In Genesis, the casings are said to be mk3 travel machines. I headcanon that the reason Davros did not start the automated production was it was set to mk1s (what we see in The Daleks) and had not yet been updated. The daleks themselves would later reverse engineer the newer casings down the line.
Could also be that the designs for Mk 3 were lost with Davros's death in some sort of last-resort protocol that would activate automatically upon his death being reported from his life support system.
This also implies that the mark 2 daleks (the dalek invasion of earth daleks) are also set for production on another line for possibly long range or even multi planetary missions and attacks while the mark 1 daleks were designed to be the main guards of the cities on skaro in the event of a dalek victory against the thrals
I’ve just found something I said to a mate when I sent him this video last year which is very similar to this; It could be that the grey daleks in genesis are prototypes of the next stage in davros’s development of the casings but they weren’t perfected yet, so when the Dalek that kills davros starts the automated production line right before they exterminate him rhe casings it’s set to be used are the ones seen in black and white who, and then when the Daleks advance their casings when it went to colour they draw on the prototype grey casings that Davros had saved the plans for
I’ve always thought that the Daleks shown through Daleks (1963) to Death to the Daleks (1974) were from a different timeline where their origin wasn’t changed by the doctor.
No-one's going to read this, but I decided long ago there must have been at least three different Dalek species. Pre "Genesis," the Daleks were descendants of the Dals/Kaleds. In the first story they even had personal names. In Genesis we learn that Kaleds knew next to nothing about the cosmos. Without the Doctor's actions, Davros' experiments ran their course and the Kaleds began modifying their infrastructure to accommodate the travel machines. Eventually they evolved into the creatures we caught glimpses of in the sixties. These Daleks were crafty and creative. They always had some sort of scheme to weaken their enemies or give themselves an advantage. Then the Doctor shows up and inspires Davros. As the Doctor convinces the government to shut down Davros' experiment, he orders edits to the last round of test subjects to make them more ruthless and then arranges for both civilizations of humanoids to be destroyed. This creates a new timeline with a completely different Dalek species. These lack not only the potential for "good" emotions, but creativity and spontaneity. Centuries later he sees how his carefully engineered Daleks have failed, so he tries again, creating the "Imperial" Daleks that probably became the Time War versions. These are more like the original Kaleds, so he built devices into the travel machines to prevent them from feeling any sort of benevolence without completely eradicating their "humanity," if you can excuse the term. As for the appearance of the travel machines, I chalked that up to budget and time limitations of the production. I reject the notion that we should always accept what we see on screen as a perfect visual representation of "reality." The Tardis was never strung on fishing line when in the time vortex, it was always a perfect replica of a MPS call box, K-9 didn't have lines pulling him along at the beach, the fifth Doctor wasn't wearing sneakers immediately upon regeneration, _etc._
@@joepollardmagic The ones that were current sent the doctor to the Asylum where there were past ones but mostly modern. In the Witches Familiar there are a mix, but it's still the current ones in majority. And there were current Cybermen for the time on the Mondasian cyber ship. So once again, it's kinda funny that no matter where the Doctor goes, the Daleks (and Cybermen) are always the most modern version. Past versions appearing alongside hasn't changed that. Come back when there's an episode without the current design and purely old ones. Cause you'd think there would be a mix through his adventures.
With the Daleks it would make sense after they adopt time travel from the Chase and get involved in the Time War. You'll remember the phrase "time locked" from several stories. You can also see that this happens whenever the Doctor visits Gallifrey, he can't travel back in time there, so its time moves forwards only. Its also the case with all the classic Davros stories, which are in chronological order - well apart from the recent children in need one with Julian Bleach walking around!
To add to the thematic impact of the visuals, the gray colour used by the Daleks is very similar to the paint used on Nazi German tanks until 1943. In fact, the colour is so closely associated with German tanks that it’s sold under the name ‘panzergrau’, which is German for ‘tank gray’.
I could be wrong, it’s been a long time since I’d seen it, but I seem to recall in the Dalek Invasion of Earth, from what the Doctor says, it seems like the city-style Daleks were from the far future and they’d arrived in the Daleks’ relative past during their expansion and conquest era. The city Daleks were also less insanely aggressive, more curious and had a more diverse way of thinking. So perhaps after so much defeat, the more intelligent and broad thinking Daleks became dominant and retired to Skaro and eked out an existence in their city, forgetting much and creating machines that weren’t so resource intensive because they were no longer interested in conquest. Not to say those were the only Daleks, there could have been plenty more elsewhere, but they were the only Daleks on Skaro. In fact there are multiple references to Skaro being abandoned.
I on the other hand seem to recall Doctor saying the Skaro adventure was in their relative PAST. It was said either at the end of Daleks serial or in the next one.
@@Halo_Legend In _The Dalek Invasion of Earth_ the Doctor states that the events of _The Daleks_ took place "a million years in the future" while the invasion of Earth was part of the "middle history of the Daleks". This didn't stick for very long as subsequent stories continued to develop the Daleks. It made far more sense continuity-wise for _The Daleks_ to come first. Even the _Invasion of Earth_ novelisation changes the Doctor's line to suggest the Daleks survived after their first encounter because they had other colonies elsewhere on Skaro.
@@SJ9001 neither the Daleks in Skaro City nor the Daleks from the Dalek Earth Force recognised The Doctor and his companions, so either order works. In The Dalek, they are a lot more scientific and curious, rather than the psychopathic portrayal, and they seem to have clawed hands instead of tentacles. So they could simply be the remnants of the human-Daleks after the Emperor was defeated by The Second Doctor in The Evil of the Daleks.
I feel that maybe the mark 1 Daleks from 'The Daleks' were just an experiment by Davros. While developing the Daleks he just put a bunch the first variants in a city to study, only revealing the Daleks and their name once he developed the mark 3 which would be more effective in combat. Also maybe he just had a lot of mark 1s left over from development, didn't know what to do with them so he just stored them all in am empty city. Where they became unaware of the world outside.
The only thing I could imagine is that something happens to the mark 3s that means they die out. Perhaps they didn't have the resources to get them selves out of the bunker and they ran out of power. The only Daleks that survive are the earlier mark 1 or 2s and they drew power from the Kaled city's metallic floor (possibly being an energy efficient way of easily moving heavy cargo without wheels, seeing how easily the Daleks glide despite being big metallic lumps full of heavy tech, idk). These ones didn't rely on power banks and could draw power from the floor, meaning they had more resources to create more Daleks and eventually expand the city.
That would work maybe they didn't so much as die out because they can change casings by certain sources one of them from Genesis goes on to become the sixties Emperor is later dies and is Resurrected and becomes The Parting of the ways emperor
@@scod9746 yeah they revert to old pay things because the world is dead and they want to save material I always thought of the sixties stories didn't exist no more thought Genesis rewrote them out of existence
I think davros created several dalek prototypes before settling on the grey daleks and I think when the daleks betrayed davros and eventually left skaro the early prototypes just remained there and eventually built a city where the 1st doctor would eventually encounter them also davros called it the MK3 travel machine before settling on dalek so that implied that there was a MK2 and MK1 version which probably looked like the original 1963 daleks
As a kid, I knew the audiocassette of ‘Genesis’, along with the Target novelisation, pretty much off by heart long before I got to see the telly serial. When the Doctor mutters “very primitive, but undeniably a Dalek…” I always imagined a seriously stripped-down version - silver, of course, slatless for sure, and maybe missing other features such as the dome lights. Fewer hemispheres on the skirt section, even. (This, apparently, despite the fully formed grey Dalek on the cover of the novel…) Instead of simply being content that the Daleks looked as brilliant in this serial as they ever had before (and - with apologies to all involved in nu-Who - better than they ever would again) I have recollections of pointing at the screen and declaiming, “but that’s WRONG!” Which is no way to appreciate a classic…
@@rjjcms1 Yeah, especially since it has the solar panels from The Chase, meaning that it's actually *more* advanced than some of the earliest Daleks we saw in the show.
Here's my thoughts on where the original Dalek story fits in. After the Daleks exterminate Davros, they begin building up to conquer the universe. After the 1000 years of halted progress, they leave Skaro behind to conquer the Universe, leaving some Daleks behind. The group that remain on Skaro are the ones the Doctor first encounters. These Daleks regressed to become extremely xenophobic, even by Dalek standards, and thus imprisoned themselves in a city. After the Doctor's first encounter with them, the Dalek mutants remained dormant until the events of Return to Skaro (Big Finish). Afterwards, the Daleks find a way to move outside their city and begin conquering other worlds. In their conquests, they run across the original Daleks that left Skaro and join forces after a brief conflict, sharing their ideas and designs to make the Dalek race stronger as a whole but leaving certain design elements distinct, such as why some eyestalks don't have the pupil but others do.
I don’t think the two versions of the Daleks’ origins are reconcilable no matter how many hoops we jump through. The surface of Kalaan is obviously designed for fully-fledged Daleks in the original story, with all metal pathways and everything. Not to mention the fact it’s pristine and intact instead of being leveled to the ground, so it can’t be the same one the Kaleds lived in. But the Daleks have been hiding underground since the end of the war, so when would that city have been built? The looming answer is, the original version of Dalek lore had a complete Dalek society going strong even before the end of the war, who lived in that city. Genesis, on the other hand, has them living out their infancy already trapped under the ruins of a different version of their ancestry which fills the same narrative role, but one made for humanoids. Genesis is a great story, but it does come across rather Iike Terry Nation recounting Dalek lore from memory and not actually going back and brushing up on the original scripts. As for the Dalek designs, I really wish they’d done something like the junkyard Dalek from Resolution. Unpainted metal that doesn’t even have a color scheme to speak of, not streamlined or elegant in any way, just the pure foundation out of which you can imagine the Daleks as we know them evolving.
I'd argue the early Daleks would rarely if ever go outside their city limits or have a desire to explore the rest of Skaro after the events of Genesis of the Daleks so maybe the solar panels were removed simply because they weren't needed? As for the casing colouring? Maybe it has something to do with the purity of the Dalekanium used for the casing?
Yeah they probably went to simplified designs actually doesn't Genesis of the Daleks erase the early stories because wibbly wobbly Doctor Who timeline is in constant flux that's how come at one point he was half human
I was always under the impression that the Daleks from the dead planet took place 1000's of years in the future in the original timeline that they where a faction that had remained on Skaro and had to adapt to diminishing resources. I do consider genesis to create a new timeline for the daleks. I think people are overlooking the option that Daleks might like changing there design and colour scheme.
