Dalek flying saucer

Flying saucers were the most common spaceships used by the Daleks from their early history, through the Last Great Time War and beyond, proving to be an integral part of the Dalek war machine.

Development
The Daleks began to research space travel when a Krattorian ship piloted by a slave-owner Kest landed on Skaro. Interested in seizing the ship for themselves, they began examining it. Kest's escaped slaves Sala and Astolith managed to steal the ship, killing Kest and leaving Skaro. However, by then the Daleks had learned enough about spaceship operation to begin the construction of their own spacecrafts. (COMIC: Power Play)

Research was delayed when the Daleks encountered the problem of metal fatigue. They needed a material that could withstand more heat than their own casings. When Dalek scientist Zeg accidentally discovered such a material in metalert, he claimed it would suit their needs but a power struggle resulted between him and the Dalek Emperor. Zeg was destroyed in a duel but the Emperor decreed they would improve on the metalert experiments, allowing them to resume to space travel program. (COMIC: Duel of the Daleks)

The Daleks built prototype ships such as Proto 1, 4, and 9. Proto 13 had a flying saucer design and was successful in take off, space flight, and entering/exiting hyperspace. It became the standard Dalek ship. (COMIC: The Amaryll Challenge)

Early history
The Daleks used saucers when invading planets, including during the 22nd century Dalek invasion of Earth. Each saucer was under the command of a Dalek Saucer Commander. They were all caught in the upshot of an explosion when their base in Bedfordshire blew up. (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth)

The First Doctor, Steven Taylor and Sara Kingdom stole a Dalek saucer to escape the planet Mira. Thousands more were part of the invasion fleet the Daleks planned to use to wipe out the solar system. They were destroyed by the Time Destructor. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan, PROSE: The Mutation of Time)

During the course of the Daleks' Great War, Thal forces destroyed 200 Dalek saucers in Sector Seven, and the Draconians destroyed half of the Dalek fleet along the Draconian frontier. (PROSE: The Evil of the Daleks)

Saucers were present on Earth when the Daleks retried their invasion of the 22nd century, following the destruction of the Second World Peace Conference. (HOMEVID: Day of the Daleks)

The Daleks used a saucer to destroy Earth satellites during the Cold War, hoping the Americans and the Russians would blame each other and the conflict would escalate. The saucer landed at the bottom of the ocean, sealed within a pressure dome, where it was to wait until the Daleks saw the perfect moment to strike. However, it was infiltrated by the Doctor who contacted a submarine, the HMS Pandora, and ordered it to fire on the ship. The Daleks died as the ship flooded. (COMIC: The Threat from Beneath)

The saucers were a huge part the Dalek Empire's war effort during the Second Dalek War of the 26th century. At the very beginning of the war, the Supreme Dalek's saucer was stolen by a group of Thals who used it to escape Spiridon, causing the Supreme Dalek to send for a rescue craft. (TV: Planet of the Daleks) Another saucer, named the Exterminator, was a supreme Exterminator-class flagship belonging to the Dalek Inquisitor General, Dalek X, which contained over 500 Daleks. When the Exterminator was destroyed at the end of the war on the planet Hurala, the Dalek fleet was pushed right back from Earth-Space. (PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks)

After the Dalek war, a Dalek saucer travelled to the planet Exxilon in search of parrinium. All of its power was taken by the Exxilon City. When the power was restored, the ship took off. It was destroyed by Dan Galloway, who had stowed away on the ship with a Dalek bomb, which he detonated. (TV: Death to the Daleks)

Much later in their history, the Daleks launched over a thousand Dalek Saucers into the Time Vortex. These forces were stopped by the Eighth Doctor, who left them trapped in the vortex. (AUDIO: The Time of the Daleks) The Time Lords later made a deal with the Daleks that allowed them to leave the Time Vortex. (AUDIO: Neverland)

The Last Great Time War
During the Last Great Time War each saucer contained over two thousand Daleks each and were small and bronze-coloured, the same colour as the drone Daleks of that time, as they had been in the Second Dalek War. (PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks) In addition, they held multiple Dalek fighter pods. The flagship was the same colour but many times larger and contained both Dalek drones and the Emperor's Personal Guards. (TV: Bad Wolf)

