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 were more powerful and much larger than 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 the 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).
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
The original Paradigm Daleks. (TV: Victory of the Daleks)
These Daleks were colour-coded according to rank and position: the Supreme Dalek was white, the Eternal Dalek was yellow, Strategist Daleks were blue, Scientist Daleks were orange, while Drone Daleks were red. (TV: Victory of the Daleks)
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, TV: The Time of the Doctor, Into the Dalek)
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 were 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 Eternity Circle planned to create a new paradigm of Daleks armed with Temporal Cannons that cauld erase victims from history and spread them throughout the universe through the use of the Daleks' progenitors. But the new planned paradigm was never dispersed by the War Doctor and Borusa. (PROSE: Engines of War)
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 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. (TV: The Stolen Earth)
Eventually, Caan betrayed the Daleks, 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
These Daleks 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.
The new Daleks emerge. (TV: Victory of the Daleks)
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, which the three willingly allowed to happen. They forced the Doctor to let them escape, using a bomb hidden within the Bracewell android on Earth to prey upon his compassion and choose between pursuing them and saving Earth. 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
Kaalann reborn. (GAME: City of the Daleks)
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 at Stonehenge. (TV: The Pandorica Opens)
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)
The Doctor had an encounter with the Daleks during which they exterminated Albert Einstein's toothbrush. (TV: Death is the Only Answer)
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 its data banks. (TV: The Wedding of River Song)
The second Emperor. (GAME: The Eternity Clock)
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)
The Daleks were notable customers of the information regarding the Doctor held by the Inforarium. When the Eleventh Doctor discovered the Daleks, as well as the Cybermen and Sontarans, had been purchasing this information, he infiltrated the Inforarium and memory-proofed their database using methods he learned from the Silence. The information sold was thus instantly forgotten. (HOMEVID: The Inforarium)
The Asylum
The Dalek Parliament. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)
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.
The Dalek Asylum. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)
When a human starliner, the Alaska, crash-landed 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, whom he called the Predator of the Daleks. He would be sent to the Asylum to 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)
The Sunlight Worlds
At an unknown stage of their history, the New Dalek Paradigm discovered the superweapon known as the Cradle of the Gods and learned of its ability to create or destroy on a massive scale. To make use of the weapon, the Daleks used a huge galactic recession to their advantage and created 400 planets to provide homes to the billions of people affected, which were collectively referred to as the Sunlight Worlds. It was governed by the Dalek Foundation, with the planet Carthedia of the Earth Alliance acting as a head of state. While a generation of people believed the Daleks had created a welfare state, it was in fact a plan headed by the Dalek Time Controller and the Dalek Supreme to transform the 400 worlds into copies of Skaro.
However the Daleks were unable to activate the Cradle and so they sent an anonymous message in the form of a hypercube to the Doctor's TARDIS with the intention of manipulating him into activating the Cradle instead. The Doctor's investigations resulted in shock when he learned the Daleks were considered a force for good and he was placed on trial while trying to convince the citizens of Carthedia that they were evil, which the Daleks had declared a hate crime. He was put on trial by the Dalek Litigator, who was really the Dalek Time Controller posing as a law enforcer, and when he pleaded guilty in a failed attempt to anger the Dalek and was sentenced to imprisonment, he escaped off-planet with three orphaned children, Sabel, Jenibeth and Ollus Blakely, whose parents, Terrin and Alyst, had killed themselves to prevent the Daleks from obtaining the information on the Cradle they possessed.
After learning more about the Cradle on the desert planet of Gethria and losing Jenibeth, the Doctor tried to spark a revolution on Sunlight 349 to cause the collapse of the Dalek Foundation but he could not gather the necessary support. The Dalek Litigator arrived and subjected the Doctor to another public trial. Sabel and Ollus were taking away from the Doctor's care and he was exiled from the Sunlight Worlds. However he returned to Gethria 90 years in the future and encountered an elderly Jenibeth who had been transformed into a Dalek puppet after the Daleks took her prisoner as a child. The Dalek Time Controller arrived and forced the Doctor to activate the Cradle but Jenibeth's childlike mind allowed her to resist her conditioning and she fired on the Daleks, destroying numerous drones and forcing the Time Controller to retreat and the Doctor set the Cradle to self-destruct.
