CHRONOLOGIES AND TIMELINES:
Episode 4 of The Tymecian version
of Dalek History (a.k.a - The Right Version)
Well, that wraps things up for all Classic Series Dalek stories. From hereon in, it's strictly New Series stuff. Pre and Post Time War Daleks, in my book, don't really mix (or they don't mix much - we did have a brief mention of Asylum of the Daleks in the last part). We'll have one more installment after this.
PART FOUR: THE TIME
WARS!
While their plans with the Time
Destructor have failed, this does not stop the Daleks. They continue their galactic expansion
campaign and maintain their experiments with the Nature of Time. As they start approaching the 41st or 42nd
Century, they seem to attain the one thing that makes them too much of a threat
to the Universe. They gain Full Mastery
over Time, itself. They even seem to
have changed the way they gather energy for themselves'. Instead of harnessing solar power (or
perhaps psycho-kinetic energy as the the Third Doctor once suggested in Death
to the Daleks) they now use artron energy as their main power source. Because of this discovery, the basic Dalek
design goes through its heaviest overhaul.
The gold-liveried Daleks that we see in the New Series are born.
These new Daleks continue to build
various sorts of "Time Weaponry" and develop all kinds of methods of
manipulating the Fourth Dimension.
Basically, they become that menace the Time Lords were fearing way back
when they sent the Fourth Doctor on his mission to destroy them at the point of
their origin. Which means, of course,
that the Time Lords must finally act against them directly.
And so, the Time Wars begin.
Since most of the wars weren't
actually seen in the New or Classic Series, we can only gather scant knowledge
about the Time Wars through dialogue that's been delivered by various
characters that participated in it. It
is possible to re-construct some of the events of the Time Wars through this
dialogue, but I shall try to stick mainly to the issues that relate directly to
the Daleks.
It does seem that the wars don't
only involve Daleks and Time Lords but other races and beings, too. And whoever won these wars would be rewarded
with ultimate control over Time and the Universe, itself. The Time Lords had always possessed this
power, of course, and had chosen not to abuse it. But this would not be the case with the
Daleks or the other species/beings that were attempting to win the Wars.
It would appear that Davros is,
somehow, running the initial Dalek campaigns in the Time Wars (he may not
actually be their leader, the Daleks may have just pressed him into their
service). Again, he was probably "scooped up" in some way from the
27th/28th Century and brought forward to handle battle-strategy. Davros fights well in the early skirmishes of
the Time Wars. But in a conflict at the
Gates of Elysium with a strange being known only as The Nightmare Child, he
appears to have been destroyed (apparently, he flew into the Nightmare Child's
mouth!). Only future events would
reveal a different outcome.
A short while later, the Emperor
Dalek is also retrieved from the past.
He seems to have some degree of success in the Wars too. At one point he takes control of something known
as a Cruciform. An act that causes the
Master (ressurected from being sucked into the Eye of Harmony during the 96
Telemovie) to make an all-out retreat from the battle and hide himself at the
end of the Universe. What other
victories or losses the Emperor achieved in the War Effort are unknown.
We do know, however, that the
Emperor decides to take out a bit of an insurance policy for the survival of
his race through use of the Cult of Skaro.
Having retrieved a Time Lord prison ship with an army of Daleks in it,
he places it and the Cult into a Void Ship and hides them in the nul space
between Universes for safekeeping. The
Ship is programmed to re-emerge into the Universe on Earth in the 21st Century:
a point in Time and Space far from the action of the Time Wars.
As it turns out, other things happen
after the Cult of Skaro contingency plan to help ensure the survival of the
Dalek race. But these things seem to
have happened more by accident, than anything.
Somehow, a single Dalek soldier is flung from the Time Wars and crashes
on 20th-Century Earth. It seems that
the Emperor, himself, is also ejected from the battlefield at some point.
Sometime after these events, the
Doctor becomes completely revolted with how the Time Wars are proceeding. He sees that even the Time Lords are gaining
a lust for power and knows that he must completely destroy everything and
everyone on the battlefield if the Universe is to survive. He comes into possession of a weapon known
as "The Moment". He
eventually uses the weapon - wiping out all the participants in the Wars and
putting the whole event in a Time Lock so that no one else can escape the fate
that's been handed to them. Of course,
the Doctor doesn't know that several Daleks have already escaped. But he will find out soon enough.
For several seasons of the New
Series, this is the established order of events in the Time Wars. But, thanks to the recent transmission of Day
of the Doctor, a new footnote can be added. Mention is made of The Fall of Arcadia
in dialogue from Doomsday. The
Fiftieth Anniversary Special allows us to bear witness to the event. We learn that, in the final days of the Time
Wars, it's back down to just Daleks and Time Lords. Having probably faced all kinds of strange
forms of time manipulation (quite a bizarre description of the battle is given
in End of Time) the war has reverted to a straight-forward attack of
conventional fire-power. The Daleks
surround the entire planet of the Time Lords and descend from the heavens. They fight their way through a Gallifreyan
defence system known only as the sky trenches and start wiping out the
population of the city of Arcadia.
