Doctor Who: Why Steven Moffat Should Let The Daleks Win
To paraphrase C3PO of Star Wars, “I suggest a new strategy, let the Daleks win.”
In June of 2011, with one quick sentence, Executive Producer, Steven Moffat defeated the Daleks, Its time to give the Daleks a rest. He attributed this to the Doctor having thwarted their various schemes about 400 times. And so it was that the Daleks were placed on holiday, and the Doctor Who universe erupted in panic. However, Moffat wasnt consigning the Daleks to the dust bins of ill-designed seasoning condiment holders for all of time. Rather, he felt that they had been overused as a plot device and as a result there appearance on screen and eventual defeat were becoming a little too predictable. Since then, the Daleks have only had a fleeting appearance in the Wedding of River Song and featured as the man antagonists in the Doctor Who Adventure Game City of the Daleks. Trailers for the upcoming game The Eternity Clock also seem to indicate that our favourite capsules of hate will be reasonably prominently in that title too. So having downplayed the effectiveness of the Daleks as adversaries, how could Moffat bring them back from their vacation? Thankfully, he has left an avenue open for their return. At the end of Victory of the Daleks, the Dalek Supreme lets the Doctor know that they were departing to rebuild. And this is how I think we should see the Daleks return not with a bang, but slowly, bit-by-bit. And unlike the Bad Wolf arc of the Dalek Emperor, or the impending darkness of Davros return, we should know outright that the Daleks are on the rise again all along. That being said, Moffat couldnt just bring back the Daleks as monsters of the week only to see them defeated again. That would be ignoring the plunger smack he dealt their mutated egos last year. Instead, there needs to be a new approach. To paraphrase C3PO of Star Wars, I suggest a new strategy, let the Daleks win. The Daleks need their mojo restored, especially in the eyes of a fan base thats been told that the Daleks are little more than paper tigers. We need to see them deal setback after setback to the Doctor, and the wider Who-universe needs to display a sense of fear and trepidation about this new, directly aggressive Dalek stratagem. Because ultimately, Moffat was right. We have seen the Daleks defeated far too often. Whether its a small group of straggling survivors like the Cult of Skaro, or the sizable forces of Davros Dalek Empire onboard the Crucible, theyve all been defeated. All their crafty machinations have been taken apart piece by piece by the Doctor and its evident that from the minute they roll onto the screen that theyre not going to triumph. Of course, I dont mean that the Daleks should be allowed to exterminate all life in the cosmos, as we tend to need other species to add variety to the show! And neither do I want to see the Daleks gatecrash the road to the Doctors demise on the Fields of Trensalore, as Moffat has set that up rather nicely. Instead, we should progressively hear about, and occasionally see, the Daleks imperious march back to being a credible threat. All you need is an episode each season with them, and the odd mention of their ongoing rebuilding from characters we meet along the way, and eventually youll have the Daleks back at their fearsome best. 
To some extent weve already seen a format that could work. In Victory of the Daleks the Dalek refugees succeeded in getting the Doctor to verify that they were Daleks and in doing so, secured the future of their species by creating the New Dalek Paradigm Daleks. While they failed in having the Earth die screaming, they did enjoy a rare victory over the Doctor. Its this model of episode that could work for restoring the Daleks reputation. The Doctor may inflict a tactical defeat on the Paradigm at the end of an episode, but the Daleks would still secure the overriding strategic victory, thus ensuring their menace continues to grow. Factor in that we still dont know what the Eternal Dalek actually does, and we can only hope we see the Daleks return properly to our screens in 2012.