Top 10 Grossest Things You'll Find When You Go "Into The Dalek"

If you thought this series of Doctor Who offered our first glimpse at Dalek body parts, you'd be wrong. Since their introduction in 1963, we've been given a number of peeks under the dome. Here are some of the weirdest and wildest things we've discovered along the way.

1. Dalek juice

Yep, you heard that right: Dalek juice. In one alternative timeline explored in the audio Jubilee people were boiling the creatures inside the Dalek so as to extract the "delicacy" of a black fluid just perfect for a morning snack. Fortunately for the squeamish, we don't have a picture of what it looked like.

2. The beast inside

© 2008 BBC Worldwide / Via Tardis Wiki

Of course, the Kaled mutant at the heart of the Dalek casing was seen in Into the Dalek. Heck, we'e seen some kind of bubbly, green mass on many occasions in the past. So let's just skip all that and go right for the grossest thing about them. Iris Wildthyme, a spin-off Time Lord with her own series of prose and audio stories, once ate a Kaled mutant. To find out the results, we're afraid you're going to have to read the novel, The Scarlet Empress.

And yet again, you're lucky there are no pictures of that — or what happened afterwards!

3. Variant 7

Okay this one is more of a bioweapon created by the Daleks than something inside the Daleks. Or to be more precise, it's something that's only inside some Daleks. See, according to Nick Briggs' excellent Dalek Empire III audio series — starring David Tennant dontcha know! — there was a massive galactic plague. So the Daleks, being ever so helpful, created this "cure" for the plague called Variant 7.

And it worked!

And then it turned you into a Dalek from the inside out. Painfully. (Oh, and, the Daleks created the plague in the first place. Cunning devils.)

4. Those creepy eyestalks

© 2010 BBC Worldwide / Via Tardis Wiki

You might think you're perfectly familiar with Dalek eyestalk. You might even think they're basically a part of the Dalek's exterior, and therefore not appropriate to this list. But consider these facts, one out-of-universe, and one very much in.

Out-of-universe Steven Moffat wanted to make sure in his 2010 redesign that if you looked hard enough into the center of the eyepiece, you'd see an actual eye. Which, creepily, you can kinda see in this picture.

In-universe, eyestalks, when separated from the Dalek body, were a rare prize, kinda like a rhino horn. In books like Love and War there are characters who make a comfortable living from depriving Daleks of their sight.

Not that we particularly sympathise with these poor Daleks, of course.

5. Metalert!

© 1965 BBC Worldwide / Via Tardis Wiki

Okay, fine. This one is definitely a part of the Dalek exterior But it's still fun. Most Daleks are made of, of course, Dalekanium. But one particularly cunning Dalek found a way to improve upon that, creating Metalert — a super-strong variant that let him dominate his fellow Daleks.

6. You'll come to great 'arm

© 2006 BBC Worldwide / Via Tardis Wiki

Yeah, okay, the title for this section is a lame attempt at punnery. But you'll have to forgive us for trying to lighten the mood about a deadly subject: the manipulator arm. If you're new to Doctor Who, you may not know that the sink plunger ain't the only look for that right arm. It can be a torch, a saw, a laser — really just tons of things.

Which means there's more ways than you thought that a Dalek can kill you.

7. The saunas of Skaro!

© 1964 BBC Worldwide / Via Tardis Wiki

Are you a Dalek who's had a hard day at the office? Do you find that all that extermination makes you want to just rewind? If so, we have the perfect device for your organic interior. Skaro's patented revitalising rays will soon see to the inner you!

8. How to stop a Dalek — from the inside!

© 2008 BBC Worldwide / Via Tardis Wiki

Ever wanted to make a Dalek lose control of their own movements? Well, it's possible, due to a special little circuit embedded deep within their casing. Donna Noble, or maybe more precisely, the Doctor-Donna, figured out how to access this thing — called a trip stitch circuit-breaker and make all the Daleks "spin around".

9. Flowers for the dead

© 1964 BBC Woldwide / Via Tardis Wiki

So here's a little factoid from the past. The very first Dalek Emperor had a very special casing. It contained the sap of a rare flower found only on Skaro called the Arkellis flower. It was a plant that only grew on metal — which we reckon was lucky, given its ultimate destination.

Sadly, that first Emperor Dalek was soon defeated by Zeg, the Dalek who invented Metalert — a serious casing that wasn't, yanno, flower powered.

10. If you hate it so much, you should bottle it

It's true. It's really true. Dalek hate and xenophobia can be distilled and bottled. As the Second Doctor and Jamie found out, the Dalek Factor was a creepy admixture of hate and instinctive obedience that was hidden in the genes of a Dalek.

BONUS: Convert the humans!

This isn't actually something inside a Dalek, but rather something they put inside you. So let's consider it a bonus round for this list. A Skaro mesmeristor, is something they implant inside human brains to turn a human into a ""humanoid" — a willing Dalek slave.

Fine, that's gross enough. But consider this. The comic in which this notion first appeared really didn't offer up any suggestion of improved manipulator arms for the surgery. So it probably hurt like hell, seeing as how the Daleks in the story only had a sucker arm to operate with!