
In the year 4000 ( The Daleks' Master Plan, 1965–66), they have an interstellar Dalek Empire. Here, the radio dishes have vanished, replaced with slats around the midriff functioning as solar panels. Over the course of their next few appearances, the Daleks developed time travel in The Chase (1965), where they use a time machine to pursue the TARDIS crew, before landing on the planet Mechanus and battling the robotic Mechanoids.

However, the Doctor and his companions cause a rebellion in the mine workings, and the Dalek Saucer is destroyed by the bomb intended for Earth's core. The Daleks here plan to destroy the Earth's magnetic core and pilot the planet. However, these Daleks as an invasion force are able to move without the need for metal paths, drawing power through what appear to be radio dishes on their backs.

The First Doctor explains the presence of the Daleks to his companions, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, by saying that the events take place "a million years" before The Daleks, and that what they are witnessing is the "middle period" of Dalek history. They next appeared in The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964), which shows the Daleks having conquered and occupied the Earth in the mid-22nd century after a meteorite shower and a plague. However, the popularity of the Daleks ensured their return. At the end of this serial, the Daleks are seemingly wiped out when their power source is destroyed. However, the TARDIS crew convince the Thals to fight the Daleks to stop this. After discovering the anti-radiation drugs of the Thals kill them, the now- xenophobic Daleks decide to release radiation from their nuclear reactors into Skaro's atmosphere, leaving only the Daleks.

They are more or less confined to their city their motive power being electricity conducted via metal walkways. According to the Thals in the third episode, the Daleks were originally teachers and philosophers, while the Doctor states in the fourth episode that the Daleks were called Dals back then, and speculates that the Daleks had just as badly been mutated at the time.

Following a short but terrible nuclear war between the races "over five hundred years ago", the Thals were horribly mutated and the "Dalek forefathers" retired into the city. In this version of Dalek history, the Dalek homeworld of Skaro is described by the Daleks in the second episode as having once been home to two humanoid races: the Daleks and the Thals. The First Doctor first encounters the Daleks in the second serial of the show, The Daleks (1963−64).
