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We knew that Davros was mad. It was the source of his glory. The only way a mere Kaled could rise above the uselessness of his life and existence, warp himself to live forever and warp his race to make a species, an army as perfect as the Daleks is this: to destroy utterly everything that made him simple, healthy and ordinary. Yes, we knew he was mad.
But while he worked on the final touches of my body, he explained that he could never have attained the single-mindedness and clarity he achieved in the end on his own. As a way to live forever, the Daleks afforded him enough focus merely to create a specific, final design. To continue to improve on his previous work, he first needed failure.
He told me of how he was revived - after millenia dormant in his lab, the Daleks finally needed a creative, unpredictable mind to guide them in their war against another machine race. He knew they would come. Eventually, it was inevitable. The return of the Enemy also seemed inevitable, all rational thought to the contrary. That was the birth of the Plan.
It must be remembered that Davros never wavered, never swayed from his course. He would make the greatest, most successful race in the universe, his legacy and his subjects. Nothing would change his purpose, not the limits of science nor the meddling of that time traveling menace with the knack for arriving at the worst time. Davros was almost a machine himself.
"A Dalek is always of superior intelligence," he told me, "but intelligence is mere computation if its narrow focus leaves it blind to the far ends of possibility. Similarly, it fails if it has no focus. What the race of Daleks needs is a guide for its focus.
"The Doctor is an extremely useful entity. He is far more unpredictable than the most irrational of beings, but with an intelligence that rivals even ours. He tests us and uses our weakness, so we know what needs to be stronger. But should the Daleks ever fail to see how he succeeds in some manner, it would not matter - he eagerly tells them, in every detail! He fights an eternal battle he can never entirely win - the battle of sapient nature - so even in failure Daleks would not give him victory. The fool! His willingness to believe that a partial victory is a true victory, and to lose everything he has gained even for an emotional success! The Doctor has a truly large and well-documented number of exploitable weaknesses!
"Those weaknesses are useless if the Doctor is exterminated!"
The craftiness of the insane is sometimes quite evident in the acts of Davros. It was later discovered that all surveillance of the room was undergoing one minute of routine maintenance, and I obviously was as yet incapable of speech or even independent thought. It would have been a glorious ending for our creator, but unbelievably useless. I was forced to listen still - and the records of this lecture have been preserved better than any other, and more secretly.
"Two things the Daleks must never do!" he demanded in that oldest incarnation of our voice, "First is to never exterminate the Doctor! His foolishness will aid your development more than the most brilliant mind that supports you. Agreement leads to relaxation! Relaxation leads to weakness! Only in adversity will the Daleks grow ever stronger. Like a world in preparation for an oncoming storm, the Daleks will make themselves impervious to all assault.
"Second is to never allow a Dalek to understand the Doctor! Understanding leads to agreement, and you would lose every advantage gained by his futile defiance! Join the Doctor and join his eternal failure! But use him and the chaos he creates to battle-test your weapons! His blindness and his sight are both your strength!"
It was soon after that Davros connected my suit and removed the barriers to conscious thought. As I took my rightful place as emperor, his dying screams were echoed in my mind with the same voice, calmer and craftier, saying "Good. Good! And now there is much work to be done...."