Doctor Who Series 12B: The Timeless Chibnall (Xmas special & pre-Series 13 chat)

[Thomas]

I think they might have gotten away with the paradigm Daleks if they'd actually done something with them at some point during the rest of the series. To introduce such a dramatic redesign and then have them instantly beaten and run away and then not return was never going to work. For all of Chibnall's faults, even he recognised that the scrapyard Dalek needed to be instantly fucking shit up if people were to take it seriously.

By the time they'd repainted them and positioned them an 'officer class', imposing some sense of rank on the normal bronze lads, I thought they looked quite good.



I think they should have stuck with the 'officer' idea. Kept them at the forefront whenever Dalek decisions were being made - Davros should have had a couple guarding his room in The Magician's Apprentice. I love the variety of Daleks in that story - Asylum had seemed quite timid about showing off the classic designs - but they are hanging about in a weirdly arbitrary rabble. Looks more like a Comic-Con than a Dalek council, all staring at different walls and standing wherever:



The paradigm Daleks provided a great silhouette for the stone Dalek, too.

[Replies From View]

They were okay whenever we didn't see their hunched backs.  Basically their every appearance after Victory of the Daleks filmed them from only one angle, and it was a bit obvious they were doing it.


They appeared in one of the Adventure Games in 2010 and they looked a lot better because their heads had been rescaled to fit their bodies (or their bodies rescaled to fit their heads).  Loads of red "soldier" Daleks worked and I never liked the argument that they were meant to be an officer class all along.  If they'd fixed their design in the same way for the television series after their botched initial appearance they needn't have been buried, but I guess a) budget meant they didn't have the luxury of modifying them, and b) the initial audience response to them was so bad that they decided to back-pedal massively rather than make smaller changes.  Which is a shame, as I think they were a good concept let down by an easily fixable design.

[Kelvin]

Bar the "hunched back", I actually quite liked the redesign - and preferred them in their original, brighter colours. They were meant to evoke the Cushing film, and I thought they succeeded in that respect. I wish the production team had a bit more conviction and tried them for at least one more story, rather than sidelining them for the extremely silly idea of a Dalek Parliament.

[Thomas]

They certainly weren't intended to be an officer class 'all along', no. When Moffat spoke along those lines, I think he was trying to take responsibility and deflect criticism away from the rest of his team for what was seen as a design cock-up.

In 2011, he said:

The fact is, we're not going to lose the old Daleks. We're keeping them. They're coming back. We'll just use them all at once, and have different ranks. All I've done is give the Daleks an officer class.

- which makes it sound like he'd intended it all along. But later he'd say:

Well, I suppose if I'm completely honest – and it's all my fault, no one else's fault – I don't think that was a great idea. When I looked at them in person I thought 'my god, the new Daleks are awesome. they're so huge and powerful, they're brilliant.' But I learned a grave lesson: which is that when you put them on screen, of course, they don't look bigger, they just make all the other Daleks look smaller.

So I revised my plans and I now consider them an officer class of Dalek. You do seem them about from time-to-time. It just became a little bit mad in The Magician's Apprentice because there were so many different Daleks in there that I didn't want to confuse the eye. They haven't gone away. We still have them. But that's the answer. The answer to most questions I find is that I've made a mistake.

I just think that, once they were positioned as such in Asylum, they could have easily remained so.

[Mango Chimes]

They were a shit idea. Here's our new toy line. The blue one's a science one! The yellow one's a politics one! They're bigger than the old ones which never seemed small until we put these big plasticy lumps next to them!

Moffat said they looked good in person, bad on film, but they're nostalgic models and don't make sense as development from the Davies era Daleks. If your brief was to design a new, more dangerous collection of Daleks from those, you wouldn't go from bronze to Tellytubby primary colours. The fact they came at the end of a shit episode where the Daleks were already gimickily repainted in camouflage and union jacks didn't help, nor as Huxley notes that they didn't do anything. The only thing they had to impress was their looks.

I like how they were dropped and never mentioned, though. That's the enjoyable loose continuity of Doctor Who. "Here are the New Paradigm Daleks! This is it! These are your Daleks now! You'll be seeing a lot more of these! A new era is here!" Never mentioned again, only seen as extras in the background of group shots.