I like the idea of the gray daleks were in a different bunker in suspended animation to preserve power, or were to insistent to leave/war so the others deactivated them. And they were reactivated at a later date for the purpose of Conquest
I do wish they had used the correct design for Genesis, I would have loved to see that design in color in the classic series. I also find the whole "it was the standard Dalek design" reasoning stupid when they *literally* had a different design one year prior. Oh, and what color was that design? SILVER! I wish the effort had been made, imagine watching all the stories in release order and seeing those classic Daleks. I hate to say it, it's not a lore puzzle, it's a hole in the continuity that we now have to fill in. Genesis is still a great story, but I've always been bothered this aspect of it.
My theory is that the Genesis Daleks were designed with War in mind, needing to traverse a battlefield to invade the Thals dome and used the grey camouflage. However, after they were sealed in the tomb, they didn't need to go to battle anymore. That's why the slats were removed to save resources and I believe them to be some form of armor (perhaps reactive armour). They were left unpainted with the combat grey, and thus they were silver. Their independent power supply was removed as they couldn't leave the city anyway and would have likely had limited resources. The reason why the Death To The Daleks were silver was because they were on a scientific mission to an empty planet and thus had no need for the camouflage.
I’ve often thought about this question myself, the only answer I’ve come up with is, the moment the doctor got sent to skaro by the time lords changed everything. Had the doctor not meet with the council of the kaleds who then asked davros to halt the dalek production, davros would never have went to the thals and given them the secrets to the kaled dome, with the kaled city in ruins unlike the 1963 episode the daleks. That changed the development of the daleks completely, I imagine in the original timeline the war rages several years more and resources are extremely scarce by the time the daleks become a necessity for survival, resulting in the 1963 designs. That’s my thoughts on it, the dalek timeline is extremely complicated after genesis of the daleks.
I always thought that the dead planet city was a sort of "site b" and given that both daleks are pure, the 2 separate empires conquering as allies. The Death to the daleks props were a mixture of both so I viewed them as a sort of Dalek NATO.
I think the Daleks simply lost the means of manufacturing the slat power supply, so they resorted to being static powered during that time, but once they reacquired the materials they reintroduced it.
If i could customize Daleks, I’d totally do the original Dalek like these classic grey drones, with a little more black highlights and a Kaled symbol on that oval bit on the chest. Make it as if Davros was showing off to the military.
They do say that the Daleks are incased in a Mark III travel machine. Indicating that there was a Mark I and Mark II. My theory is that Davros created Daleks previously and placed them in different casings to test their capabilities and effectiveness. Mark I (the ones we see in “The Daleks”) are too dependent on smooth flooring and unable to move outside. Mark II (“The Dalek Invasion of Earth”) was better but too bulky with an obvious weakness in the solar panel in the back. Mark III was the final version adding multiple solar slabs around the mid-section to make up for the massive weakness in the Mark II travel machine, it’s hover pad was also decreased in size similar to the Mark I as to not be too bulky. Davros took the first Dalek he created and put it in a Mark I before putting it in a Mark II and then finally Mark III travel machine before that Dalek finally shot him at the end of “Genesis of the Daleks”. The Mark II Daleks eventually developed space travel and left Skaro leaving the Mark I Daleks trapped in their city unable to leave. The Mark III Daleks would eventually take over the planet.
This is the most plausible explanation in my opinion, with one added detail that it probably wasn't just earlier models of the travel machine but also earlier Dalek creatures as well. As you said the least advanced machine and perhaps the least intelligent creature were bound in their city. The second iteration was quickly abandoned as Davros was making rapid advancements toward Mark III and so they just left Skaro after achieving space travel. Ultimately we're just making excuses to cover really poor continuity, but this definitely fits best I think. The next best alternative is the silver Daleks are a cost cutting design and are essentially considered more as technicians. The greys are the actual soldiers, so they get the better hardware and armor. Then later down the line maybe when they had a greater resource supply all Daleks were given the most powerful model.
Thank you for addressing this casing problem in continuity. I like the idea the first Daleks were mark 1 types that survived in a separate location; but agree your theory of devolution could work too, until the reboot remake of all episodes to have a more consistent parallel universe.
My thought is that the Genesis of the Daleks was first in the timeline of course but the Emperor (in his prime) probably made these other Daleks that we see in the Daleks
The thing is. Because 1st and 2nd doctor who episodes were black and white. The daleks colour didn't really matter. It's when they moved over to colour that they became grey
The 'Dead Planet' Daleks were the Mk1 prototypes left behind on Skaro, coming out to play when later variants had left. The 'Invasion of Earth' Daleks were the Mk2 revision, Davros' first experiment in abandoning a static power source. The Mk3 Daleks were the final design. Simples.
I always thought the daleks changed their casings to persevere power. Knowing that using static energy would work better for them while being stuck under there as knowing they wouldn’t need to leave any time soon. But years later, under a short time needing to leave skaro to punish others designed their own portable design to do this under such short time. Only after the daleks invasion going back to the slats and then later on designing them selfs to be more like the daleks from pre-dalek ruled skaro: idk I thought that made sence. Since in the curse of the daleks they seemed to be in the same state they were when the doctor had left after helping he thals and all that
In an alternate universe, it's the Thals - after having defeated the Kaleds, but weakened by radiation, and having discovered Davros' blueprints - who created the Slaths, the mechanised galactic force for peace.
I believe they devolved in between genesis and dead planet because of the doctor setting them back a 1000 years. Their casing’s probably got damaged at some point and not having Davros or his schematics (the latter being lost to time) to repair them, they made less advanced casings that could only move around in the cities. It took 1000s possibly even longer than that for the daleks to advance to the point they were at in genesis at least when it comes to their casing.
The slats are energy suplies to allow the daleks to move out of the city . I think after the events in gensis of the daleks davros realised how ruthless the daleks were and he had the slats removed from the design so he could have more control over them
There is also a further problem which genesis creates. The story Genesis of the daleks actually contradicts the original origins of the daleks told in their first story. In ‘The Daleks (Dead planet)’ the daleks inform the doctor that centuries ago the daleks ancestors known as Dals were driven into the city by the thals, and also due to their elevated mutations. This forced the Dals to place themselves into the dalek machines that we see in the dead planet story. This was to protect themselves from the radiation that destroyed their planet, however the daleks had evolved to become so dependant on the radiation that when a dalek tried the anti-Radiation drug it had a very negative effect. Xx
It's a continuity flaw but I always look at the old Daleks like this Gun Metal grey Daleks are Soldiers Silver and Blue Daleks are Scientists Silver and Black Daleks are Scientific Scouts Black Daleks are Squadron leaders Gold Daleks are leaders of invasion Forces Then you have unique versions like the Supreme Daleks and The Emperor. Then we have the White and Gold which are Humanoid and not Kaleds.
I like to think the daleks didn't use the more advanced gray daleks because there power and outher systems were resource demanding and the blue daleks with floor power were less complex to make because of them being underground.
One could make the case of not all of the Daleks being part of the same group or faction at certain points in time, and simply just chose to ignore each other. Only when the likes of Davros resurfaced did they start getting more confrontational towards each other and becoming obsessed with purity and uniformity. I'm reminded of the Supreme Dalek killing a subordinate for failure in 'Planet Of', and then we have one back in "Power Of' being puzzled at humans killing each other. Heck, a number of them probably didn't even take part in the Time War for all we know.
I think my theory and reimagined version of "Genesis of the Daleks" would feature the original Skaro Daleks. But the Doctor is followed by a Silver Dalek Warriors from "Death to the Daleks" with single dark grey Dalek leading them. To prevent the Doctor from stopping their creation.
Ive always guessed that the reason why they are grey was because the fourth doctors meddling slightly changed dalek history, so instead of being silver then becoming grey, they were always grey
My canon behind this is that the daleks after building there city and it power caw changed there casings to save resources and energy. Also we never saw the dalek travel machines that came of the production line at the end of genesis so the grey daleks may have only been a prototype design and davros may have decided that since the majority of thals were dead the daleks didn’t need there tank like paint job
My theory is they started to run out of power whilst they were entombed. With no sunlight to power their solar slats they could not charge themselves so they had to modify the way they sourced energy through static, which meant irreversibly altering the Dalek template. Then came the eyestalk lights. Whilst digging themselves out there would have been no light creating the tunnels so they would have modified their eyes to emit light. Resources would have also become scarce so things like paint would have become redundant to the raw silver Dalekanium. But that’s my theory.
I like to think that the grey Daleks scoured the bunker, looked through all of Davros's research and thought "Well he was the smartest man on Skaro, surely he woulda known if there was other life out there." If they did find any research, it woulda just been the thesis that Skaro was the only planet in the seven galaxies capable of supporting life. With the interrogation tape from earlier in the story gone, all Dalek defeats woulda been lost, as would knowledge of the other worlds and life forms. As such, they devolved. Detonated the Neutron bomb, built their city, and decided to use the silver and blue casings since there wasn't any need to go outside now that all life was - to them anyway - gone.
Perhaps insofar as the Daleks' timeline, the grey models come before the silver ones. As such, perhaps their defeat in the very first story is in fact the extinction of the species - millions of years in the future, with their empire reduced to a small, pathetic group of beings trapped in an underground bunker, wiped out by a power outage. Quite a fitting end for them.
They could have used the grey design at the beginning but decided to use a sliver one due to the materials close to them? then they decided to go back after their empire expanded meaning more resources came available?
I have a more concrete theory and this is based off of a DVD special feature on the Genesis DVD's by 2entertain... "The Dalek Tapes" is a documentary style retrospect of the Daleks in classic Who... narrated by Terry Molloy there's a whole look at the social and political hierarchy of the Daleks, the Emperor and his guard at the top, the Supreme Daleks and leaders, and then it comes to the blue and silver Daleks, being what was described as the "scientific core" of the race, with the lowest rank being the grey Daleks, described being as "simply designed to fight". So with this knowledge I think that the Daleks that were held up for 10,000 years in the incubators became the city Daleks from "The Dead Planet"...
