Imperial Dalek

The Imperial Daleks (known as the gold sphere Daleks or Ven-Katri Davrett.) were a faction of Daleks loyal to their creator, Emperor Davros, and his Imperium, rather than to the Dalek Supreme and the rival Renegade Daleks ruled Dalek Empire in the Imperial-Renegade War.

Though acknowledged as Imperial Daleks by the Dalek Supreme's battle computer, TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) the faction had started as rebels to the Dalek Prime's followers, the original Imperial Daleks, before Davros usurped his position as Emperor and ruler of Skaro. (COMIC: Emperor of the Daleks!) Once the Dalek Prime reclaimed Skaro following Davros' defeat, his faction became the Imperial Daleks once again whilst Davros' followers were denounced as renegades. (PROSE: War of the Daleks)

Characteristics
In contrast to the drab grey and black Renegade Daleks, the sleeker Imperial Daleks had casings with white livery with gold sense globes and high-pitched, scratchy voices. The prototype models built by Davros on Necros retained the classic eyepiece and plunger manipulator arms, but also featured rounder bases. (TV: Revelation of the Daleks) The Time Lords knew these casings as the Type VI and put their appearance down to a "superior" white insulating layer, whilst their gold sense globes were indicative of a notion of prestige more than anything else. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)

The definitive Imperials created by Davros (COMIC: Emperor of the Daleks!) were known to the Time Lords as the "Type VII Dalek". (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) They retained a similar color scheme, but boasted golden eye-stalks and appendages as well as a lozenge shape on the centre of their weapons platform. Unlike other Dalek designs, the dome's luminosity dischargers became transparent rings around opaque, flattened gold discs. The ends of their manipulator arms also became slightly funnel-shaped and slotted on two sides to fit into machinery. The base units of these new Imperial casings were also slightly less tapered than was traditional - a change mirrored by their Renegade counterparts. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) The Time Lords understood that they were followed by the bronze Daleks, the Type VIII. These bronze Daleks also sported gold sense globes (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) which were previously a distinguishing feature of the Necros Daleks. (PROSE: Revelation of the Daleks)

The specific roles some Dalek drones in the Imperial faction were assigned included being a stormtrooper under the title of Ven-Katri Davrett, scout, systems co-ordinator, operator, and pilot, such as being a shuttle pilot. ((TV: Remembrance of the Daleks, PROSE: Rembemancr of the Daleks) The Imperial Daleks could hover and fly (TV: Revelation of the Daleks, COMIC: Emperor of the Daleks!, TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) like Davros himself in his chair, before he assumed the title of Emperor. The base emitted a red-to-orange glow when the Dalek in question took flight. (TV: Revelation of the Daleks, COMIC: Emperor of the Daleks!)

Early prototypes
The Dalek Empire decided that they needed Davros' help once again when the it faced the Movellans and found itself at an impasse. These Daleks soon pledged itself to Davros shortly after he was awoken by the Fourth Doctor. Davros, incensed to learn that the Daleks were led by a "Supreme Dalek", vowed to "dispute [ the title] most vigorously" and claim the position of Supreme Commander, starting what would become a schism between the two. Nonetheless, the Doctor defeated most of the Daleks and had Davros frozen in suspended animation. (TV: Destiny of the Daleks)

In the aftermath of the war, the Daleks who survived the Movellan virus retreated across the universe. (PROSE: Resurrection of the DAleks, TV: Resurrection of the Daleks) The overall Dalek Empire was thus able to suffer factionalism as different sector commands held control over their own isolated remnants of the shattered empire, (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks) creating a schism amongst Dalek ranks that hampered their further attempts at invasions and warfare. (AUDIO: Innocence)

Desperate to find a cure, the Dalek Supreme recruited Davros, only for the scientist to use an indoctrination serum hypodermic on a small group of grey Daleks, including the Gamma Dalek, Delta Dalek and Epsilon Dalek. These became the first of his followers, but they were subsequently destroyed by the Supreme's forces and the virus. (PROSE: Resurrection of the Daleks, TV: Resurrection of the Daleks) Though Davros's actions had officially opened the schism, (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks) he insisted that the Dalek Empire's divison was its own fault, with some Daleks even coming to believe they needed to return to their creator for direction. (AUDIO: Innocence)

