THE DALEKS

Now Davros has created a machine creature—a monster—which will terrorize and destroy millions and millions of lives and lands throughout all eternity. He has given this machine a name: a Dalek. It is a word new to you, but for a thousand generations it is a name that will bring fear and terror. Now undoubtedly Davros has one of the finest scientific minds in existence, but he has a fanatical desire to perpetuate himself in his machine. He works without conscience, without soul, without pity, and his machines are equally devoid of these qualities.

—THE FOURTH DOCTOR, GENESIS OF THE DALEKS

THE DALEKS ARE AN ULTRA-EVIL RACE OF INTERGALACTIC, TIME-TRAVELING, ALIEN NAZI SPACE-TANKS THAT HATE EVERYTHING AND SCREAM MANIACALLY AT YOU IN SUPER-OBNOXIOUS ROBOTIC BRITISH VOICES SO SHRILL THAT IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU’RE TAKING A CHEESE GRATER TO THE INSIDE OF YOUR BRAIN.

The most powerful and badass villains on Dr. Who, the longest-running science-fiction television series of all time, these murderous automated salt-shakers are vile constructs of pure evil and hatred that seek nothing less than the complete extermination of all non-Dalek life in the universe and the utter destruction of all organic creatures and inorganic stairwells in the galaxy.

The Daleks were created by an evil, wheelchair-bound super-genius mutant named Davros, who used to live in a bombproof bunker on the war-torn planet Skaro. Correctly realizing that a few centuries of nonstop nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare was rapidly mutating the generally human-looking Kaled people of his homeworld into a horrible race of disgusting amorphous radioactive alien snot-balls, Davros (who amused his evil genius by working on bizarre, vaguely useful scientific experiments like engineering a species of man-eating oysters for some inexplicable reason) began work on the project that was destined to save his newly mutated civilization of freaks and slime-monsters from a life of sedentary misery—the soon-to-be-notorious self-contained military tank known as the Mark III Travel Machine.

Though this may seem like a noble (if not misguided) undertaking, don’t be fooled into thinking that Davros was some selfless humanitarian hero who wasn’t totally creepy-looking, psychotic, and evil, or that his motives were anything other than ulterior and perhaps even diabolical. This guy was a whacked-out delusional fascist megalomaniac who ate crushed-up orphans through an IV drip, and while ostensibly helping the Kaled race along in their evolutionary cycle for the good of civilization, he also decided to take the liberty of genetically engineering them to have no feelings, no pity, no compassion, and nothing that resembled a conscience or legs. These vicious alien blob-monsters were bred solely to survive, murder, and perpetuate their species through extreme violence, and were specifically designed to only be interested in mightily rolling over the groins of the worthless denizens of the universe any time they happened to be lying down on a piece of relatively flat pavement.

The Kaled booger monster itself operates the tank-like Travel Machine and is the ultimate source of its species’ unrelenting universal hatred for everything in existence. Without the Dalek casing, however, these things would really just be a miserable little race of stationary angry globs that sat around all day waiting for someone to come within arm’s reach so that they can strangle him with their noodly appendages, which, while cool, isn’t exactly the most menacing thing ever. The full Dalek machine is really what makes them shine in their role as the badassholes of the universe. In addition to being impervious to all kinds of conventional weaponry, Daleks have propulsion and life-support systems that allow them to hover, fly, survive in space, travel underwater, and move through any number of incredibly inhospitable environments. They come equipped with a tremendously named eight-inch-long phallic device known as the gunstick, which shoots a vicious beam of electrical energy that can rearrange your ass faster than a sonic screwdriver enema, as well as a “manipulator arm” that makes it look like they have huge black toilet plungers sticking out of their torsos. The plunger can be used to interface with objects, manipulate heavy explosives, and rip information from a humanoid’s brain, but sometimes they like to just wave it around menacingly at people as a means of making them uncomfortable. One time I saw a Dalek use the plunger to crush a dude’s skull, murdering him in a hilariously humiliating manner. This manipulator arm, while strangely versatile considering that it operates solely by suction, can also be replaced with everything from flamethrowers to pestilence-filled syringes depending on how evil the Daleks feel they need to be on that particular occasion. The Kaled mutant driver looks out through an eyestalk attached to a swiveling head at the top of the Dalek, which, while capable of identifying and tracking human footprints, doesn’t seem to help a whole lot whenever the Doctor and his companions have the good sense to tactfully duck behind some random nearby object. As utter megalomaniacs intent on asserting their superiority over the inferior douchebags of the universe, the Daleks love screeching about how awesome they are and talk incredible amounts of trash to their victims whenever possible. In negotiations, they act like true badasses by speaking only in threats and responding to any arguments or disagreements by simply screaming louder and repeating themselves incessantly until their enemies either give up or get their neurons fragged apart by the death ray. Arguing with these guys is like getting in a shouting match with a broken MP3 player that can shoot lightning bolts out of its earphone jack.

The warriors of the Dalek Empire warp around the universe in flying saucers arbitrarily attacking every sentient civilization they encounter. They feel no pity or remorse, cannot be reasoned with, and demand universal genocide of all non-Dalek races (as well as any factions within the Dalek Empire that disagree with them). As cyborg monsters with no respect for organic or synthetic life, they rarely negotiate or accept surrender. They only waste their time forcibly subjugating a species if they feel like they need a little bit of help in the prehensile-thumbs department or if they decide they want to test out some experimental weaponry on captives, who they typically view more like expendable hostages than legit prisoners of war. For instance, one time the Doctor tried to actually negotiate with the Daleks, so they just grabbed a bunch of prisoners and started executing them in front of the Doc until he gave up all attempts at diplomacy. They’re just bastards like that.

It’s pretty beneficial to their existence that the Daleks uncovered the secrets of time travel at some point in their intergalactic crusade against sanity, because the thing about these ultimate alien jerkwads is that they’re hardwired for survival at all costs and are never fully defeated. No matter how many times you think they’ve been destroyed, they just time-warp to a different era of history, and the next thing you know, there’s a damn human-size salt-shaker wandering the streets of 1930s Manhattan wearing a fedora and a trenchcoat in a ridiculous attempt at rolling incognito.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about these creatures is that they were created back in 1963, and nearly fifty years later, they’re still out there appearing in new episodes and exterminating humans just as fiercely as ever.

According to the story, the Daleks got their name because it’s an anagram for the Kaleds.