunker on Skaro, Davros plotted the means by which his Daleks would become the supreme form of life in the galaxy.

The Doctor, however, saw the inherent irony in the genocide of an entire fledgling race to prevent future crimes at their hands. After stirring up further discord amongst Davros’s fellow scientists, he hesitated at the crucial moment, failing to destroy the mutant Kaled embryos in Davros’s ‘nursery’.

It soon transpired that, rather than avert the course of Dalek evolution, the Doctor’s presence had, in fact, served only to strengthen Davros’s resolve.

Now more certain than ever that his creations would survive the war on Skaro and go on to become a supreme force in the wider universe – a fact corroborated by the Doctor’s very presence and information he had extracted from the Time Lord that set out the Daleks’ future plans – Davros did the unthinkable: he set his creations free.

With no limitations or guiding hand, the Daleks did only what they had been created by Davros to do. Reasoning that they should be the only life forms permitted to survive on Skaro, they turned on Davros and the remaining Kaleds, destroying them all.

Free from the shackles of their creator, the Daleks emerged from the underground laboratories and began to build. They erected a vast city, Kalaann, amongst the ruins of the old Kaled stronghold. Kalaann was designed to accommodate their new forms, with powered gangways, ramped walkways and elevators – a city within which the Daleks could consolidate their control.

The Thal forces, however, were gathering for another attack. The war, as they saw it, was far from over, and the destruction of the Kaleds presented them with an opportunity. The Daleks were still a fledgling race, their numbers low. If Kalaann could be breached, then the Thals might yet gain the upper hand.

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Minutes before Davros’s own creations turned upon him, a closed-circuit camera captured this haunted likeness.
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Davros and his escort in the bunker beneath Kalaann.

The Daleks, however, were aware of this impending threat, and took the only course they could. Safe in the warren of their city, they detonated a neutron bomb, which finally ended the War, virtually obliterating the Thals.

In doing so, however, the Daleks trapped themselves within the confines of their city for over five hundred years. The surface of Skaro was so irradiated that, even inside their travel machines, they could no longer venture beyond the prison they had constructed for themselves. They had become the masters of Skaro – of their entire known universe – but they were trapped, inside their travel machines, and inside their city.

THE RE-EMERGENCE OF THE THALS

The fallout from the neutron explosion left the surface of Skaro all but scoured of life. The forests were petrified, the animal life eradicated or mutated beyond recognition, and the once arable lands transformed into dusty plains. Even the air itself was infused with deadly radiation, rendering the planet hostile to almost all forms of life.

From deep within their city the Daleks monitored the gradually dropping radiation levels outside. Unable to confirm whether the Thals had been eradicated, and unable to send scouting parties into the poisoned atmosphere, they continued strengthening their defences. At the same time they sought ways to free themselves from their travel machines, upon which they had now become utterly dependent, drawing static electricity from the walkways they’d assembled throughout the city.

A small enclave of Thals had, in fact, survived the neutron bomb, and formed a makeshift community atop one of the high plateaus, where the soil remained viable for supporting agriculture. They had not escaped unchanged, however, and although they developed anti-radiation drugs to combat the poisoned atmosphere, they were not immune to its mutating effects.

The Thals recovered quickly, however, and over the ensuing five hundred years, any sign of mutation all but disappeared from their gene pool. What remained was a race of farmers and hunter-gatherers, which had returned to an easier, pastoral way of life.

Additionally, as the new Thal society developed, they adopted new philosophies, too, becoming pacifistic, shying away from conflict. This pacifism soon became a defining trait of the Thal race, completely at odds with their more aggressive, ancestral roots. They kept themselves hidden from the Dalek City, and while they did not flourish, they survived.

The arrival on Skaro of the Doctor and his companions Susan, Ian and Barbara, though, served as a catalyst to bring the two indigenous races into conflict once again. Upon travelling to Kalaann in search of assistance, they found themselves captured by the Daleks, who initially took them to be surviving Thals – the first such confirmation they had received in centuries.

The Daleks learned from the Doctor that the Thals had managed to develop anti-radiation drugs, and despatched Susan to procure some, keeping the others captive. After securing the drugs, Susan attempted to broker peace between the Daleks and the Thals, whose crops were beginning to fail, and who were in desperate need of food and other resources.

