The renegade Time Lord known as the Doctor is a truly mysterious figure. Though he has saved our planet an immeasurable number of times, we still know comparatively little about him. Indeed for centuries it was believed by the few who were even aware of his presence, that he was not one man, but a title passed onto multiple figures throughout history.
Even today in the 51st century when our society and technology has reached heights we never thought possible and there is a fully functioning time agency. The Doctor still remains something of a fringe subject among academics. In fact in most circles the mere mention of this supposedly benevolent, immortal alien, looking out for humanity will often provoke laughter and derision. (Assuming your colleagues even know who he is, which is most unlikely.)
Some have speculated that this apparent cover up, is the work of the Doctor himself, or possibly even his people, the Time Lords erasing as much knowledge of him as they can, in the belief that the Doctor is more successful when he operates from behind the scenes? The following account of his dealings with his greatest enemies, the Daleks certainly seem to support that theory.
Still whilst officially the agency may regard him as nothing more than a myth, the time travellers version of the Flying Dutchman to the few academics that even know of his existence. I Michael Marsters, once one of the most experienced and respected time agents, who has travelled further through time and space than any other man or woman before me, can tell you that he does exist. I have encountered him many times and dare I say it, I even consider him a friend, though I don't know if he would say the same of me.
I know full well that talking about the Doctor will probably erase one of the last few bits of credibility I have left. (Assuming this is ever even allowed out.) Still the truth about what would sadly be the downfall of one of the greatest of all incarnations of the legendary Time Lord should serve as a cautionary warning to all time travellers of how delicate the balance of space and time truly are.
Even a being of the Doctors experience, knowledge and wisdom was still not able to take into account the full effect his presence alone could have after over one thousand years of time travel.
Don't get me wrong here I am not saying that I want the time agency to vanish. I owe everything to the agency. It gave me purpose, allowed me to live a truly incredible life, and I know through my own experiences and those of other agents that many of the great things we accomplished in the past, shaped the golden age we are living in today.
Still there is also no denying that the time agency has become reckless and arrogant in the last few decades. I know for a fact that events on certain worlds in this galaxy have been altered purely for humanity's benefit, that time agents these days often use this wonderful technology to satisfy their own vices and pleasures. To say nothing of the many renegade time agents that have emerged.
I can only hope that any of you with similar notions of time being ours to command, who may still have even the tiniest semblance of a conscience take away at least something from the Doctors folly. Time travel must only ever be used to document the past, and create our own history as we know it. Anything else could very well threaten the universe itself. I am optimistic that humanity will never let it get that far. Each time we have been tested with a new discovery and breakthrough that could have destroyed us, from the atomic bomb to interstellar flight, we have always managed to pull back. Still that does not mean we have not had more than a few close calls, and given how this is a bigger threat than any we have faced, it is still vital that we take even greater caution.
I first met the Doctor fairly early in my career. Even I had trouble believing he was real, but a few more encounters down the line, caused me to see that not only where the wildest stories about him true. In actual fact they didn't do him justice.
The Doctor is a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, a world so in advance of our own, that even the Time Agency looks like a game for children compared to their mastery of the fourth dimension. In some ways their existence terrifies me, yet at the same time the fact that the Time Lords have clearly overcome the dangers we currently face also gives me hope. Then again however the Time Lords, at least according to the Doctor have more or less shut themselves off from the rest of creation for the last several hundred thousand years. Furthermore even their seemingly perfect society is still not free from corruption too. There have been many renegade Time Lords, with the most notorious being the Master. This figure for those of you unaware is spoken of in some circles of the time agency with as much fear and loathing as Satan is among the clergy. I'm thankful to say I have never encountered him. but the way the Doctor spoke of this fellow renegade alone terrified me. It was the only time I've ever seen the Doctor express the level of disgust and horror he normally reserved for the Daleks. Still even with that and everything else I've seen I find it hard to believe one man could be responsible for even half of the atrocities this so called Master is said to have committed.
According to the Doctor, the Time Lords are forbidden to interfere in the affairs of other life forms, naturally to prevent their great power from being abused. The Doctor however, one day decided to steal a time and space machine, known as a TARDIS in order to go exploring the universe.
To begin with, the Doctor was simply bored, though granted he may have had other reasons for leaving Gallifrey. He not surprisingly didn't share much with me however. In fact the only family he mentioned was his grand daughter Susan. His real name isn't even the Doctor. No one knows what it is. Doctor was simply an alias he chose because he quite liked it. It made him sound important.
The Doctors strong sense of morals gradually caused him to slowly interfere in the affairs of other planets. He was always mindful not to change his own established history however, and to be fair in some cases he was forced to act, simply to save his own life and to ensure he would exist.