A fleet of Dalek saucers in the Tantalus Spiral were forced to retreat by the Fifth Time Lord Battle Fleet. The War Doctor and Cinder investigated inside one of their saucers on the city of Andor on Moldox. (PROSE: Engines of War)

On the final day of the Time War, ten million Dalek saucers (TV: Dalek) surrounded Gallifrey and launched their biggest attack ever. The saucers bombarded the planet from orbit and deployed countless Daleks and Dalek fighter pods to invade the surface. Many Dalek saucers entered Gallifrey's atmosphere and attacked the Capitol of the Time Lords itself. Although the Capitol was badly damaged, the Sky Trenches held. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) Dozens of Dalek saucers were shot down during the battle, and crashed around the Capitol. (TV: The End of Time)

At the end of the War, the Doctors froze Gallifrey in time, causing the Dalek fleet firing on the planet from all directions to blast itself apart, although everyone would believe they all burned with the planet. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) The Emperor's flagship survived and fell through time to about the 2000th century. The Dalek Emperor built two hundred ships of his fleet and created half a million new Daleks to rule. They attacked Earth, distorting entire continents with their attack, but were all destroyed by the Bad Wolf entity. (TV: Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways)

The New Dalek Empire used saucers with a modified appearance in their 2009 invasion of Earth. Though the Daleks themselves could fly and had personal weaponry, smaller versions of the saucers served as fighter craft. (TV: The Stolen Earth) The Dalek ships were destroyed by the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor along with the Crucible and the Daleks of the Empire. (TV: Journey's End)

The New Dalek Paradigm
One ship survived an encounter with the Doctor, and fell through time to 1941, acquiring a Progenitor. This ship hid behind the Moon. When the three surviving Daleks on board were confronted by the Eleventh Doctor, they used a beacon on the ship to activate all the lights in London, leaving it vulnerable to the German Blitz. Enhanced Spitfires were sent to destroy the beacon. Two were destroyed by the Dalek defence guns mounted around the saucer, but the Eleventh Doctor disabled the ship's shields and the dish was destroyed. The new Daleks escaped in their ship through a time corridor. (TV: Victory of the Daleks)

A single Dalek saucer was used by a platoon of Daleks to recover their lost Time Axis from the SS Lucy Gray. The ship was fired into the sun. (GAME: Return to Earth) The Dalek ship escaped by making a random jump several hundred years into the past. The Daleks attempted to force the Doctor to fix their ship by attaching his TARDIS to their ship; the Doctor escaped and used his TARDIS to fling their ship into a black hole. (GAME: Evacuation Earth)

Dalek saucers were used in the attack on Station 7 when the Daleks conducted a search for "the Abomination". They disguised their saucers as asteroids which they discarded when the attack began. All were destroyed — save one, which was used by an SSS officer to travel home — when caught in a deliberate volcanic eruption. (COMIC: The Only Good Dalek)

When the Daleks joined the Alliance formed to imprison the Eleventh Doctor in the Pandorica to save the Universe, many Dalek saucers were part of the Alliance fleet which arrived at Stonehenge in 102 A.D. The Doctor stated that a typical Dalek battle fleet contained a minimum of twelve thousand ships. (TV: The Pandorica Opens)

A fleet of Dalek saucers waited above Earth in 2106 when the New Dalek Paradigm invaded London using a piece of the Eternity Clock. The fleet was lead by a Dalek Flagship owned by the Dalek Emperor. (GAME: The Eternity Clock)

A contingent of Daleks - in Survey Ships Sigma, Delta and Epsilon - sent on a mission through human history to learn how humans fought war were caught in a Vortex storm and were stranded in 1908, with Ship Delta being destroyed. Still proceeding with their plan, they were foiled by the Eleventh Doctor and the combined armies of the First World War in 1917 and Ship Sigma was sent crashing to the ground. One hundred years later, some archaeologists discovered the saucer underground and accidentally powered it back up. The Eleventh Doctor arrived just in time and connected the ship to a power line, overloading the reviving Daleks and their ship. (COMIC: The Dalek Project)

