Nuwho Dalek stories

I'd argue Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks is the most enjoyable one by a long distance. I would be very surprised if any of you actually thought it was worse than the series 4 Dalek story. I like Bad Wolf/ Parting of the Ways but I'm not keen on the rest.

Journey's End is as bad as Death in Heaven.

Dalek would have been superb had it not been for the shipping nonsense and the mercy crap at the end.

Eccleston should have shot the shit out of that Dalek and driven a massive narrative wedge between him and Rose - a much better ending that would have spared us the dreadful 'I couldn't ...I wouldn't..I...' disaster dialogue.

'Dalek' from Series 1 is easily my favourite NuWho Dalek story by a country mile. It's dark, it's fairly well written and it does an excellent job at making the Daleks seem like an actual legitimate threat. Something the vast majority of NuWho would later struggle with.

Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways was also really good until they decided to completely ruin it with that horrible deus ex machina ending where Rose turns into a cartoon superhero and vaporises an entire army of Daleks in less than a minute. Not to mention the Doctor snogging her afterwards and then the devil's ballsack himself, Tennant, making an appearance. I didn't mind all the weird gameshow crap, personally. But I know a lot of people did.

Yep, RTD re-established the Dalek threat in Dalek, and then systematically went about demolishing that air of prescient danger by turning them into risible, absurd dodgem rides every time he needed to wrap up a plot.

The worst is surely Journey's Bellend, where the 'Doctor-Donna' twirls a few knobs and arranges a few cables in order to play a bit of Dalek pinball. These were the same Daleks who were keeping the supposed genius of Davros prisoner for expedience, yet decided to leave a vulnerability that had all of the complexity of a Kinder Surprise toy.

Absolute fucking shit.

Dalek established a single one as more of a tangible threat than any subsequent army; it almost felt like a play, which is meant as a compliment.

I'd have been pleased not to have seen them again, but Manhattan is underrated and - very rarely for the new show - actually has some nuances and maturity, despite certain plot holes.

DeadManRising wrote:'Dalek' from Series 1 is easily my favourite NuWho Dalek story by a country mile. It's dark, it's fairly well written and it does an excellent job at making the Daleks seem like an actual legitimate threat. Something the vast majority of NuWho would later struggle with.

Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways was also really good until they decided to completely ruin it with that horrible deus ex machina ending where Rose turns into a cartoon superhero and vaporises an entire army of Daleks in less than a minute. Not to mention the Doctor snogging her afterwards and then the devil's ballsack himself, Tennant, making an appearance. I didn't mind all the weird gameshow crap, personally. But I know a lot of people did.

The gameshow scenes don't bother me as much anymore.

That's the frustrating thing about Parting because it's consistently good for so long then it just falls apart at the end. The resolution is so tacky that it really harms the story overall. I would have also sacrificed much of Rose's time on Earth if it meant more scenes with Lynda and the TV producers. I do quite like John's delivery of "if you hear fighting up above, if you hear us dying, then tell me that the Daleks aren't real" and some of the back and forth Nine had with the Emperor.

Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks gets a ridiculous amount of hate from people online.

I'm baffled as to why people hate it so much? Its got a lot going for it. It actually tries to build up an atmosphere, it makes the Daleks both powerful and manipulative and it offers a really interesting insight into the Daleks characters too.

As Journey's End NO. No way is it as bad as Death in Heaven. Its stupid yes, but it doesn't fuck up the characters histories or anything.


I actually think the first draft of Stolen Earth/Journey's End would have been better, but budget cuts and various other factors resulted in the edited mess we got.

1/ Rose was not to have appeared at all. Her final story would have been Turn Left where she would have helped Donna get back. (This changed when Billie became available. Shame as it would have been a great, mature end for Rose to have her help Donna get back, rather than become the whiney immature brat we saw in Journey's End. Also rather cleverly it would have allowed her to appear again without undoing her sad ending.)

2/ There would have been no Doctor clone. Donna would have absorbed the power from the hand and it would have killed her in the end, with the Doctor attending her funeral.

3/ The Shadow Proclamation would have had more Classic and New Who aliens. Zygons, Draconians, Mondasian Cybermen, Sontarans, Krilltraines Krotons, Slitheen, even possibly a Raston Warrior Robot etc.

