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.