Doctor Who: 10 Worst Things The Daleks Have Ever Done
The metal pepper pots have committed some of the worst atrocities in the Whoniverse.
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00:00Doctor Who's first monsters have plagued the Hooniverse time and time again.
00:05Now these pepper pots first appeared in 1963 and from the very beginning
00:10were a chilling force to be reckoned with.
00:13The Daleks have one of the most iconic looks in sci-fi culture
00:17and whilst the designs have altered slightly over the years,
00:20the 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,
01:01venturing into the time war.
01:03Now the first audio adventure for The War Doctor
01:06saw the Daleks invade a planet called Keska,
01:09along with another ruthless race, the Tarleans.
01:12Now on the surface, invading a planet and enslaving the locals
01:15is a pretty generic thing for the Daleks to do,
01:17but 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 managed 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,
02:19the 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,
02:40he 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 and 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, it's this one.
03:26Number 8
03:26The Magician's Apprentice, and which is familiar, tricking the Doctor.
03:31The latest reunion between the Doctor and Davros sees the Time Lords
03:36summoned to the planet of the Daleks, Skaro, 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,
03:46who 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
04:04connecting 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.
04:22However, once rescued by Missy, the 12th 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,
04:37although 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 seven, 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, whereas the horror of the Dalek conversion
05:13is that hatred and anger are channelled in order to make the machine go.
05:18In the series seven opener, when venturing into the Dalek asylum,
05:22Oswin Oswald ends up captured by the Daleks inside,
05:26and 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.
05:41It'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 eleventh Doctor to escape.
06:02Granted, this isn't some huge invasion that puts countless lives at risk,
06:06but the ordeal that Oswin goes through is horrific.
06:09Number six, the Daleks' master plan, the Time Destructor.
06:14The 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.
06:29Their 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 Finnish war doctor series in the opening moments.
07:24But it does represent the huge threat presented by the Daleks, if not stopped.
07:30Number five, Planet of the Ogrons, the Overseer.
07:34Another slightly altered Dalek appearing in Big Finnish here,
07:38the Dalek Overseer is a monstrous scientist
07:42who appears in the eighth Doctor's Time War series.
07:45Based on the titular Planet of the Ogrons, the Overseer creates dreadful experiments
07:51in 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,
08:20but the aim was to try and increase the Daleks' chances of victory
08:25through 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, and 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.
08:511975'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.
09:10But by the next serial, they want him back,
09:12with him thankfully for them having survived within the depths of Skaro.
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 has chucked away into the basement,
09:30with them simply using him once again, without him running the show.
09:34The lack of respect is therefore a running trend in Davros' character,
09:38and in the previously mentioned series' nine-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.
09:58Even 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 this serial, Davros has recreated the Daleks
10:16using his own cells, which 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
10:56is a testament to the lengths the Pepper Pot
10:58were willing to go for this scheme.
11:00And while this plot does fail, we do see the devastation
11:04that this device is capable of when it is tested
11:07on a group of humans who, as mentioned,
11:09quite literally turn to dust.
11:11Number two, Revelation of the Daleks using the dead of Nekros.
11:161985's Revelation of the Daleks sees the sixth 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, Davros was creating a new race of Daleks
11:32from the dead humans.
11:34Revelation through and through is a very bleak story,
11:37but Davros using the corpses within the facility
11:40is 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.
11:53These new Daleks become the ranks of Davros's
11:56previously mentioned Imperial Daleks.
11:58This plot is an interesting one,
12:00as using humans, like the case with Oswin years later,
12:03to create Daleks seems to go against
12:05their quest for racial purity.
12:07Now, we could argue that this shocking Dalek moment
12:11could take top spot, but there is one more Dalek moment
12:16that just about takes the trophy.
12:18Number one, 22nd century Dalek invasions of Earth.
12:22In the 22nd century, the Daleks invade Earth,
12:25twice, crippling the planet.
12:28The first Dalek sequel brings the creatures
12:30from Skaro to Earth for the first time,
12:32and years later, Big Finish brings them back
12:34for round two, 20 years after their first attempt.
12:38The strategy for invasion involved
12:39bombarding the planet with meteorites,
12:42unleashing a plague from within the meteorites,
12:44which wiped out the majority of people
12:46in Africa, Asia, and South America.
12:49Once the population was weakened,
12:50the Daleks moved in for conquest.
12:52This may seem kind of run-of-the-mill
12:54compared to previously mentioned entries,
12:56but the Daleks occupied Earth for 10 years,
13:00causing insurmountable pain to humanity.
13:02Recent Big Finish adventures
13:04following the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan,
13:06after the first invasion claim Earth's technology
13:09is set back 200 years.
13:11Similar to the Thousand World plot,
13:13the Daleks aim to reach the center of the planet
13:15and replace it with a propulsion system
13:18to use as a massive, movable base of operations
13:21to 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
13:30to create a plague planet,
13:33capable of moving through time and space
13:35to weaken and infect other worlds.
13:37The Daleks are the most pure evil force in Doctor Who,
13:42and the Whoniverse should be thankful
13:44that most of these plots were stopped
13:46before 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.
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14:05I've been Ellie with WhoCulture,
14:07and in the words of River Song herself,
14:09goodbye, sweeties.