I suspect the real reason is BBC prop people couldn't be arsed to remove the slats, and fill in and re-paint the mounting holes on the old "shoulder" bands underneath. Its a budget thing. (You can almost hear them saying "kids won't notice it!, its been years now! since those shows aired and got junked"
I think that's exactly what happened, there are lots of examples of Classic Who revisiting old locations / monsters from the '60s and early '70s and having them look completely different, because nobody at the time ever considered that people in the future would take notice of that. The Telos tombs from Attack of the Cybermen are a good example - the fact that Tomb of the Cybermen was lost at that point meant that the production team were going off of memory alone when designing the tombs
The Dalek timeline is probably well and truly buggered thanks to the time war, but if it was linear I would assume whatever munitions the Daleks detonated outside of the bunker to try and clear out the remaining Thals before building Kalaan messed with the power systems of the original casing design making it difficult to operate efficiently. After that they became insular, modifying the casing to draw power from the floors of the expanding city and gradually reworking the look to what would be the original 1960s design. It's clear the Daleks have at least some concept of aesthetics (even if it is just bumps and ovals) from their architecture. The interference from the First Doctor may have been enough to get them to accelerate their space travel capabilities and leave Skaro with a modified power system to attack the Earth after a period of time. After that they set about reintroducing the old slat design since it was now viable again. Upon the destruction of the Emperor and most of the facilities on Skaro, they rapidly went through several design iterations in local Dalek fleets before reviving the 'original' casing at least aesthetically to allow them to wage war on a truly galactic scale (and possibly as a narcissistic reference to their initial victories as a species). Hence why the grey colouration was so prolific in later stories.
Buddy, we all know that. The point of this video and discussion is that it being a continuity error is anything but "just", anything but simple. It ruins everything.
My theory is that the Silver design was created in the 1000 years of entrapment as a solution to energy and parts issues, a more lightweight, less self-sufficient model suited to confined life in the bunker, by The Daleks they were still in this form, also begrudgingly taking a more tolerant approach to other lifeforms out of there current weak position. Due to both lost knowledge from the cities computer banks being in poor repair and possibly the mark 3 models simply being unfeasible despite its technical superiority to the silver design (inefficient energy use, frequent technical issues etc.) they stuck with the silver design even after becoming interstellar, and were somewhat slow to develop features that the original design had. Eventually they implemented features from the grey design's casing, as it was more durable then the silver one and was now more feasible.
Ironically if they had made the daleks army/olive green no one would have complained. They had sliver daleks in the last episode so they had to go out of theor way to paint them back
I have always thought that the grey Dalek looked far more intimidating than other Dalek versions, the cold grey look was far more sinister in visual when compared to 'pleasing' colours more suited as spray finishes on flashy automobiles.
I actually think the Doctor's interference in Genesis CAUSED the Daleks to regress the way they had in their first story. When the Doctor mentions delaying the Daleks for "perhaps a thousand years', I think the implication could've been broader than just halting technological progress. His meddling in the timeline could've caused the Daleks to REGRESS in technology as well, doing so for the sake of survival. This idea can also be affirmed by the line "We are entombed, but we live on" by the Dalek Prime. I think the Daleks doubled down on this idea as time went on, and they ended up regressing as a result. So, the Daleks in "The Daleks" are actually the product of the Doctors interference in Genesis, and said interference was simply a pre-determined part of the timeline. I know that's not necessarily on parr with Doctor Who's typical depiction of time travel, but I think it's an interesting idea.
I always think the daleks add or lose components according to what they have to do. There might be advantages to not carrying round a huge amount of kit on the casing if the daleks are living in a city with a shared power supply for example. It may be more energy-efficient to lose individual power plants and shielding slats on each dalek if they are living indoors and not fighting. If they do become involved in fighting or other demanding activities they can always upgrade. So the Daleks of the original series are stripped down 'holiday daleks' at the nude beach, basically!
I think The Dalek Handbook hypothesised that it's because Daleks kept travelling back in time and rewriting their history. I hypothesise that 1970s Daleks travelled back in time to quicken Dalek evolution by introducing Mark III casing earlier in their timeline.
Maybe they changed to the silver design because it was more convenient or resource efficient than the grey designs, better for the cities but not for other uses
If Davros can suddenly regain his sight, then his legs and full mobility, and it turns out he never was in a wheelchair at all, then nothing is permanent and we don't need to worry about paint jobs.
It's pointless trying to fit things into cannon where fiction is concerned if it didn't happen that way on screen. They are grey because they wanted a big Nazi storyline with Davros as Hitler. They sacrificed cannon so they could do that.
I'd like to think that the dalek designs are in terms of generation, the daleks we see in Genesis are the first generation while in The Daleks, the ones in that episode are second generation.
It's just bad continuity, that's all, like how Davros keep reappearing after his death in Resrrection and when he was captured by the Dalek's loyal to the Supreme in Revelation then suddenly reappearing as the Emperor with a bunch of new design Daleks in Remembrance with no explanation in either case. I'll give props to the writers of Resurrection for keeping in continuity of Davros being in suspended animation as what happened to him at the end of Destiny.
There's a few theories, one I like is that the silver and blue casing is an earlier version of the grey casing and that's why it needs static electricity to power it and the reason they don't mention kaled in the daleks is because the beings that inhabit those casings are dals who the thals near drove to extinction before or during the war with the kaleds. Though Bernice summerfield says in "the lights of skaro" that the dalek city rose from the kaled bunker like a metal cancer so that implies these are the same daleks so that creates more confusion. But then where is the dalek city in destiny of the daleks! Ughhh it annoys me so much So my conclusion is the time war fucked it all up and made the inconsistencies 🤣
I've long since accepted that its impossible to fully tie up everything in Doctor who in to a neat set of chronological events without any contradictions. Just part of the parcel when dealing with a franchise that's lasted as long as Doctor Who and gone through so many different writers and retcons.
to answer the where's the Dalek city in Destiny, I always point towards the War of the Daleks novel that explain that the version of Skaro we see in Destiny was not actually Skaro at all, rather a planet called Antalin that the Daleks terraformed to be a perfect replica of their home planet in a bid to save it's destruction in Rememberance
You should do one about the daleks in parting of the ways when thay bomb earth and reshape the earth's contents in seconds but in stolen earth the daleks don't seem to do this.
There's a nice theory that I like, that the 60's Daleks are the most modern Daleks This means everything after all the way up to 2005 (most recent design as of this comment) are pre-60's design
haven't watched yet but gonna guess the first appearance of the daleks were from the future after davros created them hence why there a different colour
Perhaps because the daleks killed their creator they struggled for a while to get to the same point technologically that they were at in genesis. So for the next few hundered future generations they regressed but then eventually developed further past that after the original daleks story. Its not a perfect explanation because they’re meant to be geniuses and very technologically advanced but its the only one i can think of. Perhaps as we were seeing them in the original story they were going through a particularly rough patch and running low on resources since they couldn’t go outside their base. So really we were seeing them at their weakest (and yet they were still very powerful)
My belief is that the Daleks seen between The Daleks and The Evil of the Daleks are the Daleks as seen in the timeline where The Doctor does not go back in time to the events of Genesis. In this timeline, the Daleks are much more bent on conquest and are far more scheming. It can be assumed that, without The Doctor’s manipulation of the timeline in Genesis (after all he influenced Ronson, Gharman et al and incited Davros to wipe out the Kaled people) that Davros hot much further in his experiments and the Dalek War ended in a much different fashion. Indeed, the Dalek City in The Daleks and Evil may well be the Kaled Dome in that timeline. The Grey Daleks seen in Day onwards, alongside the silver ones from Death, are most likely the Daleks born out of the Doctor’s intervention. These Daleks lack the more scheming element of the 60s era Daleks and are much more war like in their nature.
i know im a bit late. but the reason why they are silver. is because they were known as the mark 2 travel machine. there are many varients of travel machine. the the mark IV travel machine is a casing that the imperials use. while the renegades use mark III. the genesis also uses the mark III. if its not obvious however silver daleks were mark II travel machines. aswell as the ones in the comics. its mostly not likely canon. but maybe it is. the bronze daleks being the mark V. each dalek has a specific type of casing. each belonging to a newer model. or older. that is why in the magician's apprentice. there are many varients of daleks. which the most likely reason is because the casings originated on factory production lines on skaro. considering that there are so many varients. they either might be the few survivors picked by davros. or completely new daleks. considering that some of them have blue eyes. ***EDIT:*** i kinda went off topic. but hopefully this is explains why the daleks are silver and the others are seemingly grey. this is an in universe explanation. but i just basically got a bit of few scraps and used whatever i knew about the traveling machine.
What if The Doctor actually entered into an alternative universe by accident? The Timelords phucked up and sent The Doctor to the wrong timeline and since then that universes timeline was reset and not the original. Perhaps both timelines did merge together due to the implications of the Time War and we now witness two universes and timelines co-existing which would mean we would have twice the amount of Daleks in 1 universe.
I think the best theory would be the simplest. Davros creates the Grey Daleks. The Fourth Doctor successful sabotage stalls Dalek progress leading to them being weaker when the First Doctor arrives. In other words, the sabotage the Doctor does in Genesis is why the Daleks are weaker in the first series and slowly evolve over the course of there first stories into the efficient killing machines they were originally envisioned by their creator to be. As for the eye thing, I thing they always have contracting glowing eyes as seen in several fan interpretations of older designs (Imperials can have red glowy eyes). The pupil design always looked kind of dorky, but its a product of its era.
I have a theory that is based on librarian bot's personal dalek timeline, the daleks in genesis was powered by solar energy aka the slats, after breaking free from the bunker, the daleks came into conflict with the thals. the thals, knowing that the daleks would eventually escape from the bunker, created weapons that could destroy the daleks, resulting in a war between the thals and the daleks, however, this war only lasted for 2 years, since the daleks knew they can't take out the thals in front line combat due to their numbers & their weapons, they bombarded every single continent of skaro with the neutron bombs, seemingly killing of all of the thals. However, this caused a nuclear winter on skaro, rendering their slats ineffective at producing power, but since there was no evidence of life beyond skaro and the thals were all seemingly extinct, the daleks, believing they have become the superior beings, returned to their city and started using static electricity as a power source, and since the surface was decimated to the point that it was no longer worth investigating, the daleks removed the slats from their travel machines and dedicated themselves to the perfection of their environment and technology, to the point that they even created art of their own. This age of isolation continued for a millennia, However, without other creatures to kill, the daleks grew more xenophobic even by their own standards and would have turned that hatred inwards and eventually would have destroyed each other, if not for an old time traveler and his companions wandering into their city.
