Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe (short story)

was a book-within-a-book included in the book of the same name. Essentially a novel in its own right, it comprised eight chapters plus an introduction, which, in the anthology, were interspaced with unrelated short stories as well as behind-the-scenes articles.
 was presented as an in-universe history of the Dalek race reconstructed by anonymous future historians. It contained numerous references to established Dalek lore but also introduced its own ideas and characters.
== Summary ==
Historians contemporary with the return of a post-Last Great Time War Davros to Skaro set out to write a complete history of the Daleks, drawn from a variety of records, myths and legends. It paints a picture of the Daleks as a relentless threat from their inception in the Thousand Year War to their survival beyond the Last Great Time War.
== Plot ==
=== Introduction ===
As shown by new photographic evidence, the Daleks remain the greatest enemy of the Earth Empire. A team of historians go over the broad lines of the Daleks' history, despite the problems caused by the Last Great Time War's confusing timelines, and can but reach the conclusion that the Doctor is the main bulwark between the Daleks and the rest of the universe.
=== Chapter 1: The Creation of the Daleks ===
In the ancient days of the planet Skaro, it is inhabited by two species: the Kaleds and the Thals. The Kaleds are "thoughtful and studious" compared to the militaristic Thals, but this thoughtfulness turns to bitterness and, ultimately, xenophobia against the more powerful Thals. Observing the Thals constructing a massive protection dome over their capital city, the Kaleds follow suit out of paranoia.
Though the historians cannot agree on who actually began the ensuing Thousand Year War (with some legends blaming the Thals, while others speculate about a preemptive strike from the Kaleds), it soon proves the undoing of both peoples, especially after the Kaleds begin deploying nuclear bombs, exposing both sides to radiation. The disabled scientist Davros studies the ensuing mutation and is horrified to discover the helpless, supremely vulnerable creature in which his people are transforming. This changes his entire outlook on the War: he realises that victory does not lie in the extermination of the Thals, but in the preservation of the future form of the Kaleds.
With the Doctor unable to prevent the Daleks' arising, the Daleks soon exterminate Davros and emerge from their underground laboratories. Among the ruins of the old Kaled stronghold, they erect a Dalek City; Kalaann. However, the Thals survive, and view the war as far from over; they plan out a final assault on the Dalek City, still intent on destroying their ancestral enemies even in their strange new forms. Safe within the city, the Daleks save themselves from this threat by detonating a neutron bomb which virtually annihilates the threat. However, this traps them in their own city, as the rest of Skaro becomes too irradiated even for the Daleks to survive.
After "a group of offworlders" reignite conflict between the Thals and Daleks, the Thals appear to win the war for good by switching off all electric power in the Dalek City, trapping the Daleks in place. In subsequent millennia, however, the Daleks return to the universe and conquer many races. The historians note that some of the conquered races formulated conflicting creation myths about the origins of their tormentors, some of them rooted in facts, but often moulded to befit the aesthetics and noosphere of the conquered races.
=== Chapter 2 - Skaro - The Planet of the Daleks ===
The historians turn their attention to the history of the planet of the Daleks; Skaro. For "untold millions of year"s, life on Skaro evolved in a similar way to that on Earth, with animal life beginning in the seas and eventually "crawling up onto the beaches". An "age of monsters" follows, lasting millions of years, comparable to Earth's dinosaur age, only for the reptilian creatures to be driven to extinction by the sudden arrival of humanoid life, though the historians cannot determine whether these humanoids were naturally-occurring, or brought to Skaro by one ancient race or another.
The sapient races, separated by geography and biology, which evolved on Skaro, are many and soon wage war on one another until only the Kaleds and Thals remained. However, the Thousand Year War leads to the arising of a third people, the Mutos; initially a hodgepodge of mutated Kaleds and Thals, they soon form a gene pool of their own, and survive beyond the detonation of the neutron bomb, assisting the surviving Thals.
The historians conclude that the only truly fixed point across Skaro's battle-scarred history is the Dalek City, rebuilt time and again by its masters; they speculate that its most recent destruction at the hands of the resurrected elder Daleks from Skaro's sewers, engineered by the Doctor, can only have been a temporary setback, with the Daleks surely being already at work rebuilding their citadel.