Before the Cradle exploded, it reverted the Sunlight Worlds to how Jenibeth remembered them as a child, as well as turning her and her siblings back into children and recreating their parents, although their memories were reverted too. While the Daleks abandoned the plan, the ultimate fate of the Sunlight Worlds is unknown. (PROSE: The Dalek Generation) Their manipulation of the Doctor, however, caused him to realise how much of a danger he could potentially be, leading him to enter a short-lived retirement from travelling for a time in Victorian London. (TV: The Great Detective, The Snowmen)
The Siege of Trenzalore
- Main article: Siege of Trenzalore
The Daleks take part in the Siege. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
The Daleks - along with the Cybermen, Sontarans, Slitheen, Terileptils, Silurians, Judoon, Weeping Angels and many other species - were driven to Trenzalore by a mysterious message, a question asked by the Time Lords through a crack in the universe with the answer being the Doctor's true name. If it was answered, the Time Lords would return and the waiting fleets would fire on them, beginning another Time War. To avert this, Papal Mainframe, who had arrived at the planet first, set up a force field which locked all the other species out of the planet and the Siege of Trenzalore began.
The Daleks invade the Church. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
While the other species attempted to sneak past the force field, the Daleks called for reinforcements, preparing for war. Eventually they attacked the Mainframe, killing everyone before converting them into Dalek puppets. Information regarding the Doctor was harvested from Tasha Lem, resulting in the Daleks remembering who he was. They also revived, tortured, and killed Tasha "several times" in an effort to learn how to break the force field. The Daleks then arranged for the Doctor to be lured into a trap, but Tasha managed to break free from her conditioning and destroyed the Daleks sent to kill the Doctor.
Despite the trap failing, the Daleks managed to breach the force field, and the Siege of Trenzalore grew into a war as the species orbiting the planet followed the Daleks through the force field. After much fighting, many of these species were killed or retreated. The Doctor and the Mainframe's Silent priests acted as the last line of defence against the Daleks but they too were overpowered and the Doctor, having used up all twelve of his regenerations, grew too old to continue fighting.
With the resistance dealt with, the Daleks began looking for the Doctor in the town of Christmas with Dalek fighter pods firing on the town and a huge flying saucer descending upon it. However, Clara Oswald successfuly pleaded to the Time Lords to save the Doctor, who began regenerating into his twelfth incarnation. The energy released was enough to destroy some of the attacking Fighter Pods and the final burst destroyed the saucer. The shockwave blew apart the Daleks ground forces, ending the war. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
Resistance from without and within
Rusty. (TV: Into the Dalek)
At some point the Combined Galactic Resistance formed to battle the Daleks and captured a damaged Dalek that was later named Rusty. After the Twelfth Doctor rescued Journey Blue, the Resistance asked him to help fix Rusty as he had been turned good. The Doctor, Clara Oswald, Journey, Ross and Gretchen Alison Carlisle travelled into Rusty and located a crack in his power source that was spewing radiation and killing him, losing Ross along the way.
The Doctor repaired the crack with his sonic screwdriver, but the radiation had been causing Rusty's change, and so without it Rusty turned evil again, breaking free of its restraints and calling in more Daleks to destroy the Aristotle. At the insistence of Clara, the Doctor, Clara, Journey and Gretchen attempted to turn Rusty good again by reactivating his suppressed memories, particularly that of a star being born which would open him to the Doctor's influence.
Clara succeeded in reactivating the memories, opening Rusty's mind and the Doctor telepathically linked with him to get him to see the good in the universe through the Doctor. However, being a Dalek, the "beauty" that Rusty reacted to was the Doctor's hatred of the Daleks. Taking the Doctor's hatred as his own, Rusty turned on the Dalek boarding party attacking the Aristotle and exterminated them. Rusty told the Doctor that he wasn't a good Dalek but the Doctor was, and then he ordered the Dalek flying saucer that was docked with the Aristotle to retreat, claiming that the humans had activated the ship's self-destruct. Rusty left with the Daleks to to continue his war against his own kind by destroying them from within. (TV: Into the Dalek)
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. Later stories like COMIC: The Dalek Project, PROSE: The Dalek Generation, TV: The Time of the Doctor and TV: Into the Dalek would follow this example to even greater lengths. Between these four stories, The Dalek Generation is the only one to feature an appearance by any 2010 Dalek, specifically the Supreme Dalek (and possibly other "high ranking" Daleks), and even this is kept to a small cameo.
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
- The Supreme and Drone Dalek props appeared on an episode of Top Gear when James May hosted a race through the BBC Television Centre.
- Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy use the Supreme, Drone and Strategist props respectively in an attempt to secure a part in the 50th Anniversary Special in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot. However, Steven Moffat cuts the scene from the final product.
- TV: The Day of the Doctor (alongside its prequel The Last Day) is the only story to feature the Daleks in any medium during Matt Smith's run as the Eleventh Doctor that did not involve the New Dalek Paradigm. The New Dalek Paradigm was intended to reintroduce a permanent Dalek establishment so that Dalek stories no longer had to feature Dalek survivors of the Time War, as they had done during the time Russell T Davies ran the show.
Footnotes
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ New-look coloured Daleks ‘like toys’. The Sun (19 April 2010). Retrieved on 6 July 2013.
