Doctor Who Eve Of The Daleks: 10 Huge Questions After The New Year Special

7. Have The Daleks Been Upgraded?

Doctor Who Eve of the Daleks
BBC

After the debacle of the much maligned New Paradigm Daleks, minor cosmetic upgrades has been the way forward. Chibnall has tinkered a fair bit with their look, most dramatically with the reconnaissance Dalek and the ones modelled after it (Resolution, Revolution of the Daleks). But here we are back to the bronze Daleks that have been so effective since the series was relaunched in 2005.

The biggest innovation for Eve of the Daleks is the changes made to its weapon. It’s now able to shoot multiple blasts at once, machine gun-like. It’s still as useless as ever and sometimes unable to hit a moving target close up. To be fair, it’s a problem that isn’t unique to Daleks (the Sontarans and Cybermen were just as useless with their aim in Doctor Who Flux), but with this bigger weaponry on display, we ought to have seen a higher success rate.

Chibnall likes his purpose-made Daleks (scout Daleks, for example), and this lot are an execution squad so the regular army are now doubt still decked out just as we saw them in 2005. The effect of the deaths is still the classic one, but it would have been fun to see something different to the x-ray, one that would show the greater power of the new weapons.

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Paul Driscoll is a freelance writer and author across a range of subjects from Cult TV to religion and social policy. He is a passionate Doctor Who fan and January 2017 will see the publication of his first extended study of the series (based on Toby Whithouse's series six episode, The God Complex) in the critically acclaimed Black Archive range by Obverse Books. He is a regular writer for the fan site Doctor Who Worldwide and has contributed several essays to Watching Books' You and Who range. Recently he has branched out into fiction writing, with two short stories in the charity Doctor Who anthology Seasons of War (Chinbeard Books). Paul's work will also feature in the forthcoming Iris Wildthyme collection (A Clockwork Iris, Obverse Books) and Chinbeard Books' collection of drabbles, A Time Lord for Change.