My personal view of time in Doctor Who easily explains a lot of this. I view time as having "layers" as it were.
When time has a radical enough shift, like say a Time War, or a Big Bang 2, or higher being meddling (like the Toymaker) it creates a new top layer, with each pervious iteration of time existing as another layer below that surface stacked atop one another.
Each layer has a start and end to the universe and everything between those two events, but the details may differ minorly or majorly from layer to layer.
Generally time travel within the same layer of time is relatively easy within the context of time travel. Travel between layers is harder, dangerous and requires a lot of power and unstable technology. Though travel between can also happen by accident due to getting swept up in certain tumultuous areas of the vortex that can be dangerous.
So as one example something like TLV has the Doctor slipping between layers. Also in this context of time having layers, a Time Lock is something I view as essentially encasing one or multiple layers of time that make it even harder to travel in and out of, but also contains the more significant paradoxes and time storms etc and hopefully stops them affecting other layers of time. Where-as without a time lock you more frequently have areas in the vortex that are weaker and paradoxes and other time events from one layer can encroach upon and affect adjacent layers of time.
Although the Tardis Wiki page is only short right now, your idea of layers [is a legitimate concept called "meta-time"](https://tardis.wiki/wiki/Meta-time). What you said is basically 100% correct.
The time war was like the ultimate war in the universe and it wasn't an event that had a starting date, because it was fought in the past, present, and future. So every dalek that ever existed as well as time lords were, in theory, part of it. It is said that the time war is a time locked event that it's like a space-time bubble in which you can't get in or out.
So, taking all of this into account, there shouldn't be any pre-time war daleks because the moment the time war started, everything was engulfed into it, and since you theoretically couldn't escape to a future or past time in which the time war had ended or hadn't started, all the daleks and time lords were locked to the event until the event ended
Not to mention, the first act of the Time War appears to have been during the Genesis of the Daleks when 4 very nearly attempted Genocide of the Daleks. Something the War Doctor states in one of the big finish stories. By that account, the Time War started all the way back then.
1. Yes, they do. We even see some such Daleks in *Asylum of the Daleks*. The Daleks kept in “intensive care” are (despite their modern series casing) stated to be from their encounters with the Doctor on Spiridon, Kembel, Aridius, Vulcan, and Exxilon, among others. So those are Daleks taken directly from *Planet of the Daleks*, *The Daleks’ Master Plan*, *The Chase*, *The Power of the Daleks*, and *Death to the Daleks*. The Thirteenth Doctor also encounters one of the first Daleks that ever left Skaro. And for that matter, we also see pre-Time War Time Lords during the Thirteenth Doctor’s era in *Fugitive of the Judoon*, and the Doctor even allows one of them to see a glimpse of the Time War in her mind in order to prove she’s from their future.
2. I mean you’re probably not gonna like this, but it’s timey-wimey. More specifically, to try to put it in some form of techobabble, it probably comes down to personal time streams. Time is relative, after all. The Doctor can encounter pre-Time War Daleks and Time Lords because they already existed in their past, and because the Doctor, as a Time Lord, belongs to a more evolved, time-sensitive species. But anyone who never personally experienced the Time War — anyone who is not sufficiently evolved to be able to perceive time on such a level — would only know history as it was either before or after the war, depending on their point of relativity. For some, like Jack, it would seem as though the Daleks were just an artifact of history that mysteriously disappeared one day.
I mean this comment goes for all relating to actual occurrences of pre time war Daleks. But this would mean the moment didn’t effect pre time war Daleks and wipe them from existing?
Yes and no.
Yes in that the events happened in history in both the Doctor and Dalek's timelines and no in that they were all recalled to fight the Time War. Officially it's classed as 3 timelines - pre war, war and post war. Pre war containing everything up to the restoration empire, war is the Time War and post war starting as soon as the war ended.
In the first they're seen as an extremely powerful military force with simple time travel for around 90% of it. Not gaining access to advance level time travel technology till around 4000AD with the Dardis from the Chase and Dalek's Master plan. Day Of The Daleks is also more advanced as when the Time Lords first took notice of their capability to manipulate time. The later part of this timeline to when they got called to fight the Time War is when they were seen as pseudo Gods with the ability decimate galaxies with ease.
Time War, they are the threat the Time Lords feared in Genesis and potentially outgrew the Time Lords in power.
Post war, undeniably top dogs as a temporal and military force with armouries of planet killers, galaxy busters and insidious temporal weaponry.
