Do I have the right?
Still wincing from the leftover pain in his neck after being attacked by that Dalek creature, the Doctor rushed over to the other side of the corridor just a little bit away from the incubation room in the Kaled bunker on Skaro and he held up the two wires, and once he saw the reflected light sharply reflect off of the metallic threads, the Doctor hesitated.
When he had found himself on Skaro, and met that Time Lord from the CIA - the Doctor knew members of the Celestial Intervention Agency wore special robes out in the field, which used the same technology as a TARDIS chameleon circuit to allow them to blend in with their assigned time periods, but he supposed it made little difference to the Time Lord given how they were both standing in a foggy part of the wastelands, surrounded by the barren landscape of pre-Dalek Skaro - the Doctor had been surprised by the opportunity the Time Lords were handing over to him on a plate. Time meddling in history was something the Doctor didn't usually like, and the thought of the Time Lords gave him a mission to do just that had been a surprise.
He hadn't wanted to. He had hoped that following his recent regeneration after that mess with the Giant Spiders of Metebellis 3, the Time Lords would leave him alone. He should have known better. But the Time Lord who'd brought him here while disrupting the transmat beam between the Ark and Earth had given him an incentive.
The news the Time Lords had foreseen a timeline where the Daleks would have destroyed all other forms of life was not a surprise. The Doctor had seen the lengths the Daleks would go in order to conquer and enslave as much of the universe as possible.
Operation De-gravitate where the Daleks had conquered Earth and tried to rip out the planet's molten core and replace it with an engine to transform the planet into a giant spaceship while arming it with weapons to turn it into a warship.
The Time Destructor would have allowed the Daleks to conquer the Milky Way.
The experiment to transfer the so-called Dalek factor throughout Earth's history to make the human race willing allies of the Daleks.
The war the Daleks had tried to instigate between the humans and the Draconians through the Master before unleashing an invisible army and bacteria bombs on the galaxy.
Infecting the Milky Way with the plague which required parrinium to cure it….. And so many others. The danger of the Daleks taking control of the universe using time travel or some other grandiose scheme which was crazy to the minds of ordinary beings but considered feasible to the Daleks since the Daleks, despite their savagery, knew nobody would think of it so they could. The Doctor hadn't scoffed at the Time Lord at all in a childish fit of irritation for how Gallifrey wouldn't leave him alone.
No, the Daleks were too serious for that.
When they had given him the mission to change Dalek history, he couldn't believe his ears. The Time Lord hadn't given him many details about what the Daleks would do, but it didn't matter. The Time Lords didn't like creating new timelines. It was dangerous and reckless if done poorly, and the Time Lords didn't like doing it anyway because it could cause problems with the Web of Time. The only Time Lords who could authorise it was the High Council in full conjunction with the CIA. The Agency had the means of mitigating any serious changes to the timelines, but this was too big for them to handle. If they did it by themselves then they would likely be shut down.
The Doctor had always tried to preserve history, but the thought of wiping out his oldest enemies… it was too great. The Time Lord had given him three options; avert their creation, affect their genetic development, or find a weakness to use against them. Aside from learning about Davros and his role in their creation and a few more details to the account he had learnt when his original self had landed on Skaro centuries ago shortly after his escape from Totter's Lane, the Doctor hadn't really learnt much about the Daleks. He had tried to speak to the Kaled council and relate to them what their twisted descendants would do in the future, and while the Doctor knew many of them had not believed him at all and he was more convinced Mogran had been more interested in getting Davros kicked out of the bunker, the council had listened.
Only that council was gone now. They had been wiped out when Davros betrayed his own race and gave the Thals a chemical formula which was the solvent to the material Davros had used to coat the Kaled city dome (he should have paid attention to General Ravon, but the young man's ranting voice had given him a headache when the Kaled troops had captured them before, and he hadn't been keen on repeating the experience), and the Thals had launched their last rocket against the Kaleds.
Davros had responded by sending out a small army of Dalek prototypes against the Thals; the Daleks of this time were primitive, but the Doctor knew they were effective enough, judging from what he had seen when he'd narrowly made his escape from the Thal city. Rassilon only knew what kind of state the place was in now, but he knew the Daleks. They had likely wiped out a large number of Thals by now. His only hope for them was they had managed to survive to fight this stage of their interminable war with the Kaleds. Only the game rules had changed.
The Time Lords options had closed to him. He had even tried to persuade Davros twice to change the Daleks himself, make the mutated cyborgs into a force for good throughout the universe, and he had even been on the verge of giving him a strong case for doing so. The Daleks had been born and bred out of war, and the ones he had witnessed massacring the Thals could easily be reprogrammed and reconditioned. The idea of the Daleks stopping invasions, providing aid to various worlds, allying themselves with grand empires and federations to overthrow repressive enemies while protecting others, especially against races like the Sontarans was a strange mental image for the Doctor to accept, and now he was out of the incubation room, he wished he had done just that.
He'd had the opportunity to change the Daleks himself right under Davros' nose, but he hadn't taken it.
His hesitation didn't go unnoticed. "What are you waiting for?" Sarah Jane demanded as she stood next to him.
"Just touch these two strands together, and the Daleks are finished. Have I that right?" He asked plaintively.
There was sheer incredulity in Sarah's voice. "To destroy the Daleks, you can't doubt it."
"But I do," the Doctor argued, unable to take his eyes off of the wires. If he touched either one of them with one wire, the explosives he'd set up with Harry's help would blow. He was beginning to wish he had not been given this mission. He knew the Time Lords had only given it to him since as a renegade he had the necessary skills but also the experience with Daleks. "You see, some things could be better with the Daleks and many future worlds would become allies because of their fear of the Daleks."