Other Daleks believed Davros deserved no such loyalty, instead remaining loyal to the Supreme (TV: Revelation of the Daleks) and the Dalek Prime. (PROSE: War of the Daleks) Davros experimented with a new kind of Dalek, which became his Necros Dalek prototypes, at the Tranquil Repose funerary complex on Necros, using parts from cryogenically frozen bodies. Some, like Arthur Stengos, he decapitated, modified and placed — still living — into a Glass Dalek casing. During the conversion process, Stengos' personality alternated between that of a human and that of a Dalek. (TV: Revelation of the Daleks)

Davros created several thousand of these Daleks. (PROSE: Revelation of the Daleks) Orcini set off an explosion in Davros' bunker, killing the army of prototype Necros Daleks. Other Daleks loyal to the Dalek Supreme then apprehended him to take him to Skaro for trial, taking the surviving Necros Daleks to be converted into drones loyal to the Supreme. (TV: Revelation of the Daleks) However, the Time Lords would later speculate that those drones remained loyal to Davros and helped him cement control over Skaro. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual)

By one account, the ship carrying Davros, en route to Skaro, crashed on the planet Lethe. Davros set himself up as "Professor Vaso", altering the perceptions of the humans on the colony so they would not recognise him as the "Great Healer". He attempted to create a new machine, a Juggernaut based on a Mechanoid design. Under his Vaso guise, he also "befriended" Melanie Bush, whom he saw as a skilled programmer. Lethe's atmosphere prevented the Supreme Dalek retrieving Davros directly, but its forces intercepted the Sixth Doctor's TARDIS, forcing him to serve as an agent of the Daleks and stop Davros's researches and manipulations. The Doctor discovered two of Davros's Necros Daleks had survived the crash, but were destroyed following Davros's final gambit on the colony and the Supreme Dalek's intervention. Davros himself was left badly injured by Mel after she reprogrammed several Juggernauts into attacking him, and his self destruct system in his chair was activated leading to the destruction of the colony. (AUDIO: The Juggernauts)

Beginning of the Civil War
Accounts differed as to how Davros went on to being placed on trial on Skaro to being at the head of a whole army of Imperial Daleks loyal to him.

According to one account, as part of a long-term strategy, the Sixth Doctor himself rescued Davros so that he could further develop the Imperials and cause the eventual Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War. Taking him to Spiridon, the Doctor showed Davros the cache of four million Daleks (COMIC: Emperor of the Daleks!) whose freezing the Third Doctor had witnessed. (TV: Planet of the Daleks) Davros began reanimating this army and spent a whole year experimenting on them, giving them new, improved casings as well as programming them to be loyal to him rather than the Golden Emperor.

When the Golden Emperor's Daleks, led by the Black Dalek himself, were directed to his hideout by the Seventh Doctor, Davros unveiled his new army and demanded all other Daleks switch allegiance to him. After their refusal, he made short work of the Dalek task-force which had tracked him down to Spiridon and set a course for Skaro, where he exploited a computer virus created by the Doctor to cause every non-Imperial Dalek's casing to malfunction and eventually explode.

The newly-minted Dalek Emperor Davros and his Imperial Daleks were left to resettle the depopulated, ruined Skaro in the aftermath of this first battle, which had also seemed to cost the Golden Emperor his life (although he had initially managed to resist the effects of the virus), while the Black Dalek, stranded on Spiridon, sought to rectify the situation and was left to found the Renegade Dalek faction. (COMIC: Emperor of the Daleks!)

According to another account, however, the Golden Emperor was already nowhere in evidence on Skaro when Davros was taken there for trial, with the Dalek Empire instead being placed under the orders of the sole Supreme Dalek, who was giving some thought to taking on the charge of Emperor, itself. En route to Skaro, Davros was given an engineered strand of the Movellan virus by Thal agent Lareen, giving him the chance to take his creations out with him when they exterminated him, or even, if he somehow survived, to redeem himself to the rest of the civilised universe. Instead, Davros showed the Daleks what power he held over them and pointed out that he chose not to use it. Impressed by his show of loyalty to them, the Daleks attending Davros' trial stopped obeying the Supreme Dalek, instead crowning Davros to be their Emperor before exterminating Lareen on his orders. (AUDIO: The Davros Mission)

A third account indicated that the supposed "trial" was in no way a legal endeavor, but it was instead an attempt by the Daleks on Skaro, believing their creator could solve the schism within their empire, to "try out" Davros as a solution. These Daleks claimed to be loyal to the Supreme, (AUDIO: Innocence) but the Supreme in fact believed Davros deserved extermination and lost control of Skaro. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)

