Moffat exterminates Daleks

[Hillary]

for the time being.

From the BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13594932

The Daleks are to be given "a rest" from Doctor Who, writer Steven Moffat has told the Radio Times.

Moffat, who is also the BBC television show's executive producer, said: "They aren't going to make an appearance for a while. We thought it was about time to give them a rest."

The Daleks were voted the scariest villains in the history of Doctor Who in a poll of fans in 2007.

Moffat said they had been defeated by the Doctor "about 400 times".

Created by Terry Nation, the Daleks are the Doctor's hugely popular enemies who have made regular appearances in the long-running science fiction show since first appearing in 1963.

Moffat said: "There's a problem with the Daleks. They are the most famous of the Doctor's adversaries and the most frequent, which means they are the most reliably defeatable enemies in the universe."

Recent episodes of the show, which stars Matt Smith as the timelord, have been criticised for being "too scary for children".

But Moffat said: "It is horror, but horror for children. It's scary in the way that a fairy story can be scary."

It does seem funny that, having just reinvented their look, he is now putting them on ice for a while.

Not that I object to this in any way - we've seen far too much of them since the series returned. In old Who, from Tom Baker onwards, they were used rather sparingly. Tom only faced them twice in 7 years.

[Serafina]

Sounds good.
But rather than just not appearing, i'd like to see the occasional mention of a dalek VICTORY that the Doctor just could not prevent because he wasn't there. I'm fine with the Doctor beating the Daleks consistently, but if we show that they win when he isn't there they'd become more threatening.

[doom3607]

Be nicer if sometime's they'd win even when he is there. Not as in "he'll beat them in the next bit of this two-parter", as n "he managed to get away alive, which was an achievment". That would make them a lot more menacing, IMO. But then again, nothing can really make a salt shaker with a plunger and egg whisk sticking out of it truly scary.

[Seele]

Be nicer if sometime's they'd win even when he is there. Not as in "he'll beat them in the next bit of this two-parter", as n "he managed to get away alive, which was an achievment". That would make them a lot more menacing, IMO. But then again, nothing can really make a salt shaker with a plunger and egg whisk sticking out of it truly scary.

Truth be told, I thought their last appearance, no pun intended, was a victory to the Daleks. Sure they wasn't able to kill the Doctor or destroy the Earth but that wasn't their primary goal. And that was to unlock the Progenator Device, which was a success.

[TOSDOC]

Be nicer if sometime's they'd win even when he is there. Not as in "he'll beat them in the next bit of this two-parter", as n "he managed to get away alive, which was an achievment". That would make them a lot more menacing, IMO. But then again, nothing can really make a salt shaker with a plunger and egg whisk sticking out of it truly scary.

Truth be told, I thought their last appearance, no pun intended, was a victory to the Daleks. Sure they wasn't able to kill the Doctor or destroy the Earth but that wasn't their primary goal. And that was to unlock the Progenator Device, which was a success.

It's not acting, it's reacting. Eccleston's and Barrowman's reactions to the presence of a Dalek did a lot for me to establish menace, especially in Parting of the Ways. And there was something in Tom Baker's morality and sense of futility in Genesis of the Daleks that made that sense of menace undiminished despite their "defeat" in that episode that just isn't present in later nuWho. I'm glad Moffat decided to wait until he can hopefully restore this.

[FaxModem1]

Good. Let's let them lie for a while and become the Borg of Doctor Who, once menacing, but turned into a joke.

[Big Orange]

Good idea, stop running them into the ground through diminished returns and keep on slowly building them up as a more credible threat for later. The new Dalek designs didn't go down so well mainly because the red, blue yell and lime coloured Daleks looked like they came free with every McDonald's Happy Meal and they had an unsightly bulge on the back of their hulls. That said I didn't mind the white Dalek and a heavily damaged Dalek was used well in "The Big Bang". I prefer them being more of a background secondary threat as pretty much established in S5, with their current Empire conquering and destroying off screen, with large numbers of Daleks introduced and then destroyed in a future story just being one taskforce out of thousands more (rather than the Dalek race going extinct again).

[PREDATOR490]

Uh huh, introduce the 'new' Daleks and then ditch them. I remain highly skeptical how long that will last.

