- 3 hours ago
From their first appearance in 1963 to the depths of the expanded universe, the Daleks have committed some of the worst atrocities in the Whoniverse. Join us as we count down the 10 most monstrous acts ever perpetrated by the Doctor's greatest foes.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00Doctor Who's first monsters have plagued the Hooniverse time and time again.
00:05Now, these pepperpots first appeared in 1963 and from the very beginning were a chilling force to be reckoned with.
00:13The Daleks have one of the most iconic looks in sci-fi culture,
00:16and whilst the designs have altered slightly over the years, the core design remains the same.
00:22Every Doctor has come across the Daleks many times during their time on screen,
00:27with the exception of the criminally short-lived Eighth.
00:30Now, due to the depth expanded media has gone with these characters,
00:35we will be covering moments beyond just that of the TV series.
00:40And so, with that in mind then, I'm Ellie with Who Culture,
00:43here with the 10 worst things the Daleks have ever done.
00:47Number 10. Only the monstrous The Thousand Worlds.
00:51In 2015, Big Finish acquired the right to new Who content,
00:56and their first exploit into this era was a series for the War Doctor venturing into the Time War.
01:03Now, the first audio adventure for the War Doctor saw the Daleks invade a planet called Keska,
01:09along with another ruthless race, the Tarlians.
01:12Now, on the surface, invading a planet and enslaving the locals is a pretty generic thing for the Daleks to
01:17do,
01:18but this particular invasion is part of a much larger plot.
01:21Keska is one of a thousand planets, all invaded by the Daleks,
01:26and all with engines being placed at the centre of those planets.
01:31Now, of course, we have seen the Daleks trying to place engines in planets before,
01:36but we'll talk a bit more about that later.
01:38But what is the purpose of these planet engines?
01:42Well, it's pretty simple.
01:43They're going to fire them at Gallifrey to try and win the Time War.
01:46Now, that's one hell of an offensive against the Time Lords,
01:49to invade a thousand planets, enslave all those populations,
01:53and then make those people drill to the core of their own planets.
01:57It's all one very sick scheme.
01:59But thankfully, the Doctor and co. manage to stop this particular plot,
02:03and the war rages on, and the Daleks go on to commit even more atrocities.
02:07Number 9, Dark Eyes, the Dalek Time Controller.
02:11The Big Finish 16-part epic Dark Eyes starring the 8th Doctor
02:16sees a unique kind of Dalek take centre stage, the Time Controller,
02:20and it's no exaggeration to say this is one of the worst Daleks out there.
02:25Having made various appearances in Big Finish before this story,
02:29the Dalek Time Controller has proved a force to be reckoned with,
02:33but Dark Eyes is their big moment.
02:35Using the Doctor's companion Molly, who's infected with retrogenitor particles,
02:39he planned to undo the Time Lords' past, wiping them out.
02:44But thankfully, due to a paradox, this is unsuccessful in the first part of the series.
02:49But the Time Controller still vows to wipe out the Time Lords.
02:53After these events, he is exiled by the Daleks,
02:56and allies himself with the Master.
02:59In the end, the Time Controller seeks out the origins of the Eminence,
03:03a psychic force that's a comparable threat to the universe as the Daleks,
03:07and wishes to become one with it.
03:09Thankfully for the Hooniverse, this plot is foiled by the Doctor and his companions.
03:14But if the Time Controller had succeeded,
03:17then the Time Lords could have been wiped out before the Time War even began.
03:21If there is a Big Finish audio adventure that you should sink your teeth into,
03:25it's this one.
03:268. The Magician's Apprentice, and which is familiar,
03:29tricking the Doctor.
03:31The latest reunion between the Doctor and Davros sees the Time Lord summoned to the planet of the Daleks,
03:38Skaro, to meet with their dying creator.
03:41After long chats between these two arch-rivals,
03:44the Doctor is made to feel sympathy for Davros,
03:47who is unable to open his own eyes to watch the sunrise on Skaro one last time.
03:52To fix this, the ever kind-hearted Doctor elects to give the creator of the Daleks
03:56some of his regeneration energy, thinking it enough to allow him this final moment.
04:01When the Doctor unleashes his Time Lord gift into the cables connecting Davros to the rest of the Daleks,
04:06Colony Sarf, a snake-like being, secures him in place,
04:10siphoning off even more regenerative energy.
04:13This energy is taken and transferred into every single Dalek,
04:17renewing them, including Davros, allowing him to regain his strength.
04:21However, once rescued by Missy, the Twelfth Doctor reveals he knew the plan all along,
04:27including the Daleks in the sewers, who revolt, destroying the Daleks in the Skaro city.
