31 Favourite Monsters: The Daleks
I was a fan of Doctor Who before the revival made it cool again. It started when an uncle offloaded a bunch of his science fiction stuff to me, and it continued from there via whatever tapes of the old series I could find. Inevitably, I came across the Daleks. Without the Daleks, Doctor Who would likely have vanished into obscurity aeons ago. It was initially meant as an educational show, with historical episodes showing history, and science-fiction episodes showcasing science. The second serial introduced the Daleks, and history was made.
Though the vastness of the Doctor Who canon (and the assorted spin-off material in the early days) means that the Daleks initially had conflicting origin stories, there is at least one definitive version, provided by the serial The Genesis of the Daleks. On the planet Skaro, there lived two humanoid races, the Kaleds and the Thals, who fought each other, finally creating nuclear weapons. After bombing the planet to hell, they found that they were mutating. The Thals became physically perfect humanoid beings, while the final fate of the Kaleds, as found by the Kaled scientist Davros (the guy in my icon up there), was to become small crab-like creatures which couldn’t survive very long. Davros, a mutated victim of an atomic attack, decided to design machines to aid the mutants. Along the way, he became obsessed with the survival of the Kaleds above all else. To this end, he altered his design for the machines, and performed genetic experiments that cleansed the mutant Kaleds of concepts such as love, pity, and fear. The end result was the Daleks, who wiped out the Thals before turning on their creator (though Davros turned out to be not quite dead, and the Daleks later enlisted him in their schemes). Afterwards, they became bent on exterminating all other life forms in the universe. To this end, they have hatched many schemes, culminating in a plan to destroy the entirety of reality, thankfully thwarted by the Doctor.
STAIRS? I LAUGH AT STAIRS. HA. HA. HA.
The Daleks are very distinctive monsters for good reasons. Their design is unmistakable, stemming from the creator not wanting to have ‘bug-eyed monsters’ on the show, as is their trademark voices and catchphrase: “EXTERMINATE!” They are also nearly unstoppable-not only can you not reason with them, they happen to be bulletproof, and even a flight of stairs isn’t quite as effective as it used to be, thanks to their hovering ability. They’re like alien Terminators with awesome voices-and that is why I love them.