Probably as long as it takes for them to realise they are losing out on a key toy market by not having new Daleks appear. That said, the Daleks have been largely unimpressive so far and I highly suspect it is due to the new standardisation of Doctor Who. Personnally I would have relished a far more involved story with the Daleks doing their 'helping humanity' shit as a means to make humanity turn on the Doctor when he tries to stop them. The irony is it was working massively well and then they go and fuck it up by 'reviewing testimony'.

The new Daleks are frankly disgusting to look at. The colours are wrong and they look like someone pushed the 'toy' aspect too far. On the one hand making them bigger might allow for more tech to be slapped inside the things and room for the folks inside to play with but there is no explanation why they got suped up like this.

Removing from sight is probably best for now. I will always have a fondness for the leader Dalek being BLACK with the rest of the Daleks being uniform in appearance. Making them different colours for different roles seems a bit Star Trekish.

[doom3607]

As long as they avoid getting too Star Trekkish, it'll be fine...

[crying and twitching in a corner] holes in event horizons... [/crying and twitching in a corner]

[Stark]

If only it'd happened 5 years ago?

[Hillary]

If only it'd happened 5 years ago?

Good Lord, Stark, where did you disappear to?

Great in the Ecclestone story and I liked the idea of the Cult of Skaro in Tennant's first series. Boy, did it all go south after that though.

I'm liking this series a lot. New menaces and a proper story arc, rather than the RTD thing of bolting an irrelevant teaser into every other episode and then revealing at the end. I don't know if you've seen any of this series - it's a big step up from Tennant (and the last series).

[Big Orange]

The BBC "had" to keep them around to shift more Dalek action figures, RC model Daleks, Dalek keyrings, Dalek colouring books and Dalek masks, etc. I didn't mind how the Daleks were generally depicted in "The Stolen Earth"-"Journey's End", but of course they were ruined in the last twenty minutes by not understanding the concept of firewalls and then getting blown up with a flick of a switch. Anyway there's an online comic book, Second Empire that depicts the Daleks much better than how the Daleks have been depicted in S3 to S5 of NuWho, with a page that features a sly dig at the controversial Moffat redesign.

Anyway, while S6 is going in the right direction in developing interesting new villains like the Silence, in the upcoming episode we've got other retro baddies:
Spoiler

Sontarans (who seem to include another version of Skorr from way back in S4) and Cybermen (with the Cybus logo removed).

[Serafina]

As long as they avoid getting too Star Trekkish, it'll be fine...

[crying and twitching in a corner] holes in event horizons... [/crying and twitching in a corner]

You know, the TARDIS once DID escape from the event horizon of a black hole (and presumably a supermassive one, that is).
Of course Sexy managed to do so because she didn't care about "gravity-schmavity", not because of any ludicrous misinterpretation of a mathematical concept

I didn't mind how the Daleks were generally depicted in "The Stolen Earth"-"Journey's End", but of course they were ruined in the last twenty minutes by not understanding the concept of firewalls and then getting blown up with a flick of a switch.

If i am standing in fron of your computer and can access it's keyboard, why should i care about the firewall?

[Simon_Jester]

Now now, Serafina. If you can travel backwards in time, you can travel upwards in a black hole. Escaping "up" through a black hole is pretty much exactly the same problem as traveling to "yesterday." Indeed, in a black hole "up" and "yesterday" point in the same direction due to the intense warping of spacetime; this is why there's an event horizon in the first place- because inside the event horizon, by definition all events "above" you happened "before" your present time. And therefore you cannot reach them even in theory, even by following a lightlike curve (that is, traveling at the speed of light).

Since the Tardis has the ability to follow spacelike curves, and does so on a regular basis, there is no reason to assume it can't climb out of the event horizon of a black hole assuming it can get into one without being torn to bits. No "crack" in the event horizon is required; the Tardis simply climbs out of the hole.

Arguably, an FTL starship should be able to do the same thing within limits,* if, once again, it can survive being in the neighborhood of the singularity without being torn to bits. Of course, that brings up the whole horrible mess of FTL, general relativity, and time travel, but since Dr. Who is first and foremost a time travel story anyway, this is not a problem in the good Doctor's case.

*(the limit is set by the point at which the curvature is so strong that even the ship's maximum feasible superluminal speed would not be enough to escape, or where the ship is physically torn to bits by very very large tidal forces, or where the curvature of the hole somehow renders FTL travel impossible through technobabble).

