Daleks

"EXTERMINATE!"

- Catchphrase of the Daleks

"Daleks are the Masters of Earth!"

- The Supreme Dalek

Daleks are the most recurring enemies of the Doctor in the long-running British, sci-fi series Doctor Who. Their main objective is to reign supreme over the Universe and destroy every other species, seeing the Doctor as "The Oncoming Storm" or mortal enemy.

The Daleks were created by writer Terry Nation and designed by Raymond Cusick. The Daleks have become a very famous icon for Doctor Who, mainly for their catchphrase "EX-TER-MI-NATE!" They were introduced in the 1963 Doctor Who serial, "The Daleks".

Origin
The Daleks originated from Skaro during a thousand year-long war between the Kaleds and Thals. They are result of a Kaled scientist named Davros experimenting on his people as some are mutated by the war.

Davros removed the blobs of flesh of all emotions except hatred and placed them in tank-like "Mark III Travel Machines", partly based on the design of his wheelchair. Thus, despite the Fourth Doctor was sent to avert their creation on the Time Lords' behalf, the Daleks are born as they disposed of Davros, acting on his desire for them to be ultimate lifeform while exterminating what they consider inferior.

Five centuries later, having enslaved the surviving Thals and pacified them as they are unable to leave their base of operations, the Daleks encounter the first incarnation of the Doctor when he arrives to Skaro and gives the Thals the courage to stand up and fight for their freedom. The First Doctor encounters the Daleks another time, when they invade Earth at the end of the 21th Century and are defeated with the help of Earth's resistance fighters.

The Endeavor of the Daleks
Over the course of their encounters with the Doctor and his other incarnations, the Daleks developed time travel and evolved into an interstellar empire by the year 4000. They were believed to be destroyed after the Second Doctor had seen their city burn down, however, they returned previous to the Second World Peace Conference, encounteruing the Third Doctor.

Eventually encountering a hostile race of androids called the Movellans, the Daleks realized they were in a stalemate and decide to revive Davros to give them an advantage in the presence of the Fourth Doctor. However, Davros was captured and imprisoned for his crimes with the Daleks locked in combat with the Movellans until they would develop a virus that targets the Daleks about a century later.

A single Dalek appeared as an enemy in the deadly games on Gallifrey, when Borusa had captured the five incarnations of the Doctor. It was destroyed when it was hit by it's own laser which was reflected by a mirror.

The Dalek Civil War
Though the Daleks rescued Davros to help develop a cure for the Movellan's virus, their creator betrays them and later develops Imperial Dalek loyal to him. This causes a a schism among the Daleks, with one faction following Davros's leadership and another rejecting their creator to instead follow a Supreme Dalek.

Eventually, Davros succeeds in becoming the unquestioned emperor of the Daleks as he and the Renegade Daleks appear on Earth to obtain the Hand of Omega to refine their crude time travel technology. But the Seventh Doctor rigs the hand to have Skaro's sun go supernova to wipe out the Dalek homeworld and the Imperial Dalek fleet. Though the Renegade Supreme Dalek self-destructed upon learning to be the last of its kind, Davros, escaped his flagship's destruction in an escape pod and created a new breed of Dalek that executed the Master for his crimes.

The Time War and its Aftermath
These Daleks later battled the Time Lords led by Rassilon in the Time War, which threatened the whole of creation and in which the Doctor therefore had to obliterate both them and his people. This also affected others of the Doctor's enemies, like the Nestene Consciousness and the Gelth, who lost their bodies in the war.

However, some Daleks survived the Time War. Henry Van Statten, a wealthy American businessman and the owner of the Internet in 2012, managed to obtain a lone inactive (and badly damaged) Dalek and kept it in a secret underground museum known as the Vault. Van Statten referred to it as a "Metaltron" and tortured it in order to find out what it was. This Dalek sent out a distress signal which was intercepted by the TARDIS, where it would be encountered by the Ninth Doctor and his companion, Rose Tyler. The Dalek tricked Rose touching it, thus using her imprint to regenrate and free itself from captivity. It went on a killing spree, before realizing it had gained emotions, thus it demanded Rose give it the order to self-destruct. Rose, though reluctant at first, relented, and the Dalek self-destructed.

The insane Emperor Dalek, another survivor of the Time War, managed to create a dangerous form of Dalek from human tissue after time-traveling to the time of the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, where he and his fleet manipulated the human race for many years by using minions like the Jagrafess, the Editor and Anne Droid.

When the Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack Harkness returned to the Game Station in the year 200,000, the Emperor and his fleet finally revealed themselves and launched an invasion of Earth, beginning by attacking the Game Station. After realizing that he was vastly outnumbered by the Daleks and that he had run out of options, the Doctor decided that he would use the station to generate a Delta Wave, a powerful energy wave that would wipe out the entire Dalek fleet, but, unfortunately, kill everything else as well, including himself. Not wanting to risk Rose, the Doctor uses Emergency Program One to send Rose home, but Rose, desperate to save the Doctor, looks into the heart of the TARDIS and absorbs the Time Vortex, thus becoming an omnipotent-figure known as the Bad Wolf entity. Using the TARDIS to return to the Game Station, Rose uses her new-found powers to decimate the entire Dalek fleet, revive Captain Jack (who'd been killed by the Daleks earlier) and save the Doctor. This was considered as the last act fo the Time War.

