Originally Posted by grazey1985:
“I've no issue with the daleks being in it but I feel 4 times in the past 3 years is far too often. It just doesn't excite me any more as it's not surprising. Personally I'd find it more exciting if they bring back davros on his own without daleks. It has been done for big finish and given to the correct writer I think it could be very well received. The classic series didn't have the daleks back every year. In the Tom baker era there was about a 5 year gap between appearances so I have no issue if they actually spaced out their usage for every 2-3 years instead of every year”
The thing is that everything works to a brisker pace these days. It's all well and good to consider that the Daleks (on two occasions in the past, the first of which was intended to be a retirement for them) went around five years without a story in Classic Who - but these days entire TV shows seldom last that long! I think the change of pace means we have to accept that tropes of certain TV shows will recur a bit more frequently than they were once able to. Aside from that, they still go down an absolute storm with younger viewers every time they appear - which in turn sells toys. It keeps the majority of people happy.
I could place various faults at Moffat's feet, but I feel he's at least done an okay job at including the Daleks without giving them too much airtime. RTD was a little guilty of this, with all four of his series having a two-parter that features the Daleks, with Series 1 featuring a further episode with them. I believe he also intended to include them in The End of Time before Moffat said he had plans for them for Series 5 (ironically by 2010 most people wanted less Daleks, and then a great number of people insisted that
Victory of the Daleks would have worked better as a two-parter).
I have to exuse the use of them around the 50th Anniversary, so I couldn't say that their appearance in 2013 was overkill. The Time of the Doctor also included them simply because of the nature of the story, rather than because it was an out-and-out Dalek story. As such we've only really had
Victory of the Daleks, Asylum of the Daleks and
The Magicians Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar as Dalek stories under Moffat since 2010, which isn't so bad in this fast paced, modern TV scene. I get that with only 14 episodes a year to enjoy it's a bit frustrating knowing that at least one of those will predictably be a Dalek story on some level... but then I hope to enjoy the story before automatically thinking the worst because the Daleks happen to be back again.
Originally Posted by Fizzbin:
“You know nothing, John Smith.”
I should have seen that one coming