The Daleks may be Doctor Who‘s most iconic villains, but they’re also something of a continuity minefield. In part, that’s because the classic series never imagined what modern fandom would look like, or how devoted viewers would become to the world’s longest-running science-fiction TV show. In fact, the BBC didn’t really understand that classic episodes would ever be rewatched; that’s why so much footage was lost in the 1970s, and why the recovering of some classic Doctor Who stories became such big news back in March.
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To be fair, it’s pretty much impossible for a TV show to run from 1963 to the present day without some continuity problems. With Doctor Who, time travel lends itself to a rather fluid approach to canon and continuity, too, because who’s to say how the timeline fits together, or whether history has been rewritten in some way. Still, even factoring that in, here are five things that make no sense about the Daleks.
5. Did the Doctor Know About the Daleks When He First Met Them?
Who can forget the Daleks’ first appearance? William Hartnell’s First Doctor encountered them in one of his earliest adventures, and he had absolutely no idea what he was dealing with. The problem, though, is that it makes no sense for the Doctor to have never heard of the Daleks; this race go on to become one of the most important in the entire universe, dictating the sweeping narrative of galactic history. They’d go on to become challengers to the Time Lords themselves, giving a sense of the scale they operate on. Even a cursory knowledge of the galaxy would mean recognizing the Daleks.
You could potentially put this down to deception on the Doctor’s part. The problem, though, is that the Doctor was traveling with his granddaughter Susan. We don’t really know much about Susan – the recent RTD2 era botched a return that might have helped clarify things – but it’s reasonable to assume she was raised on Gallifrey. So, like the Doctor, Susan is someone who really should know what’s she dealing with. As irascible as the First Doctor may be, there’s no way Susan would risk others by putting on an act.
4. What Was the Seventh Doctor’s Real Plan For the Daleks?
In 1988, Doctor Who celebrated its 25th anniversary with a series of adventures that reinterpreted the show’s history. One of these, “Remembrance of the Daleks,” rewrote the reason the Doctor and Susan had hidden on Earth in the first place. They’d left Gallifrey with the Hand of Omega, an ancient Time Lord stellar manipulator that had the potential to become one of the most dangerous weapons in creation. The Doctor had planted the Hand of Omega on Earth as bait to draw the Daleks, believing he could goad them into trying to use it.
“Remembrance of the Daleks” is a fantastic story, one of the most enjoyable Dalek adventures. The problem, though, is that this idea simply doesn’t work. Leaving aside the fact the First Doctor and Susan showed no knowledge of the Daleks until after they’d left Earth, the Doctor’s plan was predicated on a Dalek civil war engineered by Davros – a man who only survived until this point because of the Doctor’s later meddling, meaning the timeline should have been more than a little different. In continuity terms, this doesn’t really work; still, it’s a fun story, and we can hand-wave it away as just being a bit too “timey-wimey.”
3. What Actually Happened to the Dalek Homeworld, Skaro?
The Daleks originate from the distant planet Skaro, a world finally destroyed in “Remembrance of the Daleks.” It’s an epic scene, with the Doctor goading Davros into triggering the Hand of Omega before he’s checked the device’s programming; Davros intended to destroy Earth, but annihilated the Daleks instead. The problem, though, is that this wasn’t the first time in Doctor Who history that the Daleks had been wiped out. Even more confusingly, plotting out the timeline, Skaro should really still exist after this point.
John Peel’s fantastic novel War of the Daleks explained this away in a rather sophisticated manner, revealing the Daleks discovered records of Skaro’s destruction during their brief conquest of Earth. Forewarned, they conducted geo-engineering on an unprecedented scale, creating a fake Skaro – one the Doctor and Davros destroyed. It’s an ingenious fix, but personally I think there are simpler ones; modern Doctor Who has established that “Skaro” is simply the Dalek word for “home,” so it’s the standard name for the Dalek capital planet.
2. How Does Davros Fit Into the Dalek Timeline?
Speaking of Davros, this brings us to the next problem with the Daleks – and one of the biggest. Doctor Who has essentially given us two different origin stories for the Daleks, in “The Daleks” and “Genesis of the Daleks.” As good as both stories may be, the details don’t really go together, not least because there’s no trace of Davros in the first Dalek origin. The so-called creator of the Daleks doesn’t even live in a facility that resembles where the Daleks were supposed to have been born. Matters become even worse if you factor in the TV21 Dalek strips, which spun out of the first version.
Realistically, there is no fix for this one. The truth is, Terry Nation didn’t come up with the character of Davros until he was penning “Genesis of the Daleks,” and the character firmly established himself as one of the best Doctor Who villains of all time. Back in 1975, he never expected anyone to care about whether or not he’s contradicted himself.
1. Why Does Nobody Ever Remember Dalek Invasions?
History is remarkably fluid in Doctor Who, as the Doctor himself learned in “Victory of the Daleks,” where he discovered all memory of the aliens had been wiped during one particular reset. In functional terms, that reset was a smart way to dial the scale back a little, because the show had made previous Dalek defeats a little too spectacular. But the problem, though, is that total resets are still pretty rare. Despite that, everybody keeps forgetting all about previous Dalek invasions.
Take, for example, “Revolution of the Daleks.” This featured a subplot where the then-Prime Minister sponsored Defence Drones (in reality Daleks), only to wind up exterminated. The problem, though, is that previous Prime Minister Winston Churchill had himself been fooled by the Daleks. You’d have expected there to be some sort of institutional knowledge, even if UNIT had been disbanded at the time. The repeated plotline is simply becoming a little too unbelievable.
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