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[ilovebiscuits]

Is any one else feeling disappointed in the BBC for their use of the current Daleks? Over the Christmas break we had Daleks running around in air ports advertising comedy shows and the latest BBC one trailer has them standing side by side with all the dancing/singing shows like they're all sitting on the same level

Comments

[vervet_monkey]

Was having this same conversation with Mum the other day. She grew up terrified of Darleks, and STILL jumps when walking past the one in our local bookshop, despite the fact it's been there forever.

It's not quite so scary when there everywhere (I personally found the soldier Darleks before their skittle transformation the scariest of all)

[ilovebiscuits]

Where is this Dalek? A life size Dalek could be awesome!

[vervet_monkey]

It's a promo one that sits at the top of the stairs, rather than one they've used filming. But it is pretty cool!

[nobleplatypus]

Full disclosure: I started watching Doctor Who in college, and took in some Nine and Ten before working my way back into Classic Who, so I had zero exposure to daleks as a kid... which may be why I have ALWAYS found the daleks to be a combination of laughable and irritating. It's their voices that get to me; I just can't take anything seriously that ends every sentence with an upward inflection. They sound like valley girls screaming underwater. So I'm all for seeing less of them, just not for quite the same reasons.

[captaintish]

so I had zero exposure to daleks as a kid... which may be why I have ALWAYS found the daleks to be a combination of laughable and irritating.

THIS.

[nobleplatypus]

The hype didn't really help, either. They were presented in New Who as a BIG. FREAKING. DEAL. Which meant nothing out of context (i.e. without some familiarity with Classic Who, which I lacked at the time), and left me just kind of baffled. :P "It's... a squid in a can. Eek?"

Frankly, I could do with less of daleks, cybermen, and anything else from Classic Who that we've seen in the new series more than once. You have the entirety of time and space to work with; why recycle villains? And if you must, why not recycle something really freaky, like the Mara?

[calapine]

You have the entirety of time and space to work with; why recycle villains?

In the case of the Daleks, and to a lesser extent, the Cybermen, it's because they're Iconic in the UK. Even though DW had been off the air for sixteen years, save the telly movie, most people in Britain knew what a Dalek was and there was a lot of goodwill and nostalgia about them.

[eaweek]

I thought the stone Dalek in "Big Bang" was scarier than almost any Dalek they've had on the entire run of the new series. Similarly, I found the lone disarticulated Cyberman in "Pandorica" more creepy than legions of them--certainly way more creepy than the over-the-top giant Cyber King.

Seriously, you can have too much of a good thing. Overexposure makes any monster less scary. The default reaction becomes, "Oh, them again?"

[calapine]

I thought the stone Dalek in "Big Bang" was scarier than almost any Dalek they've had on the entire run of the new series. Similarly, I found the lone disarticulated Cyberman in "Pandorica" more creepy than legions of them

Same here. That was the first Cyberman that had ever managed to scare me.

[bardingtide]

They were scary in Parting of the Ways because you didn't expect there to be so many.

But you're right. In Tennant's run it was more a case of, "Daleks? Again? I swear the Doctor killed them for good last time."

[calapine]

To be fair, that's what always happens. He killed them for the Very Final Time, No Really rather a lot in Classic, thus RTD continued the fine tradition.

[rj_anderson]

The lone Dalek in Dalek was insanely scary -- the only time I'd ever truly understood how kids could be afraid of them. After that, meh.

It's like the Borg were in Star Trek. Incredibly creepy and unsettling at first, but after a while they'd become so overused and humanized (Borg Queen, are you KIDDING ME?) that they stopped even being interesting any more. Assimilate blah blah blah whatever.

I really don't know what it would take to make the Daleks even remotely scary again.

[captaintish]

A little off-topic -- I liked the Borg Queen, but I think it was what they did with the Borg on Voyager that really de-scarified them for me. It's hard to be scared of Seven of Nine. She's really just not scary. And those kids they rescued? Not scary. :)

[rj_anderson]

A re-humanized Borg I can work with, seeing as she'd clearly been human (and then assimilated) in the first place. But the Borg Queen was the world's most terrible idea, because the whole scariness of the Borg was that they had no leader, no single point of attack. They were this enormous collective, and no matter how many of them (or which ones) you killed they would just keep coming. Giving them a visible hierarchy with a Queen at the top of it totally destroyed that sense of overwhelming hopelessness that was so crucial to their scariness at first

[ilovebiscuits]

How can any Doctor Who villians be scary when they're defeated by a guy with no weapons at all?