Dalek Emperor

Four different incarnations of the Emperor Dalek are known, three seen on the television series, and one in the TV Century 21 comic strip (a squat, golden Dalek with an enormous head-section). It is unclear whether any of these are the same Dalek or different Daleks.

The Dalek Emperor was first introduced in the TV 21 comic strip The Daleks, reproduced in collective format as the Dalek Chronicles. According to this comic strip version of events, the Emperor was originally a standard Dalek, one of the war machines created by the blue-skinned humanoid Dalek scientist Yarvelling. After the nuclear war that devastated Skaro, the mutants had survived in the casings. The only humanoid Dalek survivors of the war, Yavelling and the warlord Zolfian encountered a Dalek that persuaded them to build more Dalek casings for their mutated descendants. Before the last two humanoid Daleks died, a special casing was built for the Emperor to reflect its new rank. It was slightly shorter than the other Daleks, with a disproportionately large spheroid head section and in gold rather than grey. This origin story is completely different from that portrayed on television in Genesis of the Daleks. The description of the Dalek Prime in John Peel's novel War of the Daleks matches the TV 21 Emperor closely.

The Emperor first appeared on television in The Evil of the Daleks where it was an enormous immobile conical shell plugged into a corner of the control room in the Dalek City on Skaro. The novelisation of Evil (adapted 26 years later from Whitaker's scripts by John Peel) stated that this Emperor had originally been the Dalek who had apparently exterminated Davros at the end of Genesis of the Daleks (although Davros was later revealed to have survived). The Emperor was apparently destroyed as a civil war broke out amongst the Daleks, although a light was seen still blinking on its casing at the end of the serial indicating some kind of activity.

The next time a Dalek Emperor appeared was in Remembrance of the Daleks. The Emperor of the Imperial Dalek faction was actually Davros, greatly deteriorated physically and reduced to a head and partial torso in a customised Dalek casing similar to the TV 21 comic version of the Emperor. He was last seen heading for an escape pod just before his ship was destroyed in the wake of the supernova that consumed Skaro.

Another Dalek Emperor featured in the finale of the 2005 series, The Parting of the Ways, its ship having barely survived the Time War. After its ship fell through time, it went into seclusion and went on to rebuild a new race of Daleks. This Emperor was a Dalek mutant floating in a transparent tank of liquid, topped by a giant-sized Dalek dome, complete with eyestalk, and flanked by panels of armour dotted by Dalek "bumps". Because this Emperor had recreated the Dalek race, it saw itself as a god, and had transformed its Daleks from fascists to religious fanatics centred around them worshipping it. This Emperor was apparently destroyed with the rest of the Daleks by Rose Tyler after she had absorbed the energies of the time vortex.

A Dalek Emperor also appears in the Dalek Empire series of audio plays by Big Finish Productions. In the Eighth Doctor audio adventure Terror Firma, taking place after Remembrance of the Daleks, Davros's increasingly unstable mind is obliterated by a totally Dalek personality, that of the Emperor. This new Emperor then takes command of Davros's Daleks and departs. Whether this is the Emperor seen in the rest of the Big Finish Dalek audios is unclear.

A Dalek Emperor, described similarly to the Emperor in The Evil of the Daleks, appears in the Telos novella The Dalek Factor by Simon Clark. It is referred to as "an" Emperor, implying there was more than one at that time.