Dalek time technology

Throughout their history, the Daleks employed time travel and time manipulation technology ever since they discovered it was possible to travel through time and space.

Scrutinising Dalek history during the Last Great Time War, the Time Lords' interest in Dalek time technology was such that a whole section of their Dalek Combat Training Manual was dedicated to covering it. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)

Time manipulation
The Daleks employed the taranium to power the Time Destructor, a superweapon capable of reversing and accelerating the flow of time. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan)

Time travel
The Seventh Doctor guessed that the Timewyrm, whom the Daleks called Golyan Ak Tana, the twister of paths, was responsible for the Daleks having so much trouble developing time travel. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Revelation)


 * Because of the nature of time travel itself, the following list details the Daleks' innovation in order of least to most advanced, rather than historical order.

Time corridors
Throughout part of their history, the Daleks, rather than having space-time vessels as such, used devices (TV: Day of the Daleks, COMIC: Doctor Who and the Dogs of Doom) or time corridors to move through time. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks, Remembrance of the Daleks) In one instance, a controlled human taken over by the Renegade Dalek faction used a small time controller to direct a time corridor.

When the Fifth Doctor fought off a small group of Daleks leftover from their war with the Movellans, travel through a time corridor involved stepping into a white room and a sliding door came down. When they arrived at the opposite end of the corridor, the travellers would arrive in a haze of pink light. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks)

The Seventh Doctor described to Ace that Dalek time corridor technology as "very crude and nasty," which was why both the Supreme Dalek, the head of the Renegade Dalek faction and Davros, the leader of the Imperial Dalek faction desired time travel of the kind already possessed by the Time Lords and sought the Hand of Omega, a Time Lord artefact which could enable this. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)

Even after the Time War, Daleks still used time corridors. The New Dalek Paradigm used a time corridor to escape destruction at the hands of Eleventh Doctor and Danny Boy. (TV: Victory of the Daleks)

Time ships
The Daleks developed the Dalek time machine, a machine functionally similar to the TARDIS (except that, having no chameleon circuit, it could not change shape). (TV: The Chase, The Daleks' Master Plan) Eventually, it seems the Daleks did develop the time vessels which they sought. (TV: The Evil of the Daleks, AUDIO: The Time of the Daleks)

By the time of the Last Great Time War, the Daleks had temporal technology at least comparable to their enemy, the Time Lords, themselves. The casing of the Cult of Skaro (if not ordinary Daleks) contained the ability to effect an emergency temporal shift, making their shells in effect a small time machine. (TV: Doomsday)

Time devices
The Daleks used a time vortex magnetron which would cause the human guerrillas who had travelled to the 20th century to be drawn to the Daleks' base the next time they used their time machine. By mistake, Jo Grant was drawn in instead. (TV: Day of the Daleks)

The Daleks also used the time transporter to bring the Werelox from "many years ago" to the 25th century to attack the New Earth System. (COMIC: Doctor Who and the Dogs of Doom)

The Dalek Time Controller arrived in the 22nd century, and with the help of the Monk, devised a plan to re-conquer Earth after the previous Dalek invasion had been overthrown and install a giant time-warp engine in the heart of the planet to collect the remaining Amethyst viruses that had been scattered into time and space. The time-warp engine was destroyed thanks to Lucie Miller and turned into a small black hole that was enough to suck all of the Daleks into it. (AUDIO: To the Death)

Time Artifacts
The Daleks possessed time artefacts on many occasions, including the Eye of Time (GAME: City of the Daleks), the Eye of Harmony. (AUDIO: The Time of the Daleks) and a piece of the Eternity Clock. (GAME: The Eternity Clock) The New Dalek Paradigm created Time Axis device for time travel. (GAME: Return to Earth)

Falling through time
Occasionally, a Dalek has been shown to fall through time after a defeat and arrive at a location completely beyond their control. The Metaltron and Dalek Emperor did so after the destruction of the Daleks at the end of the Last Great Time War, landing in different places in time near or on Earth. (TV: Dalek, The Long Game, The Parting of the Ways) The Ironsides Daleks and a Dalek saucer similarly fell through time after they survived an encounter with the Doctor. (TV: Victory of the Daleks)

Pre-Time War
In the Genesis Incident, Davros encountered the Fourth Doctor and learnt that he had come from the future to interfere in the creation of the Daleks by Davros's hand. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks) It was, however, the Dalek Prime who assumed leadership of the first generation of Daleks after apparently exterminating Davros. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Genesis of the Daleks)

During the Thal-Dalek battle, the First Doctor, in an attempt to stall the Skaro City Daleks, disclosed that he had arrived on Skaro on "a ship capable of crossing the barriers of space and time", the TARDIS, and offered to show them how to build another such ship. The Daleks, however, insisted that they would find the ship and examine it themselves after leaving the Dalek City, only to be defeated by the Thals, after which the Doctor left. (TV: The Daleks) By one account, the Dalek Prime began to pursue time travel after the First Doctor was identified in footage taken from the 2150s Dalek invasion of Earth; as he was initially encountered in the Thal-Dalek battle five hundred years earlier, this confirmed to the Daleks the humanoid's earlier claim of being a time traveller. (PROSE: The History of the Daleks)

In the later stages of the Second Dalek War in the 26th century, Dalek time-travel theory stated that mastery of time travel would begin with the destruction of the Time Lords and end with the subjugation of humanity. During this time the Daleks attempted to achieve time travel by exploiting the Arkheon Threshold but were foiled by the Tenth Doctor. (PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks)

