Creation of the Daleks Several different , seemingly conflicting accounts of the creation of the Daleks existed . The largest body of information centred on the Kaled scientist Davros . Davros ' account . Conceptual origins of the Daleks and their name . On the planet Skaro , during the later part of the Thousand Year War between the Thal s and Kaleds , both sides suffered mutations caused by nuclear , biological and chemical agents . Some of the mutant survivors , known as muto es , survived in the wastelands . ( TV : " Genesis of the Daleks " ) Shan , a young Kaled scientist , authored a paper which formulated a solution to the threats of perpetual war or mutually assured destruction . With both Kaleds and Thals competing for resources , she claimed that the only way out of this dilemma was through a process she called " the Dalek Solution " . Davros presented the paper to the Kaled Council as his own , though he omitted several of Shan ' s more controversial conclusions , such as the fact that the Kaled race would be completely replaced by the new species . ( AUDIO : " Davros " ) Another account had it that the name Davros gave his creations came from a prophecy found in the forbidden " Book of Predictions " , written in the extinct language of the Dal s , which stated " . . . and on that day , men will become as god s " . In the original language , the final word was pronounced " Dal - ek " . ( AUDIO : " Guilt " ) The first Daleks . Later , Davros , now crippled , became one of the Kaled Scientific Elite . He had begun experiments on living subjects and hoped to deify the Kaled race . Davros pushed through legislation enabling authority ( and ownership ) of all Kaled infants under the age of five years old to be delivered to Pediatric Facility K99 , which he used as a laboratory for surgical experiments . Davros transplanted the brain from Baran , a captured Thal spy , into a Mark I Travel Machine , ironically meaning that the very first functional Dalek was technically Thal , rather than Kaled in origin . ( AUDIO : " Guilt " ) Davros reveals the Daleks . Davros did not immediately show the results of his Dalek experiments to the Kaled Scientific Elite . He improved and developed the shell for the organic components of the Daleks , housing them in tank - like and armed Mark III Travel Machine s similar to his own life support chair . He maintained a nursery of embryonic Dalek young . As well as nurturing the physical form of his creations , Davros shaped their minds . The Daleks did not understand concepts such as pity . It did not exist in their " vocabulary banks " . The Fourth Doctor was sent on a mission by the Time Lord s to prevent the creation of the Daleks in the first place , or at the very least lessen the damage they would do in future . Arriving on Skaro , he discovered that many other members of Kaled Scientific Elite were against the project also . To prevent this , Davros arranged for the Thals to aim a missile at the Kaled Dome where his people resided . ( TV : " Genesis of the Daleks " ) The Daleks revolt against their creator . The newly christened Daleks ( apparently paradoxically called such due to the Doctor ' s claims that it was their name ) were sent by Davros to exterminate the Thals , supposedly in retaliation for the attack on the Kaled Dome . They turned on Davros , as they were not programmed to recognise any creature as superior to them , apparently killing him . Accidentally , whilst attempting to stop the Doctor , a Dalek triggered an explosion which destroyed the embryo room before the Thals sealed the bunker entrance and trapped the Daleks there . In the aftermath , the Doctor believed he had only held back their progress by about a thousand years or so , and that they would return . ( TV : " Genesis of the Daleks " ) Davros survived his " death " in a state of suspended animation . ( TV : " Destiny of the Daleks " ) The same Dalek that fired on Davros later became the Dalek Prime and eventually proclaimed itself to be the Dalek Emperor . ( PROSE : " The Evil of the Daleks " , " War of the Daleks " ) In 2025 , the Doctor attributed the creation of the Daleks to " a near lethal cocktail of war , hatred and technology " . ( AUDIO : " Energy of the Daleks " ) The Eternity Circle later considered the Time Lords ' act of trying to prevent their creation to be the beginning of the Last Great Time War . This act created the Skaro Degradations . ( PROSE : " Engines of War " ) Other accounts . Historical account . Subsequent to their creation , the Daleks , confined to their city , believed the war was a quick neutronic war and that the Thals were horribly mutated from their original humanoid forms . The Daleks ' " forefathers " retire d into their city and were protected by their machines . ( TV : " The Survivors " ) The First Doctor speculated from the Thals ' historical records that these forefathers , the Dal s , had mutated as well in the war , and while the Thals ' mutation had come full circle and " refined itself " back into humanoid form within five hundred years , the Daleks , as they were now called , had not . ( TV : " The Ambush " ) Yarvelling and the Dalek Emperor . Another account told of short , blue , humanoid Dalek s whose warlord , Zolfian , plotted to use neutron bombs against the Thals . Zolfian employed a scientist , Yarvelling , to develop war machines against the survivors and ordered the factories to mass - produce more of them . Two weeks later , a meteorite strike destroyed the factories and the neutron bomb stores . After two years , Zolfian and Yarvelling climbed out of a fallout shelter to find a mutated Dalek , which Yarvelling described to Zolfian as having " a brain a thousand times superior to ours " , had crawled inside one of the war machines and used it a shell . Before the two survivors died of radiation sickness , the " machine Dalek " forced them to make more war machines . ( COMIC : " Genesis of Evil " ) Behind - the - scenes history . As far as the vast bulk of continuity is concerned , Davros created the Daleks and the Fourth Doctor , Sarah and Harry nearly stopped it before it started . ( TV : " Genesis of the Daleks " ) However , prior to the writing of that story , Terry Nation , the real - life creator and copyright holder of the Daleks , elected to allow at least three separate origin stories for his creations . The reason for the multiplicity of origins is unclear , but it likely had something to do with the time in which they were written . In the 1960s and early 1970s , Nation and the rest of the " Doctor Who " team didn ' t really believe they were creating " permanent " works . Written long before the advent of home video , the internet , or even the existence of a robust market for reprinted comic strips , the various origins told during the first decade of " Doctor Who " were likely considered as disposable as the episodes themselves turned out to be . Hence , Nation contradicted not just other writers , but himself , when positing various origins for the Daleks . " The Daleks " . The first Dalek story , " The Daleks " , gave viewers a tiny sliver of an idea of where the creatures came from . Far from a full - fledged origin , " The Daleks " tells us the Daleks came from a race called " the Dal s " who had survived an atomic war . This narrative " plank " was certainly incorporated into " Genesis of the Daleks " , although the name of the parent race wasn ' t . " The Dalek Handbook " offers the explanation that Thals , who fought a war against the Dals , conflated the Dals with the Daleks in their legends . " TV Century 21 " comic strips . Nation allowed writers David Whitaker and Alan Fennell to tell a Dalek origin in their 1965 " TV Century 21 " comic strip " Genesis of Evil " . This was the first published attempt to tell a more - or - less complete origin , and it posited that the Daleks were mutated from a race also known as the Daleks . There is no reference at all to any part of " Genesis of Evil " within televised " Doctor Who " , and very little more than an occasional , sly reference in other forms of " Doctor Who " fiction . Short story . The " TV Century 21 " version went unchallenged by any other story for eight years until Nation himself was commissioned to write a short prose story for the " Radio Times " Doctor Who " 10th anniversary publication " in 1973 . Entitled " We are the Daleks ! " , the piece substantively contradicted " Genesis of Evil " and " The Daleks " , and the later " Genesis of the Daleks " . The most contradictory and surprising feature of this piece was the notion that Daleks were actually evolved from future human s .