An exchange was arranged between the two races, with the Daleks promising food. However when the time came, the xenophobic Daleks ambushed the Thals, driving the survivors back into the cover of the Petrified Forest.

Meanwhile, the Daleks began testing the Thals’ anti-radiation drugs upon themselves, only to discover that the chemicals proved deadly to their mutated physiology. Discerning that they now needed radiation to survive, the Daleks devised a plan to release further radiation from their nuclear reactors beneath the city. This would both exterminate the surviving Thals and poison the atmosphere enough for the Daleks to be able to venture out from the confines of their city.

The Doctor and his companions managed to escape from Kalaann in the confusion surrounding the ambush and rendezvoused with the Thals in the Petrified Forest. However, because they still needed mercury from the Dalek City, they attempted to persuade the Thals to mount an attack on Kalaann. At first the pacifistic Thals refused, but eventually they came to see that they had no option but to intervene.

Together with the Doctor and Ian, the Thals raided the city, and were successful in both stopping the nuclear explosion and disabling the Daleks’ main power supply. With their supply of static electricity gone, the Daleks became immobile. Kalaann was shut down, eventually no more than a dusty museum.

After more than a millennium and a half, the Thals had finally won the war, and it seemed that the Daleks were no more.

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In the aftermath of the neutron bomb much of Skaro was laid waste, and the decaying shells of Daleks littered the silent battlefields.

MYTHS, LEGENDS AND CREATION MYTHS

In the millennia that followed, the Daleks went on to conquer thousands, if not millions more inhabited worlds. On many of these worlds, where scant few survivors, refugees or slaves lived on to form sparse communities in the wake of the Dalek destruction, scores of myths, legends and stories sprang up to explain the origins of the bizarre, horrific invaders to future generations.

Indeed, throughout the known universe, the Daleks have become an enduring source of nightmarish inspiration, fuelling fireside tales with talk of their croaking metallic voices, their near-invincibility and their utter lack of mercy.

Some of these legends take the form of parables, casting the Daleks in the role of ‘devils’ from another realm, come to bring punishment to the people of the world in retribution for their perceived misdemeanours. Others envision them as ‘bogey-men’, terrifying monsters that come in the night to ‘exterminate’ misbehaving children; or ancient gods from beyond the stars, existing only to wreak vengeance upon the unfaithful.

On rare occasions these tales are found to have some basis in truth, derived from the established history of Skaro and the Thousand Year War between the Kaleds and the Thals. Often, though, this history has become warped in the retelling, moulded to accommodate the conquered races’ own history.

One such creation myth tells of the Daleks of Dalazar, a continent on the planet Skaro, where a race of blue-skinned, humanoid Daleks lived amongst the mountains. These Daleks are described as having a short, ungainly appearance, with over-sized craniums. In marked similarity to the historical accounts, these humanoid Daleks were locked in a bitter war against the Thals, who lived on a neighbouring continent across a vast ‘Sea of Ooze’.

The Dalek leader was known as Drenz, a figurehead who had demonstrated pacifist inclinations, speaking out against the war with the Thals. This eventually led to his public assassination at the hands of the Dalek Warlord Zolfian, who seized control of the Dalek administration and appointed himself their new commander. The offensive against the Thals continued, and more and more Daleks were allocated to the construction of neutron bombs. Zolfian intended to deploy these against the Thals, hurling them across the Sea of Ooze at the neighbouring continent.

Meanwhile, Zolfian tasked his Chief Scientist, Yarvelling, with creating an army of war machines to use against any surviving Thals. The test machines – automated robots designed to enter the irradiated war zone – were successful, and soon went into mass production.

However, on the eve of the neutron bombardment, a meteorite strike destroyed the war machine plant and the neutron bomb stores, utterly devastating Dalazar. Zolfian and Yarvelling were protected from the blasts in an underground bunker, where they were subsequently forced to remain for two years.