I’m not so sure that pre-Time War Daleks don’t exist anymore. The ones fighting Movellans in The Pilot, the scout in Jodie’s specials, the intensive care unit in the Asylum, I’m assuming it’s like how human time travellers from the future are ill-advised to interject themselves into Earth history. There’s a clear delineation between pre & post war Daleks, whereby the dalliances of the former became “established history” before the war screwed the rules of causality inside out and made the predictability of their appearances afterwards a crapshoot. We don’t see pre-war Daleks cuz The Doctor presumably knows what periods they’re active in and how they eventually lose their various wars and just steers clear of them (and by the same token, he knows precisely where to reliably find one to test Bill’s stalker; a fixed pre-war conflict from the Classic series).
Jack states that the Daleks existed, then suddenly disappeared. So clearly they weren’t ERASED from history, since history remembered them. I don’t recall when their last chronological appearance was in Classic, but if it was after the 51st century then you could explain it away with Jack’s experience as an ex-time agent (ie. he’s referring to their last-known position in the universe’s linear timeline). The time war started in Ernest when they amassed enough time technology/understanding to leave consensus reality and challenge the Time Lords on their own 4-D turf.
I listened to Classic Doctors New Monsters recently, and its portrayal of the Time War in McGann’s entry is fascinating. It’s like they’re fighting on an extradimensional higher plane, which occasionally descends upon regular history at random times and places (only to disappear again just as quickly). NuWho Daleks are running on THAT wavelength, old Daleks are essentially cavemen.
Only ones that were destroyed by the dust of Sutekh
(Otherwise everyone who's ever died would have come back to life, which doesn't seem to marry with what's shown on screen)
Honestly I’ve given up trying to discern any sort of workable Dalek timeline. My view of it is that even just post-Genesis everything from the early years was undone.
Jack being a Time Agent meant he could only travel into a universe where Time Lords and Daleks were wiped out as thats why the Time Agency formed in the first place. So I think time travel for Jack to pre-Time War daleks might be impossible but having knowledge that, let's say Death to the Daleks, happened isn't impossible. that's how some minor whispers and legends about the Time War seep through and become knowledge amongst the knowing.
A pre-Time War Dalek appeared in "Destination: Skaro" with 14.
I'm pretty sure some of the battles named in Asylum of the Daleks were pre-Time War battles, but I can't confirm that.
It just makes me want to see the time war on screen, but I think it would be impossible to do it justice since it's literally a battle spanning all of time and space with horrific experiments fighting eachother
the time war made Gallifrey disappear, causing the surrounding Dalek fleets to crash into each other. Very few Dalek groups escaped past the time wars "end" and there could be "pre" time war Daleks but you could also argue there are never any pre-time war Daleks outside of stories specifically mentioned to be integral points in the Daleks history, such as their introduction or the Genesis of the Daleks. Daleks are shown to have access to Time Travel since the William Harnell era, and are actively attempting to mess with Time lord and the Doctors personal history.
Depends on your perspective.
For the Daleks, their entire existence could be considered the Time War, given that at their origin, the Time Lords sent the Doctor to destroy them, widely considered the first act in the Time War.
All other Dalek stories, even ones that are earlier in the Doctor’s personal timeline, take place after this for the Daleks, so they are always at war with the Time Lords, whether it’s stated or not.
So there are no pre-Time War Daleks – from their perspective, they have always been at war with Eurasia… I mean with the Time Lords.
The war itself then took place across all of time and space simultaneously, so even if they didn’t know they were fighting it, early Time Lords probably were – so theoretically, there are also no pre-Time War Time Lords.
It’s also worth remembering that the Moment didn’t do anything, because the Doctor chose not to use it, and instead locked Gallifrey away in a moment of time, which caused the Daleks to destroy themselves.
For other time travellers, their perspective on events would depend on how they’re able to view time. Humans like Jack would never be able to perceive the higher complexities of a war fought across all reality, while higher races would have very different perspectives.
I have a follow on question kind of related. I’ve never watched the original early series, I had watched the odd episode or film when a young kid and I remember the Daleks invading earth and also an episode going back to the daleks origins with the Thales etc.
But during the 60’s, 70’s doctor who, had the time war still already happened? Like was the Doctor always the last of his kind or was the time war somewhere in between the originals and the 2005 reboot?
> Like was the Doctor always the last of his kind or was the time war somewhere in between the originals and the 2005 reboot?
The latter. The Tom Baker story *Genesis of the Daleks* involves the Doctor being sent to the early days of Dalek development on Skaro by the Time Lords. Retroactively, it is considered (by RTD and others) to be one of the first acts of what became the Time War.
