Dalek X, also known as the Dalek Inquisitor General, was one of the most sacred and feared Daleks before the Last Great Time War. He was described as having a black casing with gold vertical slats and sensor globes.
Biography[]
Dalek X's name was famous across the universe, but it was not his real name; he adopted the title in the knowledge that it evoked fear in humans. It was every bounty hunter's dream to defeat him, but also every bounty hunter's fear to encounter him. He was often called "the Devil in Dalek form". He commanded the first Exterminator-class Dalek vessel, the Exterminator, and had a squad of Assault Daleks equipped with laser-cutting claws in place of manipulator arms. He had at least two elite guards, armed with double gunsticks. He answered only to the Supreme Dalek. He ordered the destruction of a flagship in the Auros escape fleet.
Dalek X lasted until the end of the Second Dalek War when he encountered the Tenth Doctor, travelling to the Dalek Base after the Doctor and a team of bounty hunters were captured. After enslaving them, he thought himself victorious over the Time Lord. He exterminated one of the Daleks in the Mines for progress being too slow, then gave orders that every hour the weakest team of miners should be exterminated. Dalek X tortured the Doctor in many ways, simply to see how much pain he could endure. In the end, his methods proved unsuccessful; the Doctor resisted them all. The Doctor agreed to give him his TARDIS when Dalek X threatened to kill a mother and a daughter. He left with the Doctor, Command Dalek, the Temporal Research Team and the surviving bounty hunters to the planet Hurala and the abandoned Lodestar refuelling station. In a rage, one of the bounty hunters fought the Daleks and was killed in the process, although the Doctor escaped with the others. Dalek X was attacked from below and knocked into a pit. The Doctor and the others detonated the station, destroying the other Daleks and the Exterminator, along with the other ships. The Dalek Fleet was thrown into disarray by this incident.
Dalek X was thought dead, but later the Doctor recognised his radio waves broadcasting across the universe for help, and homed in on him. The Doctor finished what he had started, leaving Dalek X to suffer forever in the darkness, living off life support systems and the astronic radiation, never able to get help because the planet's systems stopped other Daleks from receiving the signal and the planet had been quarantined due to the radiation. The Doctor claimed it would be 5000 years before anybody heard the transmission, by which time Dalek X would be gone. Dalek X vowed to survive, claiming that the Daleks would never be defeated, but the Doctor countered by informing him that Daleks were always defeated because they were incapable of accepting that every other being in the universe was better than them, the Doctor observing that, for all the Daleks' proclamation to be the superior beings, nobody in the universe would volunteer to become a Dalek, to which Dalek X had nothing to say in response. As the Doctor departed, Dalek X promised to come back and get his revenge on the Doctor, who promised to be waiting for him. (PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks)
Personality[]
Dalek X was cold and lacked mercy as shown when he slaughtered a Dalek miner for slow work, when he commanded the weaker Daleks destroyed every hour, when he worked to torture the Doctor, and when he blackmailed the Doctor through a woman and her child.
But Dalek X's major weakness was arrogance as proved when it led him trapped on a quarantine on the planet Hurala and when he boasted the Daleks would control the TARDIS without the Doctor. (PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks)
Behind the scenes[]
- Dalek X's voice was similar to the Dalek Emperor in the Prisoner of the Daleks audiobook by Nicholas Briggs.
- The Dalek Battlepack, first released before the book's publication, includes a Dalek with black casing with gold slats and globes similar to Dalek X. This design was seen in The Parting of the Ways as an Emperor's Dalek guard in the background.
- In Dalek Hack, the player has the option to turn a Dalek's casing black with gold livery.