Throughout the universe there were hundreds of species fighting with one another, squabbling over planets and resources, or for religious reasons which made no sense for the Doctor. When the Daleks launched their invasions of those various galaxies, those same species, recognising the threat as soon as the Daleks began wiping out one world after another, destroying stars in their invasions, bombing each world with nuclear weapons and bioweapons, those races came to realise they were stronger together than not when they saw the Daleks didn't care about religion or any of the pathetic reasons for so many of the invasions out there. They quickly saw the Daleks were interested in one thing; racial cleansing and they didn't care about anything else since the day they'd declared war on the universe against everything not Dalek.
Look at Earth and Draconia; two worlds with a lot of history, a lot of it bad, and yet they became allies whenever they fought wars against the Daleks or the Cybermen.
"But it isn't like that!" Sarah tried to argue after trying to speak over him for a moment, but the Doctor ignored her while he continued to hold up the strands.
"But the final responsibility is mine and mine alone," the Doctor sighed. "Listen, if someone who knew the future pointed out a child to you and told you that that child would grow up to become totally evil, to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives, could you then kill that child?" He asked, turning to look down seriously into Sarah's face, begging her to help him with this ethical dilemma.
He hadn't expected this. He had assumed because of his eagerness to strike a major blow against the Daleks in a way they could never have conceived themselves, he would never need to be this hesitant. He had spent centuries fighting the Daleks, and like he had told Davros before the Kaled scientist tortured Harry and Sarah in the main laboratory, he had seen the carnage they had caused.
Sarah, despite looking troubled by the scenario being presented to her and Harry, leaned in and said seriously, "We're talking about the Daleks, the most evil creatures ever invented. You must destroy them! You must complete your mission for the Time Lords!"
The Doctor sighed at how his hopes for someone to help him through this, but he could see Sarah's point. "Do I have the right? Simply touch one wire against the other, and that's it. The Daleks cease to exist. Hundreds of millions of people, thousands of generations can live without fear, in peace…and never even know the word 'Dalek.'"
Sarah tried again. "Then why wait? If it was a disease or some sort of bacteria you were destroying you wouldn't hesitate!"
The Doctor wondered just how he could get through to Sarah. She just wasn't getting it, and strangely Harry wasn't saying much; the Doctor wished he had the human surgeons' advice since there were some arguments here that could really have helped him. But he knew Sarah had a point; he hadn't hesitated to find a cure for the virus Morka had unleashed upon Earth, and he hadn't hesitated twice in helping the Solonians fight off the human overlords when the Marshall had instigated the insane plan to terraform the entire planet. But this was different. He had never committed genocide like this in his lives, changing history as he went along.
He knew he should have limits. If he went around meddling with history then he would be nothing more than a selfish god out to impose his will on others without giving them a chance. He needed limitations, and without them he would be no better than the Daleks themselves, to say nothing of the Monk nor the Master, who would have pressed the strands together long before now.
"But if I kill," he tried again, wishing he had Susan, Ian, or one of his former companions who had the experience of fighting Daleks and yet capable of providing more advice than Sarah could since Sarah seemed fixated on giving him advice from a certain point of view, "wipe out a whole intelligent life-form, then I become like them. I'd be no better than the Daleks."
And that was the crux of the whole matter. He didn't want to destroy the Daleks by becoming the Daleks, who he knew would gladly wipe out an enemy if they travelled back in time to a moment where that enemy was the most vulnerable and was not considered a threat on the interstellar stage if it wiped out a potential source of resistance.
"Think of all the suffering there will be if you don't do it!" Sarah implored him forcefully.
And the Doctor did. It was impossible for him not to think of Daleks without thinking or at least considering what happened to those who were unlucky enough to be captured by them.
He thought about the people he had seen murdered before his eyes by the blast of Dalek guns. He remembered seeing the sight of the human slaves as the Daleks and their Robomen slaves urged them on, uncaring if they collapsed from malnutrition. Witnessing how they gladly exterminated the colonists on Vulcan after the rebels foolishly believed they were allies. Saw for himself the alternate version of their invasion of Earth, how they had enslaved the human race while a select few lived in relative luxury while the slaves could barely do anything more than work…. On and on it had gone.
And what about the personal pain the Daleks had caused to him and to his companions over the centuries? Victoria would never have lost her father to the Daleks. Katarina would never have died (he wished he had never taken her in the TARDIS, especially given how primitive her time was), Sara Kingdom would also be alive, as would Bret Vyon.
But the Daleks were entwined in his own timeline. He knew that, but he knew it was a poor excuse to falter now. Sometimes he really hated his original incarnation and how much of a jerk he had been in that incarnation, how his first self had thoughtlessly yanked Ian and Barbara away from Earth; he had done it with Susan as well on Gallifrey, and they had all nearly died on Skaro because of his desire to see the city, even being willing to sabotage the TARDIS.
Sometimes the Doctor wondered if he was the one who had unleashed the Daleks upon the universe by thoughtlessly blundering into their city because of his curiosity. But he knew that wasn't entirely true.
Touch the wires, the Daleks were gone.
Do I have the right?
Author's Note - Genesis of the Daleks was one of my favourite Doctor Who stories even if Davros's continuing appearances in the classic series could be annoying, and they didn't have more appearances in John Nathan Turner's reign.
Anyway, I always debated if the First Doctor was responsible for the Daleks becoming a threat because he made it clear to them aliens existed.