Return of Blakes 7

The Daleks are one of the major antagonists in the British science fiction series [i]Doctor Who[/i]. They are sort of [i]Doctor Who[/i]’s Klingons, and there have been whole books written about them. But to sum it up briefly, they are humanoids (called Dals or Kaleds, depending on which episode you watch) mutated by nuclear war on the planet Skaro. The mutations started out random, but after a while as the centuries went on, a pattern began to emerge. There were still some unmutated Kaleds on another part of Skaro, and one of them, a Nazi-seque scientist named Davros, accelerated the mutations with genetic engineering to create what he considered the perfect race-the Daleks.

The mutated creatures are these ugly little green buggers with tentacles and talons, but they’re rarely seen. Davros made them each these robotic life-support systems that look like big salt shakers with a few metal protubrances. The Daleks are unemotional and programmed to destroy any inferior species. That led to the destruction of the unmutated Kaleds and the near-destruction of the other Skaran race, the Thals. The Thals have their own story, which I won’t get into. In a final irony, they consider their own creator Davros to be an inferior form of life, and ultimately exterminate him.

Anyway, they went on to travel space conquering and destroying for a few millennia before a Dalek civil war (actually there were two) in which two sides each considered the others to be inferior and they exterminated themselves. The Daleks are known for sliding around while bobbing their eyestalks up and down yelling “exterminate!” in mechanical voices with audiBritish accents.

The Daleks were created by [i]Doctor Who[/i] writer and later [i]Blake’s 7[/i] creator Terry Nation in 1963. Their appearance was desidned by Raymond P. Cusack. These abominable and highly popular monsters appeared in the episodes-

The Daleks (Hartnell)
The Dalek Invasion of Earth (Hartnell)
The Chase (Hartnell)
Mission to the Unknown (de Souza)
The Daleks’ Masterplan (Hartnell)
The Power of the Daleks (Troughton)
The Evil of the Daleks (Troughton)
Day of the Daleks (Pertwee)
Planet of the Daleks (Pertwee)
Death to the Daleks (Pertwee)
Genesis of the Daleks (Baker)
Destiny of the Daleks (Baker)
Resurrection of the Daleks (Davison)
Revelation of the Daleks (Baker)
Remembrance of the Daleks (McCoy)

…the audio adventure-

Dalek Empire (McGann)

…the novels-

War of the Daleks (McGann)
Legacy of the Daleks (McGann)

…and the movies-

Doctor Who and the Daleks (Cushing)
Daleks-Invasion: Earth 2150 A.D. (Cushing)

Suffice it to say they have a considerable history, not to mention fan following. I know of two good websites devoted to the Daleks-

The Dalek Extermination Page
The Dalek Webhome

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“Exterminate!” -Dalek warrior, [i]The Daleks[/i]: Episode 4-[i]The Ambush[/i]

“Feel the power of the dark Crystal!” -skekTek the Scientist, [i]The Dark Crystal[/i]

“I will love you forever!” -drone #790, [i]Lexx 1.1: I Worship His Shadow[/i]