Still there were times that he perhaps stuck his nose in where it wasn't wanted and he could also be incredibly reckless in his actions too. Over the course of his adventures, the Doctor also developed a particular fondness for the earth above all others. Quite why no one is really sure, though it doesn't hurt that the Doctor was humanoid in appearance. Humanoid life in general seems to be the most prosperous in our part of the universe. At first the Time Lords disowned the Doctor for his actions and even punished him by exiling the Doctor to earth in the 1970s. They soon realized however that in spite of their ancient policy. The Doctor did have a role to play in the greater battle against evil and not only lifted their exile, but even sent him to deal with problems they felt were a threat to the rest of the universe. Really the Doctor became their perfect agent, as if he failed, they could wash their hands of him and claim that he was a renegade. It should be noted however that there are rumors that the Time Lords have had other agents, even a supposed Celestial Intervention Agency, above and beyond the High Council themselves, with the Doctor only being punished because he was less secretive about his interference at least at first. Either way the Doctor has without doubt had a greater impact on our planet than any other potential renegade Time Lord.
Whilst its true that the Doctor was not simply a title passed down, it is also true that there was also not simply one Doctor either. His people the Time Lords possess an advanced kind of healing ability that can allow them to cheat death known as regeneration. Whenever a Time Lord dies, the power of regeneration completely restores and repairs their body, though in the process it also changes their physical appearance completely. It essentially rebuilds the body from scratch, with age, height, and weight all being altered to some extent. Furthermore a Time Lord's outer persona is altered by the process too. That said however a Time Lord's core personality, memories and consciousness were always completely unaffected by regeneration (barring the odd bit of temporal instability in extreme regenerations which was always only temporary.) This meant that the Doctor retained the same core persona, morals and values from incarnation to incarnation. The changes in a Time Lord's personality across regenerations are more akin to the changes that we all go through in life rather than becoming a completely different person. They only seem more extreme to us as they are more rapid, but once you get to know the Doctor across multiple incarnations, you can see he is clearly the same man.
It is stated that Time Lords can regenerate 12 times, allowing them to have 13 different bodies or incarnations. The Doctor meanwhile it is known left Gallifrey near the end of his first life meaning that there are potentially 13 different versions of the Doctor for time agents to encounter. Each incarnation can live for hundreds of years too, so even the first Doctor must have travelled for centuries.
I personally have met six versions of the Doctor. One was the incarnation exiled to earth, who was said to be the third version. He was a tall, white haired, dashing, charismatic, but somewhat pompous, and arrogant man in fancy clothes. He didn't suffer fools like I was back then sadly. In fact he could be quite short and impatient with everybody, yet he also had an undeniable heart of gold and a steely determination the likes of which I'd honestly never seen before.
The next I met was in contrast rather shambolic, and scruffy looking with jet black hair, though there was still a dandyish aspect to his appearance. He was a bit more overtly grumpy and spoke in quite a strong Irish accent. I'm told he was the 9th incarnation though we'll get back to him later. Another was apparently the fifth Doctor, who was quite a young man with fair hair, and a real love for cricket. He was definitely more amiable than the other two admittedly, though I also felt he was perhaps a bit more unsure of himself.
I also encountered the 10th and 11th Doctors, with the former being a rather jolly, heavy set, posh bon vivonde kind of a figure, and the 11th in contrast being somewhat more morose and anxious.
The final incarnation I encountered was a byronic, somewhat more romantic hero (though it's worth mentioning that the Doctor was always stated to have been completely asexual and indeed, all of his companions relationships with him at least in my experience were completely platonic.)
I was informed that the byronic Doctor was his 8th incarnation. Ironically to me he seemed to be the most pleasant, amiable, yet also the most sure of himself. It seems the centuries of fighting and triumphing over evil had not surprisingly made the Doctor proud of all he had accomplished. Perhaps however this was to be his undoing, though given what the Doctor was up against it's perhaps not fair to judge him. I doubt anyone could have truly been completely prepared for the lengths the Daleks were willing to go.
You all know of the Daleks I'm sure, though in all honestly I don't think anyone can quite comprehend the danger they pose to the rest of the cosmos unless they encounter them directly.
It's easy for us to just dismiss the Daleks as an old dead race, who had their time in the 51st century and will never possibly pose a threat to us now. There hasn't been a Dalek war in over 1000 years, at least not in our part of the galaxy. As far as we are aware the monsters, if they even still exist are mere shadows of themselves clinging to life on the outer edges of the universe.
Still even now the monsters pose a greater threat than all of our other enemies combined. They have not been even remotely humbled by their defeats and will keep on trying until the end of time in their goal of subjugating all other life forms.
