The Nightmare Child was not just a nickname or a fancy title or something really over the top like calling a space station that only destroyed one planet at a time "the Death Star".
It was really that dangerous. The Nightmare Child didn't destroy you with big explosions or flashy lasers or a big big bomb. It didn't destroy you with paradoxes or time destructors or neutron bombs or incineration cannons or pistols or knives or anything. It destroyed you with the one thing people, everywhere, were already destroyed by.
Fear.
It ate fear. It swelled it in a person and then ate it and the more it ate, the more the fear swelled…
It was a Nightmare, and it made you have Nightmares, and the Time Lords, when they had the power, tried to hide it at the far corner of the universe. Except hiding things at the far corner of the universe was not as easy as it ought to have been, especially with the intrepid humans running around with their brand new hyperdrive systems, their battered old ships and their more-than-willing crews. So here they were now, and here the Daleks were, on the orders of their Emperor.
The Nightmare Child had been born in the Old Times, and had doubtless been the daughter (most Time Lords believed it to be a she for mostly chauvinistic reasons, and Time Lady's did not tend to disagree) of hatred and fear personified; which might sound like semi mystical nonsense, but that really isn't the point.
The point was, there had been maniacs, in the past, once upon a silver moon, who had thought it a clever idea to try and control the Nightmare Child. And oh, so many had tried, so many had tried and so many had failed and suffered a fate worse than death.
They had been swallowed by the Nightmare Child, and once in there, nothing, no one, had ever returned, alive, dead, sane, or otherwise...
It was, in short, complete folly to be anywhere near it.
"…so it would be very clever to leave, now," the Doctor finished, looking Davros straight in the… withered eye socket. "Very clever."
Davros sat, considering. For a long time. A longer time.
"Or," he said at last, "I could be even more intelligent – and possess it. To possess such a power would set me up above all other powers, give me power over the Emperor, and give me power over my own creation."
The Doctor closed his eyes, and sighed.
"All about power, isn't it?" he whispered. "No mercy. No pity. Just hatred and death all around, power, power and more power."
"Power is the defining factor in the universe, Doctor," Davros countered. "Those who possess it, possess the ability to influence lesser beings with a share in it. If I were to possess the… Nightmare Child, as you ridiculously refer to it, then I would become invincible."
"Nothing can possess it," the Doctor replied. "Nothing can even try. It is unrelenting, merciless, pitiless. It will swallow you and eat you up, Davros."
"You prattle on Doctor, but you cannot realise that never before have the Daleks come to it," Davros said. "My creations are powerful enough to control it."
"What in the name of all the planets makes you think that?" the Doctor yelled. "You're insane! Even by staying near it, we're just giving it more power!"
"Daleks do not dream," Davros said. "Daleks do not sleep. A weapon that creates nightmares will have no purchase over them. And most importantly, Daleks do not fear. Nightmares are the product of lesser mind's fears and frailties. Daleks have no such frailty."
For a moment the Doctor did not answer, thinking this through, but when his thoughts reached their natural conclusion, he reacted the only way he knew how.
He laughed.
Kirk did not like waiting around. He was a man of action, a soldier. His grandfather had fought Daleks before, and had often told stories about them.
"James my boy," he had often said, "a Dalek is death to be near. Touch them and like as not you'll be frazzled. They can't be reasoned with, they can't be stopped…"
"What are you thinking?" McCoy asked him.
"I'm trying to remember all the things my grandfather ever told me about the Daleks," Kirk said, softly. "He was a veteran of the wars. He must have told me something – he told me everything."
"Old soldiers often give the best advice," Daniel added from the corner, where he was searching for surveillance equipment. His experience with the Brigadier was what he was thinking.
"What are you doing?" Kirk asked.
"Looking for cameras," Daniel said. "They may be monitoring us."
"There's no way to disable the surveillance," McCoy said. "And even if you could, what good would that do?"
Daniel gave a sidelong glance at Kirk, and grinned. Kirk raised his head, and then he grinned too, understanding reaching him.
"If we can shut it off, a Dalek will come here," Daniel said.
"And then we can get past it," Kirk added.
"This room has audio surveillance," McCoy reminded them. "They'll have heard that."
"Actually sir," a young female engineer put in, "it sort of… doesn't. Keith – Chief Daxon meant for us to fix the audio monitor systems, but we never got around to it…"
Kirk ginned even wider, and Daniel looked at the previously subdued Carrie, who looked equally hopeful now.
"Right then," Kirk said. "What're we waiting for?"
"No nightmares?" the Doctor said. "No fears? Do you honestly believe that?"
"Why should I not?" Davros asked. "I engineered them to be free of fear."
"But you left them hate," the Doctor said. "Removing emotion isn't a system of keep that, lose that. They have vestiges, Davros. And those vestiges include loyalty to their masters – hence the Supreme ones not being put down every three seconds – and, most importantly, fear."
"And what, pray tell," Davros said, looking daggers at the Doctor through his scarring and wrinkles, "could my Daleks have to fear?"
"Why, did they never tell you Davros?" the Doctor asked politely, innocently. "They fear me."