Occam's razor leads me to conclude that the grey Daleks simply comes after the Silver Daleks, and Davros did NOT actually create the Daleks. The Daleks existed from Dals, and it's only after the Silver Daleks have been defeated that Davros and the Kaleds borrowed their design. THAT's why the Dalek killed Davros immediately; Davros simply revived it, not create it. edit: Just like the scientists from The Power of the Daleks and The Victory of the Daleks believed that they have created them, but in reality, The Daleks are just using them to regain their strength. Edit: also, i don't really like the idea of ONE MAN creating the Daleks. Hundreds of years of nuclear radiation and mutation as they retreat underground and into metal tanks, slowly driving them mad is a WAYYY better origin and it's the reason why the Daleks became popular in the first place. Not sure why Terry Nation keeps retconing his own work
Maybe the Daleks adopted the darker colour scheme later on because it showed a change after the destruction of the original Dalek Emperor. As the Dalek emperor is destroyed in a civil war & that was the last episode to show the silver Daleks. Maybe after these events the new daleks changed there colour scheme from the Silver drones & Black Supreme daleks to the Gold supreme & the grey drones. The way to explain the ones in city is that they must be in the timeline some point in-between Power, the invasion of earth, chase, the Daleks master plan & the evil of the Daleks. so before the daleks had a civil war. The later appearances of the grey daleks do see changes in colour of supreme Dalek & other ranks but this is possible due to the daleks making different Supremes look different for reasons. The reason they change is probably due to some form of regression like how the other residents of the planet Skaro changed due to the nuclear war & this caused them to not need to leave & not need to be as militaristic so they changed the colour over time & lost the ability to use portable power possibly because they never needed to leave the city & thus it was a waste of resources to have that ability.
My theory for over a decade for this is something like this. The daleks after killing davros were "entombed". Possibly for thousands of years. This would likely lead them through some course of evolution through decision. Them being primitive daleks, the immediate events of the story and things concerning them, the kaleds, their creator may not have stuck around either in mind, or through documentation. By the end of the episode we can assume that the daleks hadn't yet a way to document and record information they deemed possibly important in the future, as during this story davros was the one pretty much programming and giving them all the information they had... I consider it a case of slow progress at the start. In regards to their case design, the slats on the casing are often reffered to as "solar panels". I imagine its a lot more complex than just solar power, but even in that case, perhaps whatever enables them to draw power through these slats became evermore limited while stuck inside the remains of the kaled bunker. Like a sealed room or box that runs out of oxygen as you breathe or if a flame is lit. I believe the daleks devised a primitive but effective means to keep themselves powered, that being the static electricity solution. At this point they were always going to be floorbound so it wouldnt have required anything too complex and they likely saw no possibility of this system being exploited. It worked so they went with it and their environment was already well suited towards it. Hence on later dalek models that we see in "the daleks", they didn't bother adding the slats and repurposed that material for other projects. As for their colour. As you mentioned, it was likely a stylistic choice by davros and kaled scientists. the colour helped them blend into dark spaces and also had that gunmetal look. When the daleks themselves started salvaging or creating more metals for their casings, they probably left it silver because they saw no need for the stylistic choice of dark grey. A lot of their surroundings, floors, walls etc all seem to use metal that looks more silver than is does dark grey, no doubt they repurposed some areas of the bunker into casing metals and left it as that colour. As for the blue hemispheres, I've never been too sure about that. But thought maybe it's just to aid with some sort of colour recognition in regards to light. I can imagine plenty of issues that could arise with sensors and such if absolutely everything was just silver. The blue light reflected off the hemispheres could serve a purpose in this way. Really reaching here but blue light has high frequency and short waves so maybe its this property that lead to the decision with the intruments they'd built. Some bonus theories I've thought of in the past: The daleks switching to a lens that can constrict. I just figured it may have been ideal for them during those years in the bunker, light etc. So they just refitted their optical systems and it worked well enough that it took them a long time to revert back to a possibly improved pupil generations later. This ones got a lot of holes in it though for obvious reasons. The daleks only ever having non-ray weapons when davros isn't really around. During the years in the bunker, such a powerful ray might not have even been useful and would rarely be used. Aside from damaging objects and killing rogue daleks, their guns would likely never have be used for a very long time. I imagine it would also have consumed a lot of energy that the daleks just didn't have at their disposal in a heavily damaged bunker. I think they changed it to a weapon that consumed less power. I've always thought of the earlier dalek guns to emmit some form of radiation, but i've also heard lightning. So maybe a toned down discharge of electicity somehow. This would also explain why daleks in stories pre-davros were able to just "disable" their subjects, while daleks fitted with a visible ray/plasma projectile would have a gun so powerful that just maiming victims wasn't a possibility. Destiny kind of puts a few holes in some theories but I imagine with destiny, the daleks eventually learned of davros, and given their advancements, were able to uncover more of their history. Perhaps even excavating old documentation on original daleks over the centuries. Included in the documentation would likely be reasoning for davros' original design choices, colour, slats etc. It's clear in this story they wanted davros' help, so they were seemingly willing already to take his advice on things. Having found this information, they simply reverted to older design choices with possible (but not seen in the story) upgrades of their own. One of their attempts to revert back being their original ray gun, but was probably not as successful as they'd hoped as im sure in destiny if I recall, their ray now only had the ability to kill one subject per blast. Bit of a long one but hope it makes sense. I'm sure there's a ton of issues with it. But patching up dr.who plot holes is as hard as repairing a crack in time.
This is a bit tinfoil, but what if this indicates prior Dalek adventures still take place in the post-Genesis timeline? By slowing down Dalek development to the point 4 did they had to utilize more primitive technology and only by the seventies do they redevelop the old design. The Dalek Overseer storyline suggests that timeline changes in the Doctor/the audience's future can echo back, ie we remember the Ogrons' involvement before Big Finish reveals that was a change thanks to the Time War
Okay so here's my take. There are years between Genesis and The Daleks, thousands of years. Once their creator is dead, it's likely the only Daleks left are Drones, no scientists, no one to make any advancements. All they knew how to do is make more Drones since the production line had already started. So it makes sense that as the years go on they would downgrade their casings, as leaving the city clearly isn't a priorty they discover that they can be powered by the static electricity in the floor aand adapt to it as maybe inside the city it was a much more powerful source of energy and over these years, their war with the Thals would mainly become myth and legend, details would be lost and even Davros would be forgotten, assuming all the original Daleks built by Davros die out and the facts are lost in the generations. So once the Daleks meet the Doctor they realise they do need to upgrade themselves, they need to make advancements so they can travel the stars and conquer other worlds, maybe once they start their time travel experiments they even discover their past and make a note of it in their databanks, accounting for them knowing about Davros by the time they get to Destiny.
I really don't like the Grey & Black color scheme. In my eyes, it's boring & takes away the fact that these monsters are meant to be alien in a sense. That's why I prefer the Silver & Blue & wish that it remained the original color scheme as seen in Time Lord Victorious' "Daleks!".
I think the colour scheme at least could make sense if you consider the fact that the Daleks are a fascist society. A key feature of fascism is an extreme reverence for an imagined former glory and a desire to replicate those eras. If you assume that the 70s and 80s stories take place after the “final end” in Evil of the Daleks, with the Dalek empire scattered and collapsing after the death of the first emperor, then it makes sense for them to redesign themselves in the image of their original selves. It could be likened to a desire to “the good old days” when their purpose was clear and allegiances unified. That’s just my idea though, and I like it because it adds another layer of characterisation to the Daleks as a race.
I honestly, in my headcanon, don't even recognise the Genysis of the Daleks. The character of Davros was dumb, cliche and unnecessary in the first place. Daleks are much more than minions of a mad scientist. They all are scientists. That's what I choose to believe. And grey Daleks look exceptionally bad and boring.
Ok after rewatching - Davros was actually a quite compelling character, but in a classic old cheap media fashion - he acted unlike how he was characterised by begging for pity. Cheap karma moment. Still, the original backstory of the Daleks was far better.
Here's my thoughts on where the original Dalek story fits in. After the Daleks exterminate Davros, they begin building up to conquer the universe. After the 1000 years of halted progress, they leave Skaro behind to conquer the Universe, leaving some Daleks behind. The group that remain on Skaro are the ones the Doctor first encounters. These Daleks regressed to become extremely xenophobic, even by Dalek standards, and thus imprisoned themselves in a city. After the Doctor's first encounter with them, the Dalek mutants remained dormant until the events of Return to Skaro (Big Finish). Afterwards, the Daleks find a way to move outside their city and begin conquering other worlds. In their conquests, they run across the original Daleks that left Skaro and join forces after a brief conflict, sharing their ideas and designs to make the Dalek race stronger as a whole but leaving certain design elements distinct, such as why some eyestalks don't have the pupil but others do.
I recall binge reading the Doctor Who wiki on the Dalek timeline a while back and the semi official explanation given is basically this. One group of Daleks left Skaro and those that were left behind and encountered the 1st Doctor had simply regressed in their isolation. But then later the ones that left had returned and reestablished themselves on Skaro. Although the whole thing is still somewhat messy due to the constant retcons and multiple different writers having worked on it.
my idea is that there is a dalek civil war. this would explain the technological gap between the two different versions, as the future daleks do not require the power source. possibly the genetically different daleks did not require external power sources and were banished/fled in a rocket. the older daleks were probably killed by the advanced altered daleks.
What a load of tosh...There is no story arc related reason for this. Basically it was down to money ...the BBC would not spend money on renovating the (by then) old and battered grey painted props back to their original silver, grey and blue livery...either that or they didn't forsee a time when nerds would try and rationalise the decision into some kind of contrived 'timeline' ....and didn't really care or both.
Need to get return to Skaro I'm as say lacking in Big Finsh stories as to many come out monthly and time add other sci fi stuff plus keep up to date with DWM, and blu ray sets CO figures etc sadly my budget doesn't go far for audio I only buy some off the ones I can afford (not saying Return be expensive) loads are especially the box sets
In Genesis, the casings are said to be mk3 travel machines. I headcanon that the reason Davros did not start the automated production was it was set to mk1s (what we see in The Daleks) and had not yet been updated. The daleks themselves would later reverse engineer the newer casings down the line.
I'll run with that!
That's a solid explanation to me.
Could also be that the designs for Mk 3 were lost with Davros's death in some sort of last-resort protocol that would activate automatically upon his death being reported from his life support system.
This also implies that the mark 2 daleks (the dalek invasion of earth daleks) are also set for production on another line for possibly long range or even multi planetary missions and attacks while the mark 1 daleks were designed to be the main guards of the cities on skaro in the event of a dalek victory against the thrals
I’ve just found something I said to a mate when I sent him this video last year which is very similar to this;
It could be that the grey daleks in genesis are prototypes of the next stage in davros’s development of the casings but they weren’t perfected yet, so when the Dalek that kills davros starts the automated production line right before they exterminate him rhe casings it’s set to be used are the ones seen in black and white who, and then when the Daleks advance their casings when it went to colour they draw on the prototype grey casings that Davros had saved the plans for
I’ve always thought that the Daleks shown through Daleks (1963) to Death to the Daleks (1974) were from a different timeline where their origin wasn’t changed by the doctor.