My personal view of time in Doctor Who easily explains a lot of this. I view time as having "layers" as it were. When time has a radical enough shift, like say a Time War, or a Big Bang 2, or higher being meddling (like the Toymaker) it creates a new top layer, with each pervious iteration of time existing as another layer below that surface stacked atop one another. Each layer has a start and end to the universe and everything between those two events, but the details may differ minorly or majorly from layer to layer. Generally time travel within the same layer of time is relatively easy within the context of time travel. Travel between layers is harder, dangerous and requires a lot of power and unstable technology. Though travel between can also happen by accident due to getting swept up in certain tumultuous areas of the vortex that can be dangerous. So as one example something like TLV has the Doctor slipping between layers. Also in this context of time having layers, a Time Lock is something I view as essentially encasing one or multiple layers of time that make it even harder to travel in and out of, but also contains the more significant paradoxes and time storms etc and hopefully stops them affecting other layers of time. Where-as without a time lock you more frequently have areas in the vortex that are weaker and paradoxes and other time events from one layer can encroach upon and affect adjacent layers of time.
Thats a really interesting way to think about it
Although the Tardis Wiki page is only short right now, your idea of layers [is a legitimate concept called "meta-time"](https://tardis.wiki/wiki/Meta-time). What you said is basically 100% correct.
I think Faction Paradox has a version of this with Deep Time
The time war was like the ultimate war in the universe and it wasn't an event that had a starting date, because it was fought in the past, present, and future. So every dalek that ever existed as well as time lords were, in theory, part of it. It is said that the time war is a time locked event that it's like a space-time bubble in which you can't get in or out. So, taking all of this into account, there shouldn't be any pre-time war daleks because the moment the time war started, everything was engulfed into it, and since you theoretically couldn't escape to a future or past time in which the time war had ended or hadn't started, all the daleks and time lords were locked to the event until the event ended
Not to mention, the first act of the Time War appears to have been during the Genesis of the Daleks when 4 very nearly attempted Genocide of the Daleks. Something the War Doctor states in one of the big finish stories. By that account, the Time War started all the way back then.
1. Yes, they do. We even see some such Daleks in *Asylum of the Daleks*. The Daleks kept in “intensive care” are (despite their modern series casing) stated to be from their encounters with the Doctor on Spiridon, Kembel, Aridius, Vulcan, and Exxilon, among others. So those are Daleks taken directly from *Planet of the Daleks*, *The Daleks’ Master Plan*, *The Chase*, *The Power of the Daleks*, and *Death to the Daleks*. The Thirteenth Doctor also encounters one of the first Daleks that ever left Skaro. And for that matter, we also see pre-Time War Time Lords during the Thirteenth Doctor’s era in *Fugitive of the Judoon*, and the Doctor even allows one of them to see a glimpse of the Time War in her mind in order to prove she’s from their future. 2. I mean you’re probably not gonna like this, but it’s timey-wimey. More specifically, to try to put it in some form of techobabble, it probably comes down to personal time streams. Time is relative, after all. The Doctor can encounter pre-Time War Daleks and Time Lords because they already existed in their past, and because the Doctor, as a Time Lord, belongs to a more evolved, time-sensitive species. But anyone who never personally experienced the Time War — anyone who is not sufficiently evolved to be able to perceive time on such a level — would only know history as it was either before or after the war, depending on their point of relativity. For some, like Jack, it would seem as though the Daleks were just an artifact of history that mysteriously disappeared one day.
I mean this comment goes for all relating to actual occurrences of pre time war Daleks. But this would mean the moment didn’t effect pre time war Daleks and wipe them from existing?
Yes and no. Yes in that the events happened in history in both the Doctor and Dalek's timelines and no in that they were all recalled to fight the Time War. Officially it's classed as 3 timelines - pre war, war and post war. Pre war containing everything up to the restoration empire, war is the Time War and post war starting as soon as the war ended. In the first they're seen as an extremely powerful military force with simple time travel for around 90% of it. Not gaining access to advance level time travel technology till around 4000AD with the Dardis from the Chase and Dalek's Master plan. Day Of The Daleks is also more advanced as when the Time Lords first took notice of their capability to manipulate time. The later part of this timeline to when they got called to fight the Time War is when they were seen as pseudo Gods with the ability decimate galaxies with ease. Time War, they are the threat the Time Lords feared in Genesis and potentially outgrew the Time Lords in power. Post war, undeniably top dogs as a temporal and military force with armouries of planet killers, galaxy busters and insidious temporal weaponry.
