Silver Daleks were Dalek drones who were distinguished by their gunmetal silver casings with blue sense globes. (PROSE: Mission to the Unknown) They were among the slatted casings which succeeded the Dalek War Machine as the most common variant of the Dalek travel machine sometime between the Daleks' encounter with Lodian, Yvric and Zet (COMIC: Legacy of Yesteryear) and the One in a Million Dalek's rebellion. (COMIC: Shadow of Humanity)
Hierarchy
The Silver Daleks were subordinate to black Supreme Daleks, black and silver Dalek saucer commanders, (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth) and the Dalek Emperor, who was himself in a massive silver casing. In addition, the Emperor was protected by the Emperor's Personal Guard; mostly silver, they were distinguished by their black domes, (TV: The Evil of the Daleks) a distinction which was later adapted to the bronze Daleks. (TV: The Parting of the Ways)
History
Origins
Silver Daleks' armours were among the slatted casings which succeeded the Dalek War Machine as the most common variant of the Dalek travel machine, sometime between the Daleks' encounter with Lodian, Yvric and Zet (COMIC: Legacy of Yesteryear) and the One in a Million Dalek's rebellion. (COMIC: Shadow of Humanity)
Conquests
The early Silver Dalek variant documented on 2094 Earth. (PROSE: The Dalek Chronicles Found!)
By 2094, a photograph of Silver Daleks with a large, blue luminosity discharger not exhibited by later models, was freely available on Earth, where it served to illustrate a news article about the recovering of a set of story-cubes about the Daleks' history. Five of the Daleks were standing in a deserted street, with other ruined casings of the same type strewn about. (PROSE: The Dalek Chronicles Found!)
Following the conquest of Earth in the 22nd century, silver Daleks occupied the planet, led by the Black Dalek known as the Supreme Controller while each saucer was under the command of a Dalek saucer commander. They used Robomen for patrols and overseeing slaves. The Sixth Doctor foiled their plan to unleash a Varga plant virus and new Robomen Elite in 2163 and erased any record of his involvement afterwards but the invasion continued. (AUDIO: Masters of Earth) The Daleks commenced a mining operation in Bedfordshire in order to reach the Earth's magnetic core, replace it with a propulsion system, and turn the whole planet into a massive spacecraft. Some time after their takeover of Earth, however, the First Doctor foiled the plan before its completion; the pit they had dug turned into an active volcano, the eruption of which killed the remaining Daleks and destroyed their base. (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth)
Using a taranium-powered Dalek time machines of their own, an execution squad of slatted Silver Daleks (TV: The Chase) holding the rank of Pursuer-Daleks (AUDIO: The Daleks) pursued the TARDIS throughout history in order kill the First Doctor and his companions, ultimately leading them into conflict with the Mechonoids in their Mechonoid City. The Dalek Leader slipped away from the battle with the Mechonoids after it realised that the assassination squad had no chance of winning. As the last surviving Dalek and in an act of self-sacrifice, it hacked into the city's computer systems and set the whole place to self-destruct, hoping to kill the Doctor and his companions in the blast. The Doctor escaped and the squad failed in their mission. (TV: The Chase, PROSE: The Chase)
In the year 4000, the silver Daleks formed an alliance with the Outer Galaxies and Mavic Chen, who supplied them with an emm of Taranium, which was vital to the Time Destructor to wipe out the Solar System. However, the First Doctor escaped with the Taranium, and the Daleks pursued him until he apparently surrendered it to them - this turned out to be a fake, however, so a Dalek task force with a Red Dalek sent from Skaro in another time machine by the Dalek Prime pursued him and his companions through time until the core was finally recovered in Ancient Egypt. They successfully recovered the core, although the Red Dalek was killed by rocks during the battle with the Egyptians. The Doctor activated the Time Destructor which destroyed the Daleks, their invasion fleet and left Kembel a wasteland. (TV: Mission to the Unknown, The Daleks' Master Plan, PROSE: The Mutation of Time)
