Black Dalek Leader

The Black Dalek Leader, (COMIC: Plague of Death) usually just referred to as the Black Dalek, and briefly as Searcher One Leader, (COMIC: The Archives of Phryne) was the earliest Black Dalek in existence and the second-in-command of the Dalek race, after the Dalek Prime. (COMIC: Plague of Death, The Secret of the Emperor; PROSE: The Mutation of Time, The Evil of the Daleks)

Serving as the Daleks' warlord, (COMIC: The Secret of the Emperor) the Black Dalek Leader also held the rank of Supreme Dalek. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan) During its reign, the Black Dalek Leader did not remain the only Black Dalek in existence (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth; PROSE: Legacy of the Daleks; AUDIO: The Destroyers, Masters of Earth, The Curse of the Daleks, Return to Skaro) but was uniquely valuable to the Dalek Prime, who considered in "irreplaceable". (PROSE: The Mutation of Time)

Biography
The Black Dalek Leader was summoned by the Emperor to deal with Zeg after he challenged the Emperor's authority. It's weapon was unable to penetrate Zeg's metalert casing. (COMIC: Duel of the Daleks)

When the Daleks developed space travel, the Emperor led an invasion force off Skaro to conquer other planets, (COMIC: The Amaryll Challenge) leaving the Black Dalek in charge of the Dalek City. When the Daleks were threatened by the outbreak of a rust plague, the Black Dalek was infected in such as way that it could be used as a vessel to transmit the plague to other Daleks. The Emperor returned to Skaro to deal with the situation. The Emperor's guards chased the Black Dalek away to protect the Emperor. The Emperor then found the Black Dalek by the Brain Machine, rusting away, resigned to its fate, ashamed as it was of letting other Daleks die. The Emperor claimed the Black Dalek was too valuable to lose and sent it to the recasting furnace to be repaired. (COMIC: Plague of Death)

Later, after its recovery, the Black Dalek led a force of Daleks to the planet Phryne in search of new technologies as war with the Mechanoids became evermore certain. They successfully occupied the planet, although many Phrynians went into hiding to form a resistance movement. (COMIC: The Archives of Phryne)

The Emperor called a meeting with the Black Dalek and a Red Dalek when the presence of the One in a Million Dalek threatened to cause a civil war. (COMIC: Shadow of Humanity) Both were also present on the Emperor's ship when the Daleks first ventured into the Sol System. (COMIC: Return of the Elders)

In the 40th century, (COMIC: The Brain Tappers) the Black Dalek Leader presided over the re-election of the Dalek Emperor. The Black Dalek obliterated the entire Red Extra-Galactic Squadron when their commander denounced the Emperor for failure to defeat the humans. (COMIC: The Secret of the Emperor)

After the failure of the 22nd century Dalek invasion of Earth, the Daleks identified the Doctor and the Black Dalek, under orders from the Dalek Prime, (PROSE: The Chase) ordered an assassination squad to pursue his TARDIS in a Dalek time machine. The squad failed. (TV: The Chase) Some human historians believed, on the other hand, that the Supreme Dalek had only launched on that particular mission much later in its (and the Daleks') history, spurred to action by the destruction of its fellow Dalek Councilmember the Gold Dalek. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)

At any rate, the same Black Dalek, acting as a Supreme Dalek, oversaw the Dalek operations on planet Kembel in the year 4000. It led the conference which founded the Great Alliance with the emissaries from the Outer Galaxies, intent on invading the solar system. (TV: Mission to the Unknown; PROSE: Mission to the Unknown) It was, by then, the last surviving member of the Dalek Council, hence having adopted the title of singular Dalek Supreme. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)

Some months later, the Supreme Dalek held another conference as the Alliance completed preparations on the Time Destructor with the taranium supplied by Mavic Chen. The theft of the taranium by the First Doctor put the Black Dalek on edge, and it callously executed a number of its erstwhile allies, and even other Daleks, for failure during the recovery efforts.