4/ The Brigadier would have appeared. He was to have been reintroduced in the Sontaran two parter. He and Martha would have been close, with the Brig being like a second father to her. Her and the Brig would have escaped together from the base and they would have used the Osterhagen device to teleport to the Dalek mothership. There they would have made their way to the Daleks main engine and threatened to blow it up instead of the earth in the ultimatum scene.

5/ There would have been more aliens from the other planets the Daleks stole to use in the reality bomb in the reality bomb test scene. One of these aliens who escaped would have helped Martha and the Brig get to the Daleks engine.

6/ Donna would have used her time lord powers to free the Doctor and his companions. Whilst they fought off the Daleks, the Doctor would have shut down the bomb. Before the Daleks could have recaptured them, then the Shadow Proclamation would have attacked the Daleks. The Doctor would then be forced to lead the Shadow Proclamation to fight the Daleks. Whilst the war was going on the Doctor and his friends would make his way to the Daleks main base and shut down their engine, destroying the crucible.

The Shadow Proclamation would have been summoned by Torchwood and Sarah using the same device that they used to summon the Doctor.

The earth would not have been towed, but rather sent home by the Shadow Proclamation who would have been almost completely destroyed in the war against the Daleks.

Sadly however Billie proved available and so RTD shoehorned her in. Nicholas Courtney meanwhile was out of the country so the Brig was written out of both stories. Martha's role as a result of Rose's inclusion and the Brig's exclusion was shortened down. Budget cuts also meant that they couldn't do a full Dalek vs Shadow Proclamation war, so the ending is condensed (with the Daleks as a result having EVERYTHING in Davros' room.) This also meant that there were fewer aliens in the Shadown Proclamation.

Unfortunately Russell also crapped out of killing Donna too. With Donna's death averted and the Dalek war edited out, Russell needed a new grand finale and so he unwisely stuck in the TARDIS towing the earth back.

IMO all of these things would have made it better.

Erm, I will go with Dalek if I must but Into the Dalek isn't that bad for a later Nu Who story.

Mr. Happy wrote:Erm, I will go with Dalek if I must but Into the Dalek isn't that bad for a later Nu Who story.

Yes I agree : Into The Dalek was ok, certainly one of the best of that season along with Mummy.

The 'good dalek' bit worked better than I thought it would and Journey Blue was one of the better non-regular characters. I'd even say she should have travelled with the Doctor instead of Carla (which admittedly is damning with faint praise). I liked the way her sexuality was not treated as her defining 'characteristic', and she actually seemed to take the whole situation seriously - much better than Danny Pink!

It's just a shame the Doctor stuck to his principles of never travelling with a warrior like, say, Leela.

Daleks in Manhattan was the last decent Dalek story New Who did. That's 11 years ago. Think on that, people. BW/TPOTW is good too, and Dalek is okay bar the shite ending. The rest... forget it.

Mott1 wrote:

Mr. Happy wrote:Erm, I will go with Dalek if I must but Into the Dalek isn't that bad for a later Nu Who story.

Yes I agree : Into The Dalek was ok, certainly one of the best of that season along with Mummy.

The 'good dalek' bit worked better than I thought it would and Journey Blue was one of the better non-regular characters. I'd even say she should have travelled with the Doctor instead of Carla (which admittedly is damning with faint praise). I liked the way her sexuality was not treated as her defining 'characteristic', and she actually seemed to take the whole situation seriously - much better than Danny Pink!

It's just a shame the Doctor stuck to his principles of never travelling with a warrior like, say, Leela.

The only problem I had with Into the Dalek was that at the end Rusty sends a retreat signal and then the Daleks pick him up. Why? The idea of Daleks showing mercy is just wrong. They could easily have blown the ship out the sky once he sent a signal but they stopped to pick him up?

Remember in Destiny when they had suicide squads? Then think back to River Song getting a Dalek to beg for Mercy in the S6 finale. Cowardly Daleks are shit. Cheers, Moffat, you cunt.

I think every single NuWho Dalek story has been shit, all three of the 80's Dalek stories knock the shite out of them.

