Picture of the Somethings

• 12th April 2010 • Blog Post by Seb Patrick •

If the Radio Times had their way, we really wouldn’t ever see anything for the first time upon its actual broadcast, would we? I’m honestly surprised they don’t just print a full synopsis of each episode in Alison Graham’s infantilised drawl each week.

Anyway, if you want to see something extremely big and important and relevant to this coming week’s episode, then follow the jump. And if you don’t want to see it, then for god’s sake don’t go into a newsagent before 6.15 on Saturday.

IT’S THE NEW DALEKS. Well, or is it? Is it simply the new Dalek? There are two options, here.

1. As The Flatmate of the Site has it, there’s only one new Dalek, and it’s this one :

… and the others are all simply mockups for the Radio Times, to tie in with the election (red, blue and yellow DO YOU SEE). And that this one Dalek is some kind of special one-off, or Supreme, or something.

2. There really are four new Daleks in four different colours, and this is how they’re all going to look for the entirety of the Moffat era.

And while TFOTS loves it, I’m… not sure. Okay, I like the panelling on the skirt. And it looks pretty cool and retro. And I can fully get behind white and black as a colour scheme after years of dull gold (then again, if they’re really going that way, I can fully get behind multiple colours of Dalek – particularly if those colours all indicate different ranks). But the shape of it just looks… wrong, somehow. It’s too chunky. It looks comical, rather than intimidating. Then again, we said that about the redesign of Cappsy, and look how that turned out.

The only real place to judge this is going to be when we see it onscreen on Saturday, but… well. This is going to be controversial. (In fact, it already is. But Moffat only has to use the word “the” in a script for Gallifrey Base to find controversy in it) And it does pose the question: are we going to get new Cybermen as well, or what? As well as the question: if there are four of the buggers, how much is it going to cost me to buy Character Options’ versions?

Seb Patrick once met Paul McGann, who immediately pretended to be Mark McGann. He writes for Den of Geek, BBC America, Film4 and the official Red Dwarf website, among others. He owns over thirty toy Daleks and wishes the Dapol factory tour was still open.

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15 Responses

  1. But… we already saw a Dalek in the preview. And I didn’t notice it looking like the weird Fiat Multipla version you’ve got here.

    Also:

    Everything below the jump appears in your RSS feed. Unless people are actually visiting the site old-school then you need a new way of hiding spoilers.

  2. I can’t be bothered to form an opinion of this until I’ve seen it in action. The majority of The Leisure Hive have already written off Moffat’s era now, declaring this shit along with any other old foes that might appear in series that haven’t even been written yet, while Gallifrey Base have gone beserk over this in other ways. It’s too tiring.

  4. This is certainly nothing to get angry about, but I remain to be convinced. It’s almost certainly going to be a special Dalek in this story (although, who knows, it might lead into all Dalek encounters being with these new versions in the future) but in still form they just don’t look as good as the 2005 versions. Not even close.

  5. in still form they just don’t look as good as the 2005 versions. Not even close.

    The “neck” section puts me in mind of the bendy part of a drinking straw. I want to pull its head up and elongate its neck, just to experience the satisfying “popopopopop” sound it’d make. And to see what it would suddenly look like, of course.

  8. The 2005 Daleks were built to match Billie Piper’s height, and these are designed around Matt Smith’s. Maybe Giraffe Daleks are a cost cutting exercise: We see you’ve regenerated again, Doctor *popopopop*

  9. Confirmation (a scan from another mag) that the red, blue and yellow variants ARE in the episode, and not just election-based mockups. INTERESTING.

  11. Can’t be arsed to read everyone else’s comments, but as I’ve just said on my own Facebbok page, the panels look nice (comtemporary yet retro), the eyestalk looks as though it’s capable of more movement (and therefore, arguably, more expression. This is good), but I’m not sure on what I want to call ‘the weapons belt’, despite it being a wanky name – it looks too cumbersome, and makes the top half look too small compared to the bottom.

    But – a brave decision by The Moff, and not a complete fail. I think I like it.

  13. That came out wrong, sorry. I meant that if I repeated what anyone else had said, it was because I hadn’t read the other comments before writing my own – I like to write stuff down before I forget, see.
    Sorry again.

  14. “Confirmation (a scan from another mag) that the red, blue and yellow variants ARE in the episode, and not just election-based mockups. INTERESTING.”

    It’d be fun if the rainbow daleks actually *did* represent all the different political partys and they all started fighting each other and it was a teh satires or something.

  15. It’d be fun if the rainbow daleks actually *did* represent all the different political partys and they all started fighting each other and it was a teh satires or something.

    Especially if all the blue ones were pointed out as being a load of old shit immediately, and everyone around them agreed that this was the case.