Even after the successful recovery of the taranium core, the Doctor, Steven Taylor and Sara Kingdom managed to hijack the Time Destructor itself, using the Black Dalek as a shield to discourage the other Daleks from attacking them. The active Time Destructor wiped out all Daleks on the planet. (TV: The Dalek's Master Plan) This was a massive blow for the Dalek Empire as the Dalek Prime considered both the fleet and the Black Dalek irreplaceable. (PROSE: The Mutation of Time) By another account however, the Black Dalek had survived the Time Destructor's detonation, though it was badly damaged and left in critical condition, having been recovered by attendants and brought back to Dalek territory. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)

When the Second Doctor returned to Skaro, he encountered another Black Dalek. He wondered if it was the same one from Kembel, having survived, but there were many other Black Daleks throughout the City. (PROSE: The Evil of the Daleks)

Alternate timeline
In an alternate timeline in which the First Doctor never landed on Kembel due to a temporal collision with the Second Doctor, the Daleks successfully developed the Time Destructor. The Black Dalek, recognised as the Dalek Supreme, led the Dalek Fleet at the head of an unopposed campaign of galactic conquest and destruction. After the destruction of Baralda in the Third Galaxy as a show of force, the Dalek Supreme demanded the neighbouring Urbinia to surrender and its population submit to slavery.

Continued resistance and evacuation efforts organised by the Doctors dried up the Dalek Supreme's patience. Eventually it ordered the Time Destructor deployed to destroy the planet after the lack of a meaningful surrender, even sacrificing the Dalek ground forces for the failure. However, the Second Doctor escaped and averted the initial TARDIS collision with the fast return switch, resetting the timeline. (AUDIO: Daughter of the Gods)

Personality
The Black Dalek Leader was feared among the Daleks as the enforcer of the Emperor's will. Other Daleks scattered when the Emperor summoned the Black Dalek to face Zeg. The Black Dalek itself taunted Zeg by counting down to the moment of their confrontation, although its assurance in its own victory proved premature. (COMIC: Duel of the Daleks)

Yet, while the Black Dalek oversaw the Dalek City in the Emperor's absence, it displayed a more vulnerable side. When it became a carrier for the rust plague, it was overcome with guilt once it realised it was causing the deaths of other Daleks. It deliberately exposed itself to the plague to let itself die before the Emperor ordered it repaired. (COMIC: Plague of Death) However, if there was no hope of saving other Daleks, the Black Dalek was willing to leave them. During the battle against the Phrynians, the Black Dalek ordered Searcher One to take off before it was struck by a kamikaze attack, sparing no thought to the other saucers which did not survive. (COMIC: The Archives of Phryne)

The Black Dalek utterly despised failure. When Dalek pursuit ships failed to capture the Doctor and recover the taranium core on Desperus, the Black Dalek ordered them to return to Kembel. Then, immediately after, it ordered its mission controller to destroy the pursuit ships without informing their occupants. After a subsequent failure on Mira, the Black Dalek, by one account, organised a recovery mission to rescue the stranded Daleks (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan) but according to another account, it left the unsuccessful Daleks to their fate. (PROSE: Mission to the Unknown) In the alternate timeline on Urbinia, the Black Dalek ordered the use of the Time Destructor regardless of any casualties suffered by the Daleks on the planet's surface. It reasoned that any such casualties were deserved, as if the ground forces had succeeded in achieving a surrender, the Time Destructor need not have been used in the first place. (AUDIO: Daughter of the Gods) The Black Dalek viewed such displays as an incentive to its subordinates to work well and make no mistakes. (PROSE: Mission to the Unknown)

Due to the Black Dalek's enduring loyalty and leadership as the Empire's second-in-command, the Dalek Prime viewed it as indispensable. (COMIC: Plague of Death, PROSE: The Mutation of Time)

The Black Dalek viewed all other species as inferior and measured the worth of any creature's life by the duration of their usefulness. This was true of the Dalek race as a whole, but as the Daleks' representative on the Galactic Council, it was necessary to adopt a certain degree of diplomacy until the Great Alliance had served its purpose. The Alliance existed primarily as a means for the Daleks to gather resources; none of the other members were trusted and the Black Dalek resented having to work with them. (PROSE: Mission to the Unknown)