A Dalek factory ship crashed on Vulcan, where it lay for three hundred years until a human scientist named Lesterson recovered and penetrated the capsule. Once activated, the surviving silver Daleks in the capsule decided to pose as obedient robotic servant drones, claiming to be the colonists' willing servants. The Daleks took advantage of the colonists' naive trust to establish a reproduction plant - on a conveyor belt system - with which to increase their numbers. The Second Doctor eventually destroyed the Daleks by turning the colony's power source against them, but not before the Daleks killed a vast number of the colony's inhabitants. (TV: The Power of the Daleks)
The Dalek Civil War
Under the leadership of the Dalek Emperor, silver Daleks were summoned to 19th century Earth by the human businessman and amateur alchemist Theodore Maxtible, who had devised a new form of time travel involving mirrors and static electricity, they took over Maxtible's techniques for themselves. Armed with this venue for time-space travel, they used it to trick the Second Doctor into a trap. They asked him to implant the Human Factor into three Daleks, claiming that they desired to become humanised Daleks allying the best of mankind and Dalek-kind. In truth, the Emperor's design was that the Doctor's experiment would, by contrast, also identify the Dalek Factor, which they would then spread through Earth's history. However, having realised the Daleks' plan, the Doctor encouraged the three humanised Daleks, Alpha, Beta and Omega, to defend themselves. Fearful of the implications, the Emperor ordered many Daleks through an archway that would re-implant the Dalek Factor. However, the Doctor switched factors so that all Daleks through the archway were humanised. A conflict between the normal and humanised Daleks inevitably broke out across Skaro, apparently ending the Daleks. (TV: The Evil of the Daleks)
After the Dalek war, a ship of silver Daleks travelled to the planet Exxilon in search of Parrinium, where all of its power was taken by the Exxilon City. The Dalek task-force encountered the Third Doctor and his companion Sarah Jane Smith along with a human expedition. They attempted to gun down the humans, but discovered that the Exxilon City had also drained their power supplies, rendering their gunsticks useless and forcing the Daleks to form an unholy alliance with the humans. While their gunsticks did not work, the Daleks replaced them with machine guns and enslaved the Exxillons in search for parrinium. When their power was restored, the Daleks revealed they were the cause of the Space plague and were about to fire plague missiles to kill the Exxilons and the Doctor as they made their getaway in their ship. However, it and its crew were destroyed by Dan Galloway, who had stowed away on the ship with a Dalek bomb, which he detonated. (TV: Death to the Daleks)
Replacement by the Grey Daleks
At later points in the Daleks' history, Silver Daleks were phased out and Grey Daleks became the normal form of Dalek drone. (TV: Frontier in Space, Destiny of the Daleks, Revelation of the Daleks, etc.) Grey Daleks had, according one account of the Daleks' origin, been the original form of Mark III Travel Machine presented by Davros to the Kaled Scientific Elite. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)
Return of the Silver Daleks
Further conflicts with humanity
However, following the end of the Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War, (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) Silver Daleks returned to the reformed Dalek Empire as the standard design for the Dalek drones. They served during the Daleks' long war with humanity, (AUDIO: Invasion of the Daleks) including the hijacking of Project Infinity, (AUDIO: Project Infinity) and the subsequent war against the Mentor's Daleks from a parallel universe, (AUDIO: Dalek War: Chapter One) although the Daleks of N-Space briefly allied with humanity when Kalendorf deemed the Mentor's Daleks an even greater threat to humanity. (AUDIO: Dalek War: Chapter Four)
Servitude under the Dalek Time Controller
Silver Daleks continued to serve in the Dalek Empire even when the Time Lords began foreseeing "something terrible" in the time tracks, at least some of whom served under the Dalek Time Controller. (AUDIO: The Great War) Silver Daleks were used to invade Srangor, and came to work inside an underground base to assist the Dalek Time Controller and Kotris in creating a space-time projector. They also occasionally travelled to the surface of Srangor and captured survivors of the Daleks' invasion for experimentation. (AUDIO: X and the Daleks) Silver Daleks were also used to pursue the Eighth Doctor and Molly O'Sullivan across time, starting from Earth in 1914, (AUDIO: The Great War) to 1943, to the Ides Scientific Institute in 1970, and even across the universe, (AUDIO: Fugitives) before eventually recovering them. (AUDIO: Tangled Web) When the Doctor and Molly escaped to Srangor themselves, they investigated the Space-Time Projector; when Straxus was exterminated, Kotris, and by extension, his plans, were erased from history. (AUDIO: X and the Daleks)