The Daleks are not simply a race that love warfare like the Sontarans, or who seek glory like the Martians used too, or who are willing to conquer in order to survive like the Cybermen. The Daleks literally have no purpose other than the conquest of other races, and cannot be threatened or reasoned with. They are driven by an irrational hatred that is all consuming.
For those of you unfamiliar with the finer details of their history, I will briefly explain their origins in order to understand how the Doctor fits into all of this. The Daleks originally began as a humanoid race similar to our own known as the Kaleds, who became locked in a war with another humanoid race, the Thals on the planet Skaro many hundreds of thousands of years ago. The war eventually went atomic and destroyed the surface of Skaro, turning it from a beautiful paradise into an irradiated wasteland. The Kaleds and Thals both then began to slowly mutate as a result of the polluted and poisoned air of Skaro. Whilst these mutations were at first cast out to die in the wilderness by both the Kaleds and Thals, eventually, Davros the head of the Kaled scientific elite discovered that the entire Kaled and Thal species were destined to undergo a cycle of mutations due to the polluted air.
Using living Kaled cells. Davros carried out experiments to see what the final form of the Kaled's mutation would be. He subjected the cells to greater amounts of the same kind of radiation that had polluted Skaro's air, accelerating the mutation cycle. Eventually he discovered that the Kaleds final mutated form was a slimy, amorphous blob like creature, barely capable of surviving on its own. Davros then constructed a robot war machine to house this Kaled mutation, but beyond that he also tampered with the Kaled mutants minds. Having been born and raised in a brutal war, that by that stage had endured for over 1000 years. Davros believed that this new Kaled race would have to be stronger mentally than the original, and so he removed what he thought were weaknesses that had prevented the Kaleds from triumphing over the Thals. Emotions such as love, compassion and pity were purged from the Kaled mutants minds. Worse Davros also programmed an overriding sense of superiority into the mutants and a desire to conquer and utterly suppress any other potential life forms they came across, or exterminate those who could not be conquered. Davros believed, again due to the centuries long animosity between the Thals and the Kaleds that different species could never co-exist peacefully and that one race would have to dominate the others. It's worth mentioning that Davros also effectively created this new Kaled race in his own image. He had been crippled and mutated during the war, and was forced to survive in a similar life support machine. Whilst unlike other mutants, Davros had not been cast out due to his genius, he undoubtedly felt inferior to the rest of the Kaleds at various points due to their twisted ideology, and was perhaps scared that if the war was ever won they'd have no use for him.
The combination of this deranged Kaled mutant inside Davros' war machine was referred to as a Dalek by Davros, a name that would become hated by trillions of worlds throughout all of time and space.
Once the Kaled government found out what Davros was creating, they attempted to shut him down, but Davros went as far as to betray the secrets of the Kaleds defenses to the Thals, allowing them to kill his own people just to ensure the survival of the Daleks.
The first of the Daleks subsequently conquered the Thals and eventually proceeded to exterminate Davros too. After conquering Skaro, the Daleks then went on to conquer hundreds of thousands of more worlds. They even conquered our planet as I'm sure you know in the 22nd century, killing more humans in that single conflict than any of our wars or disasters before hand, and subjecting the few unlucky survivors to a decade of the most horrific and brutal treatment as they tried to turn our very planet into a war ship. Though our planet was luckily able to repel the alien menace and rebuild, countless others have not been so fortunate, including one of my favourite planets Nakor.
I spent many years there when my time ship crashed into the planet. Due to their primitive level of technology it took me quite a while to get the equipment ready to fix it my time ship. Thankfully the Nakorians were an open minded people, who weren't terrified of the prospect of alien life and welcomed me with open arms. My first visit had been against the rules and nearly cost me my position. At least back then we weren't allowed to even visit planets beyond our Federations reach. Again however my visit was an accident with my time rotor throwing me off course and due to my years of service I narrowly avoided dismissal. After my visit the Time agency wanted to monitor the world to make sure I hadn't changed anything, so I was given a chance to visit the planet a few more times at different stages in its development to make amends. I saw it go from a world that was about on our level of technology in the 20th century to the one that was capable of establishing thriving colonies on other uninhabited planets. Unfortunately when I travelled to just a few years after the founding of their fifth colony, I saw that Nakor had become a barren, irradiated wasteland, devoid of any signs of life. I assumed I must have made a mistake at first, only to discover that the Daleks had destroyed Nakor and all of its colonies in the span of a single year. An entire race, with a history and culture stretching back hundreds of thousands of years, lost forever all except for one piece of art I was able to retrieve on one of my visits. Where it not for my time rotor malfunctioning. No one would even know the Nakorians even existed.