The Cult of Skaro
The most infamous of the Daleks were Dalek Sec, Dalek Caan, Dalek Thay and Dalek Jast, the members of the Cult of Skaro who escaped during the Time War by going into the nothingness between dimensions — the Void — taking with them a Time Lord prison, the Genesis Ark, which contained millions of Daleks.

The Daleks' Void Ship finally emerged in 21st century Earth, where it was examined by the Torchwood Institute. The path of the void ship also left a breach in spacetime that allowed the Cybermen of a parallel universe to cross over. This results in a three sided fight between the humans, Cybermen, and Daleks until the Tenth Doctor has the monster armies sucked into the void with the Cult of Skaro escaping to 1920s New York.

Creation and End of the New Dalek Empire
Unable to create a new generation of Daleks, the Cult's leader Dalek Sec hatched a plan of evolve their species into a more adaptive race to escape extinction. The Cult of Skaro employ a man named Mr Diagoras to finishing the Empire State Building and reinforce it with Dalekanium metal while Dalek Caan, Dalek Thay and Dalek Jast were assigned to take more intelligent humans they capture to became part of the Final Experiment: converting their bodies into blank slates to be infused with Dalek DNA. With his fellow Daleks making sacrifices for their scheme, Sec follows suit by assimilating Diagoras to become a "Human Dalek" and splice his DNA into the humans through gamma radiation from the Sun.

However, as Sec begins to develop emotions and makes peace with the Doctor, Caan staged a coup that killed Sec and became the new cult leader with the intent to infuse the captured humans with pure Dalek DNA. However, the Daleks' plans fell into ruin when their Dalek army was corrupted with Time Lord DNA and Thay and Jast were killed.

The sole survivor of the Cult of Skaro, Dalek Caan terminated the Dalek-Human army by remote before the Dalek initiated an emergency temporal shift to force his way into the Time War to save Davros at the cost of his insanity and armored body.

Regardless, establishing the New Dalek Empire, Darvos produces a new generation of Daleks from his flesh and uses them to enact a scheme to wipe out reality itself. To build a reality bomb he steals 27 planets including Earth, Adipose 3, the Moon of Poosh and Pyrovilia, the planet of the Pyrovile. But the interference of The Doctor and his companions, who had all teamed up as the "Children of Time", had stopped Davros' plans, who learns that Caan engineered it so the Daleks would be destroyed forever as the Crucible explodes with all Daleks and Davros destroyed in the process.

The Return of the Daleks
However, remnants of the New Dalek Empire survived and ended up in England during World War II where they posed as weapons called "Ironsides" that were used by Winston Churchill against the Nazis. Awaiting for the Eleventh Doctor, the Daleks trick him to confirm them as true Daleks so that can activate the Progenitor, a small capsule containing pure Dalek DNA from Skaro. Though their plan was a success, the five newly created Daleks vaporize their predecessors before escaping into the future where they rebuild the Dalek race as their final victory. This was the official formation of the New Dalek Paradigm.

These new Daleks played a role in the Doctor's sealing in the Pandorica to save the universe with the Cybermen, the Sontarans, the Judoon and others. Furthermore, the Doctor later searched the data of a damaged Dalek for information about the Silence.

Eventually, the Doctor, who was lured to the Parliament of the Daleks and his companions Amy and Rory are drafted by the Dalek Prime Minister and enter the Asylum of the Daleks, a planetary prison, to disable the force-field so that the Daleks could destroy the Asylum before its most dangerous occupants could escape. It was at that time that Doctor encounters Oswin Oswald, learning that she is a human converted into a Dalek yet managed to maintain herself. Helping the Doctor succeed at the cost of her life, Oswald hacked into the Daleks' psychic path-web to delete all memory of the Doctor from them, so that he could escape.

The Daleks will return in the 50th Anniversary Special, The Day of the Doctor.

Trivia

 * According to one of the show's writers Terry Nation, the Daleks were deliberately modeled after elements of Nazi ideology: viewing themselves as the superior lifeform and enact a relentless crusade to destroy all life they consider inferior.
 * The Funnybot from South Park is modeled after the Daleks.

Appearances in other Media

 * The Daleks also make an appearance in Looney Tunes: Back In Action, where they are released by Marvin the Martian in order of Mr. Chairman to cause chaos in Area 52.
 * Some Daleks, disguised as police officers, briefly appear in the Simpsons episode "Holidays of Future Past", chasing a woman at "The BennyHilton".
 * The late comedian, Dave Allen, on his show Dave Allen At Large, had an opening skit wherein a British vicar was surprised by a Dalek disguised as a fixture in his church.