Four different incarnations of the Emperor Dalek are known, three seen on the television series, and one in the TV Century 21 comic strip (a squat, golden Dalek with an enormous head-section). The first seen on screen was an enormous immobile conical shell plugged into a corner of the control room in the Dalek City on Skaro. The second was the Daleks’ creator, Davros, in a Dalek casing very similar to the TV 21 comic version of the Emperor, and the third was a visible Dalek mutant in a tank surrounded by a giant Dalek head and armour. It is unclear whether any these are the same Dalek, or up to four different Daleks.
The Dalek Emperor was first introduced in the TV 21 comic strip The Daleks, reproduced in collective format as the Dalek Chronicles . According to this comic strip version of events, the Emperor was originally a standard Dalek, one of the war machines created by the blue-skinned humanoid Dalek scientist Yarvelling. After the nuclear war that devastated Skaro, the mutants had survived in the casings. The only humanoid Dalek survivors of the war, Yavelling and the warlord Zolfian encountered a Dalek that persuaded them to build more Dalek casings for their mutated descendants. Before the last two humanoid Daleks died, a special casing was built for the Emperor to reflect its new rank. It was slightly shorter than the other Daleks, with a disproportionately large spheroid head section and in gold rather than grey. This origin story is completely different from that portrayed on television in Genesis of the Daleks.
The Emperor first appeared on television in The Evil of the Daleks (by David Whitaker, who also wrote most of the comic strips) where it was the immobile shell described above. The novelisation of Evil (adapted 26 years later from Whitaker’s scripts by John Peel) stated that this Emperor had originally been one of the Daleks who had tried to exterminate Davros in Genesis of the Daleks. At the close of the story, the Emperor was apparently destroyed as a civil war broke out amongst the Daleks.
The next time a Dalek Emperor appeared was in Rememberance of the Daleks. The Emperor of the Imperial Dalek faction was actually Davros, greatly deteriorated physically and reduced to a head and partial torso in a customised Dalek casing similar to that seen in the comic strips. He was last seen heading for an escape pod just before his ship was destroyed in the wake of the supernova that consumed Skaro.
The Dalek Emperor, from The Parting of the Ways. Another Dalek Emperor featured in the finale of the 2005 series The Parting of the Ways, its ship having barely survived the Time War. After its ship fell through time, it went into seclusion and went on to rebuild a new race of Daleks. This Emperor was a Dalek mutant floating in a transparent tank of liquid, topped by a giant-sized Dalek dome, complete with eyestalk, and flanked by panels of armour dotted by Dalek “bumps”. Because the Emperor had recreated the Dalek race, it saw itself as a god, and had transformed its Daleks from fascists to religious fanatics centred around them worshipping it.
A Dalek Emperor also appears in the Dalek Empire series of audio plays by Big Finish Productions. (via Wikipedia)