Still in spite of their power, the Daleks have suffered many crushing defeats. Their empire has risen and fallen several times over the centuries. Whilst humanity has aided in several these defeats, ultimately their greatest enemy has always been the Doctor.
All incarnations of the Doctor have faced the Daleks multiple times. In fact it is only through his intervention that humanity has survived against the Daleks at all. That's not to do down the brave soldiers and heroes who have given their lives to save us in the many Dalek wars and the decade they occupied our earth in the 22nd century. (Truly the darkest time in all of human history.)
Still due to his Time Lord intellect, the Doctor was able to inflict more devastating defeats than we who are generations behind the Daleks ever could. For instance it was the Doctor who repelled their invasion and occupation of the earth in the 22nd century. Had it not been for him, the Daleks would have surely wiped out the unruly humans as they converted our world into a war ship to conquer others.
At the same time however whilst the Doctor did more to hold the monsters back than any other individual. He was also in some ways responsible for what they became.
The Time Lords, not long after lifting the Doctors exile had foreseen a time when the Daleks would rise to a level of power where not even the Time Lords could stop them, with Davros' vile children eventually tearing all of creation itself apart.
The Doctor was sent back to the earliest period in the Daleks development the Time Lords could reach, when Davros was conducting his experiments to create the first Daleks. At one point during the ordeal the Doctor held a weapon that could have destroyed Davros' incubation chamber, where the original Daleks were being created who at that stage represented their entire race. Ultimately however he refused for many reasons.
The Time Lord did not believe that morally it was right to completely extinguish a race, even as evil as the Daleks at their point of birth. More importantly however, he was terrified about the changes it could potentially cause. For instance as evil as they were, the Daleks were unintentionally responsible for many positive advancements throughout the universe. Stolen and altered Dalek technology obtained in wars was used by several species to cure diseases, end famine, and save other races from extinction. Furthermore the threat of the Daleks also forced many races to unite with each other out of fear. Many such alliances against the Daleks, ultimately served as the foundations for peaceful collaborations between certain races for thousands if not millions of years in some cases.
For instance humanity and Draconia, two of the closest species in the known universe, whose alliance has endured for over 2000 years friendship began entirely as a result of the second Dalek war. Whilst its true that we were allied before, it was a very shaky alliance with both species having previously been at war (which the Daleks ironically tried to exploit to cause a second war, before humanity and Draconia learned the truth and united like never before against them.)
Had it not been for the threat of the Daleks, it's very probable that we may have destroyed each other in a second seemingly inevitable at that point war.
Many of our greatest scientific advancements have also been made in a desperate attempt to keep up with the Daleks too. Whilst it may have sadly condemned two generations, the second Dalek war also led to breakthroughs in medicine, terrorforming, engineering and agriculture the likes of which humanity may not have survived without, during subsequent threats such as the great space plague of the 29th century. Also perhaps the Daleks have served as a warning to other sentient races who could just as easily have descended into a similar monstrous state. Let us not forget that the Daleks were once capable of choosing between right and wrong when they were the Kaleds, until one man's twisted vision turned them into the monsters we know and loathe. What Davros did to his people and what became of him as a result, may have been enough to frighten even the most egomaniacal, power mad would be history makers many times over.
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Finally the Doctor was also not sure if erasing the Daleks would make the universe a better place anyway. Nature does abhor a vacuum after all. Perhaps if the Daleks were exterminated, then another race would emerge, one who was even more dangerous, who the Doctor and the Time Lords this time didn't see coming and who they wouldn't be able to deal with. It is better with the devil you know after all.
The Doctor instead simply slowed down their development, by not only destroying Davros' research and equipment (which could not be replaced so easily now that the Kaled and Thal cities had been destroyed) but also by entombing the first Daleks beneath a mountain, which it took them several thousand years to escape from. During this time, numerous other species who the Daleks had exterminated in the original timeline were given a chance to catch up to the monsters, such as the Movellans. (Who in our version of events dealt the Daleks the single most crushing defeat they ever endured, completely destroying their second empire.)
Furthermore the Doctors actions also ensured the survival of Davros. In the original version of events, after exterminating him, the Daleks destroyed Davros' body completely. Now however as they were trapped in the bunker, they simply cast him aside after shooting him. This allowed his life support machine to slowly restore Davros to life over several centuries. When he returned Davros made a grab for power, which ultimately split the Dalek race into two factions. Some followed him as he was their creator, whilst others refused on the grounds that he was not a true Dalek, leading to a civil war. After the Daleks defeat at the hands of the Movellans, the civil war brought them to the lowest point in their history in terms of influence and power.