=== Chapter 3 - The Daleks in History ===
The authors of the history of the Daleks are unable to determine for sure the cause of the Daleks' obsession with destroying the human race, speculating that it may be due to their having been the first aliens the Daleks were exposed to, through the companions of the First Doctor, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, although it may simply have been an effect of the humans' uncanny resemblance to the Kaleds or even a purely strategic move from the Daleks recognising the First Great and Bountiful Human Empire as a potential threat to their supremacy.
At any rate, due to the Daleks' lack of compunctions about meddling in time, even before the Last Great Time War, this obsession manifests as the Daleks interfering in early human history. Their earliest known incursion in Earth's past comes in approximately 2,200 B.C. and is recorded in a hierarchic script tablet, which also contains a depiction of the Doctor's TARDIS. Interference of much later Daleks in the Roman era notwithstanding, the next major point of interplay between human history and the Daleks comes in 1866 with the Daleks' alliance with Theodore Maxtible, a Victorian alchemist. With the Second Doctor interfering with the Daleks' plan, the ensuing chaos sets back Dalek advances greatly, but they eventually resurface in Earth history on the Mary Celeste.
The historians also go over the schemes of the Cult of Skaro in 1930 New York and the fate of the Ironside Project during the Second World War, as well as profiles of various mind-controlled human agents of the Daleks throughout the history of their schemes.
=== Chapter 4 - Daleks in the Modern World ===
The history of the Dalek's interference in human history continues through the description of various factions of Daleks' large-scales attempt to invade or destroy the Earth in the 20th century and beyond, ending with an overview by the historians of the various organisations created by humanity to combat their threat — starting with UNIT and continuing with the Space Security Service.
=== Chapter 5 - Building an Empire ===
Circling back to the early days of the Dalek Empire, the historians describe the rise of the Empire, beginning with unsuccessful rocketry experiments involving the Proto 4 and Proto 9, performed under the direction of the Dalek Supreme. In the end, however, the Daleks succeed in conquering and laying waste to other planets, beginning with Alvega, and burn a trail of destruction throughout the universe, both through direct attacks by their fleet and the seeding of factory ships throughout the universe. Eventually, in 2157, the Daleks reach Earth, but are repelled.
This history of the Daleks' military pursuits continues with the Dalek-Movellan War and the complex Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War — dubbed the "first Dalek Civil War" by the human historians — a conflict whose history is made all the more complex by the discovery of a wrecked Supreme Dalek of the New Dalek Paradigm in the ruins of a Renegade Dalek base on Thule, suggesting interference by future Dalek factions in the Civil War.
=== Chapter 6 - The Dalek Wars ===
Before Davros comes to draw plans against the High Council of the Time Lords, the Daleks find themselves "embroiled in endless conflicts across the Seventh Galaxy". This remark leads the historians to retrace the tortuous tale of the Dalek Wars, which they believe were in fact instigated by a Time Lord, , when he comes before the Supreme Council of the Daleks with an plan to pit the Earth Empire against the Draconians and take over in the ashes.
After the failure of the Master's plan, the Gold Dalek, feeling responsible for this major setback, develops a time tunnel which is used in an attempt by the Daleks to change their own history to a more favourable outcome, but this plan is foiled by the Doctor. Further wars see the Daleks take on the Ogrons as slaves and cannon-fodder, having been impressed with the Master's use of them.
The betrayal of the Dalek "Rusty" frightens the Dalek High Command; after capturing Rusty and consigning him to the Dalek Asylum, they take the time to ensure that his betrayal cannot be replicated. With the Gold Dalek lost to time, a different Dalek Supreme takes charge of a smaller-scale time operation, going back in time to attempt to destroy the Doctor, but instead only succeeds in sparking a war between the Daleks and the Mechonoids.
The Supreme Dalek, now the only survivor of the Council, becomes known as "the Dalek Council" and puts forward a great master-plan, allying himself with Mavic Chen. However, that plan, too, ends in failure, and the death of the Dalek Supreme himself.
