Dalek

The Daleks are a fictional race of cyborgs in the British television series Doctor Who. They are the mutated remains of the Kaled people of the planet Skaro, who travel around in robotic bodies. They bear a suspicious resemblance to overgrown pepper shakers, with a single mechanical eye stalk, a gun stalk, and a device for manipulation: a sort of sink plunger or in some episodes a mechanical claw. Their catchphrase is "EXTERMINATE!", screeched in a frantic mechanical voice.

Due to their gliding motion Daleks were notoriously unable to tackle stairs, which made them scary yet easily overcome under the right circumstances. An often-copied cartoon shows a flight of stairs with a sign saying "To Earth" at the top; at the foot of the stairs a Dalek says "Well, that ****s up the invasion plans". In 'Remembrance of the Daleks' it is shown that Daleks can go up stairs after all using a sort of limitied antigravity, but their awkward forms still limit their mobility in tight quarters. In a classic scene from the episode "Destiny of the Daleks" after the Doctor and companions escape from Dalek pursuers by climbing into a ceiling duct, the Doctor (Tom Baker) calls down "if you're supposed to be the superior race of the universe, why don't you try climbing after us? Bye bye!" The Daleks generally make up for their lack of mobility with overwhelming firepower.

The scriptwriter who devised them, Terry Nation, stated that he was inspired by watching ballet dancers in long dresses glide as if on wheels; and that the name came from a volume of a dictionary or encyclopedia who spine read "Dal - Lek". He later admitted that he had made this up as a reply to a question by a journalist and that anyone who who had checked out his story would have found him out. The name had in reality simply rolled off his typewriter.

Nation was pleasantly surprised to discover, that in Serbo-Croat the word "Dalek" means "far and distant thing".

Later the Daleks were seen as an analogy to the Nazis, particularly in "The Dalek Invasion of Earth".

The Daleks were first introduced in December 1963 in an episode of Doctor Who called variously, "The Daleks", "The Dead Planet" or "The Mutants" (the reason for this confusion is that in the show's early years each individual episode had a different name; "The Dead Planet" and "The Mutants" are both episodes within the serial "The Daleks"). They immediately became a hit, and were featured in many subsequent episodes.

Two movies starring Peter Cushing spun off from Doctor Who featured them as the main villains: "Doctor Who and the Daleks", and "Daleks -- Invasion Earth 2150 AD". In addition to this, their popularity has extended to books and stage shows.

Over the twenty-six seasons of the series, the Daleks underwent a number of revisions and elaborations. In the definitive episode "Genesis of the Daleks" (1975), the creator of the Daleks was revealed to be the Kaled chief scientist Davros. Although Davros appeared to have been killed by his own creations at the end of the episode, he survived their attack in suspended animation and was later recovered from the ruins of Skaro by the Daleks seeking his help to enhance their design. Davros' continuing influence eventually led to a schism among the Daleks, with one faction following Davros' leadership (the "Renegade" Daleks) and another faction rejecting their creator to instead follow the Supreme Dalek (the "Imperial" Daleks).

Davros made his last appearance in the Doctor Who TV serial "Remembrance of the Daleks" simply as a head inside a large Dalek.

Daleks have been the subject of many parodies, one idea was gay daleks.