Davros' side known as the Imperial Daleks, eventually won the conflict and cast those who followed the black Supreme Dalek out into space. With both factions greatly weakened and desperate. The Doctor now in his 7th incarnation had come to regret not destroying the Daleks at their point of birth, and saw their weakened state after the Movellan war as a golden opportunity to finally rid the universe of their filth once and for all.
Using an ancient Time Lord weapon known as the Hand of Omega (which he had stolen all those centuries ago when he fled Gallifrey as an insurance in case the Time Lords came after him.) The Doctor lured a group of Imperial Daleks to earth, specifically London in the 1960s. He had buried the Hand of Omega here centuries ago whilst in his first incarnation believing it was the perfect hiding place. The Doctor hoped that the Imperial side would find the hand of Omega and in their attempts to use it, be destroyed (with the Doctor having programmed the Hand to do so if Davros tried to use it.)
Unfortunately things got a little out of the Doctors control as the Renegades unexpectedly arrived and began to war with Imperials all over the streets of 60s London, with the Renegades briefly triumphing and stealing the Hand of Omega. The Doctor however was able to infiltrate their base and trap them on earth by sabotaging their time vessel, long enough for the Imperials to wipe out the Renegade faction and steal the Hand of Omega, after which just as the Doctor predicted. Davros' attempt to use the Hand instead led to the destruction of Skaro, and the Imperial Dalek mothership killing all of the Imperials and possibly Davros himself. There have been sightings of Davros since and rumors that he escaped the mothership, but currently no verification if they are real or not.
Finally believing he had rid the universe of these monsters once and for all, the Doctor for many centuries afterwards enjoyed arguably a much greater piece of mind than he had done since before he first encountered them on Skaro in his first incarnation. Even before giving up his golden opportunity to exterminate them at the point of their birth, which happened in his fourth incarnation. The Doctor always felt responsible for what the Daleks became due to his first visit to Skaro. From his point of view, that visit unintentionally let them know that there was life in the universe to conquer beyond the last of the Thals on Skaro. The Doctor often lamented that had he not visited, maybe the monsters in their arrogance would have been happy to remain in their dark, desolate corner of the universe convinced they were the only life forms.
When I first met the 8th Doctor, like I said he seemed much more full of life, sure of himself and able to appreciate the beauty of the universe more than even his other incarnations. The Doctor always had a great zeal for life it must be said, but underneath the bravado with his other incarnations, particularly the fifth and eleventh Doctors. There always seemed to be a sense of great torment and regret over the horror he felt he had unleashed with his oldest and bitterest enemies. Even if it wasn't conscious, the Doctor always deep down it seemed believed that no matter how many worlds he saved, it was never enough.
Sadly the Doctors relief came to an end when he discovered that against all odds, some of the Daleks had survived their supposed final end. The renegades were not actually led by the Dalek supreme. Rather they were led by the Dalek Prime. According to the legends, this was one of the first Daleks, that led the attack on the Thals city and later shot down Davros all those centuries ago. It was in fact the only one of Davros' original Daleks that had survived all this time, being kept alive long past even the long life span of a Dalek through numerous means (in a similar fashion to Davros himself ironically. Both the Dalek Prime and Davros hated each other perhaps to a greater degree than either did even the Doctor.)
The Dalek Prime was a shadowy figure however, ruling from behind the scenes and almost never taking part in conflicts itself. Some believed it just to be a myth created by the Daleks themselves of this immortal Dalek above and beyond the supreme council and the Emperor. Even the majority of Daleks themselves weren't sure if it was real or just Dalek propaganda.
Sadly however as the 8th Doctor discovered, it was real. Having been stationed on the planet Anatalin, the Daleks only remaining colony at that point. The Prime had remained in constant contact with the Dalek supreme during its mission on earth to find the Hand of Omega. Little did the Doctor know, the Dalek supreme had scanned the entirety of the Hand of Omega when it was in his custody and sent the information to the Dalek prime back on Anatalin. The black Dalek supreme however was later left on earth after the destruction of its battle force, where the Dalek prime allowed it to think that the Doctor had destroyed Anatalin too, which actually caused the Dalek to kill itself in what can only be described as grief. The reason for this was because the Dalek Prime did not want to send more of its troops to earth to rescue the Supreme, which could have alerted the Doctor to the fact that there were more renegades. He knew it was better to work in secret against both the Doctor and the Time Lords when it had access to their secrets.