No-one's going to read this, but I decided long ago there must have been at least three different Dalek species. Pre "Genesis," the Daleks were descendants of the Dals/Kaleds. In the first story they even had personal names. In Genesis we learn that Kaleds knew next to nothing about the cosmos. Without the Doctor's actions, Davros' experiments ran their course and the Kaleds began modifying their infrastructure to accommodate the travel machines. Eventually they evolved into the creatures we caught glimpses of in the sixties. These Daleks were crafty and creative. They always had some sort of scheme to weaken their enemies or give themselves an advantage.
Then the Doctor shows up and inspires Davros. As the Doctor convinces the government to shut down Davros' experiment, he orders edits to the last round of test subjects to make them more ruthless and then arranges for both civilizations of humanoids to be destroyed. This creates a new timeline with a completely different Dalek species. These lack not only the potential for "good" emotions, but creativity and spontaneity. Centuries later he sees how his carefully engineered Daleks have failed, so he tries again, creating the "Imperial" Daleks that probably became the Time War versions. These are more like the original Kaleds, so he built devices into the travel machines to prevent them from feeling any sort of benevolence without completely eradicating their "humanity," if you can excuse the term.
As for the appearance of the travel machines, I chalked that up to budget and time limitations of the production. I reject the notion that we should always accept what we see on screen as a perfect visual representation of "reality." The Tardis was never strung on fishing line when in the time vortex, it was always a perfect replica of a MPS call box, K-9 didn't have lines pulling him along at the beach, the fifth Doctor wasn't wearing sneakers immediately upon regeneration, _etc._
It is kinda funny that no matter where in time the doctor goes, the Dalaks (and Cybermen) are always the most modern version.
Not really. In asylum of the Daleks there are a whole mix and in Capaldis last episode there are Mondasian Cybermen
@@joepollardmagic The ones that were current sent the doctor to the Asylum where there were past ones but mostly modern. In the Witches Familiar there are a mix, but it's still the current ones in majority.
And there were current Cybermen for the time on the Mondasian cyber ship.
So once again, it's kinda funny that no matter where the Doctor goes, the Daleks (and Cybermen) are always the most modern version.
Past versions appearing alongside hasn't changed that. Come back when there's an episode without the current design and purely old ones. Cause you'd think there would be a mix through his adventures.
With the Daleks it would make sense after they adopt time travel from the Chase and get involved in the Time War. You'll remember the phrase "time locked" from several stories. You can also see that this happens whenever the Doctor visits Gallifrey, he can't travel back in time there, so its time moves forwards only. Its also the case with all the classic Davros stories, which are in chronological order - well apart from the recent children in need one with Julian Bleach walking around!
To add to the thematic impact of the visuals, the gray colour used by the Daleks is very similar to the paint used on Nazi German tanks until 1943. In fact, the colour is so closely associated with German tanks that it’s sold under the name ‘panzergrau’, which is German for ‘tank gray’.
Interesting thanks for commenting this! 🤘👊
Not really. Panzergrau was actually a lighter shade of grey then that version of the Daleks.
I could be wrong, it’s been a long time since I’d seen it, but I seem to recall in the Dalek Invasion of Earth, from what the Doctor says, it seems like the city-style Daleks were from the far future and they’d arrived in the Daleks’ relative past during their expansion and conquest era.
The city Daleks were also less insanely aggressive, more curious and had a more diverse way of thinking. So perhaps after so much defeat, the more intelligent and broad thinking Daleks became dominant and retired to Skaro and eked out an existence in their city, forgetting much and creating machines that weren’t so resource intensive because they were no longer interested in conquest. Not to say those were the only Daleks, there could have been plenty more elsewhere, but they were the only Daleks on Skaro. In fact there are multiple references to Skaro being abandoned.
I on the other hand seem to recall Doctor saying the Skaro adventure was in their relative PAST.
It was said either at the end of Daleks serial or in the next one.
@@Halo_Legend In _The Dalek Invasion of Earth_ the Doctor states that the events of _The Daleks_ took place "a million years in the future" while the invasion of Earth was part of the "middle history of the Daleks". This didn't stick for very long as subsequent stories continued to develop the Daleks. It made far more sense continuity-wise for _The Daleks_ to come first. Even the _Invasion of Earth_ novelisation changes the Doctor's line to suggest the Daleks survived after their first encounter because they had other colonies elsewhere on Skaro.
@@SJ9001 neither the Daleks in Skaro City nor the Daleks from the Dalek Earth Force recognised The Doctor and his companions, so either order works.
In The Dalek, they are a lot more scientific and curious, rather than the psychopathic portrayal, and they seem to have clawed hands instead of tentacles. So they could simply be the remnants of the human-Daleks after the Emperor was defeated by The Second Doctor in The Evil of the Daleks.
I feel that maybe the mark 1 Daleks from 'The Daleks' were just an experiment by Davros. While developing the Daleks he just put a bunch the first variants in a city to study, only revealing the Daleks and their name once he developed the mark 3 which would be more effective in combat. Also maybe he just had a lot of mark 1s left over from development, didn't know what to do with them so he just stored them all in am empty city. Where they became unaware of the world outside.
The only thing I could imagine is that something happens to the mark 3s that means they die out. Perhaps they didn't have the resources to get them selves out of the bunker and they ran out of power. The only Daleks that survive are the earlier mark 1 or 2s and they drew power from the Kaled city's metallic floor (possibly being an energy efficient way of easily moving heavy cargo without wheels, seeing how easily the Daleks glide despite being big metallic lumps full of heavy tech, idk). These ones didn't rely on power banks and could draw power from the floor, meaning they had more resources to create more Daleks and eventually expand the city.
That would work maybe they didn't so much as die out because they can change casings by certain sources one of them from Genesis goes on to become the sixties Emperor is later dies and is Resurrected and becomes The Parting of the ways emperor
the static electric daleks are Mark 1, this makes the most sense.
@@scod9746 yeah they revert to old pay things because the world is dead and they want to save material I always thought of the sixties stories didn't exist no more thought Genesis rewrote them out of existence
@@scod9746but what about the mark 2’s
I think davros created several dalek prototypes before settling on the grey daleks and I think when the daleks betrayed davros and eventually left skaro the early prototypes just remained there and eventually built a city where the 1st doctor would eventually encounter them also davros called it the MK3 travel machine before settling on dalek so that implied that there was a MK2 and MK1 version which probably looked like the original 1963 daleks
This makes the most sense.
mk1=davros's chair
mk2=60s dalek
mk3=70s-80s dalek
My theory was always the fourth doctor meddled with time and accidentally messed it up
As a kid, I knew the audiocassette of ‘Genesis’, along with the Target novelisation, pretty much off by heart long before I got to see the telly serial. When the Doctor mutters “very primitive, but undeniably a Dalek…” I always imagined a seriously stripped-down version - silver, of course, slatless for sure, and maybe missing other features such as the dome lights. Fewer hemispheres on the skirt section, even. (This, apparently, despite the fully formed grey Dalek on the cover of the novel…) Instead of simply being content that the Daleks looked as brilliant in this serial as they ever had before (and - with apologies to all involved in nu-Who - better than they ever would again) I have recollections of pointing at the screen and declaiming, “but that’s WRONG!” Which is no way to appreciate a classic…
When he said they were primitive I was looking for visual evidence of it but didn't see any.
@Ok-Scale so basically how he appears in Remembrance?
@Ok-Scale yeah but they have enough budget to undo some screws to remove the lats and just dumped a bucket of silver paint on them
@@rjjcms1 Yeah, especially since it has the solar panels from The Chase, meaning that it's actually *more* advanced than some of the earliest Daleks we saw in the show.
The Daleks looked gray because the 70s BBC had no pride for making the Dalek designs make sense
They just couldn't be arsed (or afforded) painting the existing props and removing the slats!
Here's my thoughts on where the original Dalek story fits in. After the Daleks exterminate Davros, they begin building up to conquer the universe. After the 1000 years of halted progress, they leave Skaro behind to conquer the Universe, leaving some Daleks behind. The group that remain on Skaro are the ones the Doctor first encounters. These Daleks regressed to become extremely xenophobic, even by Dalek standards, and thus imprisoned themselves in a city. After the Doctor's first encounter with them, the Dalek mutants remained dormant until the events of Return to Skaro (Big Finish). Afterwards, the Daleks find a way to move outside their city and begin conquering other worlds. In their conquests, they run across the original Daleks that left Skaro and join forces after a brief conflict, sharing their ideas and designs to make the Dalek race stronger as a whole but leaving certain design elements distinct, such as why some eyestalks don't have the pupil but others do.
I'd say the 60s design was just a prototype and they were left abandoned to their own devices separate from the grey daleks
I don’t think the two versions of the Daleks’ origins are reconcilable no matter how many hoops we jump through. The surface of Kalaan is obviously designed for fully-fledged Daleks in the original story, with all metal pathways and everything. Not to mention the fact it’s pristine and intact instead of being leveled to the ground, so it can’t be the same one the Kaleds lived in. But the Daleks have been hiding underground since the end of the war, so when would that city have been built? The looming answer is, the original version of Dalek lore had a complete Dalek society going strong even before the end of the war, who lived in that city. Genesis, on the other hand, has them living out their infancy already trapped under the ruins of a different version of their ancestry which fills the same narrative role, but one made for humanoids. Genesis is a great story, but it does come across rather Iike Terry Nation recounting Dalek lore from memory and not actually going back and brushing up on the original scripts.
As for the Dalek designs, I really wish they’d done something like the junkyard Dalek from Resolution. Unpainted metal that doesn’t even have a color scheme to speak of, not streamlined or elegant in any way, just the pure foundation out of which you can imagine the Daleks as we know them evolving.
I'd argue the early Daleks would rarely if ever go outside their city limits or have a desire to explore the rest of Skaro after the events of Genesis of the Daleks so maybe the solar panels were removed simply because they weren't needed?
As for the casing colouring? Maybe it has something to do with the purity of the Dalekanium used for the casing?
Yeah they probably went to simplified designs actually doesn't Genesis of the Daleks erase the early stories because wibbly wobbly Doctor Who timeline is in constant flux that's how come at one point he was half human
I was always under the impression that the Daleks from the dead planet took place 1000's of years in the future in the original timeline that they where a faction that had remained on Skaro and had to adapt to diminishing resources.
I do consider genesis to create a new timeline for the daleks.
I think people are overlooking the option that Daleks might like changing there design and colour scheme.
I like the idea of the gray daleks were in a different bunker in suspended animation to preserve power, or were to insistent to leave/war so the others deactivated them.
And they were reactivated at a later date for the purpose of Conquest
I do wish they had used the correct design for Genesis, I would have loved to see that design in color in the classic series. I also find the whole "it was the standard Dalek design" reasoning stupid when they *literally* had a different design one year prior. Oh, and what color was that design? SILVER!