I suppose if forced to choose, "Dalek" and "Into the Dalek" are probably the best two, bits of "Asylum Of The Daleks" were just about tolerable too.

All shit compared to the 80's Dalek stories though.

Dalek, dodgy ending aside, is the only one that I would call 'great', hell its the only NW Dalek story in my top 10 favorite Dalek stories. the rest range from good (BW/POTW) watchable (AOG/DD, DIM/EOTD and VOTD), subpar (SE/JE, AOTD, ITD and TMA/TWF) to diabolical (Resolution).

TheWatcher wrote:Dalek, dodgy ending aside, is the only one that I would call 'great', hell its the only NW Dalek story in my top 10 favorite Dalek stories. the rest range from good (BW/POTW) watchable (AOG/DD, DIM/EOTD and VOTD), subpar (SE/JE, AOTD, ITD and TMA/TWF) to diabolical (Resolution).

I'd mostly go with that, although I'd personally move The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar into the 'diabolical' category.

I think that one is the very worst.

Me too. It's fucking ghastly.

Dalek and Parting of the Ways were good.

Otherwise i can pass on them all.

Manhatten was okay but the follow up let it down. The Pigmen were one of RTD's incredibly bad ideas. A revival of the Robomen would have been a better idea.

Julian Bleach was a good choice for playing Davros but he was wasted in two of the worst two parters of the shows revival.

I think it's obvious that Moffat just doesn't like the Daleks and only ever included them for the sake of fan service - or contractual obligation if the Terry Nation Estate rumour is to be believed. He left their reintroduction in Series 5 to Mark Gatiss, even admitting that he didn't pay enough attention during Victory's production. After that, they were more or less reduced to cameos for the first two years, playing small parts in stories that could easily have worked without them. The two dedicated Dalek stories Moffat wrote himself portrayed them as weak, dim-witted, ineffectual, mindless drones unable to fend for themselves and controlled by their travel machines, the latter defeating the entire point of them being mutants in tanks rather than mere robots.

Another thing Moffat fucked up was their relationship to the Doctor. They wiped out his entire species, they're supposed to be the creatures he despises most in all the universe. How and when did he go from this to castigating resistance fighters simply for being soldiers and appearing totally nonchalant about the existence of a new Dalek empire with mass prison camps?

At least RTD knew how to build them up as a credible threat before ruining everything with the inevitable deus ex machina. To give credit where it's due, Russell's enthusiasm for the Daleks also shines through in his dialogue. Even in a story as fundamentally flawed as Journey's End, there are real highlights like the Supreme Dalek's chilling questions about emotion after Donna's apparent death, whereas Moffat's Dalek dialogue is the most lazy and uninspired I've ever heard. You can almost hear Briggs straining desperately to inject some semblance of life into the insipid, generic, repetitive drivel he's been landed with.

From taking a backseat to James Corden pissing about in a shopping mall to becoming the remote-controlled playthings of Missy, the Cybermen fared no better. It's like he just couldn't resist taking the piss out of TruWho icons. The return of the Mondasian variant in Series 10 was a definite improvement, but that was reportedly more Capaldi's idea than Moffat's.

I was watching a documentary about the Cushing movies last night, featuring some interviews with Terry Nation. He spoke of how strongly he felt about protecting the image of the Daleks, how hard he'd tried to stop them appearing on comedy shows, and how important it was that they remained a credible, menacing threat and weren't reduced to figures of fun. I can only imagine how outraged he'd be by The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar. Just look at this shit...



Well over a dozen of supposedly the most dangerous creatures in the universe just sitting around silently, lazily staring into the distance while Pissy Missy prances around making sexual innuendos about them. How could anyone possibly think this was in any way a good idea? Was Moffat EVER a fan of this show?

Despite the worst moments of the New Who Dalek stories, I could always just about come away from most of them still believing and feeling the Daleks were a dangerous galactic threat.

Until The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar.

That's when it became impossible to take them remotely seriously as that anymore.

I used to like the Eccleston ones, but on rewatching them, I realised they were shit.

The last one I saw was Asylum. Have I missed anything? (Ironic question)

Having read that JE first drafted post, 3 emotions come to mind

"YES!"
"Satifactory"
"Goddamn it, Billie!"