[TOSDOC]

The BBC "had" to keep them around to shift more Dalek action figures, RC model Daleks, Dalek keyrings, Dalek colouring books and Dalek masks, etc. I didn't mind how the Daleks were generally depicted in "The Stolen Earth"-"Journey's End", but of course they were ruined in the last twenty minutes by not understanding the concept of firewalls and then getting blown up with a flick of a switch. Anyway there's an online comic book, Second Empire that depicts the Daleks much better than how the Daleks have been depicted in S3 to S5 of NuWho, with a page that features a sly dig at the controversial Moffat redesign.

Not a bad comic, but I have one question--when did the Daleks steal the intercom panels off the original Enterprise?

[aussiemuscle308]

Should the Daleks get their own series?

Be nicer if sometime's they'd win even when he is there

what? you like if he was somehow fallible? that might make him less than 2 dimensional tho.

If i am standing in fron of your computer and can access it's keyboard, why should i care about the firewall?

You never used Vista eh?

[Hillary]

Should the Daleks get their own series?

Be nicer if sometime's they'd win even when he is there

what? you like if he was somehow fallible? that might make him less than 2 dimensional tho.

Of course, the Doctor NEVER gets things wrong Have you ever actually watched the programme?

[Crossroads Inc.]

Anyway there's an online comic book, Second Empire that depicts the Daleks much better than how the Daleks have been depicted in S3 to S5 of NuWho, with a page that features a sly dig at the controversial Moffat redesign.

I remember when I first read that and how impressed I was with the whole concept. It always struck me as a great "what if" about Dalek Society if things had been slightly different. Daleks with emotion and individuality, even if many concepts (such as diplomacy) are still foreign to them.

I also loved how they treated "travel machines" and ran with the idea that Daleks Are just livign things in travel machines. It was hard to really convay on Dr.Who and all too often you forget that theres something alive inside the machine. After all in Dr.Who theres really only one or two types of Daleks (due to budget really) But in the comic you have science daleks, worker daleks, warrior Daleks. And you actually see Daleks change machines as needed.

The fact that the whole comic is done in 3d computer renders is equally impressive, Hope he may finish his work someday.

[Big Orange]

Not a bad comic, but I have one question--when did the Daleks steal the intercom panels off the original Enterprise?

There's also a Laputa Robot laid out on workbench in a Dalek lab, a big spoof of the ski chase from The Spy Who Loved Me and tons upon tons of references to Star Wars.

I didn't mind how the Daleks were generally depicted in "The Stolen Earth"-"Journey's End", but of course they were ruined in the last twenty minutes by not understanding the concept of firewalls and then getting blown up with a flick of a switch.

If i am standing in fron of your computer and can access it's keyboard, why should i care about the firewall?

I've heard that in government buildings of importance intruders had gotten onto restricted systems when the guys at the terminals had gone off for a pee/lunch/cigarette break, but it still seemed rather contrived that a single control console in a dungeon area controlled all operations onboard the Dalek's version of the Death Star. Davros was virtually the Supreme Dalek's prisoner, but hey pulp TV.

I get the impression those Paradigm Daleks, when the Daleks inevitably come back in about 18 months time, may either get quietly retired or have a big make over, making them more like intergalactic war machines and less like things that have rolled off a Mattel production line (though I still like the concept of bigger "pure" Daleks that hate the smaller brass Daleks, it's the execution that's been somewhat wanting). I hope the Daleks will be depicted in a similar manner to how the Cybermen have been depicted as in the last couple of seasons, with a big space empire and such, but not always primary enemies and are more of a continuous menace lurking in the background.

Also:
Spoiler

The Daleks may even come back as comparatively soon as this year's Christmas Special.

I also have a feeling the Time Lords will show their mugs again in 2013, in a 50th anniversary special. The Master got reintroduced into the Time War, into the closing days/hours of the Time War from the perspective of Gallifrey...

Useless fact: the Toclafane were first intended as place holders of the Daleks in S1 if the Nation estate said no.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Also included as trivial background stuff is a random Necron Monolith on Yttral's workbench.

I do love that comic, it makes Dalek's humans and yet still leaves them as genocidal warriors. Plus they include the Mechanoids, who I tihnk are just cool.