A New Dalek Paradigm

Well now. SPOILERS. In fact, if you're looking at this, it's possibly a bit late but, if you don't want to know anything about Victory of the Daleks, GO BACK YOU MAD FOOLS, GO BACK!!!

*Ahem* Anyway, I was on the whole impressed by it, even if it did gallop along a touch too fast. The Dalek’s plan was sound and their needing the Doctor's help was wonderfully reasoned. And the new Daleks were certainly impressive, with some wonderful (intentional or otherwise) nods to Ron Turner's art on the Dalek Chronicles. However...I have three problems with said new Daleks.

The first is that they look hunch-backed. This is not a little be due to some bright spark's idea to cover the back panel of the skirt with a ruddy great support pillar with vents on. This is something I’ve noticed happening a lot in fan redesigns and I personally loathe to see it on anything that isn't a special weapons Dalek. In fact, I dislike any design that cuts the Dalek bumps down from the requisite 56. In story, if they are sensors, then that would leave them with a blind spot. Out of story, I just don’t think it looks right. All this said, on subsequent watching, I am getting used to it so we’ll have to see how it goes.

The second is the neck/ring section. It looks like a compost bin. And you can SEE STRAIGHT THROUGH IT. Granted, this only happens a couple of times but would it have killed them to put a bit of gauze or something around inside there? The above models take these two complaints and run with them. It’s effectively my attempt to bolt aspects of the new design onto a more traditional (and, admittedly, smaller) model, since it’s long been my ambition to apply some features of Turner’s wonderfully stylised Daleks to an actual model and this is as good an excuse as any.

But the third problem is the worst and will sorely test my endurance if it remains. It’s one of the greatest crimes against the image of the Daleks since the comedy routines of The Chase. It is an almost unforgivable sin. You see, last night, the world bore witness to the unimaginable horrors that were the Bright Orange Dalek and the Marigold Yellow Dalek.

I exaggerate, of course. But while I am (as a glance at my gallery will show) a lover of multi-coloured Daleks, there are limits. I’m not talking about going beyond so hallowed ‘black, red, blue, grey, gold’ spectrum of acceptable Dalek colours ‘cause they already did that with the rather spiffing bronze scheme we’ve had for the last five years and that worked wonderfully. What I’m talking about is the sudden absence of the very definitely metal feel that the UK’s favourite pepper-pots have been sporting of late. Suddenly we’re back to flat, matte colours and it leaves a design that is bigger, bolder and heavier than even the bolted and riveted RTD era one looking decidedly plastic. And that would be fine, I suppose, if it weren’t for the colours. You see, it kind of works on the White, Blue and Red versions. A bit of texturing and a metallic zing would go a long way, of course, but what the heck. Bonded polycarbide doesn’t sound like a metal anyway.

Except then we have Orange Zest and the Sunflower Kid and it all falls apart. If it had been a decent gold and copper, we’d have been fine, I think. But Orange and Yellow – *bright* yellow – do not look threatening. They’re cheery, friendly colours, nice, happy colours, in short, colours no self-respecting Dalek should be seen dead in. They look, as a friend of mine pointed out, like sweets.

Which is all a rather long winded way of saying that, when it came to deciding on colours for the above picture, I decided to stick with metallic hues. I hope that, while still striking, they can at least hold their eyestorks high, confident that they do not look like they could be undone with a craft knife and a glue-gun.

*Phew*
Rant over. Enjoy the picture. It’s sort of WIP but hopefully there’ll be more of this design to show off soon.