New Dalek Paradigm

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The New Dalek Paradigm was an empire of purebred Daleks created by a Progenitor device, which made use of original Dalek DNA. The Progenitor was activated by the only three surviving Daleks of the previous empire, themselves "unclean" specimens since they were generated from the cells of Davros. The original five Daleks of the New Paradigm, and the leadership class once their new empire was created, were more powerful and much larger than any of their predecessors.

Overview

Characteristics

The Daleks of the New Dalek Paradigm had towering casings and a bulkier, yet more streamlined design than their predecessors while retaining the basic Dalek structure of a dome-shaped head connected to the torso by a neck and a "skirt" of grey orbs (black for Eternal Dalek). The shoulder slats (TV: The Chase) were removed and replaced by the original bands. New to the design, however, was the addition of a rear compartment (replacing the basic back "skirt" panels) , that was supposed to open and allow the New Daleks to access other weaponry.

One thing that didn't change, however, was their personalities. If anything, their egos appeared to have increased in size along with the rest of them. They considered themselves invincible and boasted their superiority in typical Dalek arrogance, even as Spitfires rained down on them. Despite the three survivors of the New Dalek Empire giving them life, these New Paradigm Daleks, true to Dalek nature, exterminated them for their impurity. The older Daleks knew this would occur the entire time and offered no resistance. (TV: Victory of the Daleks)

Hierarchy

These Daleks were colour-coded according to rank and position, that is to say a singular Dalek that is more rounded in terms of a skill-set would be a 'drone', a singular Dalek that has a higher intellect would be a 'scientist', and so forth as to make a more expanded, organized armada. Supreme Daleks were white, the Eternal Dalek was yellow, Strategist Daleks were blue, Scientist Daleks were orange, while Drone Daleks were red.

While the new Drone Dalek design was mass-produced initially, (GAME: City of the Daleks, COMIC: The Only Good Dalek, GAME: Return to Earth, GAME: The Eternity Clock) the Daleks ultimately went back to using the Time War models as the shells for their basic drones, making the larger red models more rare. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks) These bronze drones were sometimes sent on missions where they operated without the leadership or presence (although still under the instructions) of New Paradigm commanders. (COMIC: The Dalek Project, PROSE: The Dalek Generation)

The position of ultimate leader varied. During the New Dalek Paradigm's first encounter with the Doctor, there were only five Daleks, each one the first example of their rank, making the Supreme, as the name implies, the supreme. (TV: Victory of the Daleks) However, as the Daleks started their campaign of Empire-building, at least two Dalek Emperors are known to have ruled the New Dalek Paradigm at some point. (GAME: City of the Daleks, The Eternity Clock) Later on, a Parliament of the Daleks was established, and the Supreme Dalek was subordinate to the Dalek Prime Minister. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)

Several commanding officers were long known to exist. The mission to destroy the "Abomination" and Station 7 was commanded by a Chief Strategist. (COMIC: The Only Good Dalek). When the bronze drones were reintroduced, another mission was led by a black Dalek. (COMIC: The Dalek Project) Additionally, the Dalek Time Controller took overall command of the Daleks' search for the Cradle of the Gods, even outranking the Supreme Dalek. (PROSE: The Dalek Generation)

Initially, some of the red Dalek Drones acted as the Emperor's guards, and were identified as such by their black domes. (GAME: The Eternity Clock)

The Daleks' zero tolerance for failure was not affected by rank. For example, during the attack on Station 7 and search for the Abomination, a Dalek Strategist was killed by a Dalek Drone for failing to ensure the safety of Weston's base. (COMIC: The Only Good Dalek)

History

Origin

The Last Great Time War left only small pockets of Dalek survivors, all of which were destroyed in confrontations with the Doctor. (TV: Dalek, Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways, PROSE: I am a Dalek, TV: Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, COMIC: Carnage Zoo, Flight and Fury, The Living Ghosts, Extermination of the Daleks) This left Dalek Caan of the Cult of Skaro as the last Dalek in existence. (TV: Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks) Caan coincidentally but not deliberately travelled back to the Time War, breaking through the time-lock at the cost of his sanity. He saved Davros from the jaws of the Nightmare Child and brought him to 2009. Davros rebuilt the Dalek race, growing them from his own cells.