Whilst the technology of the Hand was still above even what the Dalek prime was capable of, the monster was nevertheless able to use the information the supreme gave him to construct a machine that allowed the Dalek to abduct the Doctors TARDIS whilst he was in his 8th incarnation. You have to remember that the Doctors TARDIS was also not the most advanced model. In fact it had been obsolete for centuries by the time the Doctor had stolen it. Incidentally this is why it resembles a blue police box. Apparently those were common back in 1960s London where it's known the Doctor spent quite a bit of time. So much so it's when the first serious research into him by humans began. TARDIS' have the ability to change their outer appearance in order to blend into their surroundings, whilst their inside always remains the same size and shape. However the chamelion circuit which allows this, was damaged after assuming the form of a police box during a visit to 1960s London, resulting in it being stuck in that shape seemingly forever. What was once an obsolete piece of earth technology has now ironically gone on to be recognized on many planets around the universe. (Especially Skaro.)
After capturing the Doctor and his TARDIS, the Dalek Prime subjected him to extreme torture in an effort to truly discover the secrets to the Hand of Omega. The Dalek assigned to torture the Doctor was Dalek X, the second oldest Dalek in existence. He was originally the Dalek Supreme, tasked with the Spirodon mission. After the failure of that plan, he was demoted to the head of interrogation rather than destroyed due his years of service, but his somewhat more unstable personality, even by Dalek standards led to him becoming notorious among the enemies of the Daleks for his cruelty. Human soldiers in the second Dalek war named him Dalek X, or the Devil in Dalek form. Their worst fear was to end up in one of his camps. Whilst the Daleks generally have no need for names, the disgraced Supreme came to embrace this title, purely for psychological warfare due to the fear it carried. Much like with the Master some have doubted that Dalek X could have been responsible for all of the things that he has been credited with. The Doctor assures me however, that our history books, many of which would make your stomach churn reading about Dalek X-s experiments, couldn't even begin to comprehend what that monster was capable of.
In spite of this however Dalek X failed to break the Doctor who remained defiant in the face of his greatest enemies. Ironically the Daleks had influenced the Doctor this way, as his hatred of them drove him on as much as his love for humanity and the other races.
Sadly however new mind control technology developed by the Daleks did eventually allow them to later turn the Doctor into their puppet. The Daleks had always been unable to take control of the Doctor, as Time Lords have the power to place barriers around their minds which can render them immune to most forms of hypnosis. They can still fall victim to suggestive hypnosis, but not anything that would ever change who they are.
Dalek Prime and Dalek X however learned how to penetrate a Time Lord's mind from the Hand of Omega, the plans of which allowed them to harness greater power to break through the Doctors psychic defenses. Once the Doctor was their puppet, he helped build a similar weapon to the Hand which allowed the Daleks to begin rebuilding their empire.
By the time the Doctor regained his senses and escaped. The Daleks had already conquered hundreds of planets and re established themselves as a galactic power.
In his attempt to destroy them, the Doctor had tragically made the monsters more powerful than ever before. During this time the Daleks attempted to create numerous weapons that could alter the fabric of time itself, including most notably the Time Destructor, though ironically the creation of this weapon was foiled by an earlier incarnation of the Doctor who had no idea his future self's knowledge had led to its creation.
The Time Destructor incident led to the third Dalek war in the 41st century, the greatest and most prolonged of all the Dalek conflicts humanity has ever endured. It lasted for almost 100 years. During the war humanity was part of an alliance with over fifty other races, including ironically those who had initially attempted to ally with the Daleks. Naturally alliances with the Daleks don't tend to last too long. Even with this help however, humanity was only able to hold the Daleks back for almost the entire war and would still have surely lost had it not been for the Doctor.
For decades the Doctor tried to find a way to help us, without furthering altering history than he had already done so. However when he was part of a successful attack on Anatalin (that by this stage was referred to as Skaro, with the Dalek Prime trying to down play the destruction of their world for propaganda purposes.) The Doctor was able to hack into the Dalek time sphere. For all intents and purposes this was a crude version of the Eye of Harmony he had built for them, with the Eye being the ancient device that grants the Time Lords their power. Even with the Doctors help however the Daleks hadn't been able to perfect construction of a power source on that level.
You have to remember that whilst the Doctor had ironically had a greater impact on the universe than any individual Time Lord, Omega, the Time Lord engineer who constructed the Hand was truly the greatest scientist their species ever produced. When it comes to the technical side of things the Doctor, whilst a genius by our standards wasn't particularly remarkable, having apparently only scraped by with 50 percent at the fabled Time Lord Academy. His ignorance of Time Lord technology was somewhat backed up by the fact that despite his claims to the contrary. He hadn't been able to fix the chamelion circuit of his Tardis properly in goodness knows how many centuries. He always claimed to me that he had grown accustomed to the blue box shape, but I always felt that was an excuse.