I wish the effort had been made, imagine watching all the stories in release order and seeing those classic Daleks. I hate to say it, it's not a lore puzzle, it's a hole in the continuity that we now have to fill in. Genesis is still a great story, but I've always been bothered this aspect of it.
My theory is that the Genesis Daleks were designed with War in mind, needing to traverse a battlefield to invade the Thals dome and used the grey camouflage. However, after they were sealed in the tomb, they didn't need to go to battle anymore. That's why the slats were removed to save resources and I believe them to be some form of armor (perhaps reactive armour). They were left unpainted with the combat grey, and thus they were silver. Their independent power supply was removed as they couldn't leave the city anyway and would have likely had limited resources.
The reason why the Death To The Daleks were silver was because they were on a scientific mission to an empty planet and thus had no need for the camouflage.
I’ve often thought about this question myself, the only answer I’ve come up with is, the moment the doctor got sent to skaro by the time lords changed everything. Had the doctor not meet with the council of the kaleds who then asked davros to halt the dalek production, davros would never have went to the thals and given them the secrets to the kaled dome, with the kaled city in ruins unlike the 1963 episode the daleks. That changed the development of the daleks completely, I imagine in the original timeline the war rages several years more and resources are extremely scarce by the time the daleks become a necessity for survival, resulting in the 1963 designs. That’s my thoughts on it, the dalek timeline is extremely complicated after genesis of the daleks.
I always thought that the dead planet city was a sort of "site b" and given that both daleks are pure, the 2 separate empires conquering as allies. The Death to the daleks props were a mixture of both so I viewed them as a sort of Dalek NATO.
I love that concept- NATO of Daleks… Neo Alliance Total Obliteration
I always assumed the 60’s daleks were much later. Especially because of ‘witch’s familiar’
I think the Daleks simply lost the means of manufacturing the slat power supply, so they resorted to being static powered during that time, but once they reacquired the materials they reintroduced it.
If i could customize Daleks, I’d totally do the original Dalek like these classic grey drones, with a little more black highlights and a Kaled symbol on that oval bit on the chest. Make it as if Davros was showing off to the military.
They do say that the Daleks are incased in a Mark III travel machine. Indicating that there was a Mark I and Mark II. My theory is that Davros created Daleks previously and placed them in different casings to test their capabilities and effectiveness. Mark I (the ones we see in “The Daleks”) are too dependent on smooth flooring and unable to move outside. Mark II (“The Dalek Invasion of Earth”) was better but too bulky with an obvious weakness in the solar panel in the back. Mark III was the final version adding multiple solar slabs around the mid-section to make up for the massive weakness in the Mark II travel machine, it’s hover pad was also decreased in size similar to the Mark I as to not be too bulky.
Davros took the first Dalek he created and put it in a Mark I before putting it in a Mark II and then finally Mark III travel machine before that Dalek finally shot him at the end of “Genesis of the Daleks”.
The Mark II Daleks eventually developed space travel and left Skaro leaving the Mark I Daleks trapped in their city unable to leave.
The Mark III Daleks would eventually take over the planet.
This is the most plausible explanation in my opinion, with one added detail that it probably wasn't just earlier models of the travel machine but also earlier Dalek creatures as well. As you said the least advanced machine and perhaps the least intelligent creature were bound in their city. The second iteration was quickly abandoned as Davros was making rapid advancements toward Mark III and so they just left Skaro after achieving space travel.
Ultimately we're just making excuses to cover really poor continuity, but this definitely fits best I think.
The next best alternative is the silver Daleks are a cost cutting design and are essentially considered more as technicians. The greys are the actual soldiers, so they get the better hardware and armor. Then later down the line maybe when they had a greater resource supply all Daleks were given the most powerful model.
Thank you for addressing this casing problem in continuity. I like the idea the first Daleks were mark 1 types that survived in a separate location; but agree your theory of devolution could work too, until the reboot remake of all episodes to have a more consistent parallel universe.
My thought is that the Genesis of the Daleks was first in the timeline of course but the Emperor (in his prime) probably made these other Daleks that we see in the Daleks
The thing is. Because 1st and 2nd doctor who episodes were black and white. The daleks colour didn't really matter. It's when they moved over to colour that they became grey
The 'Dead Planet' Daleks were the Mk1 prototypes left behind on Skaro, coming out to play when later variants had left.
The 'Invasion of Earth' Daleks were the Mk2 revision, Davros' first experiment in abandoning a static power source.
The Mk3 Daleks were the final design.
Simples.
Oooh I like this idea!
I always thought the daleks changed their casings to persevere power. Knowing that using static energy would work better for them while being stuck under there as knowing they wouldn’t need to leave any time soon. But years later, under a short time needing to leave skaro to punish others designed their own portable design to do this under such short time. Only after the daleks invasion going back to the slats and then later on designing them selfs to be more like the daleks from pre-dalek ruled skaro: idk I thought that made sence. Since in the curse of the daleks they seemed to be in the same state they were when the doctor had left after helping he thals and all that
In an alternate universe, it's the Thals - after having defeated the Kaleds, but weakened by radiation, and having discovered Davros' blueprints - who created the Slaths, the mechanised galactic force for peace.
Always thought it was to cover up damage to the props.
Bring back the original dalek design!
I believe they devolved in between genesis and dead planet because of the doctor setting them back a 1000 years. Their casing’s probably got damaged at some point and not having Davros or his schematics (the latter being lost to time) to repair them, they made less advanced casings that could only move around in the cities.
It took 1000s
possibly even longer than that for the daleks to advance to the point they were at in genesis at least when it comes to their casing.
The original daleks
The slats are energy suplies to allow the daleks to move out of the city . I think after the events in gensis of the daleks davros realised how ruthless the daleks were and he had the slats removed from the design so he could have more control over them
There is also a further problem which genesis creates. The story Genesis of the daleks actually contradicts the original origins of the daleks told in their first story. In ‘The Daleks (Dead planet)’ the daleks inform the doctor that centuries ago the daleks ancestors known as Dals were driven into the city by the thals, and also due to their elevated mutations. This forced the Dals to place themselves into the dalek machines that we see in the dead planet story. This was to protect themselves from the radiation that destroyed their planet, however the daleks had evolved to become so dependant on the radiation that when a dalek tried the anti-Radiation drug it had a very negative effect. Xx
It's a continuity flaw but I always look at the old Daleks like this
Gun Metal grey Daleks are Soldiers
Silver and Blue Daleks are Scientists
Silver and Black Daleks are Scientific Scouts
Black Daleks are Squadron leaders
Gold Daleks are leaders of invasion Forces
Then you have unique versions like the Supreme Daleks and The Emperor.
Then we have the White and Gold which are Humanoid and not Kaleds.
I like to think the daleks didn't use the more advanced gray daleks because there power and outher systems were resource demanding and the blue daleks with floor power were less complex to make because of them being underground.
One could make the case of not all of the Daleks being part of the same group or faction at certain points in time, and simply just chose to ignore each other. Only when the likes of Davros resurfaced did they start getting more confrontational towards each other and becoming obsessed with purity and uniformity.
I'm reminded of the Supreme Dalek killing a subordinate for failure in 'Planet Of', and then we have one back in "Power Of' being puzzled at humans killing each other.
Heck, a number of them probably didn't even take part in the Time War for all we know.
I think my theory and reimagined version of "Genesis of the Daleks" would feature the original Skaro Daleks. But the Doctor is followed by a Silver Dalek Warriors from "Death to the Daleks" with single dark grey Dalek leading them. To prevent the Doctor from stopping their creation.
Ive always guessed that the reason why they are grey was because the fourth doctors meddling slightly changed dalek history, so instead of being silver then becoming grey, they were always grey
They were already grey before the doctor even did anything to change history
@@SirSX3 yeah but they were silver before that
My canon behind this is that the daleks after building there city and it power caw changed there casings to save resources and energy. Also we never saw the dalek travel machines that came of the production line at the end of genesis so the grey daleks may have only been a prototype design and davros may have decided that since the majority of thals were dead the daleks didn’t need there tank like paint job
My theory is they started to run out of power whilst they were entombed. With no sunlight to power their solar slats they could not charge themselves so they had to modify the way they sourced energy through static, which meant irreversibly altering the Dalek template. Then came the eyestalk lights. Whilst digging themselves out there would have been no light creating the tunnels so they would have modified their eyes to emit light. Resources would have also become scarce so things like paint would have become redundant to the raw silver Dalekanium. But that’s my theory.
I like to think that the grey Daleks scoured the bunker, looked through all of Davros's research and thought "Well he was the smartest man on Skaro, surely he woulda known if there was other life out there." If they did find any research, it woulda just been the thesis that Skaro was the only planet in the seven galaxies capable of supporting life. With the interrogation tape from earlier in the story gone, all Dalek defeats woulda been lost, as would knowledge of the other worlds and life forms.
As such, they devolved. Detonated the Neutron bomb, built their city, and decided to use the silver and blue casings since there wasn't any need to go outside now that all life was - to them anyway - gone.
Youda woulda outta herea
Perhaps insofar as the Daleks' timeline, the grey models come before the silver ones. As such, perhaps their defeat in the very first story is in fact the extinction of the species - millions of years in the future, with their empire reduced to a small, pathetic group of beings trapped in an underground bunker, wiped out by a power outage. Quite a fitting end for them.
They could have used the grey design at the beginning but decided to use a sliver one due to the materials close to them? then they decided to go back after their empire expanded meaning more resources came available?
I have a more concrete theory and this is based off of a DVD special feature on the Genesis DVD's by 2entertain... "The Dalek Tapes" is a documentary style retrospect of the Daleks in classic Who... narrated by Terry Molloy there's a whole look at the social and political hierarchy of the Daleks, the Emperor and his guard at the top, the Supreme Daleks and leaders, and then it comes to the blue and silver Daleks, being what was described as the "scientific core" of the race, with the lowest rank being the grey Daleks, described being as "simply designed to fight". So with this knowledge I think that the Daleks that were held up for 10,000 years in the incubators became the city Daleks from "The Dead Planet"...
I suspect the real reason is BBC prop people couldn't be arsed to remove the slats, and fill in and re-paint the mounting holes on the old "shoulder" bands underneath. Its a budget thing. (You can almost hear them saying "kids won't notice it!, its been years now! since those shows aired and got junked"
I think that's exactly what happened, there are lots of examples of Classic Who revisiting old locations / monsters from the '60s and early '70s and having them look completely different, because nobody at the time ever considered that people in the future would take notice of that. The Telos tombs from Attack of the Cybermen are a good example - the fact that Tomb of the Cybermen was lost at that point meant that the production team were going off of memory alone when designing the tombs
Colour and slats puzzled me too!
