The Cybermen might have suffered the worst at the hands of successive writers and script editors, but the Daleks were not immune to dilution of threat.
The big problem was the introduction in 1975 of their creator, Davros. It was obvious to Terry Nation and to Eric Saward that this character was far more interesting than his creations. They could be rather monosyllabic, and difficult to write dramatic dialogue for.
One Davros arrived, the daleks were pushed into the background of their own stories.
Before Genesis of the Daleks, the Daleks had been empire-builders - invading planets (including Earth - twice) as well as creating dastardly weapons like the Time Destructor. They had their own command structure - a Black Supreme to begin with, followed by an Emperor and then other leaders such as the Gold Dalek seen in the Pertwee era.
Their dialogue might have weakened after their first appearance, in which they can be really quite chatty with each other:
"A few questions will reduce the mystery".
"Mark her movements carefully. If there are more Thal people living in the jungle she will try to make contact with them".
"Will they let themselves starve to death? No, I feel preserving our prisoners was a good idea" / "And an arrangement to bring the Thals inside our city an even better one".
"Because the lapse of time, the relaxation of sleep, the provision of food, all these things will give them a false sense of security".
Admittedly, after their first couple of episodes they begin to sound more like the later Daleks, simply issuing orders or threats.
The Daleks only feature for about 14 minutes of Genesis' 6 episode running time. Prior to this, they had a habit of only turning up at the cliff-hanger of their first episode - ideally in some unusual manner - but they then dominated the remaining episodes. Whilst the odd one (the very odd one) committed suicide, it generally took a very big explosion to finally get rid of them - unlike the Cybermen who had a rapidly expanding list of really rather pathetic weaknesses. Daleks weren't allergic to anything - except the Doctor.
Once Davros appeared, the Daleks started to transform into his 'heavies'. Whilst they play a reasonably substantial role in the first half of Destiny and most of Resurrection, they hardly feature at all in Revelation of the Daleks until the grey ones turn up in the last few minutes.
In 1988, helping to mark the 25th Anniversary, Ben Aaronovitch endeavoured to make the Daleks once again the focus of their own story. We didn't even notice the arrival of Davros, disguised as he was as a giant roll-on deodorant. With a second Dalek civil conflict, the creator finally played second fiddle to the creations. No doubt, had the series not been cancelled, future Dalek stories would have placed the focus back on them again, as in the Hartnell to Pertwee years.
When it came to reviving the series in 1996 the Daleks were going to feature prominently, even undergoing a radical redesign to give them spider-like legs. In the end, all we got was Daleks off screen, sounding like they'd been sucking helium, in an underwhelming TV movie.
In 2003 it was announced that the series would be coming back as an in-house BBC production, and it would be a series - not just a one-off pilot / special.
Everyone automatically assumed that the Daleks would feature, and indeed writer Rob Shearman was adapting elements of an audio of his for one episode. The person who had commissioned the series assumed that the Daleks would feature in the opening episode, but Russell T Davies refused to countenance this - arguing that they should be held back until the mid-point just in case the series did not take off, and needed a relaunch. Even a successful series needs a mid-point "flagpole" episode, to prevent interest flagging.
Not only would the Daleks be appearing part way through the series, RTD had a plan to feature them in the finale. He decided that their first appearance should feature just a single Dalek - showing how powerful and deadly they could be before unleashing a whole army of them in the finale.
As such, Shearman had to think of ways to make the Daleks scary again. They had to be a credible threat. RTD could tell us that they were powerful enough to go to war with the Time Lords - to the extent that the only way to beat them was to destroy both sides - but we really had to see why this should be.
Shearman simply looked at the Dalek form, and considered each element in turn. Remembrance of the Daleks had featured a VFX of a victim being shown in skeletal / X-ray form when exterminated, so new CGI effects could produce a more effective version of this. The sucker was generally derided as a sink plunger - so it became capable of crushing skulls, as well as interacting with control panels.
The "bumps" became explosives, which could presumably be used against opponents as well as performing self-destruct duties.
The middle-section of the Dalek could now rotate, allowing it to shoot in any direction without having to spin its whole casing around.
The whole "can't go up stairs" thing may have been put to bed in Remembrance - but the general public hadn't seen that, and the old joke persisted. It was therefore important that the Dalek be seen to hover so that it could travel anywhere.
These Daleks couldn't be easily destroyed either. They now had bullet-melting personal force-fields.
Added to this was the redesign, which sensibly opted not to make any major changes to the overall shape. Instead, the changes were in the surface detailing. As Daleks were fighting a war, they would be more armoured in appearance. (Ray Cusick wasn't happy with this, as he felt the surface details, such as the big rivets, looked what they were - man-made, when they ought to have been Dalek-made).
On top of all of this, the Dalek could now regenerate in a sense - absorbing DNA from a time-traveller to repair their casing and re-energise themselves.
One thing which hadn't changed from the classic series was the Dalek obsession with racial purity - and this would be this lone Dalek's downfall. In absorbing Rose's DNA it took on other human baggage, which it couldn't cope with. (But if this is one of the Emperor's Daleks, then it has human DNA in its make-up anyway - so shouldn't have been that affected by Rose surely?).
The episode didn't need to show the actual Dalek mutant. I actually hoped they wouldn't - reinstating some of the mystery of the early days which might have caught the imagination of younger viewers. Just what was inside that thing? Alas, this wasn't to be. If they were going to show it, at least give us something impressive - and this they did.
The return of the Daleks, at least in this first series, nearly never happened. The BBC rubbed the powerful Nation estate up the wrong way by assuming that the Daleks could be used without their approval. Shearman started on an alternative script - which he jokingly called "Absence of the Daleks" - featuring a Sphere (later to be recycled as the Toclafane) which RTD had devised in case the Daleks couldn't be used. He needn't have worried. Doctor Who can do without the Daleks - but the Daleks can't do without Doctor Who. The estate simply wouldn't have been doing its job by denying the use of the Daleks, as it would have lead to a massive loss of potential income.
The Daleks were back, courtesy of just a single member of the race. They were cunning, ruthless killers once again, and no longer figures of fun (no matter how hard Nation had tried to avoid this happening).
In a way, the first appearance of the Dalek sent the message that this was no longer the cheap, childish show that the general public often thought it to be - more than the first five episodes had done.
Had Rose and the other early episodes not already successfully grabbed the public's attention, Dalek would certainly have achieved the relaunch which RTD hoped it would do if needed.
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