=== Chapter 7: The Great Time War ===
The historians attempt to draw a history of the Last Great Time War, whose beginning they pin down as the Time Lords' attempt to halt Dalek history by sending the Doctor back in time to their beginning to "destroy them in the crib". Other skirmishes add to the growing tensions between Dalek High Command and the Time Lords, such as Davros' attempt to use the Hand of Omega to destroy Gallifrey.
Following that incident, Davros escapes "the fireball that engulfed his command ship", but lost control of his newly formed Empire, leading to a new Dalek Emperor taking over the Empire and then beginning the Etra Prime Incident. Eventually, the Emperor takes the Daleks "out of time and space", leading them into the Time Vortex itself to prepare for the coming conflict, before beginning the Time War in earnest.
Davros's return to the Time War is short-lived, as the Doctor, having forsworn his people's newfound warlike ways, fails to save him from death in the jaws of the Nightmare Child. The Time Lords, on the other hand, begin to break another of their cardinal rules by resurrecting the long-dead: Rassilon to serve as their Lord President and to act as a general. , however, foresees his own possible death on the Cruciform after the Emperor's takeover, and flees rather than face death once again. The Doctor is forced into the conflict himself, taking on a new form on Karn.
Viewing the situation as an increasing deadlock, the Dalek Emperor founds several secret societies to tip the balance, such as the Cult of Skaro and the Eternity Circle. However, the Time War ultimately ends with a whimper as Gallifrey is consigned to a pocket universe by the Moment, while most Daleks are destroyed. But, from the ashes, the New Dalek Paradigm is eventually born.
=== Chapter 8: The Final End ===
After their recreation, the New Dalek Paradigm consider the unreliable pathweb data of the rewritten past of the Time War and come to the conclusion that the Daleks have, for all intents and purposes, won the conflict. Seizing the Eye of Time, they attempt to fully take over the universe, but are stopped by the Doctor.
This leads the Dalek Empire to recreate itself once again with the institution of a Parliament of the Daleks. However, the Prime Minister of the Daleks of this resurrected Dalek Empire falls from grace due to his decision to send the Eleventh Doctor to the Dalek Asylum, kickstarting a bizarre chain of events which erase the Doctor from all Dalek memories. The Parliament wastes centuries debating its faulty memories, with the worry driving the Prime Minister insane and paralysing the Empire's war efforts.
The original members of the New Dalek Paradigm take over once again after they are told to head to Trenzalore by the Eternal Dalek, where they fight the Siege of Trenzalore after the Dalek race remembers the Doctor. The fleet is only to be destroyed in what the historians tentatively conclude was the true final end of the Daleks, although they warn their readers the Daleks may yet return.
== Characters ==
* Artist
* Arthur Terrall
* Bellatrist Small
* Briant Michel
* Bryant Anderson
* Daleks
** Alpha
** Beta
** Black Dalek Leader
** Caan
** Dalek Prime
** Gold Dalek
** Jast
** Metaltron
** Omega
** Sec
** Thay
* Davros
* The Doctor
* Drenz
* Edwin Bracewell
* Ian
* Jo Grant
* Judith Winters
* Pig slaves
* Prisoner
* Reginald Styles
* Susan
* Theodore Maxtible
* Yarvelling
* Zolfian
== Worldbuilding ==
=== Art ===
* The Eye of the Creator is a painting, created by an artist who is thought to have subsequently been exterminated.
* Humanity created depictions of their enemies the Daleks on television, on stage and in merchandising.
* The Great Thinker was painted by the Moldoxian artist Bellatrist Small.
* Humanity has captured the likeness of the Daleks in "cautionary tales, sketches, engravings and the wild accounts of surviving eyewitnesses".
* The Space Museum on Xeros contains a statue of Dalek Sec, believed to be of Sarkovian origins.
* There exists only one portrait of the Master. It is entitled Portrait of Evil. The work of Skarnn, it hangs in the Church of the Evergreen Man's Oakdown Gallery on Piedosos.
* Taming the Exxilons was a piece of Dalek propaganda by Dalek duplicate and painter, Briant Michel.
* The wailings of Daleks in the Dalek Asylum was sampled by composer Gregori Glasst in his 2378 symphony, The Insanity of the Damned.