[Alberon]

Saw a new paradigm Dalek toy in a window while on a walk the other week. The hunchback is an absolute terrible failure of design, something really went wrong there.

The metal zip on the back - presumably allowing the Dalek to swap arms for something other than unblocking the toilet - was a good idea and maybe it could be reintroduced somehow.

[Mister Six]

I think they might have gotten away with the paradigm Daleks if they'd actually done something with them at some point during the rest of the series. To introduce such a dramatic redesign and then have them instantly beaten and run away and then not return was never going to work. For all of Chibnall's faults, even he recognised that the scrapyard Dalek needed to be instantly fucking shit up if people were to take it seriously.

They didn't get instantly beaten - they were victorious over The Doctor, hence the title "Victory of the Daleks".

[Thomas]

As an idea and a design, I think the rough Resolution Dalek, cobbling itself back together out of scraps and retrieved weaponry, is the most successful element of the Chibnall era.¹

The spoilery images of the forthcoming Dalek ep seem to imply that

Spoiler alert

the silhouette of the Resolution Dalek, however, is something that originated on Skaro, with actual Daleks shaped like that - which does not look as good

[close]

.

Spoilers in case of anyone caring.

_{[1] For fairness' sake, you've also got the performances of Bradley Walsh, Alan Cumming, and Sacha Dhawan; the CyberCunt; and Maxine Alderton writing a good ep.}

[Replies From View]

Bar the "hunched back", I actually quite liked the redesign - and preferred them in their original, brighter colours. They were meant to evoke the Cushing film, and I thought they succeeded in that respect. I wish the production team had a bit more conviction and tried them for at least one more story, rather than sidelining them for the extremely silly idea of a Dalek Parliament.

I agree in terms of the intention to evoke the Cushing films, but the Cushing film maintained the Dalek silhouette.  The New Paradigm Daleks tampered with the shape just too much.


Here's how they appeared in the Adventure Games, which presumably used designs drawn up before they appeared on television.  It works:




This also works:




Here is how they appeared on screen, viewed from the side.  They break the classic Dalek silhouette and that's why we never saw them from the side ever again:

[Replies From View]

They were a shit idea. Here's our new toy line. The blue one's a science one! The yellow one's a politics one! They're bigger than the old ones which never seemed small until we put these big plasticy lumps next to them!

"Bigger Daleks" is a mis-step in itself.  A Dalek is more terrifying when it can enter your house.


Fun fact:  the height of the RTD-era Dalek was determined by the desire to have Billie Piper and the first Dalek look eye-to-eye, with the Dalek's eyestalk horizontal.  The height of the New Paradigm Daleks was to allow a similar scene with Matt Smith.

[Replies From View]

Moffat said they looked good in person, bad on film, but they're nostalgic models and don't make sense as development from the Davies era Daleks. If your brief was to design a new, more dangerous collection of Daleks from those, you wouldn't go from bronze to Tellytubby primary colours.

Why?

The New Paradigm Daleks didn't design themselves as a follow-on from the RTD ones.  In-universe they were a fresh start.  Stripping back to core Dalek DNA, and in a position to use whatever Dalek shell they wanted.  In theory they could still be multiplying somewhere in the universe and show themselves one day, in technicolour glory but without the humps.

It could have been fun and exciting, and if they'd looked more like the drawn design above than the ones we ended up with, I'm sure we'd all be talking about how great they are.

[Replies From View]

The metal zip on the back - presumably allowing the Dalek to swap arms for something other than unblocking the toilet - was a good idea and maybe it could be reintroduced somehow.

Also pointless, though.  There's never been a time when you've felt a Dalek gun was insufficient unless it just wasn't working.


Plus imagine a Dalek changing its weaponry:  the new weapon popping out of the zip, scooting along the outside rail and connecting into its weapon socket.  It's just impractical and absurd, especially when you picture that Dalek within any tight location like a corridor.  We've since seen Dalek eye-stalks popping out of people's foreheads, so it's surely not a stretch to imagine Daleks neatly withdrawing their weapons and exuding alternative ones, with the swapping mechanism itself occurring internally.

[Replies From View]

Here's a fan image that tweaks the shape back to the classic silhouette.




I think it'll be a shame if we never see technicolour, Cushing-esque Daleks again as a consequence of the 2010 design mistakes.

