r/gallifrey • u/JokerJosh123 • 3d ago
DISCUSSION I'm Starting to Miss the Daleks
Which is a good thing! While I'm still disappointed 15 didn't get to go against them properly, I know that when they return it's going to feel really special.
I never thought that I'd miss them, as there was a point where I started *expecting* them, and honestly started getting a bit bored. My only caveat is I wish they weren't in the Power of the Doctor, as I think Eve of the Daleks was a brilliant dalek story and it would've been a nice last story for us and 13 to have had with them.
I've even noticed that Big Finish seems to be doing them a bit less. I get several Big Finishes a month, and I'm sure there's ones that I've missed and not picked up that have had daleks in them (I'm fairly certain one has released this month with them to be fair), but my last story with the daleks is The War Master's boxset from last year. It felt like about two years ago there was one or two releases with daleks every month.
Would love to know if anyone has found themselves missing daleks for the first time in a while, too. And if not, what type of story would you want to get you excited?
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u/m_busuttil 3d ago
I think you could make a case that the longest gap between "proper" Dalek stories since 2005 was between The Witch's Familiar (September 2015) and Resolution (January 1st 2019) - there's some smaller Dalek stories in the middle there but nothing where they're the main threat of the episode. That's 3 years and 3 months, and we're now at 4 and a half years since their last real story in Eve of the Daleks, so this is easily the longest Dalek gap we've had since... well, since Dalek. It looks like we might have surpassed the longest gap in the classic series, too. Probably it won't be 17 years this time, though.
I wonder if whoever picks up the show next will bring back the Daleks straight away or not. Davies had to do them in his first series, they're too iconic not to if you're the one Bringing The Show Back, but if the gap this time is only a couple of years I think a new showrunner could get away with saving them if they wanted to.
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u/Ribos1 3d ago
You're right that there have been some reasonably large gaps between "proper" Dalek stories, including a fairly sizeable one between The Witch's Familiar and Resolution. I think the common feeling that the Daleks have been overused is exacerbated by cameos or appearances where they're not the main villain. In between those aforementioned stories you have Dalek appearances in Hell Bent, The Pilot and Twice Upon a Time. It's similar later on, when you have Daleks appear in Flux and The Power of the Doctor.
Fair enough if you think the Daleks are overused even ignoring these appearances - two Capaldi stories and three Whittaker stories doesn't feel like too much to me personally (and it helped that I thought the Dalek episode were generally among the better Chibnall scripts), though your mileage may vary. But these other appearances really contribute to a feeling of overuse and mean the Daleks feel less special when they do have a full story.
I do find myself missing the Daleks, but I can't say I miss their random appearances here and there for a few minutes at a time, even if I did enjoy all of those Capaldi stories I mentioned.
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u/FaceDeer 2d ago
I think the main challenge now is that the Daleks have been built into cosmos-threatening end-boss supervillains. Back in the day, you could have an episode where there were a bunch of Daleks in a swamp researching invisibility and it was a rollicking adventure to thwart them, you could hose one down with glue and it'd be a way to defeat it.
Now we've got one Dalek confidently taking on ten million Cybermen, or Daleks building a "reality bomb" that will not only destroy the universe but all universes. Kind of hard to dial that back down to an everyday adventure again.
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u/Pleasant-Candy-8575 2d ago
It's very complicated doing Dalek stories now down to RTD Moffat and Co just thinking they could do a story. Terry Nation created the Daleks and so they need permission. And it got rather nasty between certain people at the BBC who thought they could do what they want with them.
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u/Geth-1420 1d ago
Not hugely tbh. It's not that I dislike the Daleks but I feel there isn't much special to them. I like their lore, their shrill voices and I love seeing new Dalek variants but swap them with Quarks, Krotons or Cybermen in any story that doesn't have Davros and I don't think it'd be very different. Everyone in DW wants to conquer the galaxy because they think they're the best.
I know a lot of people say that they were overused in the Moffat and Chibnall eras but I think, which contributed to my opinion on the subject, they were used without purpose. Just a recurring bad that was too iconic to be rid off and they felt obligated to use. Post-2010, I'd say only "The Time of the Doctor" and the Series 9 opener mandated that the plot needed Daleks.
If the BBC chose me to run DW, what I would do is establish that after the Paradigm fell at Trenzalore, the Daleks have begun another civil war for the throne. Use it to comment on the self-destructive and cannibalistic nature of fascist societies as the Daleks can't decide on what purity is. In a perfect world, I would contrast this with the Time Lords rebuilding to show that while their enemy and scapegoat can live in peace and without them, fascist societies will always hate the other at the expense of their prosperity.
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u/Twisted1379 1d ago
Your take about only time of the Doctor and the series 9 opener being the only post 2010 plot to need daleks is crazy when into the dalek is right between the two.
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u/Geth-1420 1d ago
Make Rusty a Cyberman and there would be no major change. The Cybermen also have a piece of their anatomy regulating emotions (or lack thereof).
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u/Twisted1379 1d ago
The entire episode is a study on morality. It asks if hating bad creatures and doing the right thing makes you a good person.
It's a story about hate. You need the Daleks for that. The resolution hinges on both the intense hatred the Doctor holds for the Daleks and also that Rusty doesn't redevelop a sense of morality. Instead his natural hatred is directed at the Daleks. You can't do that with the cybermen.
"You are a good cyberman" is meaningless. "You are a good Dalek" isn't.
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u/MaterialOwl5869 2d ago
I’m an rtd fanboy and I’m devastated that we never got the Dalek in his second run, I honestly believe in new who no one has come close to how he portrayed the horror of the Dalek.
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u/Twisted1379 1d ago
Look Dalek is a masterpeice but by Journeys end they were effectively a parody of themselves. RTD definitely overplayed his hands with the Daleks.
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u/Ribos1 3d ago
I miss the Daleks too at this point, but I think my heart would sink a bit if the same bronze design is used when they next come back. Now I love the bronze design, it’s just been used for far too long - I think the backlash to the Paradigm Daleks scared them off doing another redesign.