04:33This resulted in us once again being led to believe Davros has been destroyed,
04:38although we all know that that's most likely not the case.
04:41The evil of this plot, even if the Doctor did know what was coming,
04:44is that the Daleks try to use the Doctor's kind-hearted nature against him,
04:50even for his worst enemies.
04:51Number 7. Asylum of the Daleks, Oswin Oswald the Dalek.
04:56Now, we've seen cyber conversion many times in Doctor Who,
05:00but that seems like nothing when compared to Dalek conversion.
05:04With cyber conversions, the process puts the participant into the cyber armour,
05:09but then removes all feelings,
05:10whereas the horror of the Dalek conversion is that hatred and anger are channelled
05:16in order to make the machine go.
05:18In the Series 7 opener, when venturing into the Dalek Asylum,
05:22Oswin Oswald ends up captured by the Daleks inside
05:25and goes through the horrific conversion into a Dalek.
05:29This reality is so horrific for her that she imagines herself a different version of events.
05:34Trapped within the cold metal shell,
05:36Oswin believes herself to be hiding within her crashed ship making soufflés.
05:40It's not until the Doctor turns up that she sees the true fate that has befallen her.
05:45The moment in which Oswin learns the truth is soul-crushing,
05:48and the following flashback of her being forced into the process,
05:51whilst not graphic, still feels gruesome.
05:54The only positive in the end is that Oswin manages to fight the process,
05:58allowing and assisting the 11th Doctor to escape.
06:01Now, granted, this isn't some huge invasion that puts countless lives at risk,
06:06but the ordeal that Oswin goes through is horrific.
06:09Number 6. The Daleks' Master Plan, The Time Destructor
06:13The huge 60s epic, The Daleks' Master Plan, was exactly what it said on the tin.
06:19William Hartnell's last encounter with the Daleks came in the form of a 12-part serial,
06:24in which the Daleks had created a new weapon, the Time Destructor.
06:28Their intention was to conquer the solar system.
06:31The device would reverse or accelerate the flow of time with devastating consequences,
06:37exhausting its terranium core, a mineral only found on Uranus.
06:41Whilst this is thankfully going to become a repetitive trend, the Dalek plot is halted.
06:46However, the device is still used.
06:49Not only does the serial feature the first and second companion deaths in the franchise,
06:54they are also both equally two of the grimmest fates befallen to Who characters.
06:59Katrina's death technically does not involve the Daleks.
07:02However, during the series, she is awfully sucked into space.
07:06But Sarah Kingdom falls victim to the Time Destructor itself.
07:10Basically, aged to death, decaying to nothing.
07:14Now, this device is actually later used by the Time Lords against the Daleks
07:18in that previously mentioned Big Finish War Doctor series in the opening moments.
07:24But it does represent the huge threat presented by the Daleks if not stopped.
07:30Number 5. Planet of the Ogrons, the Overseer.
07:34Another slightly altered Dalek appearing in Big Finish here.
07:38The Dalek Overseer is a monstrous scientist who appears in the Eighth Doctor's Time War series.
07:45Based on the titular planet of the Ogrons, the Overseer creates dreadful experiments
07:50in order to create weapons to win the Time War.
07:54Now, the Daleks have done some pretty gruesome things in their history,
07:58but none so bad as this abomination.
08:01One of the experiments revolved around inserting Ogron brains
08:05into battle TARDISes to bypass their controls.
08:09Another one of the Overseer schemes was the insertion of Ogron armies
08:13into events of the past, such as Day of the Daleks.
08:18But thankfully, these events remained unchanged.
08:21But the aim was to try and increase the Daleks' chances of victory
08:24through temporal manipulation.
08:27A final major creation is Doctor Ogron,
08:30where he augmented an Ogron with the personality of the Doctor.
08:35Now, while he did make a lovable character here,
08:37this guy is still bad news.
08:38And this particular experiment did lead to his downfall.
08:42In the end, he was deemed an insult to the Dalek race
08:45and was exterminated by the other Daleks.
08:48Number four, the relationship with their creator.
08:521975's Genesis of the Daleks debuts, the Pepper Potts creator, Davros.
08:56Through his various appearances throughout the show,
08:59we've seen the Daleks treat their creator with varying levels of respect.
09:03The end of his first appearance, after having just created the Daleks,
09:07a squad of them come and exterminate Davros.
09:09But by the next serial, they want him back,
09:12with him thankfully for them having survived within the depths of Scarrow.
09:16Across the remainder of his classic appearances,
09:18Davros starts the Imperial-Renegade Civil War,
09:21where the Imperials side with him against the Supreme and the Renegades.
