Dalek Prime

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Dalek Prime
Main aliases:	Emperor Dalek
Species:	Dalek
Place of origin:	Skaro
First mentioned in:	Dalek Planetarium
First appearance:	Invasion of the Daleks
Appearances:	see list

The Golden Emperor, also known as the Master Brain (COMIC: City of the Daleks) or the Golden Dalek (COMIC: The Dalek Trap, PROSE: The Outlaw Planet) was an early Emperor of the Dalek Empire.

Characteristics

The Golden Emperor was slightly shorter than the other Daleks, with a disproportionately large spheroid head section rendered in gold rather than grey. It also had three sense globes on each panel of its base unit unlike other Daleks. (COMIC: Invasion of the Daleks)

History

Origin

The first mutated Dalek to use a machine casing, as well as the future Dalek Emperor. (COMIC: Genesis of Evil)

According to one source, the Daleks were originally a race of blue humanoid men. One of them, a scientist Yarvelling, created a "machine" as a weapon. After asteroids caused the eruption of neutronic weapons owned by the Daleks, those caught in the blast were mutated.

The only humanoid Dalek survivors of the war, Yarvelling and the warlord Zolfian, emerged from hiding and encountered the machine that Yarvelling had built being occupied by one of the mutants. As they died from radiation poisoning, the agreed to make more machine cases for the mutated Daleks. The original Dalek was built a new casing, made of Flidor gold, quartz and Arkellis flower sap. The first Dalek Emperor was now in command. (COMIC: Genesis of Evil)

Rule

Early empire

When the Jevon spaceship Guardian approached Skaro, the Emperor had the magnetrap bring it down to the planet. Kirid, the Jevon commander, revealed that they were headed to Arides to destroy the plants there before they could pollinate and endanger all life in the universe. Though the Daleks believed themselves immune, they were deceived into believing they were susceptible. When a Dalek was destroyed while examining the Jevon weapon, the Emperor led ships to destroy the Guardian, doing just as it completed its mission on Arides. The Emperor then declared all-out war on humanoids everywhere. (COMIC: The Emissaries of Jevo)

Detecting the approach of the spacecraft Starmaker, the Emperor ordered it bombarded with meteorites, forcing the ship to land on Skaro. His attention was to acquire prisoners to learn the location of their planet. While Starmaker was destroyed by the Daleks, three survivors were able to escape using a stolen Dalek transporter. However, they left behind a sheet of paper revealing the path to their planet, Earth, which the Emperor vowed to conquer. (COMIC: The Road to Conflict)

Aboard his Dalek Flagship, the Emperor led an invasion fleet into the solar system on a course to Earth. Engaging what appeared to be a fleet of organic spacecraft, actually the mediums of the telepathic Elders, the Dalek fleet was overpowered and forced to regroup before attacking a human colony on Titan, moon of Saturn. Capturing six human colonists, the Emperor had them conditioned to operate Dalek spacecraft in order to attack the mysterious aliens. However, the Elders saw through this plan and freed the humans of the influence of the Daleks who, induced to state of confusion, destroyed the majority of their own fleet. Spared the power of the Elders, the humiliated Emperor was forced to retreat. (COMIC: Return of the Elders)

25th century invasion

In 2400, the Emperor gave an address at the Great Council Chamber, ordering a Dalek invasion of the solar system. (COMIC: Invasion of the Daleks)

Residing in the Emperor's Quarters, the Emperor gave the order to switch on the revitalising rays. He was unaware that he was being observed by the human Jeff Stone, who was conducting espionage in the Dalek City. (COMIC: City of the Daleks)

Ultimately, the war ended with the Emperor being forced to sue for peace by Earth ambassadors. In a televised ceremony, the Emperor renounced the Dalek dream of conquest and promised that the Daleks would never leave Skaro again. (COMIC: Battle for the Moon)

27th century invasion

After two hundred years of peace, a mysterious Mechanical Planet came which threatened both Skaro and Earth. The Emperor landed on Earth and made an offer to eliminate the threat in exchange for the return of confiscated Dalek weaponary, which the humans grudgingly accepted. Ultimately, the Daleks destroyed the Mechanical Planet and, with their weapons and power restored, the Emperor vowed to conquer "all the planets in every sky." (COMIC: The Mechanical Planet)