Silver Daleks were later used to conquer the Nixyce system, (AUDIO: The Traitor) including Nixyce II (AUDIO: Eye of Darkness) and Nixyce VII; on the latter planet, Silver Daleks again served under the Dalek Time Controller and ensured the enslavement of Nixyce VII's survivors. The Eighth Doctor eventually arrived and attempted to end the slavery of Nixyce VII, but was eventually captured and taken to the Dalek Time Controller, where he revealed his true intentions in coming to the planet; (AUDIO: The Traitor) the Doctor wished for the Time Controller to use the super weapon that the Daleks had created on Nixyce VII to destroy a nearby fleet of Eminence caskets. The Time Controller complied. (AUDIO: Time's Horizon, Eyes of the Master)
On the Eye of Orion, Liv Chenka specifically identified the Dalek Commander of a small contingent of Daleks as silver in colour. This Commander, along with its subordinate Daleks, were exterminated by the Dalek Time Controller (as by this point, the Time Controller had been banished from the Dalek Empire). Shortly afterwards, a force of Silver Daleks, led by a gold Dalek Supreme, landed on the Eye of Orion and dispelled the Eminence gas containing Markus Schriver's consciousness back into Schriver's bunker; the Daleks then forced the Eighth Doctor to lead them to the Dalek Time Controller, where they trapped him, along with Liv, Schriver and the Time Controller, inside the bunker. The Silver Dalek force then left the Eye of Orion, shortly before a temporal wave could hit. Back onboard their ship, the Silver Daleks were ordered by the Dalek Supreme to reconstitute the remains of the Dalek duplicate Adelaine Dutemps, (AUDIO: Eye of Darkness) who the Daleks had recovered from Montmartre, Paris, in 1921, (AUDIO: The Monster of Montmartre) into a unique Dalek Time Strategist. (AUDIO: Eye of Darkness)
Phasing out
Shortly before the outbreak of the Last Great Time War, (PROSE: Birth of a Legend) the bronze Dalek design used in the Second Dalek War (PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks) was reintroduced as the standard design for all Dalek drones, in preparation for the conflict that would soon begin. This marked the end of the Silver Daleks' dominance in the Dalek Empire's history. (TV: Dalek et al)
Persistence of Silver Daleks
However, some Silver Daleks continued to exist following the design's disappearance from the Dalek Empire.
A number of Silver Daleks from earlier in the Dalek Empire's timeline were kept within the Dalek Asylum after being deemed insane, including survivors of encounters with the Doctor, (TV: Asylum of the Daleks) including Silver Daleks from Vulcan (TV: The Power of the Daleks) and Exxilon. (TV: Death to the Daleks) These insane Daleks were killed when the Asylum was destroyed by the Parliament of the Daleks. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)
Silver Daleks were also among a diverse range of Daleks who, led by a red Supreme Dalek, resided on the rebuilt Skaro where Davros lived. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice) When the Doctor's regeneration energy rejuvenated the discarded Daleks from the sewers, the city-dwelling Daleks were overrun and destroyed. (TV: The Witch's Familiar)
Alternate timelines
In an alternate timeline created when the TARDISes of the First and Second Doctors crashed into each other, in 4000, the Daleks successfully developed the Time Destructor. In this timeline, Silver Daleks landed on Urbinia and commenced the Harvest of Urbinia. This timeline was averted when the Second Doctor travelled back in time and stopped his TARDIS from colliding with the First Doctor's TARDIS. (AUDIO: Daughter of the Gods)
In an alternate timeline created when the Reborn Master and the Dalek Time Controller conquered Earth in the 20th century, by 1961, Earth had become "New Skaro", and humanity was harvested to create Silver Daleks in Dalek slave camps; when humanity was approaching extinction, Sontarans and Draconians were also harvested to create more Silver Daleks. (AUDIO: Master of the Daleks) After the Master travelled with numerous Silver Daleks from 1961 to Montmartre, Paris in 1921, the Silver Daleks assisted in the invasion of Earth to establish this timeline. (AUDIO: The Monster of Montmartre) Later, the Master betrayed the Dalek Time Controller and revealed that he had secretly programmed 75% of the Dalek army to obey him, sparking a civil war between the Master's Silver Daleks, the Dalek Time Strategists, who had arrived from 1921, and, eventually, an ever-growing army of newly-born Sontaran clones created by the Eighth Doctor. (AUDIO: Master of the Daleks) This timeline was erased when a temporal wave passed over the Eye of Orion. (AUDIO: Eye of Darkness)
