10 Simple Fixes That Would’ve Improved Doctor Who
8. Tone Down The Design Of The New Paradigm Daleks
The Daleks are as iconic to Doctor Who as the TARDIS and the titular Time Lord. The evil foe that torments The Doctor throughout their life, always wreaking havoc and always finding a way to survive.
The most important element of an iconic symbol like this is a maintained design across the decades. Although there have been some minor alterations to the Daleks’ design over the years, the overall layout remains the same. Metallic casing, round nodes, and toilet plunger arms!
The most daring upgrade came in Series 5 with the New Paradigm Daleks, and while the overall shape remained the same, the bright new colours and larger size did not receive praise from fans. Placed next to even the WWII camouflage design, these bold giants seemed too cheerful and lacked the steely, cold aura of these soulless creatures.
The simple solution here would’ve been to stick more closely to what worked, making the New Paradigm Daleks slightly less vibrant, and slightly less… well, chunky. Even Steven Moffatt himself admitted that their design was a mistake:
“When I looked at them in person I thought ‘my god, the new Daleks are awesome, they’re so huge and powerful, they’re brilliant.’ But I learned a grave lesson; which is that when you put them on screen, of course, they don’t look bigger, they just make all the other Daleks look smaller.”
If the man responsible admits it was a mistake, then you know the new design just didn’t work. It’s no surprise that these Skaro Skittles were barely seen again after this episode.