| “ | I reached into the dirt and made new life. I am the GOD OF ALL DALEKS! | „ |
| ~ The Dalek Emperor revealing his god complex. |
| “ | Purify the Earth with fire. The planet will become my temple and we shall rise. This will be our paradise! | „ |
| ~ The Dalek Emperor to his army. |
The Dalek Emperor is a major antagonist in the Doctor Who franchise, serving as the main antagonist of Seasons 1-4 of the classic series and Series 1 of the revival series, as well as the First and Ninth Doctor's tenure as a whole.
In Evil of the Daleks, the Emperor is voiced by the late Roy Skelton, who voiced the Daleks and many other villains throughout the classic series. As with the other Daleks in the Revival era, he was voiced by Nicholas Briggs, who also voiced the Emperor in Big Finish's audio dramas, and the Time Lord Victorious multi media storyline.
Biography[]
Past[]
One of the first Daleks, who exterminated Davros and proclaimed the Daleks' future victory over the universe, assumed the role of Dalek Prime (later Dalek Emperor) and would continue to act as the Emperor throughout Dalek history.
The Evil of the Daleks[]
One of the best known incarnations of the Emperor remained in an enormous, immobile, conical shell plugged into a corner of the control room in the Dalek City on Skaro. It was connected to the wall by tubes, and spoke in an echoing voice.
The Emperor tried to conquer the Earth by blackmailing the Second Doctor. He ordered the Daleks to capture the Doctor so that they could force him to conduct research into the Human Factor. This would unlock the secrets of the Dalek Factor which was to be spread throughout all areas of human history, giving all humans the mentality of a Dalek and preventing the Great War from ever happening. He was seemingly destroyed by a civil war between humanized Daleks and un-altered Daleks. However, a light was seen blinking on its casing at the end, indicating some kind of activity.
Imperial Dalek Emperor[]
The Imperial Dalek faction during the Dalek Civil War was led by an Emperor. This Emperor was in fact Davros, creator of the Daleks, and founder of the Imperial Faction, who wired himself into an Emperor casing. As seen in Remembrance of the Daleks, Davros led his faction to 1963 to retrieve the Time Lord stellar manipulator, the Hand of Omega, so that the Daleks could develop time travel to rival the Time Lords. However, he was tricked by the Seventh Doctor into destroying Skaro. According to the audio drama Terror Firma, after Skaro's destruction, Davros began developing a second personality that far more resembled that of a true Dalek Emperor. After confronting the Eighth Doctor, who ensured the dangerously unstable Davros's complete mental breakdown, he lost his original personality, and left with his Daleks as the Emperor.
Time Lord Victorious[]
According to the Time Lord Victorious storyline, a Dalek Supreme that was part of the Imperial Dalek council went onto become Emperor after Davros fled the Civil War, executing the other members of the council. The Emperor of the Restoration Empire was aggressive and single minded in building up the Daleks to their past glory, even adopting a casing similar to the original Emperor.
to be added
Time War[]
The Emperor led the Daleks during the Last Great Time War between the Daleks and the Time Lords. (Whether this Emperor was the same one as a previous Emperor is open to interpretation) The nine-meter tall Emperor's new casing had the appearance of its mutant revealed floating in a transparent tank of liquid, topped by a giant-sized Dalek dome, complete with eyestalk, flanked by panels of armor dotted by Dalek "bumps" with a ring-shaped "throne" on the bottom. He formed the Cult of Skaro, a group above and beyond the Emperor himself, created to "think as the enemy thinks" and "imagine" new ways to find victory. The Emperor took control of the Cruciform which scared the Master so much he fled the war. Even early in the Time War, the Emperor was developing a God complex.
The Dalek Emperor was aboard its saucer flagship when all the incarnations of the Doctor up to the Twelfth moved Gallifrey to a pocket universe on the last day of the Time War, the assembled Dalek fleet ended up firing on itself through the space Gallifrey once occupied (an event which was presumed to have been the activation of the Moment) as such, the Emperor was believed to have died with the rest of its species, but this was mistaken.
Series 1[]
The Emperor's lone ship barely survived the Time War, falling through time in a heavily damaged state. It went into seclusion at the edge of the Solar system "damaged but rebuilding" during the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. Circa 199,909, it secretly installed the Jagrafess aboard Satellite Five to play the "long game" of slowly manipulating humans and re-establishing the Dalek species and fleet. A hundred years after the Jagrafess was killed, in the year 200,100, the Emperor was still using Satellite Five (now renamed the "Game Station") to manipulate humanity and conceal his fleet. The Emperor secretly used transmat technology aboard the space station to kidnap humans for nearly two hundred years. The kidnapped humans were harvested for their genetic material, and "one cell in a billion" was used to rebuild a new race of Daleks numbering roughly half a million aboard a fleet of 200 ships. Because the Emperor had recreated the Dalek race, it saw itself as a god and immortal and so was worshiped by the new Daleks. These and other religious concepts such as blasphemy were new to Dalek psychology.
