CHRONOLOGIES AND TIMELINES: 

The Tymecian version of Dalek History (a.k.a - The Right Version)

This one's a long one. So I've decided to break it down a bit and will release the chapters over the next little while so that it's a bit more digestible! Since the entire essay is complete, the wait between posts won't be quite as long as it normally is....

This is one of my favorite things to postulate regarding long-term villains and/or monsters in Doctor Who: How, exactly, does their history play out within the context of the stories that have been shown about them. While adventures involving Daleks have happened in one order in the Doctor's timeline - the fact that he has traveled through Time means that, from the Dalek's perspective, their experience of him has happened in an entirely different way. And that's part of what makes Dalek stories so fun - trying to figure out what their "proper" order is.  It can also be something of a conundrum.    But sorting out this puzzle has given my fanboy brain endless hours of enjoyment.  

Before I begin, it should be noted that I have read various other manuscripts that have done the same thing as I have, here (Terry Nation and John Peel's book on the Daleks, Jean-Marc Locifier's  Terrestial Index and so on...).  While many of these other efforts mainly gel with my own theories, there are a few points we greatly differ on.   Should you be familiar with these other works, this will become quite evident to you as you read along.  

Anyway, here goes:  

PART ONE:  THE EARLY DAYS ON SKARO

It all begins, of course, on Skaro.   Probably some time back when Early Man on Earth was just starting to get good at hunting and gathering.    Skaro was already a somewhat advanced civilization, by this point.   Most likely, they'd even done a bit of space exploration and had learnt a fair amount about the galaxy they inhabited.   Maybe even set foot on a few other planets.

            

However, there was a big problem with racial disharmony on Skaro.    The advanced civilization had evolved into two basic cultures - one barely distinguishable from the other - but the differences were distinct enough to provoke an Ultimate War (I say "Ultimate" because I assume there were probably many wars before the one we eventually see in Genesis).

            

The two sides of this War were, quite naturally, the Kaleds and the Thals.    And while the War was, initially, fought from opposite ends of the planet, it is said that it waged on for close to a thousand years.   As populations were decimated - the enemies moved closer.   Until, eventually, most of the planet was now barren from the ravages of battle and the surviving population of both races were inhabiting huge protective domes that were practically only spitting distance away from each other.   

            

And into this mess, the Fourth Doctor is dropped.    And the events of Genesis of the Daleks ensue.   We meet Davros for the first time and get some somewhat revisionistic history that almost flatly contradicts the events of The Daleks.  But, good little fanboy that I am, I can make sense of this.   

            

Of course, the important piece of information to note to help fix this is a bit of throwaway dialogue in Episode Two.    The discussion of the different models of travel machines.   The Daleks we see in Genesis are "Mark Three".   Which suggests there are two other versions of Daleks that were built before them.   The Mark One was, most likely, largely unsuccessful and was scrapped, altogether.    The Mark Two was probably experimented with more extensively before it was, eventually, abandoned.   The Mark Three used most of the same design as the Mark Two but Davros found a different power source for them.    Mark Two used static electricity.  Mark Three relied on solar power (or, quite possibly, psycho-kinetic energy - or a combination of the two).       

            

There is one other important snippet of dialogue that we get in Part Six of Genesis that also helps to reconcile some of the continuity issues.    The Doctor makes an assumption that he has set the Daleks back a good thousand years or so.   It seems almost absurd that the Doctor can make such an assumption - but he does understand the Daleks better than anyone.   So we should take him at face value.  

            

Let's assume that the millennium he speaks of takes place entirely with Mark Threes remaining in the bunker.   Given that they are in a facility designed for humans rather than Daleks, it would take some time for them to even adapt the technology around them to work for Daleks rather than Kaleds.    Once they've adapted the technology, however, they start digging themselves' out of the bunker.   But all this adaptation and burrowing takes years to properly accomplish.   

            

At the end of Genesis of the Daleks, we get the impression that there is a fair amount of Thal survivors.   That they have banded together with the Mutants of the Wasteland and will probably try to rebuild what's left of their society now that the Thousand Year War is definitely over.   The Mark Threes, as we've just said, take several years before they can emerge again.   This gives the Thals and the Mutants some time to reconstruct their society.   The emerging Dalek force, quite small in comparison to the Thal/Mutant community, see how outnumbered they are and immediately descend back into their bunker.   

            

While, the Mark Three Daleks, themselves', are too few (there is, to all appearances, only a handful of them at the end of Genesis).   They repair their incubation chambers and set about building an army.   They also expand their bunker into a huge underground base.   The Thals and the Mutants have moved to another part of Skaro and don't even notice this development occurring.  So several more years pass as the Mark Threes build themselves' up.   

