What Difference Would One Dalek Make?

Guest contributor Matthew Adams shares an intriguing ‘what if’ scenario.

One of the main overarching themes of New Who is the Time War. So I was just thinking, what would happen if you’d remove a pretty important New Who character from that timeline. Specifically I wondered: what would happen if the Dalek Emperor had died before he created the Cult of Skaro. How would the Whoniverse look? I wrote this article just as a fun thought experiment. Enjoy!

Let’s go through it chronologically:

The Time War ends, no Daleks, no Time Lords.

Series 1: The only surviving Time Lord – the Doctor, shortly after meets Rose Tyler and later the last Dalek, which (in the end) self-destructs. All of Series 1 would play out exactly the same, except there are no Bad Wolf references, The Long Game and the finale never play out this way. So, at the end of Series 1 we have got a TARDIS crew consisting of the Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler and a mortal Captain Jack.

Series 2: The finale never happens, as the Cult of Skaro doesn’t exist. Even the Cybermen can’t appear, cause the Void ship is never built. So at the end of Series 2 we’ve still got the same TARDIS crew.

Series 3: Martha might never join the Doctor, but I’ll leave that to your imagination. Again, the most important thing is the finale: the TARDIS never tries to get rid of immortal Jack, thus never landing at the end of the universe. The Master dies as old Professor Yana, he never escapes from the end of the universe. So: still same TARDIS crew.

Series 4: With Donna it might be the same as with Martha. Again, the finale doesn’t happen, Dalek Caan never rescues Davros.

The Specials: The ‘Four Knocks’ arc never happens, as the Master is dead at the end of the universe.

Series 5 – Time of the Doctor: Now this is where it gets complicated and the timeline is split into a few different possible realities:

• Series 5-7 happen pretty much the same way.
• Partial collapse of the universe, the Doctor is dead.
• The Doctor dies on Trenzalore
• Gallifrey is still destroyed, the whole Silence arc never happens.

Confused? Let me explain. The important part is that the Master never escapes from the end of the Universe. Meaning that Clara meets neither “The Woman in the Shop”, nor the Doctor. Clara does three important things for the arc, as follows:

• She jumps into the Doctor’s timestream, thus preventing partial universal collapse and saving the Doctor (TNOTD).
• She prevents him from destroying Gallifrey and notices that the War Doctor hasn’t used the Moment yet (TDOTD).
• She saves the Doctor by talking to the Time Lords, who give him new regenerations (TTOTD).

Now, depending on whether Rose (or his then current companion) would have done the same in Clara’s place. If she did, then Series 1-7 would have been more or less the same. If she wouldn’t jump into the Doctor’s timestream, we get possibility 2; partial event collapse. If she does jump into his timestream, but does not talk to the Time Lords we get possibility 3; the Doctor dies on Trenzalore. And if she doesn’t recognize, that the War Doctor hadn’t deleted Gallifrey, or wouldn’t have prevented the Doctors from doing so, the whole Silence/Trenzalore arc would disintegrate; possibility 4.

Series 8: As the Master is dead and the Doctor is either dead, still in his ninth incarnation, or regenerated, Series 8 does of course play out completely differently.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed my article and your headache isn’t too bad!