The Dalek timeline is probably well and truly buggered thanks to the time war, but if it was linear I would assume whatever munitions the Daleks detonated outside of the bunker to try and clear out the remaining Thals before building Kalaan messed with the power systems of the original casing design making it difficult to operate efficiently.
After that they became insular, modifying the casing to draw power from the floors of the expanding city and gradually reworking the look to what would be the original 1960s design. It's clear the Daleks have at least some concept of aesthetics (even if it is just bumps and ovals) from their architecture. The interference from the First Doctor may have been enough to get them to accelerate their space travel capabilities and leave Skaro with a modified power system to attack the Earth after a period of time.
After that they set about reintroducing the old slat design since it was now viable again.
Upon the destruction of the Emperor and most of the facilities on Skaro, they rapidly went through several design iterations in local Dalek fleets before reviving the 'original' casing at least aesthetically to allow them to wage war on a truly galactic scale (and possibly as a narcissistic reference to their initial victories as a species). Hence why the grey colouration was so prolific in later stories.
I think it was just a continuity error.
Buddy, we all know that.
The point of this video and discussion is that it being a continuity error is anything but "just", anything but simple. It ruins everything.
My theory is that the Silver design was created in the 1000 years of entrapment as a solution to energy and parts issues, a more lightweight, less self-sufficient model suited to confined life in the bunker, by The Daleks they were still in this form, also begrudgingly taking a more tolerant approach to other lifeforms out of there current weak position. Due to both lost knowledge from the cities computer banks being in poor repair and possibly the mark 3 models simply being unfeasible despite its technical superiority to the silver design (inefficient energy use, frequent technical issues etc.) they stuck with the silver design even after becoming interstellar, and were somewhat slow to develop features that the original design had. Eventually they implemented features from the grey design's casing, as it was more durable then the silver one and was now more feasible.
Ironically if they had made the daleks army/olive green no one would have complained. They had sliver daleks in the last episode so they had to go out of theor way to paint them back
I have always thought that the grey Dalek looked far more intimidating than other Dalek versions, the cold grey look was far more sinister in visual when compared to 'pleasing' colours more suited as spray finishes on flashy automobiles.
I actually think the Doctor's interference in Genesis CAUSED the Daleks to regress the way they had in their first story. When the Doctor mentions delaying the Daleks for "perhaps a thousand years', I think the implication could've been broader than just halting technological progress. His meddling in the timeline could've caused the Daleks to REGRESS in technology as well, doing so for the sake of survival. This idea can also be affirmed by the line "We are entombed, but we live on" by the Dalek Prime. I think the Daleks doubled down on this idea as time went on, and they ended up regressing as a result.
So, the Daleks in "The Daleks" are actually the product of the Doctors interference in Genesis, and said interference was simply a pre-determined part of the timeline. I know that's not necessarily on parr with Doctor Who's typical depiction of time travel, but I think it's an interesting idea.
I always think the daleks add or lose components according to what they have to do. There might be advantages to not carrying round a huge amount of kit on the casing if the daleks are living in a city with a shared power supply for example. It may be more energy-efficient to lose individual power plants and shielding slats on each dalek if they are living indoors and not fighting. If they do become involved in fighting or other demanding activities they can always upgrade. So the Daleks of the original series are stripped down 'holiday daleks' at the nude beach, basically!
I think The Dalek Handbook hypothesised that it's because Daleks kept travelling back in time and rewriting their history. I hypothesise that 1970s Daleks travelled back in time to quicken Dalek evolution by introducing Mark III casing earlier in their timeline.
Maybe they changed to the silver design because it was more convenient or resource efficient than the grey designs, better for the cities but not for other uses
they ran out of grey paint
Always though this was odd. But overall never really payed attention to the lore implications.
If Davros can suddenly regain his sight, then his legs and full mobility, and it turns out he never was in a wheelchair at all, then nothing is permanent and we don't need to worry about paint jobs.
It's pointless trying to fit things into cannon where fiction is concerned if it didn't happen that way on screen. They are grey because they wanted a big Nazi storyline with Davros as Hitler. They sacrificed cannon so they could do that.
I'd like to think that the dalek designs are in terms of generation, the daleks we see in Genesis are the first generation while in The Daleks, the ones in that episode are second generation.
It's just bad continuity, that's all, like how Davros keep reappearing after his death in Resrrection and when he was captured by the Dalek's loyal to the Supreme in Revelation then suddenly reappearing as the Emperor with a bunch of new design Daleks in Remembrance with no explanation in either case.
I'll give props to the writers of Resurrection for keeping in continuity of Davros being in suspended animation as what happened to him at the end of Destiny.
I think The Timelords accidently sent The Doctor to an alternative past timeline and since then we have been in a different Whoniverse.
There's a few theories, one I like is that the silver and blue casing is an earlier version of the grey casing and that's why it needs static electricity to power it and the reason they don't mention kaled in the daleks is because the beings that inhabit those casings are dals who the thals near drove to extinction before or during the war with the kaleds.
Though Bernice summerfield says in "the lights of skaro" that the dalek city rose from the kaled bunker like a metal cancer so that implies these are the same daleks so that creates more confusion.
But then where is the dalek city in destiny of the daleks! Ughhh it annoys me so much
So my conclusion is the time war fucked it all up and made the inconsistencies 🤣
I've long since accepted that its impossible to fully tie up everything in Doctor who in to a neat set of chronological events without any contradictions. Just part of the parcel when dealing with a franchise that's lasted as long as Doctor Who and gone through so many different writers and retcons.
to answer the where's the Dalek city in Destiny, I always point towards the War of the Daleks novel that explain that the version of Skaro we see in Destiny was not actually Skaro at all, rather a planet called Antalin that the Daleks terraformed to be a perfect replica of their home planet in a bid to save it's destruction in Rememberance
@@harogenkitnsg2474 But then how was Davros still there deep in the bunkers?
You should do one about the daleks in parting of the ways when thay bomb earth and reshape the earth's contents in seconds but in stolen earth the daleks don't seem to do this.
The grey Daleks were graphite grey
There's a nice theory that I like, that the 60's Daleks are the most modern Daleks
This means everything after all the way up to 2005 (most recent design as of this comment) are pre-60's design
Well I guess davros was right about saying they cannot progress without him
They straight up degressed
haven't watched yet but gonna guess the first appearance of the daleks were from the future after davros created them hence why there a different colour
Perhaps because the daleks killed their creator they struggled for a while to get to the same point technologically that they were at in genesis. So for the next few hundered future generations they regressed but then eventually developed further past that after the original daleks story. Its not a perfect explanation because they’re meant to be geniuses and very technologically advanced but its the only one i can think of. Perhaps as we were seeing them in the original story they were going through a particularly rough patch and running low on resources since they couldn’t go outside their base. So really we were seeing them at their weakest (and yet they were still very powerful)
My belief is that the Daleks seen between The Daleks and The Evil of the Daleks are the Daleks as seen in the timeline where The Doctor does not go back in time to the events of Genesis. In this timeline, the Daleks are much more bent on conquest and are far more scheming. It can be assumed that, without The Doctor’s manipulation of the timeline in Genesis (after all he influenced Ronson, Gharman et al and incited Davros to wipe out the Kaled people) that Davros hot much further in his experiments and the Dalek War ended in a much different fashion. Indeed, the Dalek City in The Daleks and Evil may well be the Kaled Dome in that timeline.
The Grey Daleks seen in Day onwards, alongside the silver ones from Death, are most likely the Daleks born out of the Doctor’s intervention. These Daleks lack the more scheming element of the 60s era Daleks and are much more war like in their nature.
i know im a bit late. but the reason why they are silver. is because they were known as the mark 2 travel machine.
there are many varients of travel machine.
the the mark IV travel machine is a casing that the imperials use.
while the renegades use mark III.
the genesis also uses the mark III. if its not obvious
however silver daleks were mark II travel machines. aswell as the ones in the comics.
its mostly not likely canon. but maybe it is.
the bronze daleks being the mark V.
each dalek has a specific type of casing. each belonging to a newer model. or older.
that is why in the magician's apprentice. there are many varients of daleks.
which the most likely reason is because the casings originated on factory production lines on skaro.
considering that there are so many varients. they either might be the few survivors picked by davros.
or completely new daleks.
considering that some of them have blue eyes.
***EDIT:***
i kinda went off topic. but hopefully this is explains why the daleks are silver and the others are seemingly grey.
this is an in universe explanation. but i just basically got a bit of few scraps and used whatever i knew about the traveling machine.
What if The Doctor actually entered into an alternative universe by accident? The Timelords phucked up and sent The Doctor to the wrong timeline and since then that universes timeline was reset and not the original.
Perhaps both timelines did merge together due to the implications of the Time War and we now witness two universes and timelines co-existing which would mean we would have twice the amount of Daleks in 1 universe.
just a aesthetic design choice. the bright silver Daleks with blue orbs wouldn't exactly feel with the darker colour palate of Genesis
I think the best theory would be the simplest. Davros creates the Grey Daleks. The Fourth Doctor successful sabotage stalls Dalek progress leading to them being weaker when the First Doctor arrives. In other words, the sabotage the Doctor does in Genesis is why the Daleks are weaker in the first series and slowly evolve over the course of there first stories into the efficient killing machines they were originally envisioned by their creator to be.
As for the eye thing, I thing they always have contracting glowing eyes as seen in several fan interpretations of older designs (Imperials can have red glowy eyes). The pupil design always looked kind of dorky, but its a product of its era.
I have a theory that is based on librarian bot's personal dalek timeline, the daleks in genesis was powered by solar energy aka the slats, after breaking free from the bunker, the daleks came into conflict with the thals. the thals, knowing that the daleks would eventually escape from the bunker, created weapons that could destroy the daleks, resulting in a war between the thals and the daleks, however, this war only lasted for 2 years, since the daleks knew they can't take out the thals in front line combat due to their numbers & their weapons, they bombarded every single continent of skaro with the neutron bombs, seemingly killing of all of the thals.
However, this caused a nuclear winter on skaro, rendering their slats ineffective at producing power, but since there was no evidence of life beyond skaro and the thals were all seemingly extinct, the daleks, believing they have become the superior beings, returned to their city and started using static electricity as a power source, and since the surface was decimated to the point that it was no longer worth investigating, the daleks removed the slats from their travel machines and dedicated themselves to the perfection of their environment and technology, to the point that they even created art of their own. This age of isolation continued for a millennia, However, without other creatures to kill, the daleks grew more xenophobic even by their own standards and would have turned that hatred inwards and eventually would have destroyed each other, if not for an old time traveler and his companions wandering into their city.
