Which story should've been the Daleks' last hurrah?

Thinking about the thread discussion in the NuWho section about the ruination of once great monsters in the show, I thought it might be interesting to poll for what was the monsters' last great high point before their decline, or the right point to conclude their story to preserve their stature.

So what was that point for you concerning the Daleks?

Do you think there was anything salvageable about the New Who Dalek stories? Do you think the Daleks lost something the moment they were no longer in black and white? Do you even think maybe they were a one-trick foe that were only really worth their first story?

(P.S. I've had to largely limit this to TV stories only, as polls don't allow more than fifty choices, and I'm sure I'd have to exceed that limit if I included all the Dalek audio stories too, but I have included an 'other' option for if there's a particular spin-off Dalek story you think would've been a great finale for them)

The Daleks are certainly not a one trick pony.

IMO the Daleks are the greatest aliens in all of sci fi. As villains overall they are among the top tier alongside the Joker, Callisto and Khan Noonien Singh.

The Daleks embody all of the great monster tropes. They are machine creatures, yet there is also an element of body horror in their design too, as they are flesh and blood creatures. They represent technology being abused, people becoming machine creatures like the Cybermen, yet they also are totally alien in appearance too. At the same time they also represent many of our darkest qualities, like fascism, conformity, race hatred, mans destructive effect on the environment etc.

Furthermore as they have an empire across the universe, and can time travel, they can be placed into any type of story you want. IMO they will never get old.

I think all of their stories in Classic Who worked. There are only three that aren't great or classics, The Chase, Planet and Destiny, and even then none of those are bad.

As for New Who, well tbh I think Dalek was the wrong way to bring them back in hindsight. It made one so powerful that an army of them was always going to seem less spectacular as a result.

Still overall all of the New Who Dalek stories are enjoyable at least up until the Capaldi era. I do admit though that Journey's End is a total mess. The first draft would have been absolutely excellent, but the one we got was bad fanfic.

I don't mind Asylum as much as some of the others here. Its a fun romp at least. I think their last good story was definitely Into the Dalek, but again the whole show went to pot after that story.

I voted Remembrance. It’s the last time they were genuinely well written and consistently portrayed. The ending of Dalek completely undermines the threat established previously in the story (and on another note, Eccleston’s performance and the ‘I couldn’t... Oh, Rose!’ dialogue are utterly appalling), and Parting Of The Ways is horrendously overrated, featuring cringeworthy popcultural references that date it horrendously, and a inexcusably shit ending where the Daleks are beaten via the Deus-Ex-Machina narrative device which has featured so frequently in NuWho. The rest of the NuWho Dalek stories are shite, bar individual moments in Daleks in Manhattan and Into the Dalek, and all it’s done is water them down beyond recognition in the end.

There's a part of me that would've actually been okay with Destiny of the Daleks being their last hurrah.

Genesis is definitely their high-point, but it demands some kind of a follow-on resolution, and to me Destiny just about works as one.

The Daleks still seem like a conquering galactic terror rather than the last surviving scavengers they become after. I could accept that their threat is more or less ended or at least contained by the Movellan stalemate, as a neat conclusion to their threat.

Resurrection starts with the Daleks seeming a real force to be reckoned with, but by the end I think the indulged wholesale destruction makes the Daleks no longer seem so invincible. Like how Redlettermedia once said that in DS9's Dominion war, the previously imposing Klingon and Romulan warbirds became reduced to disposable tie-fighters. In many ways it absolutely would've worked as the Daleks' 'final end'. Reduced to an endangered species. Sadly though it also felt like the end of my ability to care anymore.

Revelation and Remembrance were somewhat returns to form, but still I felt the Daleks were kind of more treated as cannon fodder than they should be there. Still, either story would kind of work as a farewell concert to them, though I was never quite convinced by Remembrance's 'final end' just because Skaro was destroyed. I always felt the Daleks ruled a vaster empire of space than just that one world.

I did think the Daleks were mostly well-handled and invincible again in Eccleston's first season (enough that the mishandled moments were *really* annoying for it, i.e. when Eccleston's "so if anyone's gonna shut up.... IT'S YOU!" followed by Daleks scarpering). At least enough to make me intrigued by the show again.

By Journey's End they were a joke again. By Witch's Familiar they'd been humiliated and stripped of all menace to the point there was no caring about them anymore.

Would I have wanted Dalek, or Parting of the Ways to be the 'final end' for them? I'm not sure. There came a point in New Who where the Dalek stories seemed the only thing worth looking forward to, and I think without them it would've felt like the classic series was just being buried and forgotten completely.

Like burrun, I'd probably say either Day of the Doctor or Into the Dalek was their last gasp of greatness.

But I think I'm going to go with Destiny.

This is really difficult to pinpoint because there are good elements to even some of the earlier NuWho dalek stories. Unfortunately, yes there's a lot of shit in there too, but it's difficult to make a complete hash of the Daleks because there are certain qualities that can't be changed wholesale, otherwise they wouldn't be Daleks.
Having said that, Genesis is quite clearly a peak which would never be reached again, but I still think there are some redeeming qualities in many of the stories which came after.
Part of the problem in a way was tying the Daleks to Davros after Genesis, diminished them as force in their own right. Davros was such a brilliant character, but I felt it was a mistake to bring him back so soon, if at all. (although I've heard this was down to Terry Nation who owned the copyright on the Daleks, demanding that Davros be used in subsequent dalek stories?)
I actually think that Davies used the Daleks quite well as a rule. Yes, Dalek had those corny scenes, but they were at least attributable to just one lone dalek in a highly unusual circumstance. Plus when the Dalek managed to free itself it goes on a cold killing rampage that any dalek would've been proud of, and that emo ending and Rose guff aside, it's still arguably the best Dalek story in NuWho.
Similarly, there are legitimate complaints to be railed against some of the writing in the Parting of the Ways, but not much of the script inadequacies are really around the Daleks themselves.
Doomsday is certainly a contender, being little more than a fan wank battle between the two most famous Who enemies, but again the Daleks themselves are consistent.
So I've gone for Daleks in Manhattan, because whilst it's far from the best of Dalek stories, the fact that these are four isolated Daleks looking for a way to reboot the continuation of their race, does allow for the story idea to have its own internal logic, though obviously not without flaws. And as a story, it's actually rather better in many ways than its predecessor.
For me I think it's the horrendous S4 finale where the Daleks finally jump the shark. Although you could say that they've been gradually jumping it ever since Destiny of the Daleks.