Nevertheless whilst the Daleks still weren't on the Time Lords level yet, the time sphere gave the monsters the ability to look into numerous different timelines and predict their outcomes, though these visions were still very vague and confusing, hence why they only had limited success in using it to prevent defeats. The Time Lords possessed a similar much clearer device back on their home planet, but it was not used except for in the most extreme emergencies. According to their legends, Rassilon had been driven insane through looking at the sphere and constantly tried to change history, resulting in the destruction of countless worlds before he placed himself in his tower to repent. The threat of the Daleks marked the first and only time the sphere had been used since and even then the High Council made sure that its use was limited.
When the Doctor hacked into the Daleks time sphere, he was able to make the visions much clearer for himself and against his better judgement looked into it. By that stage he had been pushed too far by the war and was willing to do anything to stop the Daleks.
The Doctor looked further than either the Time Lords or the Daleks had ever been able or willing too, and saw visions of a conflict far more horrifying than even he could comprehend. The Time War.
In this potential future, the Daleks eventually mastered the Time Lord technology he had left them completely to the point where they were finally able to wage a full scale war against the Time Lords, which would become the single most devastating conflict in the history of the universe.
The best outcome for this Time War, where the Doctor triumphed still saw hundreds of billions of worlds destroyed in the cross fire, the laws of time mangled to the point where history was constantly changing in devastating ways and the Time Lords themselves become corrupted by the conflict to the point where they were no better than the Daleks. The worst potential future meanwhile saw the Daleks finally triumph over the Time Lords and go on to devastate all of creation, just as the Time Lords vision had foretold all those centuries ago.
The thousands of years the Doctor had held the Daleks back when he tampered with their creation, now meant nothing with the boost he had given them after being under the monsters control.
Incidentally it is also believed that the Dalek Prime may have used this machine to change certain aspects of Dalek history before the war, though it clearly was not in any substantial way. The Doctor nevertheless later told me that he found the Daleks from earlier points in their history were advancing at a much greater rate than he had previously remembered.
The Doctors only course of action it seemed was to change history again. He could not go back and undo his own actions as that would create a direct paradox with his own history. Instead he had no choice but to alter it in the present and so he gave humanity and numerous other races advanced technology from the future (though he made sure it could not be traced back to him so as to remain hidden in the shadows, instead supplying it to his numerous allies, who took credit on his urging for these inventions.)
The Doctor later told me that humanity would have never come close to developing this technology for thousands of years to come had he not intervened.
Only with this boost from the Doctor did the alliance of planets finally after a century of loss and bloodshed manage to turn the tide against the Daleks, destroy their armies and push them back to the outer reaches of the galaxy.
Sadly many of the planets they Daleks had conquered were blitzed and destroyed by humanity and her allies, with no attempt to liberate them, as the alliance was so desperate to get rid of the Dalek invasion force. Millions more innocent lives were sacrificed as a result.
The Daleks were seemingly wiped out at the end of the war as Anatalin/new Skaro was razed and as you know there hasn't been a Dalek attack for close to 1000 years since the war ended. The Doctor told me that they will one day return however. They always do, in fact tragically they are among the species who endure until the end of the universe's history alongside humanity.
Still he assured me that my generation and hundreds after me won't have to worry about them any time at least. The Time Lord it seems has attempted to educate himself on our history more than in his younger days. Furthermore our victory in the third Dalek war definitively prevented the Time War from ever happening. Whilst the Daleks will endure, they will never come close to being as powerful as the Time Lords ever again. That was their one chance and thankfully it was averted.
Still whilst the Doctor had set his bitterest enemies back by hundreds of thousands of years yet again, the after effects of the technology that he gave to humanity and other races, and even the technology we were able to salvage from the Daleks led to numerous other wars between the former allies, and changes to history whose after effects will endure for thousands, if not millions of years. (This once again made him a hated renegade among his people, even though he saved them from damnation in the Time War.)
Still in all fairness to the Time Lords the amount of people who died from the Doctors actions, or worse who were erased from history completely is truly beyond comprehension.
Ironically history as I know it only exists because of the Doctors changes. The time agency was created from a combination of technology we used to defeat the Daleks and their own weapons, both of which come from the Doctor. Who knows if I even existed in the original events and if I did, what my life would have been in the other world? Who knows if the other world would have been better? Whilst there were many more years of fighting and killing after defeating the Daleks, we are now living in the greatest period of human history in over 2000 years.
Still whilst it may be easy for me to dismiss this, the burden of all the lost lives and the lives that never were on the Doctor must be unimaginable. In fact it was so great that he actually did lose the will to live in his 8th incarnation, who died in the final assault against the Daleks in the third war. The Dalek prime was about to utilize his ultimate weapon, one that even he had been terrified to use, that could have attempted to weaponize time holes. Had the Dalek Prime been able to use this, even with our advantage from the Doctor, he would most surely have destroyed our planet and many more within the alliance.
