Any historian, whether researching the history of real or fictional events, relies on information which inevitably changes over time.  When basing a history on a historical character, new information and foresight makes one revise, or in some cases rewrite that entire history.  The same can be said for fictional characters as well.  The history as presented here is based on events depicted in both "The Dead Planet" and "Genesis of the Daleks," although preference is given to the origins as established in the first story.  As for the rise of the Thal and Dal nations, the ideological split between them, and the beginnings of the Dal/Thal War, all is based on conjecture drawn from human history, human nature, and clues presented in both a fore mentioned stories.  It is not the end all of that history, and as readers of previous versions of this history know, is will not be the last.  Finally, while Davros is mentioned here in this chapter, he is severely down played, as I feel the original origin story allows for better, and more interesting turn of events. -JRR. 

        Skaro, the twelfth planet in a solar system several light years from Earth.  While human life on Earth was in it's earliest of stages, civilization on Skaro had risen to it's highest.  Two major nations have risen to the pinnacle of world power.  The Thals, a warlike and aggressive race, and the Dals, a nation of scientist and artists.  The two peoples were as different in their ideologies as the ancient Roman Empire was to that of the democracy of Athens in ancient Greece.  Other nations also existed on Skaro, several, too small and weak to stand on their own, were quickly conquered by the Thals.  The leaders of the other nations, like the Kaleds, for their own protection and survival, quickly aligned themselves with the Dal nation.

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        For years these two nations competed for the limited resources the single continent had to offer.  While the Dals believed in helping their fellow neighbors, the Thals were content with taking what they wanted.  Year after year the two countries engaged in a "Cold War," forming alliances, disputing over territory, spying on each other, and manuvering for the perfect military advantage over the other.  Soon however, tensions between the two nations were at a breaking point, and war seemed inevitable. Diplomats from both sides first met in the Dal capital city, located along the Dramman River in the western part of the continent, and then in the Thal capital, located towards the north near the Drammankin mountain range.  But negotiations went nowhere, as each side was unwilling, or unable to give in to the other's demands.  As diplomatic relations between the two nations broke down, war ensued.
        The actual fighting began as a small conventional conflict started over a stretch of land along the southern tip of the Drammankin mountain range, with each side throwing men and equipment at each other.  The Thals expected a quick victory; after all, their race was the "superior" one.  The Dals too, expected the fighting to be short; as they had knowledge and liberty on their side.  Year after year each side tried to push home an advantage.  Year after year each side found themselves pushed back into a stalemate. The stretch of land that they had been fighting over, once fertile and plentiful, was slowly turned into a wasteland.

               

      
        As tensions continued to mount, and victory eluded both sides, the Thals decide to end their problem with the Dals once and for all.  They escalated the conflict into a full-scale nuclear and biological war.  Within months, most of the planet's cities and towns were destroyed, and the war came to a grinding halt.  No fighting ensued for almost one hundred years, as centers of communication and industries came to a grinding halt.  In space, both Thal and Dal outposts were abandoned and forgotten. This was the first one hundred and twenty years of the Dal/Thal War.

Editor's note: "The Daleks" established that there were two major races on Skaro; the Thals, and the race the Daleks evolved from; the Dals.  In addition it is also established that these "races" were completely opposed in ideology to each other, and we may assume that the Thal rise to power mirrored the rise of Nazism in 1930s Europe.  However "Genesis of the Daleks" establishes the name of the race from which the Daleks came from as Kaled.  In keeping with the original origin story however, it is not unreasonable to think of the Kaled people as allies of the Dals, much in the same way Britain and the United States are allies today.  Regardless of their names however, the first story suggests that it was the Thals who took on an aggressive mantle, with the Dals (or Kaleds) playing the role of defendants.       
       
        The war had not ended and over the next hundred years occasional out breaks of fighting erupted from time to time along the boarders, but radiation released into the atmosphere began to slowly cause mutations among the newborn children on both sides.  As the years past, each side blamed and accused the other for the plight on their children, yet neither side was willing to end their aggression and the war waged on.  Thal ideology, dedicated to the purity and superiority of their race, forced into extermination camps hundreds of mutated children and their parents.  But as the number of the afflicted kept increasing, the Thal government  realized the cost involved in the extermination camps, and so began to exile their sick into the wastelands of Skaro.
        Dal scientists too, were concerned with the damage their nuclear and biological weapons had caused, especially to the planetary gene pool as a whole.  But unlike their Thal counter-parts, Dal scientists began research on ways of reversing the effects of the mutations, not only on the planet's population, but on the entire planet's plant and animal life as well.  But soon they discovered that the damage caused by the radiation was far too server, and that a search for a way to "cure" the effects were a futile effort.  The damage had been done; the mutations could not be reversed.  So with a bleak future before them, the Dal people slowly began to accept their fate.  The Thals on the other hand, obsessed with their conquest, continued to push home what they thought was their advantage, and the fighting continued.  This was the next one hundred and sixty years of the Dal/Thal War.

