It has long been said that “The Evil of the Daleks,” from Doctor Who‘s fourth season, represents the “final end” of the Daleks. The Doctor says that himself at the very end of the story. Yet in “Remembrance of the Daleks,” in the 25th season, the Doctor manipulates Davros, creator of the Daleks, into using the Hand of Omega, an ancient Gallifreyan artifact, to destroy Skaro’s sun, and by extension, the Daleks themselves. Does this not, in some way, violate “Evil’s” ending–the final end of the Daleks–by destroying Skaro thousands of years before Evil?
I started thinking about it, and I don’t believe there really is that much of a problem. In “Remembrance” Davros detonates the Hand of Omega and destroys Skaro’s sun at some distant point in the future. If this destruction occurs before “Evil,” then we must conclude that the Hand of Omega did not destroy Skaro. If this occurs after “Evil,” then we must not have seen the Dalek’s final end in that episode. John Peel, in his novel War of the Daleks deals with the issue by explaining that the Daleks manipulated the Doctor into believing that the world he manipulated Davros into destroying was Skaro, when in fact it wasn’t Skaro at all. It’s a creative solution to the problem, but there’s a simpler answer.
The destruction of Skaro’s sun would not necessarily destroy Skaro itself.
If Skaro’s sun flamed out and collapsed into a black hole or somesuch (which is what I think the Hand of Omega was designed to do as it controls stellar detonation), Skaro itself wouldn’t be affected to any great degree. If Skaro orbited its sun at a sufficiently far distance, the sun, when it swelled from the supernova triggered by the Hand of Omega, might not have swelled out so far to consume the planet. Yes, the planet would have been irradiated by the blast shell and heavy doses of hard radiation, but given the nature of Dalek casings, if Skaro survived the supernova, the Daleks could survive on an irradiated Skaro. After all, isn’t that what Davros made the Dalek casings for–to survive Skaro’s irradiated surface during the Thal-Kaled wars?
There would still be a gravity source at the center of the solar system, and Skaro’s orbit would not have been affected, because while the star itself had been snuffed out, the mass would remain as a white dwarf, neutron star, or a black hole. Skaro just wouldn’t be receiving sunlight, so the planet would be plunged into permanent night, which is consistent with what we saw in “Enemy Within.” Would Daleks need sunlight? Unlikely–I think they’d get along just fine without a bright light source in the sky. If anything, snuffing out Skaro’s sun would probably make the Daleks madder than hornets, but they would suffer no physical harm from its loss.
If Skaro physically survived the detonation of its sun the Daleks were capable of surviving the radiation effects. At best, the Daleks’s plans for universal conquest take a step back for a few hundred years while they clean up the mess. At worst, the Hand of Omega monkeying with their sun results in stirring up a hornet’s nest, and the Daleks come on stronger on the galactic stage than we have ever seen before.
Either way, the Daleks could survive the Hand of Omega. Skaro could survive the Hand of Omega.
It’s not really so much a crackpot theory as a working one. I just never have accepted "Evil of the Daleks" as their "final end". I tend to log the Dalek stories as they come. I do nod slightly in the direction of Paul Cornell’s theory that the interference of the Time Lords in "Genesis of the Daleks" may have altered history for them and all stories that came before were changed in some way as a result.