When the Doctor, Amy and Rory were captured by Dalek puppets, several saucers were present around the Dalek Parliament. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)

On the Dalek Foundation world of Carthedia, the Eleventh Doctor assumed the Daleks would not fire on him and the Blakely children while they stood close to a Dalek saucer, as they risked damaging it. The Doctor was proved wrong as the Daleks opened fire on them, tearing the saucer apart in the process. The Daleks continued to pursue the Doctor across the Sunlight Worlds in other saucers and the Dalek Time Controller retreated in one when it was attacked by Jenibeth Blakely. (PROSE: The Dalek Generation)

During the Siege of Trenzalore, several saucers were present but by the end, only one remained, the others apparently destroyed or having retreated. When the Doctor was granted a new regenerative cycle, the final burst of energy from his first regeneration in the cycle obliterated the saucer as it descended on the Doctor to try to kill him before he could regenerate. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)

A saucer chased the Combined Galactic Resistance ship piloted by Journey Blue and her brother, attempting to destroy it and kill the two. The Twelfth Doctor succeeded in rescuing Journey, but her brother died. After "Rusty" turned evil again, he sent out a distress signal from the Aristotle and the saucer docked with the ship, dispatching boarding Daleks to slaughter the crew. At first they were successful, but the efforts of the Doctor and Clara Oswald turned "Rusty" against his own kind once more and he slaughtered the other Daleks on board the Aristotle. "Rusty" then ordered the saucer to retreat, telling the crew that the humans had activated the Aristotle's self-destruct. Fearing destruction and believing their mission accomplished, the saucer retreated with "Rusty" joining it to continue his campaign against his species. (TV: Into the Dalek)

A Dalek saucer was chasing a Cyber Ship with a Dalek later named Lumpy inside who had a piece of the Orb of Fates. (GAME: The Doctor and the Dalek)

Weaponry
Dalek flying saucers were equipped with particle beam weapons, (TV: Victory of the Daleks) magnetise beams to trap escaping ships, (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan) missile launchers (TV: The Parting of the Ways) and a hypnosound device to make targets see what they most feared or desired. (TV: Frontier in Space)

Some Dalek saucers could destroy entire planets with ease. Davros threatened to destroy Earth with his killcruiser. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) The Dalek saucer known as the Parliament of the Daleks was able to destroy the Dalek Asylum planet with a barrage of missiles once its force field was taken down. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)

Behind the scenes

 * Dalek flying saucers first appeared in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. The DVD release of the story featured a new and more convincing CGI special effects version of the saucer as an alternative to the original. On the same DVD they also appeared in the entire story's title sequence at the beginning of part one.
 * Dalek saucers featured prominently in the action of The Dalek Chronicles comics and other print-based Dalek stories.
 * The theatrical film Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (based on The Dalek Invasion of Earth) featured a Dalek command craft, the front section of which resembled a saucer. A drawing of this "saucer" appeared on the cover of the Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth novelisation even though the book's content drew from the television version.
 * While the saucers do not appear in the original version of Day of the Daleks, they were added into the Special Edition DVD release. The same ringing sound effect used in The Dalek Invasion of Earth is used here.
 * A Dalek flying saucer (post-2005) appears in the online game Doctor In A Dash as one of three enemy ships, along with a Slitheen craft and a Judoon rocket, that race along with the Doctor's TARDIS (the player) to find a Space-Time Manipulator. Like the other enemy ships, the Dalek flying saucer can fire energy weapons to immobilise the other ships temporarily. Assuming the player completes the game, the Tenth Doctor claims the Space-Time Manipulator and destroys it to prevent it falling into the wrong hands.
 * The interior of the flying saucer seen in Victory of the Daleks was not specially made for the show - it was in fact filmed in the storage room of an empty cigar factory.

Trivia
Disco volante Dalek
 * A LEGO version of a Dalek Saucer appears in LEGO Dimensions, in which it serves as the setting of the boss battle against Sauron.