As understood by the Time Lords, the Daleks discovered a means to make short hops through time, after which they changed history in the Time Paradox Incident, creating an alternate timeline, in which they had successfully conquered Earth by the 22nd century. In this time, a human guerrilla group managed to steal the Daleks' time machines, which they used to construct a rudimentary vortex manipulation device. This technology was easily bypassed, however, and the Daleks were able to use a Time Vortex Magnetron to override the temporal signal and divert any time traveller back to Dalek command. However, this timeline was negated when the event which allowed the successful Dalek invasion, the assassination of Sir Reginald Styles in the late 20th century, was prevented by Shura, a human guerilla. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual, TV: Day of the Daleks)

An actual timeship that could transport Dalek troops through time and space was specifically developed to neutralise the threat posed by the Doctor. This vessel used stolen Time Lord technology which allowed it to travel freely in the Time Vortex with the craft itself using expanded internal dimensions like a TARDIS. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)

Recognising the First Doctor for his role in "delaying" the conquest of Earth, the Daleks dispatched the time machine, manned by Pursuer-Daleks, to chase him through time, leading to a string of incursions across multiple time periods and planets which ended on Mechanus, where the Daleks came into a violent confrontation with the Mechanoids. The time machine itself was used by the Doctor's companions, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, to return to Earth in 1965 before having the craft self-destruct. (TV: The Chase)

This operation consumed all of the Daleks' taranium supply and this with the destruction of the time machine, (PROSE: The Chase) severely crippling the Daleks' existing time travel research, (PROSE: Mission to the Unknown) though it also deprived the Time Lords of an opportunity to study Dalek time technology. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) Through strenuous, long-term efforts the Daleks eventually harvested sufficient quantities of taranium to continue to use the time machines and proceed with the research. (PROSE: The Mutation of Time)

In 2223, the Daleks did not have temporal technology that gave them "precise control of vortex travel". Believing such technology would be "of value", they installed a duplicate under the name Magnus Drake onto Earth so he could establish new technologies for them to harvest during a repeat invasion. (AUDIO: Vengeance)

In 4000 a modified version of the Dalek time machine was later used in an attempt to recover the stolen Taranium Core, the power source of their Time Destructor. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan)

In 1866, human scientists Theodore Maxtible and Edward Waterfield conducted primitive time-travel experiments with mirrors and static electricity. From Skaro, the Daleks were able to intercept the time fissure created by the device, forcing Waterfield to travel forward in time and steal the Doctor's TARDIS in 1966. In Operation Human Factor, the Daleks used the Second Doctor to identify the Dalek Factor, intending to use his TARDIS to spread it throughout all of human history. However, this plot was thwarted as Humanised Daleks created by the Doctor revolted, with the Doctor escaping amidst the ensuing Dalek Civil War. (TV: The Evil of the Daleks)

By the time of the Dalek-Movellan War Dalek knowledge of time travel was considered lost. The Kembel faction worked to regain this knowledge, succeeding in sending a single Dalek back in time via a time bubble in a failed attempt to assassinate Mark Seven and in recreating a Dalek time machine. However the time machine was stolen by the Tenth Doctor. (AUDIO: The Triumph of Davros) By the end of the Movellan War, the Daleks possessed time corridor technology which they used to reach 1984 during the Duplicate Incident. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks)

By the Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War, both the Renegade Daleks and the Imperial Daleks possessed time corridor technology which was still, as the Seventh Doctor put it, "very crude and nasty". Both Dalek factions coveted the power that the Time Lords had, leading them to pursue the Hand of Omega in the Shoreditch Incident. The Renegade Daleks used a device called the Time Controller to establish a time corridor to specified coordinates. The portability of this technology represented a significant advance – the only drawbacks being that it required time to power up and was easily disabled. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks, PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)

Post-Time War
The Cult of Skaro, a group of four Daleks who had been assembled by the Dalek Emperor in anticipation of the Time War, (PROSE: Birth of a Legend) individually demonstrated the capability of emergency temporal shift after they, having fled the conflict, emerged in the post-Time War universe. This was used to escape the Battle of Canary Wharf in 2007, (TV: Doomsday) bringing them to Manhattan in 1930 in an act which the Tenth Doctor suggested had "roasted their power cells". Following the failed invasion of Manhattan which resulted in the deaths of all of the Cult bar Dalek Caan, Caan initiated another temporal shift to escape. (TV: Evolution of the Daleks)

In a feat which the Doctor had believed to be impossible and also came to the amazement of Davros, Caan passed through the time lock which was meant to protect the events of the Time War from interference. There, he rescued Davros from death at the hands of the Nightmare Child, allowing the creator of the Daleks to build a New Dalek Empire using his own DNA. Assessed by the Doctor to be a "fully-fledged Dalek Empire, at the height of its power", the New Dalek Empire used a magnetron to take planets out of time and space to the Medusa Cascade as part of the Planetary Relocation Incident, which was thwarted by the DoctorDonna, with the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor all but destroying the New Dalek Empire. (TV: The Stolen Earth/Journey's End)

A ship carrying the last survivors of the New Dalek Empire (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) discovered a Dalek Progenitor which they used to create the first members of New Dalek Paradigm, who used a time corridor to return to their own time and "begin again". (TV: Victory of the Daleks) Whilst they successfully established their empire in the post-Time War universe, the Daleks identified the Eleventh Doctor as the last of the Time Lords and so deemed themselves to have won the Time War, however, mastery of space and time still eluded them, with their efforts to achieve it being continually thwarted by the lone Time Lord. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)

Behind the scenes

 * As recounted by Susan Foreman in NOTVALID: Whatever Happened to Susan Foreman?, the 2150s Dalek invasion of Earth was launched by Daleks who had travelled back from the distant future using a TARDIS of their own. Having been defeated on Skaro by the Thals led by Ian Chesterton, their intent was to wreak revenge on Ian's people or, better still, prevent Ian himself from being born by going into the past. However, they were unable to go any further back than 2164 due to a leak in their fluid link.