The Forgotten Villains Returning To Doctor Who's Daleks! Series
Time Lord Victorious is one of the largest crossover events in Doctor Who's history. Involving the Eighth (Paul McGann), Ninth (Christopher Eccleston), and Tenth (David Tennant) Doctors and spanning across audio dramas, comics, novels, and live events, Time Lord Victorious stretches all the way back to "the Dark Times" — basically the beginnings of the universe — and could effectively involve just about anyone or anything from Doctor Who's very long history.
As it happens, it also involves Daleks, one of the Doctor's most fearsome foes. They're from the planet Skaro, and are one of two races from that world who survived an endless war with one another ... only to become horribly mutated. Eventually, the Daleks became tentacle monsters who now live inside personalized tanks. The Daleks have one goal: the extermination of anything in the universe that isn't a Dalek. And now, they're about to be the "heroes" of their own animated adventure series Daleks!, as part of Doctor Who: Time Lord Victorious.
Over the course of over half a century of Doctor Who canon, the Daleks have made a lot of enemies: the Doctor, the Cybermen, and stairs, of course. And while the Daleks have succeeded in declaring victory over all of the above, there's one other group whom they're about to face off against for the first time in decades: the Mechanoids.
BBC producer and Time Lord Victorious mastermind James Goss confirmed during New York Comic Con 2020 on October 10 that "Doctor Who's most underappreciated monsters, the Mechanoids," will be returning on Daleks! when it premieres on YouTube this November.
Who are the Mechnoids?
Let's hop in the TARDIS and travel back in time to May 22, 1965. Doctor Who is coming to the end of its second full season on BBC One, William Hartnell is still playing the Doctor, but the two remaining original companions, Ian Chesterton (William Russell) and Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) are about to depart. This is an important moment for the show because it is, in effect, setting up a soft reboot with new heroes a year before the Doctor regenerates on our screens for the first time.
Terry Nation is the writer who created the Daleks, and he's brought on board to pen a momentous Doctor Who episode entitled "The Chase," which sees the Daleks using time travel of their own for the first time to try to hunt down the Doctor and his companions.
There's a lot that happens over the course of this serialized story: The TARDIS team meets Dracula, there's a robot version of the Doctor, and they all eventually find themselves chased to a planet called Mechanus, home of plants called Fungoids and, of course, the Mechanoids. The Mechanoids were created by humans to aid in colonizing this planet, but because of an intergalactic war, the colonization never took place. Instead, the Mechanoids took residence and became sentient enough to rule — they even hold captive the only living human colonizer, Stephen (Peter Purves).
Daleks vs. Mechnoids
The Daleks are pretty difficult to deal with, and, generally speaking, when they come around demanding that any given society give up the Doctor during the events of "The Chase," the response is "sure." No one wants to face off against the Daleks — the Daleks are genocidal maniacs!
However, the Mechanoids aren't quite so fearful of the Daleks (or anyone, it would seem). They actually kind of look like what would happen if the Dalek tanks were spherical. Unlike the Daleks, though, there's no organic creature contained within. The Mechanoids are just robots with absolutely no patience. It's not that these robots don't want to give up the Doctor and his companions, it's more that the Daleks decided to roll in and tell the Mechanoids what to do and they were not having it. So for the first time, the Daleks get out Dalek-ed as the Mechanoids proceed to engage them in a firefight that brings the entire Mechanoid city to the ground.
We don't really know who won that battle for sure. Similarly, we don't know much about the upcoming Daleks! animated series. We know there will be five, 10-minute episodes; we know the story is called "The Archive of Islos"; and we know the Daleks will be on the run. Based on the trailer, it seems like the Mechanoids are sent to destroy the Daleks — but we don't yet know if there's a greater threat they must face together, or if it will be up to the Doctor to come and bail the Daleks out of this Mechnoid-related jam.
Daleks! will air on the Doctor Who YouTube channel for free starting on November 12, 2020.