Civil War in full swing
The Imperial Daleks accompanied Davros in Earth in 1815 during the Battle of Waterloo. He planned to replace Napoléon Bonaparte's mind with that of a Dalek and use Napoleon's mind for the Dalek battle computers. (AUDIO: The Curse of Davros)

Since the beginning of the war (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) with the Renegades (as he called them) Davros had improved the capabilities of his Imperial Daleks (but, from the Renegades' point of view, made them even more impure) by grafting bionic appendages onto the bodies of the Dalek mutants. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) Davros also kept himself secure within his own casing, meaning it was possible some Imperials did not realise their Emperor was the once hated creator. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)

In addition to the war against the renegades, the Imperial Daleks waged the "liquidation war" against the Thals, the "war of vengeance" against the Movellans and the "time campaign". (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks, PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe)

Conclusion of the War
Davros led the Imperial Daleks to Earth in 1963 to get the Hand of Omega. They secured Coal Hill School for a base, controlling the head teacher with a chip in his head and placing a Transmat station in the basement. When this was destroyed by the Doctor with Ace's baseball bat, they landed a shuttlecraft in the school's playground. They engaged in a battle with the Renegades, who seized the Hand, but interference by the Seventh Doctor led to the Imperials acquiring it. The Doctor tricked Davros into using the Hand of Omega (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) to detonate Skaro's second sun, (PROSE: The Stranger) which caused it to turn supernova and destroy Skaro. Davros escaped his burning mothership in an escape pod. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)

Defeat of the Imperial Daleks
According to one account, Davros went into stasis inside his escape pod, which was eventually acquired by a garbage ship, the Quetzel, on which the Eighth Doctor and Sam Jones also ended up. Brought to a resurrected Skaro, Davros realised that the Imperial Daleks had been annihilated in the Hand of Omega incident, but also that even with no modifications on his part, some of the Dalek Prime's Daleks — formerly the renegades, but who now considered themselves the "true" Imperials — were sympathetic to Davros and his ideals.

Davros's trial drove this portion of the Dalek City's population to reveal themselves, and they were destroyed by the Prime-leaning Daleks in the ensuing battle. Davros was seemingly executed, although he had reason to believe the Spider Dalek responsible for the deed was actually loyal to him and would fake his death while taking him to safety. In any event, these events left Skaro under the control of what had once been the Renegade Daleks, the Imperial cause exterminated for good. (PROSE: War of the Daleks)

Defeat of the Renegade Daleks
According to other accounts, however, only Davros's mothership was lost in the blaze of Skaro's sun. With Davros gone, a new Dalek Emperor took charge of the Imperial Daleks and continued the War, successfully taking back Skaro and other major bases from the Renegades. With the competition eliminated, the Davros-loyal Dalek Empire turned their minds to fulfilling Davros's ambition of overthrowing the High Council of Time Lords, thus sparking the Last Great Time War. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) By one account, this Emperor named his new state as the "Restoration Empire", patterning it to harken back to the early days of Dalek history, a time when the Dalek Empire was united, and restoring Skaro. (PROSE: The Restoration Empire)

In yet another account, positing the survival of an Imperial Dalek faction beyond the Shoreditch Incident, Davros' escape pod entered the Time Vortex and was found by a Nekkistani ship, whose crew was quickly murdered by Davros. The Eighth Doctor, Samson Griffin and Gemma Griffin found the Nekkistani ship in the vortex and the Griffins boarded the ship to investigate. Davros exacted his revenge by sending them back to Earth, wiping the Doctor's memory of them and operating on the TARDIS. On Earth, Davros recreated a race of Imperial Daleks.