Upon emerging they found Dalazar had been comprehensively irradiated, and soon realised that exposure to the atmosphere had poisoned them. The surviving Daleks had horrifically mutated, although in doing so, they had developed a far superior intellect. One of the mutants had crawled inside the shell of a surviving war machine, and this ‘machine Dalek’ took it upon itself to force Zolfian and Yarvelling to rebuild and restart the war machine production line. They died just as it was completed, and the other surviving Dalek mutants were able to adopt their new artificial shells. The Dalek race as we know it had been born.

Still other tales suggest entirely contradictory origins for the Daleks, becoming new creation myths, layering fiction upon historical fact until the truth becomes barely perceptible. One such unusual myth appears to have arisen on the human colony of Mars, following an ill-fated expedition to the planet Ollendorf 2.

It was a time of great conflict for the human space colonies, before their ongoing expansion led to the founding of the First Great and Bountiful Human Empire. They were engaged in a fierce and embittered conflict with the Daleks which was largely contained to the vulnerable, outlying planets, known as the ‘outer ring’. Dalek forces, however, had been encroaching, drawing ever closer to Earth’s Solar System and the heart of the human race.

Human technology was proving largely inadequate in the face of the superior Dalek weaponry, until the discovery of an incredibly rare mineral, Exxtellium. This had properties that made it – and anything coated in it – completely resistant to Dalek energy beams.

After prospecting scores of planets, however, the humans had located only enough Exxtellium to shield a single ship but this had proved almost unstoppable against the Daleks. Securing a more substantial supply of Exxtellium appeared to be the only means by which the humans could repel the Daleks and end the conflict, and thus a desperate hunt was launched to find more.

When prospectors Joel Kendon and Dag Richie saw the results of an unmanned probe they had sent to the obscure, unpopulated planet Ollendorf 2, they could hardly believe their luck – the planet appeared to be formed almost entirely from Exxtellium. They immediately mounted a secretive mission to reach the planet and claim it for mining, believing that not only would they ensure their own financial security, but that the planet represented the very real possibility of an end to the war and the complete destruction of the Dalek forces.

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During the great diaspora that led to the founding of the First Great and Bountiful Human Empire, humans took to the stars in their millions.

However, an undercover Dalek agent posed as the pilot of the vessel, and soon compromised the mission. Their ship was pursued across deep space by a small but deadly contingent of Daleks.

Upon arrival, the crew were soon able to confirm their original findings – Ollendorf 2 was comprised almost entirely of Exxtellium, so pure that it could be deployed without refining. However, conditions on the planet proved hostile, and their Dalek pursuers arrived shortly after, intent on securing the planet to ensure the humans could never successfully mine the Exxtellium.

After the rest of his party had been killed by the Daleks and their agent, Joel Kendon escaped into a cave system deep within the jungle. There he discovered the true secret of Ollendorf 2: human scientist Bryant Anderson had marooned himself there, intent on hiding his scientific discoveries from the universe.

With the Daleks closing in on their location, Kendon interrogated Anderson about his work. Anderson explained he had been researching the Daleks, and uncovered an alarming truth about their origins.

Anderson claimed that, long in Earth’s past, a race known as the Halldons had visited the planet and kidnapped a number of prehistoric humans, transporting them to the planet Ameron. There, the Halldons carried out a number of experiments on the proto-humans, accelerating their development so that they soon developed language and tools, evolving along a similar path to their kin on Earth – only at a much faster rate.

As the proto-humans developed increasing signs of aggression, the Halldons deemed their experiment over, and attempted to terminate their ‘test subjects’. The proto-humans had grown wise, however, and turned on the Halldons, destroying them. Left to their own devices, the Ameron humans continued to develop at an accelerated rate, constructing horrific weapons, growing increasingly hostile and aggressive, and eventually evolving into the form now recognised as Daleks.

Anderson told Kendon that the Daleks were the natural end result of human evolution. He had hidden himself away on Ollendorf 2, believing that the human race was not ready to hear of his findings. Anderson and Kendon were both exterminated by the Daleks, and the planet’s Exxtellium remained unmined.

Later historians, finding Anderson’s work – including the remnants of a post-mortem he had carried out on a dying Dalek mutant – have neither verified nor contradicted his findings. Some, however, have gone on to suggest that the original, parent species of the Kaleds and the Thals might also have been proto-humans, extracted from Earth and taken to Skaro by the Halldons, where evolution did its work, and once again, the Daleks were born.