Eventually, Caan, betraying the Daleks, lowered the defences, allowing the Meta-Crisis Doctor to destroy Caan, Davros, and the Daleks. (TV: Journey's End) However one Dalek ship with three Daleks onboard managed to perform a time jump back to 1941, escaping destruction. (TV: Victory of the Daleks)

Creation

The three Daleks along with one found the last surviving progenitor, a device containing pure Dalek DNA and the means to recreate the species. However, due to the circumstances of their creation, the progenitor refused to recognise them as Dalek, as they had been created from Davros's own mutated Kaled cells (TV: The Stolen Earth). To activate it, they started a scheme called the Ironside Project: they created an android to claim they were his inventions and pretended to be "Ironside" machines for the British Army. When the Eleventh Doctor arrived (after receiving a telephone call from Winston Churchill), they tricked him into calling them out - "I am the Doctor and you are the Daleks!" - so this "testimony" could be used to activate the progenitor.

Five new, larger Daleks were created, with pure DNA, a new colour-coded rank, and a white Dalek Supreme as their commander. There was also a Blue (Strategist), Orange (Scientist), Yellow (Eternal) and Red (Drone). These Daleks immediately exterminated the older three for their impurity (the three willingly allowed this to happen) and forced the Doctor to let them escape, using a bomb hidden within the Bracewell android on Earth to prey upon his compassion and make him return to Britain. While the Doctor was deactivating the bomb, they escaped through a time corridor to create a new Dalek Empire, practically laughing at the Doctor for always failing to kill them completely. (TV: Victory of the Daleks)

Empire-building

Following their escape, the Daleks discovered the lost Time Lord artefact, the Eye of Time, allowing them to alter time as they saw fit. The Daleks returned to Skaro, rebuilt their capital city of Kaalann, appointed a new Dalek Emperor and began rebuilding their Empire. In this new timeline, they killed every member of the human race. However, the Eleventh Doctor and Amy undid these events, leaving Earth unconquered and Kaalann still abandoned. (GAME: City of the Daleks)

The Dalek Supreme led an attack on the SS Lucy Grey to recover the Daleks' lost Time Axis. The Eleventh Doctor defeated them by firing their ship into the sun. (GAME: Return to Earth) The Dalek ship escaped by making a random jump several hundred years into the past. The Daleks attempted to force the Doctor to fix their ship by attaching his TARDIS into their ship; the Doctor escaped and used his TARDIS to fling their ship into a black hole. (GAME: Evacuation Earth)

A Scientist Dalek sent an alien family plummeting through time and space to collect all the Time Orbs. The Scientist recruited many Strategist Daleks and Drones. It also recruited big armies of Cybermen and Silurians as a distraction for the Eleventh Doctor and Amy. (GAME: The Mazes of Time)

At the beginning of the 40th century, the Daleks began another war with humanity which continued into the 41st century. The Eleventh Doctor and Amy encountered a group who had been sent on a mission to find a Dalek mutant being experimented on by a scientist who tried to make them less aggressive creatures. The Daleks referred to this mutant as "the Abomination". They attacked and destroyed Earth's top secret space station, Station 7, and chased the survivors to the planet Strantana below. After slaughtering all resistance, they finally found the Abomination in a hidden base, but it escaped its container and disabled the base reactor's safety measures. An explosion destroyed the base, the Daleks, the Abomination, and all the Dalek ships that had landed on the planet. The Doctor, Amy and Jay, an SSS officer, watched from a safe distance. The Dalek mission was a failure but the war continued. They had agents working in the SSS. (COMIC: The Only Good Dalek)

The Daleks joined the Alliance to imprison the Eleventh Doctor in the Pandorica in 102 to save the universe. (TV: The Pandorica Opens) As the Doctor was not responsible for the Total Event Collapse as they thought, the Daleks, along with almost the rest of the universe, were destroyed, leaving only two Stone Daleks, one of which hindered the Doctor and his companions' efforts to save the universe in 1996. Nevertheless, they were successful and the whole of reality, including the Daleks, were restored. (TV: The Big Bang)

Searching for information on the Silence before going to what he assumed was his death, the Doctor found a badly damaged Supreme Dalek and looked up information on the Silence in it. (TV: The Wedding of River Song)

Led by a new Emperor Dalek, the Daleks planned to remove Gallifrey from existence and become the new Lords of Time. They used a piece of the Eternity Clock to put a Time-Lock around a large part of London in 2106. Once they perfected their Time-Lock technology, they planned to use it to put temporal bubbles around other planets, making them unstoppable. The Eleventh Doctor and River Song infiltrated the Emperor's Flagship and managed to take back the piece of the Clock. (GAME: The Eternity Clock)