09:25When Davros returns for New Who,
09:27the Tenth Doctor even mocks that he is chucked away into the basement,
09:31with them simply using him once again,
09:33without him running the show.
09:34The lack of respect is therefore a running trend in Davros' character.
09:38And in the previously mentioned series 9 opener,
09:41it is clearer than ever that he is only ever used
09:44when they wish to use him for their own gain,
09:46rather than out of any loyalty to him.
09:49Now, we know the Daleks are evil,
09:51but showing no respect for, for want of a better word,
09:54your father?
09:55That's just truly nasty.
09:57Even if Davros is just as evil, if not worse.
10:01Number three, the stolen Earth and journey's end,
10:04the reality bomb.
10:05When Davros returned to Doctor Who for its new series,
10:09he brought with him the Daleks' most horrific plot to date.
10:13Already in the serial, Davros has recreated the Daleks using his own cells,
10:17which is pretty bleak as it is.
10:19But with this new army, he created the reality bomb.
10:22The device would result in untold devastation,
10:25killing all that wasn't protected by the Crucible.
10:28Basically, a very extreme version of wiping out all non-Dalek life.
10:31Using the Z-Neutrino energy of the Dalek Crucible
10:34and the transported planets within the Medusa Cascade,
10:38the reality bomb would cancel out the electric field of atoms,
10:41turning everything to dust.
10:43This plot would not just wipe out the main Who universe,
10:46but the life of all other universes.
10:49But we won't get into the potential plot holes of that.
10:51The recreating an entire Dalek army and moving 27 planets
10:55is a testament to the lengths the Pepper Potts were willing to go for this scheme.
11:00And while this plot does fail,
11:02we do see the devastation that this device is capable of
11:06when it is tested on a group of humans who, as mentioned,
11:09quite literally turn to dust.
11:11Number 2.
11:12Revelation of the Daleks using the dead of Nekros.
11:161985's Revelation of the Daleks sees the 6th Doctor and Perry
11:20encounter Davros and the Daleks on a planet called Nekros,
11:24the location of Tranquil Repose, a space funeral home.
11:28However, at its core,
11:29Davros was creating a new race of Daleks from the dead humans.
11:34Revelation through and through is a very bleak story,
11:37but Davros using the corpses within the facility is the most appalling aspect.
11:41In this story, the dead are used for two things.
11:44The previously mentioned new Daleks,
11:46as well as being formed into a new type of protein
11:49to solve the galaxy's famine problem.
11:51That doesn't seem a very marketable product.
11:54These new Daleks become the ranks of Davros' previously mentioned Imperial Daleks.
11:59This plot is an interesting one,
12:00as using humans, like the case with Oswin years later,
12:03to create Daleks seems to go against their quest for racial purity.
12:07Now, we could argue that this shocking Dalek moment could take top spot,
12:13but there is one more Dalek moment that just about takes the trophy.
12:18Number one, 22nd century Dalek invasions of Earth.
12:22In the 22nd century, the Daleks invade Earth, twice crippling the planet.
12:28The first Dalek sequel brings the creatures from Skaro to Earth for the first time,
12:32and years later, Big Finish brings them back for round two,
12:3620 years after their first attempt.
12:38The strategy for invasion involved bombarding the planet with meteorites,
12:42unleashing a plague from within the meteorites,
12:44which wiped out the majority of people in Africa, Asia, and South America.
12:49Once the population was weakened, the Daleks moved in for conquest.
12:52This may seem kind of run-of-the-mill compared to previously mentioned entries,
12:56but the Daleks occupied Earth for 10 years,
13:00causing insurmountable pain to humanity.
13:02Recent Big Finish adventures following the Doctor's granddaughter Susan
13:05after the first invasion claim Earth's technology is set back 200 years.
13:11Similar to the Thousand World plot,
13:13the Daleks aim to reach the centre of the planet
13:15and replace it with a propulsion system
13:17to use as a massive, movable base of operations to conquest the galaxy.
13:23When they return for their second invasion,
13:25led by the time controller, the plot is fairly similar,
13:28but instead they use a time warp engine to create a plague planet,
13:32capable of moving through time and space to weaken and infect other worlds.
13:38The Daleks are the most pure evil force in Doctor Who,
13:42and the Who-niverse should be thankful
13:43that most of these plots were stopped before the Daleks reached their goals.
13:48And that concludes our list.
13:50If you can think of anything we missed,
13:52then do let us know in the comments below,
13:54and while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe
13:56and tap that notification bell.
13:58Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there at WhoCulture,
14:01and I can be found across various social medias
14:03just by searching Ellie Littlechild.
14:05I've been Ellie with WhoCulture,
14:07and in the words of Riversong herself,
14:09goodbye, sweeties.