The Emperor's pawn aboard Satellite Five, the Controller, hated her masters and transmitted the Ninth Doctor aboard the Game Station to help defeat them. When he encountered the Emperor and his new religiously fanatical Daleks, the Doctor surmised that they were driven insane both because they isolated themselves for so long, but also because they were in denial of the fact that they were part human. The Daleks killed almost everyone aboard Satellite Five, and they attacked Earth, bombing millions of people, to transform it into the Emperor's "temple". Shortly afterwards, the Doctor turned down his chance to use an uncalibrated delta wave to destroy all nearby life, human and Dalek alike. The Emperor thought he was victorious, but he and his entire fleet were atomized by Rose Tyler after she had absorbed the energies of the time vortex and became the Bad Wolf temporal paradox.
Personality[]
The Dalek Emperor began to see himself as an immortal god as a result of his great success and soon had the other Daleks actively worship it as such. His isolation in space had utterly warped his mind and while being comforted by the Ninth Doctor he revealed his obvious arrogance and insanity, to the point where he even claimed he cannot die when being attacked by Rose Tyler, fused with the power of the time vortex energy. The Dalek Emperor despised anything that wasn't Dalek and because of this he shared his species belief of racial purity however contradictory to his belief, the new race of Daleks that the Emperor created were made from the flesh of abducted humans from Satellite 5 and when Rose Tyler said that his new empire was part human, The Emperor declared her words as blasphemy.
Appearance[]
The first Dalek Emperor
The first televised Dalek Emperor was a large, immobile machine with various tubes connecting to the walls around it. The lower casing had one row of spheres on the lower part and two on the upper part. It had a normal sized head atop its neck-like guard with a single eyestalk.
The second Dalek Emperor floats in a transparent cylindrical tank below a giant dome, complete with lights and eyestalk. Two mechanical arms are mounted to the base of this tank. The central structure is connected by articulated joints to three flanking panels, to which large hemispheres are attached, meaning his massive casing was connected to the interior of his flagship.
Quotes[]
| “ | You will take the Dalek factor. You will spread it to the entire history of Earth! | „ |
| ~ The Dalek Emperor reveals the end goal of the Human Factor experiment to the Second Doctor. |
| “ | You will not fight in here! | „ |
| ~ The Dalek Emperor to his maddened slaves. |
| “ | They survived through me! | „ |
| ~ The Dalek Emperor. |
| “ | You destroyed us Doctor! The Dalek race died in your inferno, but my ship survived! Falling through time; crippled, but alive! | „ |
| ~ The Dalek Emperor to the Ninth Doctor. |
| “ | We waited here in the dark space, damaged but rebuilding. Centuries passed and we quietly infiltrated the systems of Earth, harvesting the waste of humanity: the prisoners, the refugees, the dispossessed; they all came to us. The bodies were filtered, pulped, sifted. The seed of the human race is perverted. Only one cell in a billion was fit to be nurtured. | „ |
| ~ Dalek Emperor explaining his efforts in building a new empire, while hidden in the dark. |
| “ | Everything human has been purged. I cultivated pure and blessed Dalek! | „ |
| ~ Dalek Emperor's offended objection to Rose's observation of being part-human, and also revealing his insanity. |
| “ | If I am God, the creator of all things, then what does that make you, Doctor? | „ |
| ~ The Dalek Emperor taunting the Ninth Doctor. |
| “ | They were not part of my design. This is the truth of God. | „ |
| ~ The Dalek Emperor, revealing that he was not the cause of the 'Bad Wolf' message. |
| “ | Tell him the truth, Doctor. There is every possibility of completing the delta wave, but no possibility of refining it. The delta wave must kill every living thing - be it human or Dalek! | „ |
| ~ Dalek Emperor attempting to sow discord between the Doctor and Jack Harkness. |
| “ | Purify the Earth with fire. The planet will become my temple and we shall rise. This will be our paradise! | „ |
| ~ The Dalek Emperor's madness making him consider routine Dalek strategy as something of divinity. |
| “ | I want to see you become like me. Hail the Doctor, THE GREAT EXTERMINATOR! | „ |
| ~ The Dalek Emperor taunting the Doctor. |
| “ | Then prove yourself, Doctor! What are you, coward or killer? | „ |
| ~ The Dalek Emperor, goading the Doctor to activate the Delta Wave. |
| “ | I will not die! I CANNOT DIE! | „ |
| ~ The Dalek Emperor's last words as Bad Wolf erases it and its empire. |
Trivia[]
- The Evil of the Daleks was originally planned to be the final Doctor Who story to ever feature Daleks, due to the creatures belonging to Terry Nation, who had been shopping Daleks to American production companies. However, since Nation's deals fell through, he allowed the BBC to keep using them, thus was the Dalek Emperor's death was altered to imply survival with a glowing light - the only special effect the crew could implement in such a short time available.
- Terry Nation would also write later Dalek storylines, such as the iconic Genesis of the Daleks, which further explored the roots of the creatures, as well as introduce an extremely important and popular character of their creator, Davros.
- Davros himself once acted as a "Dalek Emperor" in "Remembrance of the Daleks".
- A similar model to the Dalek Emperor appears as the Dalek Prime Minister in series 7 of the revival series.
- The emperor has special Dalek guards whose head domes are black.
- According to the novel "War of the Daleks", the Dalek Prime, one of the first Daleks ever made, is another name for the Emperor. This has led some to infer that every appearance of the Dalek Emperor, save the stories where they are explicitly a different individual, are all the same character, until their final destruction in The Parting of the Ways.
External Links[]
- The Dalek Emperor on the Doctor Who Wiki