Chroniclers of Galactic History
believe that it was, at this point, that the Doctor grew sick of the Time Wars
and decided to bring them to a very drastic end. Convinced that this climactic battle between
Time Lords and Daleks will wipe out the universe, he unleashes the power of the
Moment and destroys them both. Of
course, we now know the truth. Through
the combined efforst of all thirteen of his incarnations, he seals the planet
Gallifrey in a stasis cube. The planet
disappears from the universe and the surrounding Dalek armada dices itself in
the cross-fire. But, to all intents and
purposes, it appears as though the Doctor did deliver his final sanction with the
Moment. Because his "secret
incarnation" was out of phase when this happened, he even believes this was
the outcome of the Time Wars. Only
later, as he re-experiences the crossing of his own timestream in his eleventh
incarnation, does he learn that things transpired differently.
Many fans like to believe that, as
the New Series begins, adventures involving Daleks happen in a proper linear
order. But if one examines things just
a bit more closely, you can see that slightly altering the order in which the
stories truly occur in relationship to the Dalek timeline gets certain
continuity issues to make better sense.
Yes, a Dalek fighting in the Time
Wars probably fell to the Earth sometime in the 1960s and has been secretly
kept in the hands of private collectors for quite some time. But the story Dalek is not said to
happen until 2012. And there are several Dalek tales that take
place before that date.
The first "true" Dalek story of the
New Series would actually be Army of Ghosts/Doomsday. Which takes place roughly in the year
2006/2007 (one is never certain exactly of the "contemporary Earth story
dates" in the RTD era since Rose does take place in 2005 but then
her first return home in Aliens of London is said to take place an
entire year later). Here, the
contingency plan made by the Emperor during the Time Wars nearly comes to fruition
and the Daleks almost become a force for the Universe to reckon with,
again. As usual, the Doctor brings
their plans to an abrupt end.
The next few stories are easy to
place in order since, like the Davros stories of the 80s, continuity between
them is somewhat tight. Members of the
Cult of Skaro are equipped with the ability to engage in an emergency temporal
shift (we can guess that only the Cult of Skaro can do this, otherwise other
Daleks being pulled into the Void would've done the same). As their army is being sucked into the Void,
they engage that ability and flee 21st Century London. Their Time Jump takes these four Daleks to
New York at the time of the Great Depression.
Daleks In Manhatten/Evolution of the Daleks takes place at this
time. In that story, three of the four
members of the Cult are destroyed. But
Dalek Caan is able to make yet another Time Jump and lives to fight another
day.
Sometime after that emergency
temporal shift, Caan somehow manages to breach the Time Lock placed on the Time
Wars. He flies in and rescues Davros
from what would have been certain death at the hands of the Nightmare
Child. He pulls him out of the fray and
back into "normal" Time and Space.
The whole act of breaking the Time Lock, however, has serious
repercussions on the Dalek. Caan is somehow able to see all of Time when he
accomplishes the task and is driven mad by the insight he is given. But Davros is saved and immediately sets
himself to work to create a new Dalek army.
Taking cells from his own body in order to accomplish the process,
Davros literally creates this latest breed of Dalek from his own flesh.
As he rebuilds the Dalek race, he
also hatches his maddest, most ambitious plan.
The Dalek Creator builds a Universal Detonator - a device that requires
twenty-seven planets and Z-neutrino energy to destroy the Universe and leave
the Daleks as the only survivors. He
decides to make one of those planets Earth, of course. For the third time in the history of the show,
a Dalek invasion force attacks the Earth.
The events of Stolen Earth/Journey's End unfold.
In the tradition of many great Who
villains, Davros' fate is left ambiguous.
Perhaps he was killed when the Dalek Crucible was destroyed - perhaps he
has escaped and shall come back and haunt the Doctor again.
Time will tell.
It always does.
While I enjoy all the work you have done with the Daleks leading up to the Time War, the whole idea of a Time War, while foretold in Genesis of the Daleks, still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It has become, in my eyes, something that the BBC created to explain what happened between Survival and the return of the series to the TV screen. Nothing against the work you have done, but as I said, the idea of a Time War, after everything that the Time Lords went through with the battles against the Great Vampires, just seems WRONG!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I remember you mentioning this a bit in the last chapter. Overall, I do like the idea of the Time War but there are elements of it that bother me, too. I do like, for instance, the way the 9th Doctor worked through his Survivor Guilt. But the way it kept manifesting itself so much in the 10th and seemed to be responsible for turning him into "The Lonely God" got a bit tiresome for me. So I can see what you're saying....
ReplyDeleteHi there! I could have sworn I've been to this blog before but after browsing through some of
ReplyDeletethe post I realized it's new to me. Nonetheless, I'm definitely
happy I found it and I'll be bookmarking and checking back frequently!
Loook at my blog post my homepage
Thankyou, whoever you may be!
ReplyDeleteHowdy! Would you mind if I share your blog with my myspace group?
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot of people that I think would really enjoy your content.
Please let me know. Thanks
Share away!
DeleteDo you have any video of that? I'd like to find out more details.
ReplyDeleteGo to YouTube and put "Dalek" in the search engine. You'll get all the videos you need....
Delete