CHRONOLOGIES AND TIMELINES: DAVROS THROUGH THE YEARS - PART ONE: EARLY DAYS...

This particular CHRONOLOGIES AND TIMELINES will be similar to the one I did on the Master. In so much that arranging a proper order to episodes involving him is almost entirely unnecessary. With the exception of a few scenes in his most recent story, we have been watching Davros' adventures happen in a completely linear fashion. However, there are things that take place between certain stories that need to be expanded upon to get his televised tales to make better sense. 

So, as I chronicle his various escapades in a way that they don't need to be chronicled, I'll delve into those various "grey areas" in his past and try to get them to make better sense. 





BEFORE WE BEGIN....

It would probably be a good idea to look over my Dalek History essays before you embark upon reading this. It does cover some key points in Davros' past so it will get referenced. Even if you have looked at it before, refreshing your memory of it will help.

Having said that, though, it is a lot to read! If you don't look it over, this essay will still make sense. It will just make better sense if you do.

Here are all five installments:

Part 1:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2015/06/chronologies-and-timelines-tymecian.html

Part 2:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2015/06/chronologies-and-timelines-part-2-of.html

Part 3:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2015/07/chronologies-and-timelines-episode.html

Part 4:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2015/07/chronologies-and-timelines-episode-4-of.html

Part 5:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2015/07/chronologies-and-timelines-episode-5-of.html

...And an Appendix!
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2015/11/chronologies-and-time-lines-history-of.html

There have been a few more Dalek appearances since the Appendix. I will probably compile a second one soon. But I think this is enough, for now.



YOUNG DAVROS

Having been born into the Kaled/Thal Thousand Year War means Davros probably didn't have the happiest of childhoods. School was probably more like low-level military training than an actual education. The demand of the war effort would require children to be made battle-ready as quickly as possible, So conditioning would start at a very young age for the children of Skaro. No doubt, Davros was fed all kinds of propaganda as he grew up. Which may help account for the very fascist ideology he would later program into his creation.

More than likely, his high intelligence was noted at a very early age by his educators. Which probably led to some re-direction for him. Rather than being put on a course that would have him thrown onto the Front Line as soon as he could hold a gun competently, Davros was streamlined into a more scientific learning program. His mind would, ultimately, be used to develop better weaponry or other such military applications.

During the days of his youth, Davros became curious and wandered out onto a battlefield where he got lost for a while. His misadventure led him to wandering into a handmine field. A soldier from a nearby patrol did try to help him but fell prey to the trap, himself. Eventually, a stranger wearing odd clothing appeared to him with a strange blue box behind him. He tossed him some sort of sonic device that enabled Davros to hear him better as they spoke from a distance.

When the Kaled youth, at last, revealed his name to his rescuer - the stranger seemed to react to this news in an odd way. He disappeared in a cloud of smoke, leaving Davros alone for a while. He, then, re-appeared in a different spot and used some sort of energy projectile weapon to destroy the handmines around the boy. Clearing the handine field, he walked Davros back to the Kaled City. Telling him of the importance of always maintaining a sense of mercy as they strolled along.

Davros wouldn't figure it out until later, of course. But this was his first encounter with the Doctor.



WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT SONIC SCREWDRIVER FOR ALL THOSE YEARS?

Clearly, the Twelfth Doctor makes sure not to tell Young Davros who he truly is. He knows Davros will encounter him next while he's in his fourth body. When they do meet, the Kaled scientist doesn't say anything to the nature of: "The Doctor? I met a man who called himself by that name when I was but a young lad..." The Doctor knows that meeting with Davros in Genesis of the Daleks constitutes their first official introduction to each other. So the Time Lord makes sure to keep his lips tight as he gets the boy back home.

But the Doctor does let the Kaled child keep his sonic screwdriver. Which does create a bit of a continuity problem. Why does Davros never present the sonic screwdriver any sooner than Magician's Apprentice?

Come to think of it, a bunch of centuries appear to have passed between that day in the handmine field and the encounter between Twelve and Davros in the Dalek City. How does he manage to hold on to the device for so long?

While I was greatly amused by some of the photo-shopping fans did of the sonic screwdriver lying around in various scenes from Davros Stories in the Classic Series, I'll try to come up with something better:

My guess is that Young Davros is intrigued by the sonic screwdriver and hides it away in his room after the Doctor gets him home. As he grows up and joins the Scientific Elite, he keeps the screwdriver as a memento. But he always keeps it hidden in his personal effects, somewhere. Even as Davros moves to the special underground bunker that we see him living in by Genesis of the Daleks, that screwdriver was brought with him and kept locked away in his living quarters.

After the Daleks fire on him at the end of Geneis, that screwdriver is still sitting around in that bunker. When Davros re-awakens in Destiny, he doesn't really get a chance to recover it before he is sent off into space to be imprisoned. Nor would he feel compelled to grab it during that time. He still doesn't really know what it is. In the same way that he doesn't recognize the Fourth Doctor as being the same man he met as a child, the model of sonic screwdriver Four carries doesn't resemble the one Twelve left with him. He hasn't made the connection, yet.

However, while serving his time on the prison ship in Resurrection of the Daleks, Davros starts to really learn about the Doctor and Time Lords, in general (we'll explain how this happens when we get to this point in his timeline, properly). It is here that some doors start opening for him. He figures out that his first encounter with the Doctor was not during Genesis of the Daleks - but earlier. He also works out what that strange memento he kept for all those years actually was.