They conquered the planet, leaving only the area where Samson lived free from Dalek control. When the Doctor, Charley Pollard and C'rizz returned from the Divergent Universe, Davros was waiting for them. Davros' mind had become fractured between his own personality and that of "the Emperor". A series of events led to the Doctor actually giving the Daleks their Emperor and letting them leave Earth. Gemma was killed. Davros left Earth with his Daleks, the Emperor personality dominant. (AUDIO: Terror Firma)

Davros eventually rejoined the formerly-Imperial Dalek Empire (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) at the request of his "children" as they launched the Time War, (PROSE: Father of the Daleks) only to seemingly die in the jaws of the Nightmare Child, during the "very first year of the Time War" by the Tenth Doctor's recollection. (TV: The Stolen Earth)

During the Time War, the Time Lords investigated using the split in the Dalek hierarchy to their advantage, considering an alliance with a single Dalek faction. They were dismayed to learn from their tactical team that the Daleks were once more united and that there was no possibility of engineering division within their ranks. In their chronology of Dalek variants they identified early Necros Daleks and the refined Imperial Daleks respectively as "Type VI" and "Type VII", following the grey Type IV Daleks and silver Type V Daleks and preceding the Type VIII Bronze Daleks, believed by the Time Lords to have been developed for the Time War. These Bronze Daleks sported gold sense globes (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual) which were previously a distinguishing feature of the Necros Daleks. (PROSE: Revelation of the Daleks)

After the Time War
At least one Special Weapons Dalek was among the insane Daleks contained in the Dalek Asylum planet. It appeared to be one of the inactive and/or catatonic of the Dalek inmates. The planet was obliterated by the Parliament of the Daleks, destroying the Special Weapons Dalek along with all the other Daleks in the Asylum. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)

At least two Special Weapons Daleks (TV: The Witch’s Familiar) were among the Daleks who operated on the rebuilt Skaro where the dying Davros lived as he called the Twelfth Doctor to him. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice) These Daleks were destroyed by the rejuvenated Daleks from the sewers. (TV: The Witch’s Familiar)

Alternate timelines
In an alternate timeline created by the Black Guardian where the First Doctor never left Gallifrey, and became Lord President, the Imperial Daleks invaded Earth and fought over the planet with other races. This timeline was destroyed when the Seventh Doctor retrieved the Key to Time. (COMIC: Time & Time Again)

Other references
During the Shoreditch Incident, an Imperial Dalek was responsible for the death of Second Lieutenant Gary Jonathan Finch, the father of Clive Finch. Clive had acquired a photograph of an Imperial Dalek and, by one account, he had shown it to Rose Tyler, (PROSE: Rose) who would encounter living Daleks in the form of the Metaltron. (TV: Dalek)

Props
Four props were constructed to portray Davros' Daleks in Revelation of the Daleks. Ironically, these were later repurposed to function as Renegade Daleks while four new props portrayed the Imperial Dalek drones in Remembrance of the Daleks.

Dalek Supreme
"Once the Imperial Dalek faction was established, it became necessary to implement a Dalek Supreme to command operations, such as the Napoleon Stratagem - much to Davros's displeasure. To ensure his authority as Emperor remained unchallenged, Davros conditioned the mind of the Supreme to be totally obedient to his will, with the capacity to punish it painfully in the event of failure. Nevertheless, its main purpose is to serve the Dalek cause - and will exterminate all who oppose it."
 * Whilst the position of an Imperial Supreme Dalek subordinate to the Emperor Davros was first introduced in The Curse of Davros, its image was visualised on the cover of Sullivan and Cross - AWOL, rendered by James Johnson.
 * As with previous work, Johnson once again released a closer look at the Black Dalek Supreme design featured on the cover, noting its origins from the Dapol line of action figures. Cover artist Caroline Tankersley also noted the design draws inspiration from the Black Dalek seen in The Curse of Fatal Death.

- James Johnson

Other matters

 * In their list of real world paradigms, The Dalek Handbook counts the Imperial Daleks in a "1985-1988" paradigm with their prototypes, the Necros Daleks, and their enemies, the Renegade Daleks and the Supreme Dalek.
 * An illustration of 's execution is depicted in one installment of the Doctor Who DVD Files feature Flashbacks, published in its sixty-first issue of the magazine. The Dalek executioners, later identified as the Dalek Prelature in AUDIO: Mastermind, are depicted as hovering Imperial Daleks, identical to those seen in Remembrance of the Daleks.
 * The image of a finalised Imperial Dalek is used to depict a Necros Dalek on the cover of The Juggernauts. Imperial Daleks additionally feature on the covers of Big Finish audio dramas The Curse of Davros and We Are The Daleks and In Remembrance, the latter of which takes place partly concurrently with Remembrance of the Daleks.
 * Depending on the player's progress, "Imperial Dalek" is a potential rank, above Standard Dalek and below Supreme Dalek, for the Metaltron to attain in the video game NOTVALID: The Last Dalek.