Kotturuh crisis
- Main article: Kotturuh crisis
In what may have been either a part of the Dalek Empire's natural history (PROSE: The Restoration Empire) or a divergence in time caused by the Kotturuh crisis, (PROSE: The Knight, The Fool, and The Dead) the Imperial Daleks had triumphed in the Imperial-Renegade Dalek Civil War. Refashioned into the Restoration Empire, the Daleks overhauled their command structure to harken back to the early Dalek Empire, reintroducing Silver Daleks as the basic Dalek drone. (COMIC: Defender of the Daleks, PROSE: The Restoration Empire)
Silver Daleks of the Restoration Empire. (COMIC: Defender of the Daleks)
Under the command of the Emperor of the Restoration, Silver Daleks invaded Islos, (WC: The Archive of Islos) fought against the Entity, (WC: The Sentinel of the Fifth Galaxy) accompanied the Emperor to Mechanus, (WC: Planet of the Mechanoids) fought against the Mechanoids on Skaro, (WC: Day of Reckoning) and recruited the Tenth Doctor into the war against the Hond. The Silver Daleks followed a dark Grey Dalek. (COMIC: Defender of the Daleks)
At least twelve (AUDIO: The Enemy of My Enemy) time-sensitive Silver Daleks were assigned to the Dalek Time Squad on its mission to investigate the fluctuations in time. They were not supposed to think for themselves, but River Song suspected that they could. (PROSE: The Guide to the Dark Times) They were ordered to invade Wrax when the Dalek Time Commander realised that the Wraxians intended to use the Devolver against the Daleks. (AUDIO: The Enemy of My Enemy) In the Dark Times, the Silver Dalek drones were deployed in the Battle of Mordeela and sent in scout ships to hunt down the last of the Kotturuh and subjects for the Symbiont, including Ikalla on Entranxis. After the creation of the Symbiont by combining Dalek and Great Vampire DNA, numerous Drones were enhanced with the hybrid DNA and subsequently deployed in the Time Squad’s attack on pre-Time Lord Gallifrey. The hybrids died after the last judgement of the Kotturuh was inflicted on them by Inyit. The rest of the drones returned to the saucer as the Daleks panicked, fearing the judgement could spread to pure Dalek DNA, which was then forced into the Time Vortex by the Eighth Doctor. (PROSE: All Flesh is Grass) The Doctor continued to sabotage the ship in the Vortex, forcing the Silver Daleks to attempt repairs. After the Dalek Prime Strategist destroyed the Dalek Time Commander, the Silver Daleks turned on him as a traitor as the Dalek Time-Ship broke apart. (AUDIO: Mutually Assured Destruction) Many of the Silver Dalek drones were torn apart by time winds, (PROSE: Exit Strategy) however one survived, ending up adrift in space. (PROSE: The Last Message) It later boarded the Starship Future where it rebuilt a bronze casing and encountered the Fourth Doctor. (AUDIO: Genetics of the Daleks)
Other references
During his trial, the Second Doctor recalled the Daleks, specifically drawing the image of a familiar Silver Dalek in the Thought Channel, as one of the adversaries he had broken the Time Lord code of non-interference to fight. (TV: The War Games)
On Earth, during 1st January 2019, the heavily rusted metal casing created by the Reconnaissance Dalek bore faded silver paint on its base unit. (TV: Resolution) The Defence Drones that Leo Rugazzi and Jack Robertson later created, based on the Reconnaissance Dalek's metal casing, were coloured black and silver. (TV: Revolution of the Daleks)
Behind the scenes
Merchandise
- Dapol, which produced a range of toys based on the classic series of Doctor Who, released several original silver Dalek variants which did not appear on-screen.
- W008-3 was silver with blue slats in addition to sense globes.
- A "Millennium Dalek" (W008-M6) had a sparkly silver body with a golden neck grille, slats and sense globes.
Other matters
- Silver Daleks (with larger luminosity dischargers than their TV counterparts') serve as foot soldiers in the theatrical film Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., adapted from The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