Having learnt about Time Lords, however, also means that Davros has discovered the Laws of Time, too. He decides to be responsible with his knowledge of what could be a future event in the Doctor's life and tries to preserve the Time Lines (unlike his younger, more reckless days when he tries to use foreknowledge to his advantage when he finds out the Doctor comes from the future in Genesis). He makes the assumption that he met a version of the Doctor that doesn't exist yet when he was a boy so he makes sure to never mention that encounter until the Doctor is wearing the appropriate face.

He would like that sonic screwdriver back, though. It might be fun to hang it over him a bit when the Doctor has temporally caught up with him. Davros has had plenty of time to work things out. The Doctor he first meets in the handmine field appears to abandon him and only comes back later to save him. More than likely, there will be a time in between those two moments where Davros will be an adult when he meets the Twelfth Doctor. The Time Lord will be carrying a lot of guilt over what he did. How fun might it be to torment him by showing him he still has the sonic screwdriver he gave him when he was a kid?

So when the Daleks bring Davros back to Skaro at the end of Revelation of the Daleks, the Dalek Creator takes the time to go back down into that old bunker and find the sonic screwdriver. We know he has hidden compartments in his chair - we see him using one during Resurrection. He stores the screwdriver in one of those compartments until the appropriate time.

Yeah, photo-shopping the sonic screwdriver into some publicity stills was probably a whole lot easier than that! 


HOW HE MADE IT INTO THE CHAIR

"The memory cheats"  - a favorite saying of 80s producer John Nathan Turner - seems to be at play, here. I was convinced there was some throwaway dialogue in Genesis of the Daleks that tells how Davros ends up in his chair. Either Ronson or Gharman mentions that Davros was working in his laboratory when a stray shell from the Thals manages to go off relatively near to him. He is badly injured but not quite killed. What's left of him is placed in a life support system of his devising (probably originally created for someone else important in Kaled society who was badly injured but not quite killed - I can't see Davros creating such a device after he's been hurt).

I re-watched Genesis several time over and found no dialogue anywhere that gives an account of the incident that causes him to become the hideous being that we see him as in this tale. To the best of my knowledge, any backstory that has been provided for this can only be considered Fan Theory. Terry Nation might have even claimed somewhere that this is how Davros came to be but, as I have said on many occasions, if its not "transmitted dialogue" - it doesn't count.

Having made that claim, I do like to agree with this idea. While it's never properly stated anywhere, it does make the best sense. What other fate could have caused him to lose the lower part of his body and the better part of an arm?

There are even some conspiracy theories that seem to indicate that it was not the Thals that prompted this fate. But, rather, some of Davros' own people who felt threatened by him rigged things to look like the explosion in the lab was an enemy attack. This seems like a pretty cool idea, too. We know such people existed. We see some of them in Genesis of the Daleks. I do believe that Davros had already discovered the ultimate form the Kaleds would take before his lab was attacked. He had probably just begun to develop a Mark I travel machine and had revealed some of the modifications he would make to the mutants he would put in them. Certain Kaled citizens might have become mortified by his plans and tried to assassinate him but attempted to stage it as an act of war. It's an interesting theory. And, since this can all only be hypothesis, I'll accept it. Until, of course, someone actually says in an episode: "This is how Davros ended up in the chair...."   Which, quite honestly, will probably never happen.


A DAMN GOOD LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM

Being placed in the life support system changed Davros. It made him all the more determined in his mission to ensure the survival of the Kaled race. If it was his own people that tried to kill him, their plans could not have backfired more. Davros became more hell-bent from his "accident".

It may even be possible that his life support system became the basis of his inspiration for the travel machines he was working on. Which would make things even more ironic if the whole thing was a Kaled assassination plot. They wanted to thwart his plans but, instead, put him in the machinery that would enable him to succeed.

As is often the case, Davros likes overkill. The life support system he devises doesn't just keep him alive, it sustains his existence indefinitely. It also makes him impervious to most forms of attack. As is revealed in Destiny of the Daleks, he is not killed by his own creation at the end of Genesis. He is put into a sort of suspended animation until the life support system can synthetically regenerate all the damaged tissue and organs that were diced in the Dalek cross-fire. The Daleks were probably even aware that he was still alive but just threw him into some sort of storage. Just in case his genius was needed again, someday (as, inevitably, it would be).

It's my theory that Davros first awoke from his slumber sometime after the Daleks had left the bunker the Doctor had sealed them in when he had failed in his mission for the Time Lords. The Kaled scientist wandered around the abandoned underground structure for a while but could not find a way out. The Daleks had re-sealed the base after they had emerged from it. Without hope for escape, Davros simply re-activated slumber mode. However, he rigged his life support system to some proximity detectors. If there was suddenly a large amount of movement around him, he would wake back up. No doubt, the movement was being caused by someone who had decided to dig him back up. This is why he regains consciousness the very moment people start crowding around him at the end of Part Two of Destinty of the Daleks.

With Davros back to life, he can go on to cause all kinds of trouble for the Universe.


That's all for Part One of this series. In the next chapter, we'll look at the Terry Molloy stories (I know many of you love Wisher best - but he's my favorite Davros) and sort out some of the unanswered cliffhangers that plague his era. Once we do work out some of those inconsistencies, we'll move on to New Who Davros in Part Three....