* Volsepheron Qiq painted a depiction of surviving Time Lords fleeing the wreckage of Arcadia, based on the memories of General Voltrix.
* Doomed Alliance was created by Alcide Esposito in 2544 and depicts four Grey Daleks, the Dalek Supreme, and a shadowy figure "believed" to be .
* Infernal Sleep by "renowned" 47th century artist Chames Jarlton is kept in the Braxiatel Collection.
=== Biology ===
* Davros's larynx is damaged, necessitating the electronic enhancement of his voice.
* Lallapalanges were harmony birds native to Skaro.
* Squirrel-like creatures "scuttled amongst the leafy forest canopies" prior to the Thousand Year War.
* Arkellis flowers and Vargas are plant species which evolved to adapt to the harsh conditions of the irradiated Skaro.
* Magnedons are described as "crocodilian reptiles with living metal flesh".
=== Culture ===
* Prior to their subjugation by the Daleks, the Ogrons wore face paints depicting the sigil of their individual tribes.
=== Geography ===
* The Plains of Annihilation were once the location of a Thal settlement.
* One of the off-world Dalek creation myths refers to the Sea of Ooze.
* The three major continents of Skaro are Dalazar, Davius and Darren.
=== Military ===
* A Dalek scouting party once managed to capture , leading to his being put on trial for his life.
=== Mythology ===
* The place of the Daleks in other species' mythology is considerable: some view them as devils, others as bogeymen and others yet as "ancient gods from beyond the stars".
* Myths about the creation of the Daleks abound among the races conquered at one point or another by the Daleks.
=== Planets ===
* Planets destroyed by the Daleks during their first burst of expansion included Vega IV, Pyrne, Guria and Selatron.
=== Politics ===
* According to one of the creation myths, Zolfian was the humanoid Daleks' Warlord and Yarvelling was his Chief Scientist.
=== Technology ===
* An Imperial Earth Spy-drone captured an aerial shot of a Dalek invasion fleet.
* According to one of the creation myths, Yarvelling's Dalek War Machines were designed to be autonomous robots that could enter the irradiated zones of the planet.
* At the time Bryant Anderson formulated a new history of the Daleks, humanity was studying the metal exttellium, which was "completely resistant" to Dalek energy beams.
* A "low-res vid-pict" of a Magnedon was recovered from the recording device of a humanoid who was devoured by the beast.
* Dalekised humans were developed after the Time War by the Scientist Dalek on the order of the Strategist Dalek.
=== The Time War ===
* The Last Great Time War is described as a tangled web of "folding paradoxes, alternating realities, dimensional instabilities and rewritten time lines", thus making it nearly impossible to make sense of it in a linear fashion.
* The Time Lords believed the coming of the Daleks "represented the emergence of the enemy they had long prophesied," prompting them to break their vows of non-interference.
== Notes ==
* The text holds that the Siege of Trenzalore could be the final end of the Daleks, but the in-universe authors ultimately conclude the Daleks survived. Indeed, earlier in the text, they note that they are aware that Skaro survives and is populated by Daleks, with the Hybrid Incident being dubbed the most recent incident within the Dalek City that they know of. As such, this text implies the events of The Magician's Apprentice and The Witch's Familiar occur after the Siege for the Daleks.
** As such, the reason no Paradigm casings appear in those stories could be that they were all destroyed at Trenzalore or it was a defeat so great that the post-Time War Dalek Empire officially rejected the Paradigm, with the text noting that the Parliament of the Daleks had already been annoyed with the Paradigm for its failures. That in and of itself suggests that the bronze Daleks of the Paradigm's Empire were not of the supposedly "pure" DNA the Paradigm had prided itself on. Instead, they could be of the same DNA type of Time War-era Daleks if the line "standard bronze units of the Time War" is read in an anti-Paradigm DNA light.
* Interestingly, although it would be exaggeration to suggest the real-world-focused articles in Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe are genuinely part of the story, the in-universe Introduction implied that similar articles may in fact be part of the in-universe book, as "the history of the Daleks would not be complete without an account of how they have been depicted – on television, on stage, and in merchandising – by one of their sworn enemies, the human race".