The Doctor at that point was travelling with a young woman named Dana, who had also lost everything to the Daleks. Her real name was actually Justine and she was born in 1951 in London. Sadly her family were killed by the renegade Dalek faction looking for the hand of omega when they arrived in 1963. The monsters however spared her for a far more sinister purpose. The Daleks despite being driven by irrational hatred and xenophobia, relied entirely on logic when solving their problems. They had no emotions or purpose beyond conquest after all.
This had been their undoing centuries ago when they became trapped in a logical stalemate with the equally ruthless, cold and logical Movellan race. In order to ensure that would never happen again, the Daleks often captured more emotional, imaginative creatures, brainwashed them into being their lackeys, elevated their intelligence and then plugged them into war machines, allowing the slave to think up new strategies for the Daleks.
Justine was chosen for this purpose and not only became part of the renegade Dalek's battle computer on earth. She also served as an agent for the Daleks, being able no monitor their enemies from the Imperial faction to the human military to the Doctor himself without drawing suspicion.
After the black Dalek supreme who she was connected with died. Justine was freed from their control, but sadly she was left broken mentally by the ordeal and spent a further two decades in a mental institution. When she was finally released in the mid 80s, Justine travelled the world, searching for other signs of alien visitations. During that time she went by many alias' with Dana being the one she eventually settled on. It was reportedly after another young girl who had been abducted and experimented on by aliens, who Justine helped overcome her trauma. She was also desperate in many ways to escape her old identity and life and even changed her appearance somewhat, dying her hair jet black and affecting a different accent.
Eventually she met the Doctor and soon joined him as his new travelling companion. Whilst she and the Doctor were friends, and they did many good things together. Dana at least at that point was more concerned with revenge against the Daleks above anything else. Sadly the Doctor, after all he had been through from Dalek X, was only too eager to oblige and neither were able to hold the other back.
The two spent years in the third Dalek war. During that time Dana also become romantically involved with Absolam Daak, a Dalek bounty hunter in the outer colonies that had shunned themselves from the war. He is believed to have personally killed over 300 Daleks in direct combat. Daak further influenced the Doctor to become consumed by his hatred, which in the end spurned the Time Lord on to make the final attack against the Dalek Prime's new weapon not caring of the risk to himself. Ironically however Daak and Dana (on her urging) rescued the Doctor from certain death, though the injuries he sustained still caused him to regenerate into his 9th incarnation.
After the war was over the ninth Doctor and Dana, having both realized the extent at which they were willing to go to finish the Daleks tried to change. The Doctor at least said to me that whilst he would always have regrets about how he had dealt with the Daleks, he was nevertheless content that the Time War had been prevented and their power crippled for thousands of years. He and Dana also continued to travel together for many years into his 9th incarnation.
Still again having met the 9th, 10th and 11th Doctor many times, it was obvious that underneath the burden of the war tormented them every second of every day. Furthermore the only time I ever saw the 9th encounter the Daleks, he was a completely different man. More than any regeneration before, his hatred nearly consumed him.
Personally I think the Doctor took the only course of action that any decent person could have against the Daleks. He didn't play god in erasing them, but didn't sit back and allow the most terrible evil the universe had ever known to reach its greatest potential. In spite of this however, he will be haunted for the rest of his long life over the choices he made, as he would have been had he destroyed the Daleks at their point of birth.
Time travel is not a blessing. It is a curse. One that lures you in with promises of reliving the past, meeting all of the great figures from throughout history, and conquering the natural order of the universe itself. We delude ourselves into thinking that a harmless journey into the 20th century to hang out with great artists is nothing, but as soon as you set foot in the 20th century, you are faced with the reality that you have knowledge that could avert tragedies from the Titanic to the first world war. When you choose not to help, you are instantly culpable in the same way the Doctor was when he refused to finish the Daleks. Yet if you went back and averted them all, the consequences would be beyond comprehension.
I can't tell you how happy I am that part of my life is over. Whilst I don't regret everything I did with the agency. On the contrary I am proud of it, at the same time if I had known the truth of the extent of the weight on my and indeed anyone else who takes part's shoulders I may never have bothered in the first place.
It's important that any other potential time traveller understand this.
I pity the Doctor who like many wanderers in the fourth dimension, was seduced by the promise of seeing the wonders of all time and space, yet has now found himself with the greatest burden of them all in his dealings with the Daleks. I only hope that one day, somewhere in all of time and space he finds the peace, that sadly the universe will never know from the horror of the Daleks.