The Black Dalek scarcely hid its true feelings from the Alliance. Very early, it declared Zephon's usefulness over, grew impatient when he failed to show up to a key conference, and when Zephon was blamed for the theft of the taranium, the Black Dalek had him executed in front of the other delegates. Later, the Black Dalek selected Trantis as a test subject for the Time Destructor when it felt he was growing too ambitious; when the device failed to work and Trantis survived, the Black Dalek had him killed anyway. Once the Alliance had served its purpose, the Black Dalek broke up the surviving delegates' with a booming "Silence!" and then locked them up.

Above all, the Black Dalek loathed Mavic Chen, viewing him as untrustworthy (with justification), arrogant, overambitious and delusional, not helped by the fact that Chen was human. Several times did the Dalek try to kill Chen for failure or treachery but Chen always managed to escape with his silver tongue and logical assessment of the situation. Only when he had nothing more to contribute and tried to take command of the Daleks was he finally killed, (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan) which the Black Dalek thought about many time after the loss of the core. (PROSE: Mission to the Unknown)

In the timeline in which the Harvest of Urbinia took place, the Dalek Supreme sought to capture Chancellor Atrias to have him enforce the surrender of his people. Yet when Atrias was captured and claimed he was no longer in charge, the Dalek Supreme simply killed him. Although it intended to use the Urbinians as slave labour, it had no qualms about eradicating them all with the Time Destructor when they refused to give in. (AUDIO: Daughter of the Gods)

Before the incident on Kembel, the Black Dalek had never met the Doctor but knew of his reputation and knew him to be dangerous. Though frustrated by the Daleks' continued failure to recover the taranium core, the Black Dalek considered that the development made sense once it learned of the Doctor's involvement. (PROSE: Mission to the Unknown) Indeed, it was in its first and only encounter with the Doctor that the Black Dalek met its end. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan, PROSE: The Mutation of Time)

At almost no point did the Black Dalek permit fire near the taranium core or the Time Destructor during its construction, lest they be damaged and ruin all the Daleks had worked for, even at the cost of letting their enemies escape them. Even when the Doctor fled the hidden base on Kembel with the active Time Destructor, the Black Dalek, so close to victory, still hoped to retrieve it. The Daleks only fired on the weapon when they began to succumb to its effects, by which point it was too late. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan)

Skills
The Black Dalek Leader was capable of critical strategic thinking. When it led the Daleks into an apparently-uninhabited region of space, its suspicions led it to uncover an entire galaxy hidden by the Phrynians' invisibility force field, precipitating the successful occupation of Phryne. (COMIC: The Archives of Phryne)

Behind the scenes

 * The Supreme Dalek was voiced by either David Graham or Peter Hawkins in its original televised appearances. It spoke with a higher-pitched voice than most other Daleks. Nicholas Briggs provided its voice for the novelisation audiobooks, as well as the reconstruction of Mission to the Unknown by the University of Central Lancashire.
 * The Black Dalek Leader first appeared in Duel of the Daleks and became a recurring character throughout The Dalek Chronicles. For years, whether or not it was ever intended, there was no definitive link made between the Black Dalek Leader, the Black Dalek which appears in The Chase, or the Supreme Dalek which features in Mission to the Unknown and The Daleks' Master Plan.The connections were made by John Peel in his novelisations: The Chase, Mission to the Unknown, The Mutation of Time and The Evil of the Daleks. Peel wrote these as interconnected works and established the Black Dalek from The Chase, Mission to the Unknown and The Daleks' Master Plan as one and the same in the process.
 * Because The Dalek Chronicles went through frequent art shifts, the Black Dalek Leader often changes colour and design between stories. It is black and silver in Duel of the Daleks, black and gold in Plague of Death, and black, gold and silver in The Archives of Phryne making it resemble the Black Dalek from Dr. Who and the Daleks, who replaced the Glass Dalek as the leader of the Dalek City in this retelling of The Daleks starring Peter Cushing (which is not considered a valid source by this Wiki).