The Last Dalek Game 56
Ingelore Clason
In the early days of the Last Great Time War, the Time Lords foresaw this Dalek's encounter with the Doctor. Taking note of how the Dalek would regenerate itself using Rose's latent artron energy, the Eleventh General warned all his troops to never touch a Dalek while also commencing research on whether it was possible to replicate the transfer of Rose's emotions to other Daleks. (PROSE: Dalek Combat Training Manual [+]Richard Atkinson and Mike Tucker, BBC Books (2021).)
Information about the alternate account of Van Statten's acquisition of the Metaltron from PROSE: Dalek and the "alternate timeline" explanation of the discrepancies of Dalek and later episodes featuring the Daleks from PROSE: The Time Traveller's Almanac needs to be added.
By another account, circa the 2000s, the Dalek was in the possession of Hiram Duchesne. After van Statten extorted the Dalek out of Duchesne, it was shipped to Utah. Having been told that the Dalek was capable of speech, van Statten called in Yevgeny Kandinsky to study the creature. Kandinsky deduced only that what was seen was an artificial construct instead of a naturally evolved lifeform before touching the Dalek, being burnt alive as the Dalek tried to harvest him for fuel. Disappointed, the Dalek gave only a cry of rageful frustration. (PROSE: Dalek [+]Robert Shearman, adapted from Dalek (Robert Shearman), Target novelisations (Target Books, 2021).)
With the intention of reaching other Daleks, he sent out a distress signal which was detected by the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler. Initially unaware of the source of the distress signal, the Doctor came to face-to-face with him. Having thought all of the Daleks destroyed, he was shocked to find one alive. He moved his gun to exterminate the Doctor, but had insufficient power to do so. After a hostile and bitter conversation between them about the end of the Time War, the Doctor attempted to murder the Dalek, pulling a lever which sent electricity through his casing. The Doctor was stopped by van Statten, who ordered two guards to "get him out", pulling the Doctor out the room. Simmons managed to turn the electricity off before the Dalek was destroyed. Henry van Statten was pleased to know what the "Metaltron" was really called. (TV: Dalek [+]Robert Shearman, adapted from Jubilee (Robert Shearman), Doctor Who series 1 (BBC One, 2005).)
Upon meeting Rose, who had not witnessed the exchange between the Dalek and the Doctor, he seemed to be a harmless victim. Rose, in an attempt to comfort him, touched the right part of the Dalek's dome (to the left of the eye stalk, from Rose's perspective). As she did so, he absorbed artron energy, biomass and DNA from her. The Dalek privately mused that Rose had travelled in the TARDIS and had picked up the artron energy within it, allowing it to extrapolate the energy and use it to regenerate himself and escape the Vault. (PROSE: Dalek [+]Robert Shearman, adapted from Dalek (Robert Shearman), Target novelisations (Target Books, 2021).) He then downloaded all the data available on the Internet and killed Simmons, Bywater, De Maggio, and numerous others. He pursued both Rose and Adam Mitchell through the Geocomtex facility and killed 200 of van Statten's security.
The Dalek and Rose travelled to the top floor of the base, where he blasted a hole in the ceiling and opens his battle armour to feel the sunlight. The Doctor then appeared, armed with an alien energy weapon, with the intent to kill the Dalek. Upon seeing the Dalek able to feel, the Doctor lowered the weapon at Rose's request.
Rose would later recall her restoration of the "Metaltron" Dalek with her touch when the Cult of Skaro demanded that she open the Genesis Ark. She explained to Mickey Smith that the Dalek was broken and dying but when she touched him she brought him back to life, as the Daleks had evolved to use as a power supply the background radiation one "soaked up" from travelling through time in the TARDIS. (TV: Doomsday [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 2 (BBC One, 2006).)
It was from the Vault that The Dalek Conquests was recorded, recounting the Metaltron incident as part of what they knew of Dalek history. (AUDIO: The Dalek Conquests [+]Nicholas Briggs, BBC Audio (2006).) Later human historians included a brief mention of this Dalek and its tragic fate in a book looking back on the history of the Dalek Empire. (PROSE: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe [+]George Mann, Justin Richards and Cavan Scott, Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe (Ebury Publishing, 2017).) An account of the history of the universe recounted that van Statten was rumoured to have the Dalek. (PROSE: The Whoniverse [+]George Mann and Justin Richards, BBC Books (2016).) A Time Lord author later noted that the Metaltron had been the first Dalek to be seen after the Time War and disproved the belief that they had been rendered extinct at the Fall of Gallifrey. (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords [+]Steve Tribe, BBC Books (2017).)