What is certain is that, as time goes on and the Daleks continue to wage war across the universe, further myths surrounding their origins continue to emerge in their wake. The truth has become muddied by centuries of warfare and misinformation. Only one thing may be relied upon: whenever the Daleks arrive, life, as it is known, will cease.

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Whatever the truth of their origins, the Daleks persist in constantly evolving forms to terrorise the universe.
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The Great Thinker – Davros ponders the existence of other intelligent races following his encounter with the Doctor, as imagined by the Moldoxian artist Bellatrist Small.

BEHIND THE SCENES

HOW THE DALEKS WERE CREATED FOR TV

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A Dalek demonstrates a use for its sucker arm in this scene from The Daleks.

The origin story of the Daleks is a story as old as Doctor Who itself.

In 1963, when Verity Lambert, the fledgling producer charged with realising Doctor Who on screen, hired David Whitaker as script editor for the new show, Whitaker looked to his own agency, Associated London Scripts, to seek out potential scriptwriters. One of the writers he approached was Terry Nation, who was then working regularly for Tony Hancock. Nation initially intended to rebuff Whitaker’s advances, preferring to maintain his relationship with the soaringly popular comedian. A falling out with Hancock, however, left Nation looking for work, and so he accepted Whitaker’s invitation and pitched an outline for a story called ‘The Survivors’. Whitaker accepted it immediately, and commissioned a seven-part story based on the outline.

Initially intended as the fourth story of the first series, the line up was soon changed, and Nation worked to an increasingly tight deadline to turn in the scripts. The story was never intended as anything but a one-off serial – neither Nation or the BBC had any notion of what they were about to unleash on British television screens, or the enduring nature of the story they were creating.

With the scripts written, Ridley Scott (then a young designer, who would go on to become a highly acclaimed movie director) was initially charged with designing the visual appearance of the Daleks, but when a conflict arose in Scott’s schedule, the task passed to Raymond Cusick.

The script suggested a ‘machine-like’ look for the Daleks – in keeping with Sydney Newman’s desire that the show avoid the proliferation of ‘bug-eyed monsters’ seen in American science fiction movies – and Nation had suggested that the Daleks carry ‘strange weapons’, have ‘arms with mechanical grips as hands’, and ‘a lens on a flexible shaft’.

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One of Raymond Cusick’s early Dalek design sketches.
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These plans from October 1963 indicate that Cusick’s original intention was for the Dalek’s gun-stick and sucker arm to be mounted on different levels.

Cusick was anxious to avoid the new aliens being portrayed by men in rubber suits, and so began sketching designs. Due to time constraints, he had only a weekend to come up with something. Realising that the props would have to be controlled by people, and that they’d likely be inside the props all day under harsh studio lights, he decided that they might as well be sitting down, so began by sketching a person in a chair, and then building the design around that.

Given that the person inside would also need to see out, Cusick added a wire mesh around the neck, and then fitted the gunstick and manipulator arm beneath that. The operator would move the prop around by means of three castors mounted inside the skirt.

More detailed plans of the design were drawn up, and soon after, Cusick, along with Jack Kine and Bernard Wilkie of the BBC Visual Effects Department, assembled a prototype out of wood and an electric fan heater.

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How to move a Dalek? Tricycle power was one possibility, but the finished Dalek design incorporated castors. New wheels were fitted to the props prior to the recording of episode 3 to make them more mobile.

With the design finalised, Shawcroft Models – the contractors who had previously built the TARDIS console – were brought in to construct four working props for the serial.

The Daleks were made from fibreglass, and painted silver. The sensor globes on the Daleks’ skirts were originally going to be illuminated, but the lighting was dropped when the costs became apparent, and so the globes were painted blue instead. The claw at the end of the manipulator arm – as designed by Cusick – also proved too expensive, and so were replaced by sink plungers with embedded magnets, which enabled the props to carry a limited range of items around the set.

While the production team marvelled at the inventiveness of the designs – particularly given the limited budget – the initial reaction from the cast was reportedly sceptical, although as soon as the props began to move and bark commands in their horrifying, rasping voices, all concerns were gone. The Daleks had arrived.

