The Daleks

Overview

The Daleks are primary antagonists from the British TV show 'Doctor Who' and, alongside The Master, are considered to be the Arch nemeses to The Doctor . Outside of the TV show's universe, The Daleks - along with other staples from the show such as The Doctor's TARDIS - are considered to be a defining icon in British TV history and popular culture.

Hailing from the planet Skaro, Daleks are the mutated alien remains of a race of people called Kaleds. Trapped in a nuclear war with the Thals, Davros, A Kaled Genetic Scientist created an armoured shell for the irradiated remnants of the Kaleds to survive in. However, Davros bred the Kaled mutants in to his own personal army, and called them the Daleks - every emotion other than hate was removed from the creature, and was replaced with a desire to exterminate any life form that was not 'pure Dalek'. The Time Lords of Gallifrey, particularly the traveler known only as The Doctor were locked in battle with the Daleks over centuries in a conflict known as 'The Last Great Time War' where The Doctor supposedly wiped out his people, his home world and the Daleks in a final decisive battle. However, over the course of his recent travels, The Doctor discovered that several groups of Daleks did in fact survive the Time War, including the Dalek Emperor and Davros himself.

The Daleks and Gaming

As a key icon in the world of Doctor Who, The Daleks have appeared as The Doctor's adversaries in the majority of Doctor Who Games. Beginning with the very first Doctor Who game, The Key to Time for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum in 1984, The Daleks appeared in every Doctor Who game released over the past 30 years - from Admiral Software's Dalek Attack in 1992 to 1997's Destiny of The Doctors. Since the series' return in 2005, The Daleks have had a cameo appearance in the Top Trumps video game based on the franchise, as well appearances in several licensed flash games released on the BBC's official Doctor Who Website - The Last Dalek, based on the events of the 2005 episode 'Dalek', and an RTS-style game called Daleks vs Cybermen, based on the following years series finale, 'The Army of Ghosts/Doomsday'. The Daleks are also rumored to appear in the upcoming Adventure Game series being made by Sumo Digital.

The Daleks have made several unlicensed appearances in mods for several video games such as Unreal Tournament, Dark Forces, Halo: Combat Evolved, Quake and Half-Life. Two particularly well known mods were QWho and TimeQuake for Quake games featuring the Daleks as well as other Doctor Who monsters such as The Cybermen and The Sontarans. To coincide with the return of the series in 2005, DalekTron was released as a mod for Robotron: 2084 - Robotron's predecessor, simply entitled Robots, featured several robots named 'Daleks' as an homage to the famous creatures.