Go, Go, Color Daleks!

I believe the new Dalek design is for exactly the same reason as the new Tardis interior and exterior and the new sonic screwdriver. The old designs wouldn't look as good in HD. You'd be able to see the rough edges.

For me I loved hearing a Dalek ask "Would you like a cup of tea?!"

Highlight of the series so far.

No, they just don't like change.

In a show that pretty much relies on it!

Oddly, I love Buffy to bits. I just wanted Who to be more a remake of Who and not simply a grafting of certain visual and spoken symbols onto a completely different collection of tropes. So it's not that I'm find it hard to adjust per se, I just feel it's a poor remake. Alongside the truly stunning remake of Battlestar Galactica, New Who felt decidedly Old Buffy -- as if RTD and co had sat there with a checklist and a copy of Syd Field, trying to work out how to make SF accessible to a modern audience for whom soap now represents high drama.

That's the classic Who that the GBP had turned it's back on during the 80's with the increasingly poor stories and Crossroads-quality sets and monsters?

Thank goodness for RTD and the others who brought us this new Who era, at least it helps eradicate from the memory much of the decay that set in after Tom Baker's departure! Hopefully it won't deteriorate to that late 80's quality anytime soon, or else the show's in trouble, especially in these ratings-obsessed times.

If only the internet (and DS) had been around and such a presence back then, it would've been interesting to see how the fans at the time would've reacted... "McCoy's just not got the presence of Davision, and keeps gurning"...

I do think if it hadn't been for the long hiatus the show would have kept going through gradual changes and probably ended up in close to the same state by 2005 but people mightn't have noticed so much.

I'm not sure what point your citations are supposed to make. Arguably, New Who has seen a continual decline in the Daleks which, together with their over-use, has changed them from being the best monsters to one of the least scary and least interesting. The single emo-Dalek that Rose met that self-destructed was one step on the way. The trash-talking with the Cybermen was another. Dalek Kaan was another; more emo. The only way to make them scary was to have thousands of them, and that didn't work either because it was so obviously CGI. It would be entirely consistent to see these new multi-coloured Daleks as yet another step towards rubbishness.

For what it's worth, I'm now fairly optimistic. I didn't like them at first, but I now appreciate that the different colours indicate different specialisations and personalities. The white one is the leader. The red one is a drone, that I gather will do much of the fighting (like red shirts in Star Trek?). The yellow one, I think, is the scientist - that's the one that scanned the Doctor's jammy dodger and uncovered his ruse.

When Daleks all look the same, it's hard to give them character. Now when we see a yellow Dalek we'll expect it to behave differently to a red one. It could make for more involving story-telling.

I think you make a very good point indeed - we never noticed the changes so markedly before because we were living the times as the programme aired...I wonder how many people hated Jon Pertwee in Colour and how many moaned because they didn't have a Colour set...

I don't think it's actually a case of short memories or being hard to please, but more a case of peoples tastes changing and getting in and out of their comfort zone.

I've only been posting on this thread for less than a year and already I have seen the average post swing from hating Ecclestone and loving Tennant to waily,waily, waily Tennant is leaving to it's ok Ecclestone was better than Tennant anyway to Matt Smith is the best thing that's ever happened to Doctor Who to why can't we have Patrick Troughton back to Smith is rubbish.

Horse for courses. Pretty soon, people are going to hate the Weeping Angels when and if they speak..

D

Eradicating the classic series from memory is exactly what I don't want to happen and why I'm not much of a fan of the new version.
Anyway a formula that worked for 26 years must be considered as a major success. Some of the stories in the 80's are considered some of the best in the show's history, and if it was doing so poorly then it wouldn't have lasted all the way to 1989.
Numerous factors led to its cancellation, the fact it was mistreated by the channel certainly sealed its fate.

Anyway, I wonder if we'll be talking about the new version in another 20 years.

Do you not think that the success of new Who has introduced many people, young and old to the classic series? If anything new who has kept the classic series more in the limelight, it has made it cool again for many people that would have never have dug out those old shows.




More than the classic series yes, it is easy to forget just how badly classic who was perceived by the general public prior to the new who re launch. Like it or not New Who has kept the memory of classic who very much alive outside your regular classic who fan and given it far more kudos than it had during the 80's 90's.

Well I never said it wasn't stubborn and selfish of me to think that way.
I'm thinking about how I feel about the show, not anyone else.