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Ian Chesterton, played by William Russell, became the first on-screen victim of Dalek firepower: a rare demonstration of a non-fatal blast.

The first episode of the serial was recorded twice, following a disaster with the microphones, meaning they’d picked up all of the backstage noise, and so, in the end, the broadcast episode was shot only two weeks before being aired.

The Daleks had made their first, terrifying appearance on screens all across the United Kingdom. Little did anyone involved realise quite what they’d started!

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The Daleks in rehearsals for their first story. Numbers and coloured tape rolls were placed on the props so the director could more easily choreograph the Dalek operators.
DAVROS GENESIS BY TERRANCE DICKS

IT WAS A small sordid anteroom attached to the smallest of the laboratories in the main complex. General Ravon paused on the threshold.

‘Well?’

‘A minor matter,’ said Security Commander Nyder. ‘An unsuccessful project run by a certain Technician Davros. He was crippled in a bomb attack and given this project as compensation. Something about using mutated brains from badly wounded soldiers to create intelligent warrior robots. A crack-brained idea frankly. No one thought it would work – except Davros – and apparently it hasn’t.’

‘Then it must be terminated. This war is dragging on and resources are limited.’

‘Shall we carry out the review?’ suggested Nyder. ‘Since we’re here …’

Impressive in their gold and silver braided uniforms, the two men strode into the room, guards at their heels.

Confronting them was a shabby crippled figure in a dilapidated wheelchair. Its body was wrapped in a worn leather coverall, one arm strapped to the side. The face was a shattered ruin, only one eye still functioning.

‘I take it you are Technician Davros,’ snapped Ravon. ‘Results?’

‘There have been many difficulties,’ said Davros, his voice weak and quavering. ‘I can show you a prototype …’

‘Produce it!’

Davros raised his voice. ‘Gharman!’

Escorted by a haggard-looking grey-haired technician, a strange object trundled into the room. Roughly pear-shaped, it was constructed of heavily studded metal with a wavering eye-stalk at the crown. Moving straight ahead it bore down on Ravon and Nyder, who recoiled in horror.

‘Halt!’ ordered Davros.

The machine continued to move forward in fits and starts. Ravon, Nyder and their guards shrank back.

‘Stop it!’ shouted Ravon. ‘Get that thing away from me!’

‘Halt! Halt!’ screamed Davros.

Jerkily the machine stopped.

‘Turn,’ shouted Davros. ‘Gharman, assist me!’

Slowly, with many stops and starts, Gharman escorted the machine from the room.

General Ravon recovered his composure. ‘And that is all you have to show us?’

‘It is a very early prototype,’ pleaded Davros. ‘The voice control circuits are still faulty. If my resources were not so limited … The finished version will be armed, it will obey commands and it will think for itself. I’m sorry if it frightened you.’

‘Frightened!’ sneered Ravon. ‘I was simply astonished at your incompetence.’

‘Just a little more time …’

General Ravon considered. ‘You have until the next inspection to produce more impressive results. I shall expect a full squad of perfectly functioning robots. If you fail the project will be terminated.’

He turned and strode from the room, followed by Nyder and the guards.

Davros slumped wearily in his chair.

Gharman came cautiously back into the room. ‘Have they gone? What are we to do? The next inspection is only weeks away. We can’t possibly …’

Davros waved him to silence. Wearily, he considered his options. If the project was cancelled he would never get another scientific post – not in his crippled state. But Ravon and Nyder would never listen to his pleas and excuses. Clearly they despised him. A sudden thought came to him. They hadn’t despised his robot. It had impressed and intimidated them, even in its imperfect state. For all his protestations General Ravon had actually been frightened.

Fear, thought Davros. Fear was a tool he could use.

He turned to Gharman. ‘Cancel all current projects and experiments. In the coming weeks we shall concentrate all our resources on just one thing – the production of one perfect Dalek.’

Gharman was horrified. ‘Just one? General Ravon demanded a squad.’

‘Just one,’ repeated Davros. ‘No more than one. First we shall complete another project.’

Gharman was baffled. ‘What project?’

Davros tapped his withered chest with his one good arm. ‘Me!’