Special:Badtitle/NS90:Talk:Complete Monster/Doctor Who/The Daleks/reply (6)

The Daleks are, to a great extent, based on Davros himself, which means by default they were designed as utter monsters from the get go. While this is a good argument for moral impairment, they do have the anomalous types who break free of their typical programming and act under what we humans would consider conventional morality, but they are exceptions, not the rule, and the latest episode with Peter Capaldi showed the Daleks DO understand the concept of mercy, they just don't often show it to their enemies except for pragmatic reasons (they need to use another species in service to their own goals), in which case the "mercy" goes out the window once their usefulness ends.

In short, it's POSSIBLE for them to choose to act morally despite their inherent design, it's just almost all don't bother to try by default.