Destination: Skaro (TV story)

Destination: Skaro, also titled Doctor Who Children in Need Special 2023, was a televised minisode broadcast on 17 November 2023 on BBC One and written by Russell T Davies as part of the 60th anniversary celebrations and Children in Need.

It featured the Fourteenth Doctor arriving on Skaro, which was hinted at in the final instalment of the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip.

While mainly comedic in tone as part of Children in Need, Destination: Skaro is notable for showing the creation of the first Mark III Travel Machine or Dalek, as well as the Doctor unintentionally being a part of their creation by giving their name and war cry of "Exterminate" to the co-creator Mr Castavillian. This origin is explicitly contradictory to the one established in, explained by the Doctor noting "ruptures" in the timelines and canon.

This story marked the first time an adult Davros is shown before his disfigurement, and the second instance Davros has been seen on-screen without the need for his life support chair and before his disfigurement overall, after his appearance as a child in and.

Most notably, much like the 2005 Children in Need special had done with the Tenth Doctor, this special marked the first full appearance of the Fourteenth Doctor on screen in a proper story following his introduction, and chronicled the very first hour of this incarnation's life after his predecessor's regeneration and following his first full adventure and appearance in the comic story.

Publisher's summary
In this special Children in Need episode, the Doctor hurtles through space and time to a crucial point in the Daleks’ history.

Plot
A pre-disfigured Davros and his assistant, Mr Castavillian, are building the first iteration of a mutant-housing Mark III Travel Machine. The assistant tries coming up with a new name for this machine, using different anagrams of Kaled, none of which Davros likes. Hearing a request from Nyder, Davros leaves. There is an inexplicable wheezing, groaning sound.

Suddenly, the TARDIS crashes into the room, smashing into a wall. The Fourteenth Doctor opens the door and says "Hello!". He mentions that he regenerated from a brilliant woman sixty minutes ago and has somehow ended with an old face. He realises his violent landing has accidentally smashed off a part of the Machine, a multi-dextrous claw, and apologises. Then he sees the machine, and says in terror, "That's a Dalek!" The assistant notes down this name approvingly. He notes that he was lucky that he wasn't "exterminated" before realizing that he must have accidentally traveled to the "genesis of the Daleks". Hurriedly, he legs it back to the TARDIS, retrieves a plunger, and throws it to Castavillian. The Doctor runs back into the TARDIS and tells the assistant he was "never here." The TARDIS dematerialises. Panicking, the assistant sticks the plunger on to the machine in place of the claw.

Davros re-enters and sees the plunger stuck on to the Dalek. The assistant looks at his boss nervously, yet he approves: "I like it."

Cast

 * The Doctor - David Tennant
 * Mr Castavillian - Mawaan Rizwan
 * Davros - Julian Bleach
 * Voice of the Daleks - Nicholas Briggs
 * Dalek Operator - Barnaby Edwards
 * Nyder - Peter Miles (archive voice recording)

Kaleds and Daleks

 * Davros mentions that the war caused the Kaleds to mutate.
 * Davros identifies the bonded polycarbide shell, multi-dextrous claw and ruby ray blaster as part of the Travel Machine's arsenal.

Temporal theory
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 * When the Doctor realised that he was creating a bootstrap paradox, he exclaimed that the "timelines and canon are rupturing."

Continuity

 * This minisode references the fact that, in-universe, an hour has passed since his regeneration; this aligns with Davies' intent that, set after , takes places over the course of a single hour.
 * The Doctor mentions being "a really brilliant woman" and having "this old face back again."
 * This story is a prequel to, positing that several parts of Dalek culture were introduced by the Doctor via a bootstrap paradox. This story also refers to the creation of the Daleks as the "genesis of the Daleks", a name for the event that had previously been used in various spin-offs.
 * One of the anagrams Castavillian proposes is "Klade"; the Klade, as seen in several BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures novels such as, were often hinted at being the future evolutions of the Daleks.
 * This is not the only time they've been alluded to on-screen, as the episode mentioned the Kaled God of War, a god which the Klade were also shown to worship in Father Time.
 * Notably, there's a discrepancy in the subtitles between BBC iPlayer, which offer the potential name "Klade", and YouTube, which instead uses the anagram "Klaed".
 * The Doctor mentions the concept of canonicity as a concept similar to a timeline; many sources have also referenced canonicity in this way, such as the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures novel establishing that the Time Lords have a Tower of Canonicity.
 * The view of Skaro from space closely resembles its appearance in.
 * Dalek casings being created from polycarbide was established in.

Home media releases
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