Occam's razor leads me to conclude that the grey Daleks simply comes after the Silver Daleks, and Davros did NOT actually create the Daleks. The Daleks existed from Dals, and it's only after the Silver Daleks have been defeated that Davros and the Kaleds borrowed their design. THAT's why the Dalek killed Davros immediately; Davros simply revived it, not create it.
edit: Just like the scientists from The Power of the Daleks and The Victory of the Daleks believed that they have created them, but in reality, The Daleks are just using them to regain their strength.
Edit: also, i don't really like the idea of ONE MAN creating the Daleks. Hundreds of years of nuclear radiation and mutation as they retreat underground and into metal tanks, slowly driving them mad is a WAYYY better origin and it's the reason why the Daleks became popular in the first place. Not sure why Terry Nation keeps retconing his own work
Maybe the Daleks adopted the darker colour scheme later on because it showed a change after the destruction of the original Dalek Emperor. As the Dalek emperor is destroyed in a civil war & that was the last episode to show the silver Daleks. Maybe after these events the new daleks changed there colour scheme from the Silver drones & Black Supreme daleks to the Gold supreme & the grey drones. The way to explain the ones in city is that they must be in the timeline some point in-between Power, the invasion of earth, chase, the Daleks master plan & the evil of the Daleks. so before the daleks had a civil war. The later appearances of the grey daleks do see changes in colour of supreme Dalek & other ranks but this is possible due to the daleks making different Supremes look different for reasons. The reason they change is probably due to some form of regression like how the other residents of the planet Skaro changed due to the nuclear war & this caused them to not need to leave & not need to be as militaristic so they changed the colour over time & lost the ability to use portable power possibly because they never needed to leave the city & thus it was a waste of resources to have that ability.
Evolution happens in odd ways.
My theory for over a decade for this is something like this. The daleks after killing davros were "entombed". Possibly for thousands of years. This would likely lead them through some course of evolution through decision. Them being primitive daleks, the immediate events of the story and things concerning them, the kaleds, their creator may not have stuck around either in mind, or through documentation. By the end of the episode we can assume that the daleks hadn't yet a way to document and record information they deemed possibly important in the future, as during this story davros was the one pretty much programming and giving them all the information they had...
I consider it a case of slow progress at the start. In regards to their case design, the slats on the casing are often reffered to as "solar panels". I imagine its a lot more complex than just solar power, but even in that case, perhaps whatever enables them to draw power through these slats became evermore limited while stuck inside the remains of the kaled bunker. Like a sealed room or box that runs out of oxygen as you breathe or if a flame is lit. I believe the daleks devised a primitive but effective means to keep themselves powered, that being the static electricity solution. At this point they were always going to be floorbound so it wouldnt have required anything too complex and they likely saw no possibility of this system being exploited. It worked so they went with it and their environment was already well suited towards it. Hence on later dalek models that we see in "the daleks", they didn't bother adding the slats and repurposed that material for other projects.
As for their colour. As you mentioned, it was likely a stylistic choice by davros and kaled scientists. the colour helped them blend into dark spaces and also had that gunmetal look. When the daleks themselves started salvaging or creating more metals for their casings, they probably left it silver because they saw no need for the stylistic choice of dark grey. A lot of their surroundings, floors, walls etc all seem to use metal that looks more silver than is does dark grey, no doubt they repurposed some areas of the bunker into casing metals and left it as that colour. As for the blue hemispheres, I've never been too sure about that. But thought maybe it's just to aid with some sort of colour recognition in regards to light. I can imagine plenty of issues that could arise with sensors and such if absolutely everything was just silver. The blue light reflected off the hemispheres could serve a purpose in this way. Really reaching here but blue light has high frequency and short waves so maybe its this property that lead to the decision with the intruments they'd built.
Some bonus theories I've thought of in the past:
The daleks switching to a lens that can constrict. I just figured it may have been ideal for them during those years in the bunker, light etc. So they just refitted their optical systems and it worked well enough that it took them a long time to revert back to a possibly improved pupil generations later. This ones got a lot of holes in it though for obvious reasons.
The daleks only ever having non-ray weapons when davros isn't really around. During the years in the bunker, such a powerful ray might not have even been useful and would rarely be used. Aside from damaging objects and killing rogue daleks, their guns would likely never have be used for a very long time. I imagine it would also have consumed a lot of energy that the daleks just didn't have at their disposal in a heavily damaged bunker. I think they changed it to a weapon that consumed less power. I've always thought of the earlier dalek guns to emmit some form of radiation, but i've also heard lightning. So maybe a toned down discharge of electicity somehow. This would also explain why daleks in stories pre-davros were able to just "disable" their subjects, while daleks fitted with a visible ray/plasma projectile would have a gun so powerful that just maiming victims wasn't a possibility.
Destiny kind of puts a few holes in some theories but I imagine with destiny, the daleks eventually learned of davros, and given their advancements, were able to uncover more of their history. Perhaps even excavating old documentation on original daleks over the centuries. Included in the documentation would likely be reasoning for davros' original design choices, colour, slats etc. It's clear in this story they wanted davros' help, so they were seemingly willing already to take his advice on things. Having found this information, they simply reverted to older design choices with possible (but not seen in the story) upgrades of their own. One of their attempts to revert back being their original ray gun, but was probably not as successful as they'd hoped as im sure in destiny if I recall, their ray now only had the ability to kill one subject per blast.
Bit of a long one but hope it makes sense. I'm sure there's a ton of issues with it. But patching up dr.who plot holes is as hard as repairing a crack in time.
This is a bit tinfoil, but what if this indicates prior Dalek adventures still take place in the post-Genesis timeline? By slowing down Dalek development to the point 4 did they had to utilize more primitive technology and only by the seventies do they redevelop the old design. The Dalek Overseer storyline suggests that timeline changes in the Doctor/the audience's future can echo back, ie we remember the Ogrons' involvement before Big Finish reveals that was a change thanks to the Time War
I think it's just a plot hole and like all plot holes The time war created some wibbly wobbly
Budget tbh (non lore)
Either that or the 60s Daleks are the future variant of the race. Idk...
Okay so here's my take. There are years between Genesis and The Daleks, thousands of years. Once their creator is dead, it's likely the only Daleks left are Drones, no scientists, no one to make any advancements. All they knew how to do is make more Drones since the production line had already started. So it makes sense that as the years go on they would downgrade their casings, as leaving the city clearly isn't a priorty they discover that they can be powered by the static electricity in the floor aand adapt to it as maybe inside the city it was a much more powerful source of energy and over these years, their war with the Thals would mainly become myth and legend, details would be lost and even Davros would be forgotten, assuming all the original Daleks built by Davros die out and the facts are lost in the generations. So once the Daleks meet the Doctor they realise they do need to upgrade themselves, they need to make advancements so they can travel the stars and conquer other worlds, maybe once they start their time travel experiments they even discover their past and make a note of it in their databanks, accounting for them knowing about Davros by the time they get to Destiny.
Grey daleks are tanks silver ones are lower ranks
What's with her hair she been electrocuted? 😂
I really don't like the Grey & Black color scheme. In my eyes, it's boring & takes away the fact that these monsters are meant to be alien in a sense. That's why I prefer the Silver & Blue & wish that it remained the original color scheme as seen in Time Lord Victorious' "Daleks!".
I think the colour scheme at least could make sense if you consider the fact that the Daleks are a fascist society. A key feature of fascism is an extreme reverence for an imagined former glory and a desire to replicate those eras. If you assume that the 70s and 80s stories take place after the “final end” in Evil of the Daleks, with the Dalek empire scattered and collapsing after the death of the first emperor, then it makes sense for them to redesign themselves in the image of their original selves. It could be likened to a desire to “the good old days” when their purpose was clear and allegiances unified. That’s just my idea though, and I like it because it adds another layer of characterisation to the Daleks as a race.
Daleks are fascist inspired, not necessarily fascist indeed.
Your whole interpretation of them is retroactive. It should go the other way around.
Why are they Grey?
Davros: you see…we ran out of paint…
I honestly, in my headcanon, don't even recognise the Genysis of the Daleks. The character of Davros was dumb, cliche and unnecessary in the first place.
Daleks are much more than minions of a mad scientist. They all are scientists. That's what I choose to believe.
And grey Daleks look exceptionally bad and boring.
Ok after rewatching - Davros was actually a quite compelling character, but in a classic old cheap media fashion - he acted unlike how he was characterised by begging for pity. Cheap karma moment.
Still, the original backstory of the Daleks was far better.
davros became bitter when he was refused a disabled invalid pension
And his blue badge.
Here's my thoughts on where the original Dalek story fits in. After the Daleks exterminate Davros, they begin building up to conquer the universe. After the 1000 years of halted progress, they leave Skaro behind to conquer the Universe, leaving some Daleks behind. The group that remain on Skaro are the ones the Doctor first encounters. These Daleks regressed to become extremely xenophobic, even by Dalek standards, and thus imprisoned themselves in a city. After the Doctor's first encounter with them, the Dalek mutants remained dormant until the events of Return to Skaro (Big Finish). Afterwards, the Daleks find a way to move outside their city and begin conquering other worlds. In their conquests, they run across the original Daleks that left Skaro and join forces after a brief conflict, sharing their ideas and designs to make the Dalek race stronger as a whole but leaving certain design elements distinct, such as why some eyestalks don't have the pupil but others do.
This concept has entered my personal head canon! Thank you!
I recall binge reading the Doctor Who wiki on the Dalek timeline a while back and the semi official explanation given is basically this. One group of Daleks left Skaro and those that were left behind and encountered the 1st Doctor had simply regressed in their isolation. But then later the ones that left had returned and reestablished themselves on Skaro. Although the whole thing is still somewhat messy due to the constant retcons and multiple different writers having worked on it.
my idea is that there is a dalek civil war.
this would explain the technological gap between the two different versions, as the future daleks do not require the power source.
possibly the genetically different daleks did not require external power sources and were banished/fled in a rocket.
the older daleks were probably killed by the advanced altered daleks.
What a load of tosh...There is no story arc related reason for this. Basically it was down to money ...the BBC would not spend money on renovating the (by then) old and battered grey painted props back to their original silver, grey and blue livery...either that or they didn't forsee a time when nerds would try and rationalise the decision into some kind of contrived 'timeline' ....and didn't really care or both.
Need to get return to Skaro I'm as say lacking in Big Finsh stories as to many come out monthly and time add other sci fi stuff plus keep up to date with DWM, and blu ray sets CO figures etc sadly my budget doesn't go far for audio I only buy some off the ones I can afford (not saying Return be expensive) loads are especially the box sets