* The story claims that Davros's injuries prevented him from opening his eyes, effectively blinding him. This contradicts a scene in The Witch's Familiar, which shows Davros successfully opening his eyes, though his vision with them is poor. As Untold History is an in-universe text, the contradict can be solved by the assumption the in-universe authors simply had bad or outdated information.
== Continuity ==
* The most obvious of Davros's many injuries was that his torso had been severed at the waist. (TV: The Witch's Familiar)
* The Time Lords foresaw the Daleks becoming a danger to the universe and dispatched the Fourth Doctor to their "fragile infancy" to attempt to stop it, but he was unsuccessful. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)
* After emerging, the young Daleks built the Dalek City on the ruins of their forebears' capital. (COMIC: Power Play)
* The Thousand Year War ended with the detonation of a neutron bomb which wiped out nearly all life on Skaro. Nine-hundred-years later, the First Doctor, Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright arrive on Skaro and spark a new conflict between the Daleks and surviving Thals. (TV: The Daleks)
* Some of what the historians take to be "warped, mythologised accounts" of the Daleks' creation, arising in the culture of species the Daleks conquered at one point or another, speaks of blue-skinned humanoid Daleks as the forebears to the Daleks. (COMIC: Genesis of Evil) Another "myth" originated in the research of Bryant Anderson (PROSE: We are the Daleks!) shortly before the arising of the First Great and Bountiful Human Empire. (AUDIO: The Lost Flame)
* The leader of the early Dalek Empire under whose guidance spacecraft was developed by the Daleks is referred to as "the Supreme Dalek". (COMIC: The Dalek Tapes)
* Interstellar wars and inter-era wars are thought to have caused the complete destruction of Skaro at least once (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) only for it to be "brought back" through mysterious means by the Daleks, some suggesting that time technology was employed. (PROSE: War of the Daleks; TV: The Magician's Apprentice)
* Skaro in the historians' present day is known to persist, hidden behind an "invisible barrier". (TV: The Magician's Apprentice) The Dalek City was last known to have endured an uprising from its own sewers. (TV: The Witch's Familiar)
* The early Daleks' experiments with space travel were less than successful, even with the use of Metalert. (COMIC: Duel of the Daleks)
* Records suggest the early Daleks allied themselves with powerful spacefaring races like the Voord in exchange for transportation from one galaxy to the next. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Daleks)
* Many believe that the first planet conquered by the Daleks was Alvega. (COMIC: The Amaryll Challenge)
* Dalek factory ships were "blasted into the void" by the thousands in the early days of the Dalek Empire, with one of them crashing on the planet Vulcan. (TV: The Power of the Daleks)
* The historians speculate that the Daleks awarded a trial (TV: Doctor Who) because they harboured some amount of respect for their occasional ally. (TV: Frontier in Space)
* The Daleks were fighting the Combined Galactic Resistance during the Dalek Wars when they discovered Rusty. (TV: Into the Dalek)
* The historians posit that the Daleks who pursued the First Doctor through human history and came in contact with Mechanus (TV: The Chase) were from late in the Dalek Wars, with their leader having been a surviving member of the increasingly-small Supreme Council who took over with the Gold Dalek's time experiments had left off. (TV: Day of the Daleks)
* An alternative name for the Last Great Time War is simply "the Great Time War". (PROSE: Meet the Doctor)
* During the Time War, "a string of Nestene protein planets were left to rot and wither". (TV: Rose)
* Though they successfully established themselves, (TV: Victory of the Daleks) the New Dalek Paradigm suffered a string of defeats at the hands of the Eleventh Doctor involving the Eye of Time, (GAME: City of the Daleks) the Eternity Clock, (GAME: The Eternity Clock) the Alliance of Enemies, (TV: The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang) the Dalek Project, (COMIC: The Dalek Project) and the Dalek Foundation. (PROSE: The Dalek Generation) This led to the establishment of the Parliament of the Daleks. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)
* The Siege of Trenzalore is speculated to be the Final End of the Daleks. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
== External links ==
* 
Category:Dalek short stories
Category:2017 short stories
Category:The Master (Terror of the Autons) short stories
Category:War Master stories