Doctor Who: 10 Things Everyone Always Gets Wrong About The Daleks

No, Davros isn't a Dalek. He isn't even half-Dalek, half-Human like the Dalek Sec hybrid in Series 3.

Davros was a scientist who had lost the use of his legs and one arm, and who relied upon a travel machine to move around his complex on Skaro. In-universe, the inspiration for the Dalek design came from Davros' chair. But he himself is not a Dalek.

It's possibly this distinction that saved the BBC and the Terry Nation estate from paying out a substantial amount of money in a copyright suit back in 2011.

The complainant, Steve Clark, claimed that he created Davros, a "half-man half-Dalek" villain for a TV Action competition in 1972. Judges on the competition included Jon Pertwee, Terrance Dicks, and Barry Letts.

So, there's an outside chance that this competition inspired Letts to ask Nation to write the Daleks' origin story three years later.

Crucially however, Terry Nation and Philip Hinchcliffe (Letts' replacement) were not judges of the competition and would likely not have seen the drawings.

It's easy to just lump Davros in with the rest of the Daleks since they of course always appear in stories together and are intrinsically linked. But Davros is entirely his own thing – a mad Kaled scientist who definitely should not be labelled as a Dalek himself.