            

More than likely, there was also a small amount of Kaleds kicking around during all this time and they have created a tiny colony of their own.  They are also thriving on another part of the planet far away from everyone.   But they are keeping an eye on the Thals and the Mutants - seeing that the two only seem to be getting along so well.    If nothing else, the Thals seem greatly intent upon remaining distinct from the Mutants.   Within the colony they are building up - there is a fair amount of racial segregation.   Thals stay with Thals and Mutants with Mutants.   They only cooperate with each other on the most basic of levels.         

            

Eventually, enough disagreements started happening between the Thals and the Mutants.   Seeing this problem, the Kaleds choose to band with the Mutants and create a proper nation of their own.    Not wanting to repeat the mistakes of the Thals, this new alliance re-christens themselves' as "Dals".    Distinction between Kaled and Mutant is lost and they are a stronger people for it.     

            

Of course, animosity now begins to grow between the Thals and Dals.  Technology begins to advance, too.   The neutron bomb is eventually developed and the two cultures experience the equivalent of a Cold War.   Both sides possess an endless arsenal of world-destroying missiles that are just waiting to be launched.    

            

Around this time, the Mark Threes re-emerge from their bunker to poke around a bit.    They have now amassed a formidable army and the bunker is now quite the underground base. It's taken quite some time to do this with their limited resources - several decades, at least.   But they feel ready to, at last, re-conquer the surface.   

 

By this point, however, the Mark Three Daleks see how close the Thals and the Dals are to an all-out war.    Again, they descend underground and choose to wait out that war.    No doubt, one side will wipe out the other and they will only need to fight one army instead of two.         

            

Quite to the Mark Threes' surprise, the Thals and Dals choose to use their Neutron Bombs against each other.    Once more, the surface of Skaro is devastated.    The Great Wait underground is prolonged for an even larger period of time as the radiation from the Neutron War must now clear before they can re-emerge.    This process takes another five hundred years or so.   

            

Which means the Doctor isn't far off in his estimation that the Daleks have been genuinely set back for a thousand years.  Had they not been buried in that bunker, they would have immediately returned to the surface and conquered Skaro quite quickly.  The Thals, Mutants and Kaleds that had survived the Thousand Year War were still too small in number and would've posed no real threat against even a handful of Daleks.   But being trapped underground for a few years set the Mark Threes back just enough to create a series of events that slowed down their overall quest to conquer the Universe. That whole series of events went on for nearly a thousand years.   As usual, it's a bit of a stretch - but we can get it all to work.   And it also allows us to make sense of the whole Kaled/Dal continuity error.         

            

The Neutron War wiped out most of the Thal and Dal population.   The survivors were suffering greatly from radioactive contamination.   Both species began to mutate.   The Thals, of course, eventually mutated Full Circle.   But not so with the Dals.   Inter-breeding with a race already influenced by mutation meant that they would evolve differently after the catastrophe.    They would turn into the slug-like creatures that Davros had first engineered those many years ago.    Vaguely recalling Davros' theories, the Dals look back into his works.  While most of his research was kept secret and could not be recovered - some of his work was much more public knowledge.   This included most of his findings regarding the Mark Two Travel Machines.    As the Dals tried to re-build a civilization after the Neutron War, they used Davros' Mark Two designs to secure a future of some sort for themselves'.    They built a version of Dalek reliant upon static electricity and began to place the more advanced versions of their mutation into them.  Their future was now secure and they continued to build a city for their new Dalek form to dwell within.  

            

The remaining Thals, however, had moved out to a more remote part of the planet where there was still some fertile land for them to work.  But the move came at a sacrifice. Not a lot of technology was made available to them in that new location.  So as the Daleks bred in their City and continued to become more and more advanced, the Thals stayed close to nature and maintained a fairly primitive lifestyle. They also became extreme pacifists.  

            

And now, the events of The Daleks take place. And while it looks like our Mark Twos are done for by the end of this particular battle, close to a thousand years have now passed since Genesis of the Daleks.   Those nasty solar-powered Mark Threes have waited out the radiation and are finally ready to properly re-emerge onto the surface and begin their plans for conquest.   

            

One of the first things the Mark Threes do is discover the abandoned Dalek City.   They take advantage of their find.   Certain adaptations are made to the Mark Twos to make them more mobile.   They're given little receptor dishes so that power can be transmitted to them.    And while they are probably considered an inferior model of Dalek - the Mark Threes are still a relatively small army and every single soldier is needed to expand the Empire. 

            

No doubt, a great clash between Daleks and Thals occurred on Skaro at this time.   We can't say for sure what happened in that battle - but we get the impression that the Thals actually drove the Daleks off the planet.    The Daleks formed a space fleet of some sort and went off to conquer the Galaxy.  The Thals probably ignored the Dalek menace once it left their world and only started to decide to do something about the Dalek Spacefleet some great time later.