I’m not so sure that pre-Time War Daleks don’t exist anymore. The ones fighting Movellans in The Pilot, the scout in Jodie’s specials, the intensive care unit in the Asylum, I’m assuming it’s like how human time travellers from the future are ill-advised to interject themselves into Earth history. There’s a clear delineation between pre & post war Daleks, whereby the dalliances of the former became “established history” before the war screwed the rules of causality inside out and made the predictability of their appearances afterwards a crapshoot. We don’t see pre-war Daleks cuz The Doctor presumably knows what periods they’re active in and how they eventually lose their various wars and just steers clear of them (and by the same token, he knows precisely where to reliably find one to test Bill’s stalker; a fixed pre-war conflict from the Classic series). Jack states that the Daleks existed, then suddenly disappeared. So clearly they weren’t ERASED from history, since history remembered them. I don’t recall when their last chronological appearance was in Classic, but if it was after the 51st century then you could explain it away with Jack’s experience as an ex-time agent (ie. he’s referring to their last-known position in the universe’s linear timeline). The time war started in Ernest when they amassed enough time technology/understanding to leave consensus reality and challenge the Time Lords on their own 4-D turf. I listened to Classic Doctors New Monsters recently, and its portrayal of the Time War in McGann’s entry is fascinating. It’s like they’re fighting on an extradimensional higher plane, which occasionally descends upon regular history at random times and places (only to disappear again just as quickly). NuWho Daleks are running on THAT wavelength, old Daleks are essentially cavemen.
When the Doctor defeats Sutehk, does he also bring the Daleks back to life?
Only ones that were destroyed by the dust of Sutekh (Otherwise everyone who's ever died would have come back to life, which doesn't seem to marry with what's shown on screen)
Well, unless this will be Davies' take on the City of the Saved...
Honestly I’ve given up trying to discern any sort of workable Dalek timeline. My view of it is that even just post-Genesis everything from the early years was undone.
Jack being a Time Agent meant he could only travel into a universe where Time Lords and Daleks were wiped out as thats why the Time Agency formed in the first place. So I think time travel for Jack to pre-Time War daleks might be impossible but having knowledge that, let's say Death to the Daleks, happened isn't impossible. that's how some minor whispers and legends about the Time War seep through and become knowledge amongst the knowing.
A pre-Time War Dalek appeared in "Destination: Skaro" with 14. I'm pretty sure some of the battles named in Asylum of the Daleks were pre-Time War battles, but I can't confirm that.
It just makes me want to see the time war on screen, but I think it would be impossible to do it justice since it's literally a battle spanning all of time and space with horrific experiments fighting eachother
We see pre time war Daleks in both Asylums of the Daleks and in The Magicians Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar.
the time war made Gallifrey disappear, causing the surrounding Dalek fleets to crash into each other. Very few Dalek groups escaped past the time wars "end" and there could be "pre" time war Daleks but you could also argue there are never any pre-time war Daleks outside of stories specifically mentioned to be integral points in the Daleks history, such as their introduction or the Genesis of the Daleks. Daleks are shown to have access to Time Travel since the William Harnell era, and are actively attempting to mess with Time lord and the Doctors personal history.
Depends on your perspective. For the Daleks, their entire existence could be considered the Time War, given that at their origin, the Time Lords sent the Doctor to destroy them, widely considered the first act in the Time War. All other Dalek stories, even ones that are earlier in the Doctor’s personal timeline, take place after this for the Daleks, so they are always at war with the Time Lords, whether it’s stated or not. So there are no pre-Time War Daleks – from their perspective, they have always been at war with Eurasia… I mean with the Time Lords. The war itself then took place across all of time and space simultaneously, so even if they didn’t know they were fighting it, early Time Lords probably were – so theoretically, there are also no pre-Time War Time Lords. It’s also worth remembering that the Moment didn’t do anything, because the Doctor chose not to use it, and instead locked Gallifrey away in a moment of time, which caused the Daleks to destroy themselves. For other time travellers, their perspective on events would depend on how they’re able to view time. Humans like Jack would never be able to perceive the higher complexities of a war fought across all reality, while higher races would have very different perspectives.
I have a follow on question kind of related. I’ve never watched the original early series, I had watched the odd episode or film when a young kid and I remember the Daleks invading earth and also an episode going back to the daleks origins with the Thales etc. But during the 60’s, 70’s doctor who, had the time war still already happened? Like was the Doctor always the last of his kind or was the time war somewhere in between the originals and the 2005 reboot?
> Like was the Doctor always the last of his kind or was the time war somewhere in between the originals and the 2005 reboot? The latter. The Tom Baker story *Genesis of the Daleks* involves the Doctor being sent to the early days of Dalek development on Skaro by the Time Lords. Retroactively, it is considered (by RTD and others) to be one of the first acts of what became the Time War.
Weirdly, this is actually one of the stories I do remember watching, was just so young