Having given him a tour of the Dalek City, the Emperor personally interogated Irishman Pat Kelley, who had arrived on Skaro in the spaceship Emerald Isle. Believing him to be a spy, the Emperor ordered all the Dalek inventions and technology, which Kelley had praised, to be screened for flaws. Interpreting Kelley's advisement for the Daleks to grow out their five-leaf clovers as an attempt at sabotage, the Emperor had his ship refitted before sending Kelley back to Earth with the clovers, believing that it would bring Earth to ruin. Little did he realise however, Kelley had infact been playing an elaborate ruse to acquire the clovers all along. (PROSE: The Five-Leaf Clover)

When the Skaro water plant was sabotaged, the Emperor initially believed that human slaves were responsible. Soon after, however, the Daleks caught an alien spy whom the Emperor ordered to be brought to him. The spy proved to be scout for an army of Birdmen that invaded Skaro. Though the invaders were ultimately exterminated, the Emperor lamented that their ability of invisibility, a potential asset to the Daleks, was lost with them. (COMIC: The Invisible Invaders)

Later campaign

The Emperor participated in a temporal attempt to invade Earth before it knew what hit it; the Emperor followed the main invasion force in his time machine to 2415. However, his machine was faulty and he instead landed in the middle of the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. While he was lost in Time, his forces, clueless as to what to do without their leader, surrendered, aborting the invasion. Some time later, the invasion of Uranus was likewise a failure for lack of efficient command by the Emperor, whose casing's sonic guard had been damaged by the supersonic waves used by an Earth colony on an artificial satellite orbiting Uranus.

Originally, the Dalek Prime and the Black Dalek Leader officially held the offices of Dalek Emperor and Warlord, respectively, on the basis of an election. Every Skaro-year, all the Dalek Commanders would convene in the Dalek City and choose whether to reelect their two leaders.

On the Super-Skaro year, however, in the 40th century, (COMIC: The Brain Tappers) the Commander of the Red Extra-Galactic Squadron protested when the Black Dalek began to announce that the Emperor was to be reelected once more. According to the Red Commander, his squadron, during its distant travels, had witness the disastrous effects of the Emperor's strategies against humankind, leading the Red Daleks to rule the Dalek Prime unfit for leadership.

Outraged, the Emperor ordered the entire Red Squadron exterminated at the nonexistent hands of the Black Dalek. However, this sent the Dalek Prime in an identity crisis which spanned several weeks of reclusion, at the end of which he emerged with the conclusion that the Red Daleks had been right after all, and he was not perfect. However, this did not mean he relinquished power; instead, he allowed the Dalek Scientists to take his casing apart and rebuild it from the ground up, integrating more cybernetics than before. In the meantime, the Daleks were ruled by the Brain Machine, to which the Emperor had transmitted all his knowledge.

When he returned, the fault with the Golden Emperor's memory cells had been found and the entire first half of his casing had been replaced, now containing a large, external, artificial organic main brain in addition to the actual brain of the Dalek mutant, and which was far more powerful than any computer. (COMIC: The Secret of the Emperor)

Behind the scenes

• The Dalek Prime as written by John Peel bears remarkable similarity to the Golden Emperor, both in its backstory as the first-ever Dalek in creation who helped his race grow and then became its first leader, and in its appearance as a Dalek with a large sphere in place of a dome on its casing. Although the Dalek Prime is sometimes construed as an alternative title for the Dalek Emperor, there has, however, been no formal link drawn between the Dalek Prime and the Golden Emperor.
• The Golden Emperor also appears in Deadline to Doomsday, a Doctor Who Magazine back-up comic and follow-up to Return of the Elders which was under production with Ron Turner, the artist of the original TV Century 21's The Dalek Chronicles, when the artist passed away. The first two pages, with no text or header art, was printed in the end of Doctor Who Magazine 276 among an article remembering Turner. Years later, the comic was completed and printed in the fan magazine Vworp Vworp!'s third issue.