THE DALEKS
Yep, there's no denying it. When it comes to being down right evil these guys not only take first prize but they laser the other contestants, melt down the awards, burn the village hall to the ground, kill everyone nearby, and their families, and their friends, and their friends' families and then take off and nuke the entire village from orbit. They're bad. REALLY VERY BAD. They're also exceedingly awesome. They always scared the beeJesus out of me as a child and yet I was utterly mesmerised by them. What were they? What was inside them? Why were they so evil?
Genetically engineered to be free of any emotions except hate and obedience by Davros, chief scientist of the Kaled race, a Dalek is essentially a slimy, tentacled blob that's placed inside and symbiotically bonded to a powerful one-blobbed tank where they live out their psychopathic existence. It was back to this original idea that new Doctor Who executive producer Russel T. Davis & writer Robert Shearman looked when bringing the monsters back onto our television screens in 2005. There had been a long-running and very public battle between the BBC & the estate of Terry Nation (Terry had wisely set this up so that he could protect his beloved Daleks from becoming over-used and out of his control). Thankfully the BBC convinced the estate that they'd treat the Daleks with respect and Russel & Robert took the very brave decision not to change the Dalek's appearance and make him more modern but to rely on the essence of the thing and the story to make them terrifying again. And boy did they succeed. The episode's lone Dalek, when deprived of any contact with, or instructions from, other Daleks went on one hell of a major-league killing spree before committing suicide (in a surprisingly poignant scene) when faced with it's own loneliness.
You see that's what always made the Daleks so scary to me, it wasn't the design, that was always pretty basic and old-school, it was the their total disgust and contempt for anything that wasn't Dalek, anything that was different had to be destroyed. In the words of the 9th Doctor, Christopher Ecclestone, "They're the ultimate in racial cleansing."
Never was this better portrayed than in the series' finale when a squad of Daleks breaks off from the main body attacking the space station 'Satellite 5' to travel down to floor zero simply to massacre the assembled un-armed humans cowering there. They posed no threat and neither were they important but they were different and therefore had to die. Brutal.
These nightmarish wheelie-bins, with their death-ray, single eye stork, incongruous sink plunger and maniacal high-pitched, voice sent children the length and breadth of the country diving behind the sofa whenever they trundled out screaming and shouting for us to obey them or they'd exterminate us. And this was one of the things that make the Daleks so striking. Like the program that spawned them (and don't forget this show was aimed at kids) the Daleks are all about death. They shouted, schemed and killed. And they killed this a lot. One episode, Resurrection of the Daleks, (aired during Peter Davison's tenure as the doctor) has a higher body count than The Terminator with 7 people killed in the first minute of the first episode and a total of 60-76 dead by the close of the story. That's higher than all 5 Friday the 13th films combined! What made matters worse (or better - depending on your point of view) was that they were apparently indestructible. Just when it looked like the Doc had done away with them for good, up they'd pop again just as crazed and angry as before.
Davros in his travelling commode
Brainchild of Terry Nation, one of the writers of BBC's Doctor Who, the Daleks first appeared on our screens in 1963 to pit their wits against the first Doctor William Hartnell. They were an immediate success and consequently appeared again and again battling every incarnation of the Doctor (except Paul McGann's eighth) rapidly becoming his number one nemesis in the eyes of the nation. So much so, in fact, that Doctor Who without the Daleks became unimaginable. It'd be like fish without chips, C-3PO without R2-D2, Ant without Dec or Richard but not Judy. Such has been their impact on us here in the UK that they've managed something truly unique and moved beyond the television show and into popular culture to become recognisable even to those who have never seen Doctor Who. The name 'Dalek' entered the Oxford English dictionary and the Collins Dictionary defines it rather broadly as "any of a set of fictional robot-like creations that are aggressive, mobile, and produce rasping staccato speech". The name is also used in a metaphorical sense to describe people, usually figures in authority, who act like robots unable to break their programming. John Birt, the Director-General of the BBC from 1992 to 2000, was called a "croak-voiced Dalek" by playwright Dennis Potter in August 1993. They've been the subject of countless fan-films, have made appearances in adverts, starred in video games and even have many books and audio plays written about them. They even made it to the big screen. Twice.
So there you have it. The Daleks. The evilest robot of all.
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