At some point, a small contingent of bronze Daleks were sent on a mission to travel through Earth's history and analyse how humans made war so that weaknesses could be found and exploited in future conflicts with the Daleks. They called this the Dalek Project. The Eleventh Doctor encountered these Daleks in the First World War in 1917 where he sent their ship crashing to the ground by ramming a plane into it. The remaining Daleks were destroyed by the combined armies of the war who had formed a very brief alliance to defend themselves. The Dalek saucer remained underground for one hundred years before it was found and accidentally reactivated by a team of archaeologists. The Eleventh Doctor arrived in time to save them and connected the ship up to a power line, overloading the Daleks. he called this "unfinished business". (COMIC: The Dalek Project)

With the help of the Dalek Time Controller, the Daleks discovered the artefact known as the Cradle of the Gods and its power to create or destroy. The Daleks established the Dalek Foundation and the Sunlight Worlds apparently to help humans recover from a huge galactic recession when in fact they planned to transform the 400 planets with the Cradle into copies of Skaro. They sent a hypercube to the Doctor's TARDIS to manipulate the Eleventh Doctor into leading them to and activating the Cradle. However, with the help of siblings Sabel, Jenibeth and Ollus Blakely, the Doctor managed to set the Cradle to self-destruct and the Dalek Time Controller abandoned the plan. It is unknown what became of the Dalek Foundation and the Sunlight Worlds after this. (PROSE: The Dalek Generation)

The Asylum

After being ruled by two Dalek Emperors, (GAME: The Eternity Clock, City of the Daleks) a Parliament of the Daleks was formed, led by a Dalek Prime Minister.

When a human starliner, the Alaska, crashlanded on the Dalek Asylum planet, the security of the insane Daleks contained there was compromised. Fearing what would happen if these Daleks were to escape, the Prime Minister ordered the abduction of the Doctor, who he knew as the predator of the Daleks, so he could be sent to the Asylum and lower its impenetrable force field so the Daleks could destroy their deranged brethren, despite their wish to preserve them and their "beautiful" hatred. Understanding that the Doctor was best assisted by his companions, his most recent ones, Amy Pond and Rory Williams, were abducted as well.

Once the planet's defences were lowered by the human-turned-Dalek, Oswin Oswald, the Parliament launched an attack to destroy the Asylum, but not before Oswin Oswald had wiped out all memory of the Doctor in the minds of every Dalek. When the Doctor came back to their ship, he was bombarded with "the First Question" ("Doctor Who?") by the entire Parliament. He left shortly after, but not before taunting the bewildered Daleks that they'd never stop asking. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)

Behind the scenes

Conception

Mark Gatiss wrote in the script of Victory of the Daleks for the Daleks' redesign to be "big buggers...bigger than we've seen them before". The eyestalk was designed to be level with Matt Smith's eyeline. Steven Moffat and Gatiss wanted the new Daleks to be very colourful, similar to the Daleks of the 1960s Amicus Productions Dalek movies, Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.. Gatiss originally wanted there to be a green Dalek, but he decided that green "just doesn't seem to work somehow". Nick Briggs, who voiced the Daleks, planned to counter their bright colours with a more vicious voice.[1]

Reception

The 2010 redesign of the Daleks attracted much criticism from hundreds of angered fans. [2] Mark Gatiss, who wrote their debut episode, acknowledged the controversial nature of this redesign in his in-vision commentary on the DVD box set. In conversation with principal Dalek voice artist Nicholas Briggs, and Dalek operator Barnaby Edwards, he opined that the new shape of the Daleks, especially in the dorsal region, was not particularly to his liking. Briggs agreed, but, with Edwards, swiftly noted that in their experience of taking the new Daleks on live exhibition to the public, British kids, for the most part, loved the new design. The decision was revisited in DWM 431 with critics voicing their opinions on the design. A comparison was made with the RTD-era Daleks, but without a conclusion as to which was the better-made. Steven Moffat finally settled the controversy when he stated in an interview that he would be keeping the bronze Daleks as the standard soldiers, and the Paradigm variants would be in charge of them as an "officer class". This was first seen on-screen in Asylum of the Daleks.

Modifications

Additionally, further tweaks were made to the 2010 redesign for their reappearance in Asylum of the Daleks: the Drone and Strategist Daleks were now in deeper, more metallic shades, and the biological eyes were made more obvious.

Other

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Jones, P. (16 April 2010). Mark Gatiss on the resurrection of the Daleks. Radio Times. Archived from the original on 19 April 2010. Retrieved on 6 July 2013.
  2. ↑ New-look coloured Daleks ‘like toys’. The Sun (19 April 2010). Retrieved on 6 July 2013.
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