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        Year after year the fighting continued, and the mutations increased.  Soon the Dals found themselves fighting a two front war.  The first was the all important task of defeating of the Thals.  The second and more important, was the survival of their own race.   Realizing that the radiation levels of the planet were increasing, the Dals began a program experimenting with the concept of a travel/survival suit, which would protect their descendants from the mutating effects of the radiation and preserve their race.  Setting up several survival centers below the streets of their remaining cities, and powered by static electricity, these survival units operated as fallout shelters and research centers.  In addition an experimental bunker, designed to both experiment on the mutation process itself and develop weapons to end the war, was set up in the Dal countryside, located deep below the scared surface of the planet.  Under the direction of the Dal's chief administrator Zolfian, many different weapon as well as survival designs were worked on and tried, and soon a Dal scientists named Yarvelling developed the concept of the Dalek machine.  At first, these machines were awkward devices, consisting of mechanical arms and claws mounted on a rounded base.  But slowly, as the years passed, the basic design of the Dalek machine came about.  Realizing however, that these machines must not only provide a means for which their mutated form could survive and move about, Yarvelling insisted that the machines should be equipped with a means to protect itself.  This was the next fifty years of the Dal/Thal war.

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        As generation after generation passed, and the mutations increased, the ideology of the Dals began to mimic that of the Thals, turning towards the purity of their race.  The Dals, originally scientist and artist, had become hardened by the years of fighting, and began to adopt the ways of their enemies.  Basic freedoms were restricted, free expression crushed, and the sole goal of all Dal citizens became the survival of their race.  As more generations passed, the old Dal republican political system broke down, replaced by one very similar to the Thals. 
        As more years passed, both nations found it is necessary to construct domed capital centers for their governments, as the levels of radiation in the atmosphere continued to increase.  Meanwhile scientists working in both the Dal cities and the bunker began the final design on the Dalek travel machine.  Concerned however over successive Thal attacks, the Dal government relocated most of it's top Dal and Kaled scientists to the bunker, assigning a young but brilliant Kaled scientist named Davros as Chief Scientist (Yarvelling having passed away some 50 odd years before).  As the war waged on, each side utilized every means possible to win.  This was the next one hundred years of the war.

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        The war had raged for over 500 years with no end in sight, and Skaro was in ruins.  As the population of the planet decreased, fighting became centered to isolated squabbles fought in the wastelands with the most primitive of weapons. Soldiers, armed with radiation detectors and gas masks, patrolled the countryside killing anyone, and anything they came across.  The Dal government was a shadow of it's former self, and began to consider any alternative to ending the war.  In this respect, they passed almost total military control to the Scientific Elite under the command of Davros (now crippled by a Thal atomic attack).   Working at the bunker, the scientists were charged with the tasks of producing enough weapons to end the war, but as the previous years had proven, that task was futile.  Davros however, bitter from his disability and now totally obsessed with the work Yarvelling had begin many years before, soon turned the elite's total attention to the survival of their race.  Basing the new travel machines design on his own life support system (which had extended his life span), Davros began experimenting on the mutated DNA of the Dal people.  This naturally angered the Dal government, but they were powerless to act.  Or at least Davros thought that was the case.  
        As the years passed on however, the Dal government became increasingly concerned over the enormous power that Davros and the Special Guard in the bunker was beginning to carry.  In the hopes of breaking this power, the Dal government ordered all research in the Bunker to stop as an investigation into the work being carried out was launched.  In the Bunker however, a new Dal ideology, that they and only they, the scientists, were the superior race, had become an obsession. Forested by Davros, the idea of their work being halted and loosing to the Thals horrified them, and the decision was quickly made to betray the Dal government.  Contacting the Thal government under the guise of offering peace, Davros provided the Thals with the defense plan to the Dal dome.  With victory in sight, the Thals launched their last missile at the Dal City, destroying the Dal government in a single blow. 
        Chaos quickly ensued within Dal society.  With no central government, the Dal nation fell apart, and the surviving cities began to develop their own plans for survival.  Most of the inhabitants locked themselves in their survival centers deep within the planet's bowels.  Only the Special Guard of the bunker remained active within the Dal military.  Utilizing specially adapted travel machines; they launched a counter attack on the Thal command center.  The Thals, lulled off guard by the prospects of peace, were totally unprepared for this new attack, which proved totally successful.  The Dalek machines destroyed the remaining Thal government.  In one final counter-attack to halt the Special Guard's attack, the last of the Thal forces besieged the bunker and sealed its entrance tunnel, trapping the surviving scientist within.
        With their government gone, their resources exhausted and faced with defeat over the destruction of the bunker, the remaining Dals in the old capital city encased themselves in their Dalek machines for good, then launched one last neutron bomb.  The radiation released destroyed most of the remaining life on the planet, including most of the mutations and surviving Thals.  Gathering as much of their technology as they could carry, the surviving Thals made for the outer reaches of the Skardoian continent in hopes of surviving.  This was the last forty years of the Dal/Thal war.

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        Fifteen hundred years had passed since the beginning of the Dal/Thal War, and drought experienced in their valley had caused the Thals, now farmers, to explore the planet in search of fertile lands.  They had searched for several years, and their wanderings finally brought them to the outskirts of the old Dal capital, just as a blue Police Box materialized in the forest surrounding the city.
 

Text and Concept © 1999, 2002 Visagraph Films International/John Rocco Roberto.
Revised edition and original photographs © 2003/2006 John Rocco Roberto.
Doctor Who series © 1963, 1999 British Broadcasting Company.
Skaro map © 1998 John Rocco Roberto.
Original photographs by Thomas Gangone.

Special thanks to Robert Moore for providing the video captures from "The Daleks" and "Genesis of the Daleks."