Moffat: New Paradigm Daleks ‘A Mistake’

Andrew Reynolds is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

It was the most controversial decision of the modern era of Doctor Who – to meddle with the design of near perfect Daleks. Battle-hardened, tough and dominating, Russell T Davies had brought the Dalek’s bang up to date and, what’s more, all driven by story.

When RTD departed, there was a need to stamp this new phase of Doctor Who’s revival with something distinctive, something decidedly more colourful – enter the ‘new paradigm’ Daleks, launched in Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor adventure Victory of the Daleks.

It’s fair to say, they never caught on with fans with some dismissing them as Teletubbies or Power Rangers. Now showrunner Steven Moffat has admitted the change was a “mistake”.

“Well I suppose if I’m completely honest – and it’s all my fault, no one else’s fault – I don’t think that was a great idea,” he told an audience at London’s Doctor Who Festival. “When I looked at them in person I thought ‘my god, the new Daleks are awesome. They’re so huge and powerful, they’re brilliant.’

“But I learned a grave lesson: which is that when you put them on screen, of course, they don’t look bigger, they just make all the other Daleks look smaller.”

Following reactions from fans, the old models quickly made a comeback. The ‘new paradigm’ were entirely absent from The Magician’s Apprentice, which led to speculation that they had been consigned to history’s dustbin.

However, according to Moffat, that’s not the case.

“So I revised my plans and I now consider them an officer class of Dalek,” he explained. “You do seem them about from time-to-time. It just became a little bit mad in The Magician’s Apprentice because there were so many different Daleks in there that I didn’t want to confuse the eye.

“They haven’t gone away. We still have them. But that’s the answer. The answer to most questions I find is that I’ve made a mistake.”

So are we happy to see, if not the back of them, then less of them? Was their inception flawed? Were they a case of new design over necessary change?

 

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