Doctor Who: 8 Spin Off Characters Who Became Canon

7. Technicolour Daleks

At the height of Dalekmania in the mid-60w, the BBC and Dalek creator Terry Nation licensed Amicus Productions to produce up to three feature-length films based on Doctor Who using Nation's Daleks. The two films that were produced took their names and story from televised Dalek serials of the William Hartnell era - Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966) - but otherwise took place separately from the main show. Taking advantage of the ability to film in colour and the bigger budget, both these films used upgraded Dalek props of different hues including blue, red and black. The props themselves would go on to be used in the show proper during the Classic Series run. 45 years later, the main show was undergoing a makeover with a new Doctor, companion, TARDIS console room and sonic screwdriver design. Steven Moffat, who was also newly-appointed executive producer, decided that the redesign should also extend to the most iconic monsters in Who history. Mark Gatiss penned Victory of the Daleks in which they were reborn as the New Dalek Paradigm, a race of "pure" Daleks free of the human factor they'd used to rebuild their numbers after the Time War. The new look was almost immediately ridiculed for making the Doctor's deadliest enemies look like a twee range of Power Rangers style colour-coded kid's toys and, while not entirely dropped, has been toned down and largely ignored since. Whilst they're not the same individual Daleks who faced off against Peter Cushing's Dr. Who, with a completely different origin, Moffat took inspiration for the multispectral Dalek design from the Amicus films.