Having a robotic voice and being another species, the Daleks live in a robotic shell, and their names give away nothing. So I am curious: is there ever any mention of a Dalek having gender?
asked Jun 2, 2014 at 15:13
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1Daleks don’t have gender, although there’s some mention of the Kaleds (the humanoids who ended up in the Dalek shells) having men/women in some of the Big Finish audio stuff.– alexwlchanCommented Jun 2, 2014 at 16:44
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2Can I say how glad I am that you didn't phrase that as "Do Daleks have sex?"?– FuzzyBootsCommented Jun 2, 2014 at 22:10
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@SeanDuggan... what you dont want the image of two monoccular squid creatures having the tenticles twisted together in the sweer embrace of coitus stuck in your head?– giacomo casanovaCommented Jun 3, 2014 at 15:10
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2Oswin Oswald was turned into a Dalek and the Dalek still thought of itself as female. That's the closest on screen to a female Dalek I can think of. Genesis of the Daleks showed female Thals fighting Kaleds but there weren't any female Kaleds flghting.– Nigel EllisCommented Apr 13, 2015 at 12:46
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3 Answers
Daleks as we know them now do not have a gender, they don't even reproduce like normal gender based races... Originally they were humanoid in nature so they most likely had a gender previous to their transformations into Daleks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaled#Origins
The Doctor first encountered the Daleks in the second serial of the show, The Daleks (1963). In this version of Dalek history, the Dalek home-world Skaro was once home to two humanoid races: the peaceful and scientifically advanced Kaleds/Dals (who were described as philosophers and teachers) and the warlike Thals. Following a short but terrible nuclear war between the races, the Dals were mutated and became the insane and xenophobic Daleks.
In fact they are pretty much cyborgs in general, though their biological bodies are within the shells.
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Dalek
Although the Daleks looked entirely robotic, they were in fact cybernetic organisms (or cyborgs), with a biological body encased in and supported by a protective outer shell of Dalekanium metal armour, armed and mobile.
In this respect, they were somewhat similar to a Cyberman; unlike them, however, the Daleks' bodies had mutated so drastically from their Kaled ancestors they had lost all humanoid appearance, save for one eye.
answered Jun 2, 2014 at 15:35
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1Daleks are completely organic beings, in a tank. They are not cyborgs.– user16696Commented Apr 13, 2015 at 14:30
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1Cde a cyborg is a being that has both organic and mechanical parts. The Daleks require the tanks to survive, in fact I believe in some parts of the series you see / hear what happens when their tanks fail or the being inside is attempted to be removed. One example is Into The Dalek in which the medical staff tell the Doctor that they attempted to open up the malfunctioning one they realized it had a living being inside. The parallels drawn in that particular episode show that the tank is more than just a tank, the Dalek needs the mechanical portions. Commented Apr 18, 2015 at 21:54
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1does an iron lung, or an IV make a person a cyborg? What about a space suit? A life support system does not make an organic being a cyborg. Remember the Dalek nine wanted to kill, the crazy Dalek that betrayed darvos, The one that became a mutant.– user16696Commented Apr 18, 2015 at 23:24
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You mean Dalek Caan, he was in the shell of the tank. You are talking about stuff that doesn't make cyborgs but we saw the inner workings of the tank during Into the Dalek. The tanks modified the Daleks as seen in the episode, the part where they find the secondary brain that was stoked the fire within the Daleks to destroy everything and "keep them pure". Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 5:27
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If humans evolved to the point where the only thing left was our brain and our brains were put inside of a mechanical being to survive would you not consider us to be some form of cyborgs then? Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 5:28
Daleks do not have gender, I believe, because when they are made, all emotion is sucked away except hate (according to the doctor in the episode Dalek). I am guessing that with all emotion gone, gender and creativity is absent as well. The closest thing I know of with the limited episodes I have watched is that group of Daleks (I forgot what they call themselves) who "even dared to have names." I have only seen up to season two though, so my information may not be entirely accurate.
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The group of Daleks with names you're thinking of is the Cult of Skaro Commented Mar 21, 2015 at 16:47
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Probably the Cult of Skaro, but another possibility is Alpha, Beta and Omega the humanised Daleks in The Evil of the Daleks– jimCommented Apr 12, 2021 at 9:59
There is an episode (somewhere during number 10 I believe), where four Daleks build a more durable (and slightly larger) Dalek. The first thing all five Daleks agree upon is that the new Dalek is superior and therefore must exterminate its four builders, which it does and they don't resist at all. They do this even though only the container, not the organism within, is different.
There was an asylum of the Daleks where all Daleks showing the slightest deviation are deported to, not to ever leave the planet. Deviation from "normal" is not acceptable. There is deportation instead of trying to migitate or even embrace the differences.
Difference will always result in classification superior/not-superior and lead to drastic actions, to uphold that "the Dalek" is the supreme being. They must believe their very existance is perfection and fight everything else.
Biological reproduction (even mythosis) does not guarantee exact clones, and therefore makes the entire process unfit for the Daleks. You don't want/need evolution once you are perfect. Having corresponding organs would be inefficient and leave room for improvement, which contradicts the assumption that a Dalek is perfect. From this we can conclude, that Daleks cannot be different from one another, not even in the slightest. There is no room for diversity, not even genders.
Once upon a time there may have been (probably were) Daleks with genders, but they would have eliminated this difference one way or the other way back in their history.
The original answer before the edit, which people seem to have problems understanding: If there were discernable genders within the Dalek race they wouldn't be able to settle on "equal". One would always think its gender is superior or inferior to the other. For the nature of the Dalek, if there are alive Daleks they must be of the same gender.
answered Jun 2, 2014 at 20:42
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2Downvote for the huge unjustified assumption that gender dimorphism would always imply some sort of sexual power struggle.– ChristiCommented Jun 2, 2014 at 21:21
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@Chisti... not agreing with his answer, the validity in his reasoning is sound for most if not all animals with gender do have a domineering gender if they are not contantly feuding; even we as evolved and rational as we are still unable to find some form of genderequality. Bonobo's a puigmee chimp(younger species than us so technically more evolved) is the only species that has had success in uniting the genders without a superior and that is through the compulsive sexuality of the creatures in social situations Commented Jun 3, 2014 at 3:46
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@Christi: They're Daleks, their very nature is to hate and believe they are superior. They were made that way. For anything that classifies species the Daleks must believe they, their making, is superior. Of course that includes gender as well. That's the smallest and most justified assumption I'm making. Commented Jun 3, 2014 at 19:53
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Daleks have power structures, chains of command, and specialized skill set Daleks (classic who, but seen in Asylum of the Daleks). Gender would not specifically be any more of an issue than that.– user16696Commented Apr 13, 2015 at 14:41
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@cde: assumed roles in organisational structures and assigned specialised skill sets are very different from discernible physiology. Assuming the Daleks have an acceptable form of biological reproduction (without the flaw of mutation) i'd say it can only work if any Dalek can assume any gender at will, making them unisex and therefore of the same gender. They may fulfill different tasks, Daleks must not differ from one another or they will classify and identify one class as superior. Commented Apr 13, 2015 at 17:48