After looking at the Cybermen in a previous article, today we take a look at the Daleks. While there hasn’t been a classic Cyberman-focused story on telly for decades, the Daleks have been comparatively well served, most recently appearing in the Ben Wheatley-directed Into The Dalek and killing lots of people with their innard-scrambling ray guns.

Dalek stories wouldn’t be Dalek stories if they didn’t kill lots of people with their innard-scrambling ray guns, right?

It’s certainly the most traditional demonstration of their power. For a regularly recurring race that exists to destroy all other species, they’re not actually the most perfect killing machines ever devised. That’d be a Raston Warrior Robot as seen in The Five Doctors, which probably hasn’t been seen again or explored further on telly because it is a perfect killing machine. The Daleks are both more and less than that. They invite allegory. They’re more human than something as ludicrously and terrifyingly efficient as the Raston. Their purpose isn’t ineffable; it’s based on hatred and tragedy.

This means that the purest Dalek story since 2005 is actually The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End, where the Daleks are working towards their ultimate goal with unusual proficiency. Normally, they’re only conquering the galaxy incrementally, rather than something on a universal scale. It’s worth noting though, that in the show’s few jaunts to the end of the universe, they aren’t there. The Daleks, the most feared race in the universe, don’t make it as far as Orson Pink.