Let's face it, the Daleks just aren't scary anymore. They're the Doctor's most 'formidable' adversaries, apparently (and not to mention the most persistent!), and nobody's disputing the fact that they're now as iconic as the show itself. They're almost as old as it, too, having first appeared in December 1963, but they've made so many returns since that any morsel of fear and terror they had left has long since been... well, exterminated! Yet still, you feel the need to defend them. You feel as if you're betraying the show somehow, by writing them off, because they're a constant source of pain and anguish in the Doctor's life so therefore you should live in fear of them, too. Only... you can't. Not really. It's not your fault, but how scared is one supposed to be of these gigantic pepperpot who are now just rolled out and dusted off whenever the show needs an extra boost in the ratings? Not that that's helped matters. At one point they were showing up so regularly that it was more of a surprise when they weren't in an episode. The writers have tried to shake things up over recent years, of course (by introducing a paradigm of rainbow Power Ranger ones, for example), but, unfortunately, all of their attempts have so far been in vein. It doesn't matter, though, because as long as the Daleks are around, Doctor Who fans will remain loyal to them. They're the ones that everybody loves to hate, after all, and the series just wouldn't be the same without them. In fact, there would be no series without them, since they're practically in every story anyway. But that's neither here nor there...
Dan Butler is the Doctor Who Editor at WhatCulture.com. When he isn't writing his own articles or editing other people's, he can be found trawling the internet for gifs of Steven Moffat laughing. Contact him via dan.butler@whatculture.co.uk.