While he was a prisoner, the "Metaltron" refused to speak when Henry van Statten's staff were torturing him, although he did scream. He was enraged by the appearance of the Doctor and tried to exterminate him, but couldn't because his gun had been damaged. The Dalek demanded to be ordered what to do, ironically using orders himself in an attempt to receive them. However, he also begged to be shown pity when the Doctor attempted to destroy him, despite the Doctor coldly pointing out "you never did".
After absorbing Rose Tyler's DNA, the Dalek started feeling human emotions for the first time. Although he gunned down van Statten's staff, he was unable to kill Rose out of mercy. As Rose observed, he began to doubt and question himself. Although he initially wanted to kill Van Statten out of revenge for his suffering, he let him survive on Rose's plea. He also craved freedom. He felt sickened and declared its own life 'sickness', begging for Rose to order him to self-destruct. When she reluctantly gave the command to end his misery, he asked if she was frightened, hinting affection and compassion for Rose Tyler, the only person who'd treated him with kindness. After hearing that it had burned in his crater for days, the Doctor believed that the Dalek had gone insane. (TV: Dalek [+]Robert Shearman, adapted from Jubilee (Robert Shearman), Doctor Who series 1 (BBC One, 2005).)
Despite Dalek ideals, the drone, even before its meeting with Rose, found itself looking for a father; it considered its commanders to have such a role and then, upon seeing the Ninth Doctor, thought the word again. After failing to kill the Doctor during the fall of Arcadia, the Dalek became obsessed with killing him, killing Yevgeny Kandinsky after hearing him being called "Doctor". It later wondered that killing the Doctor had been the only thing it had wanted for itself. After gaining human emotions, it repudiated the Doctor when he claimed to have "misjudged" it, affirming that it was still a Dalek, and its act of self-sacrifice was simply an attempt to preserve the purity of its race. (PROSE: Dalek [+]Robert Shearman, adapted from Dalek (Robert Shearman), Target novelisations (Target Books, 2021).)
The first Dalek seen in the revived Doctor Who television series, the Metaltron was depicted by a prop which was created specially for use in Dalek. The prop which originally portrayed the Metaltron would be reused on several occasions, first returning among the Emperor Dalek's army in Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways.[1]
"Dalek" is the sixth episode of the revived first series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on BBC One on 30 April 2005. This episode is the first appearance of the Daleks in the 21st-century revival of Doctor Who; it also marks the first appearance of Bruno Langley as companion Adam Mitchell.
The episode is set in Utah in the year 2012, in the underground bunker owned by Henry van Statten (Corey Johnson), a rich collector of alien artefacts. In the episode, the alien time traveller the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and his travelling companion Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) encounter the bunker's only living exhibit: a Dalek, which breaks loose and attempts to exterminate everyone in the bunker after repairing itself.
The Ninth Doctor and Rose are drawn by a distress signal to a massive bunker beneath Utah in 2012, filled with alien artifacts collected by the bunker's owner, Henry Van Statten. Rose is offered a tour of the facility by Adam Mitchell, a man who buys and catalogues artefacts for van Statten. Van Statten takes the Doctor to show him a living alien being that he has in captivity, which the Doctor recognises as a Dalek, a race thought to have been wiped out in the Time War. The Dalek is seriously wounded and weakened, and unable to break its bonds, but when the Doctor attempts to destroy it, van Statten orders his guards to restrain the Doctor and return him to his offices. There, van Statten has the Doctor secured, noting that not only does he collect aliens, but also tortures them to gain information, and proceeds to invasively and violently study the Doctor's body to learn more about his physiology.
Meanwhile, Adam has taken Rose to the Dalek. Rose takes pity on the weakened creature and touches its casing; the Dalek promptly absorbs her DNA extrapolating the biomass of a time traveller, and is able to re-energise itself.[N 1] It escapes its bonds, kills several guards, repairs its casing, and connects to the Internet where it learns of the fate of the Daleks and realises it is the last surviving member of its race. With no other purpose, it proceeds to target and exterminate all non-Dalek life forms. Van Statten is forced to release the Doctor to help stop the Dalek, but the Dalek refuses to cooperate, and continues killing all those left in the Vault.
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