In my view these examples all show that it wasn't the colours that were the problem.

[daf]

Not bad, but those black plastic shoulders and neck bits just don't do it for me. They look like cheap toys!

All they need to do is paint one of those lovely RTD brass ones in the colours - like this :

[Thomas]

Series 1 had this variant, hovering distantly in the background of The Parting of the Ways:



Based on behind-the-scenes photos, it looks as if a red Peter Cushing Dalek was supposed to be appear in The Magician's Apprentice:



Perhaps it didn't look great when filmed.

[Replies From View]

Not bad, but those black plastic shoulders and neck bits just don't do it for me. They look like cheap toys!

All they need to do is paint one of those lovely RTD brass ones in the colours - like this :

Those are lovely but I want them to take the risk of complete redesigns as well every now and then, otherwise we have Time War Daleks all the time apart from cameos from other models, and that's not always appropriate. 

They could change a lot of those details and still ensure all the variants are recognisably Daleks, as long as they carefully maintain the silhouette.

[weekender]

Those are lovely but I want them to take the risk of complete redesigns as well every now and then, otherwise we have Time War Daleks all the time apart from cameos from other models, and that's not always appropriate. 

They could change a lot of those details and still ensure all the variants are recognisably Daleks, as long as they carefully maintain the silhouette.

Red and yellow and pink and green
Orange and purple and blue

I can see a rainbow!  Why can't you?

Obviously it's because Chibnall's shit and no-one wants a rainbow dalek, but have your say.

[mjwilson]

Victory needed to do what 'Dalek' did and be written to show off the new designs. Different coloured Daleks have different jobs? Fine, show us. You've screwed up the classic shape to give them extra attachments like a hoover? OK, write a big set piece based around it.

We would probably still have hated them but at least they would have justified their existence. As it is, everything that's new about them seems to be in the "I'll explain later" category.

[mjwilson]

Dalek watchalong live-tweet now (I think this should work: https://twitter.com/hashtag/TheMetaltron )

Episode preview at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y2RZ2mwMR8&feature=youtu.be

[daf]

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Tonight's tweeters :
ROBERT SHEARMAN : @ShearmanRobert [Writer]
NICK BRIGGS : @BriggsNicholas [Dalek Voice]
BARNABY EDWARDS : @BarnabyEdwards [Dalek Operator]
Combined link : #TheMetaltron  /  Trailer

[daf]

Dalek Prequel - written by Andrew Ireland, starring Leo Flanagan as Sven.

SVEN AND THE SCARF



Part 1

BARNABY EDWARDS : I'm really looking forward to seeing 'Dalek' again after all these years. I was in those chains for what seemed like forever!
‪#TheMetaltron‬
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : Half an hour to go! Just saying - feel free to tweet at me as much as you like, but I'll be too busy to answer you directly during the ep. I shall try and catch up afterwards though!
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BARNABY EDWARDS : Just slipping into my Dalekanium shell in preparation for tonight's tweetalong. Now, where did I put that monocular tentacloid...?
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : So! Welcome to Dalek - the story of what happens when one individual decides to break self-isolation, and the havoc that causes. Pressing play now...
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : Ah, space year 2012. Did any of us working on it back then believe the show would still be running in 2012? I'm sure I didn't. I bet Russell may have done.
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NICK BRIGGS : I sort of assumed it'd go on forever
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : Straight into the museum! I didn't write a Tardis scene, because I found it oddly intimidating. Too much like a fan living the dream! Always regretted it. So fifteen years later I made myself write one for the Target book. (Still intimidating.)
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I wanted the museum to be housed entirely with stuff we'd already seen in the previous four stories. But one of them was in the year five billion, and the Gelth were made of gas. So a Slitheen arm was the best I could offer!
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NICK BRIGGS : Cyberman!
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : Julie Gardner had the idea that there should be a Cyberman head. I sort of objected. It felt weird to me that in an episode called Dalek, we should be first introduced to a Cyberman.  /  She pointed out it this was all precredits, and so no one knew the story was called Dalek yet.  /  So I pretend this is its own mini-adventure, called Cyberhead. Enjoy.
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NICK BRIGGS : That was from Revenge of the Cybermen. Interesting...
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BARNABY EDWARDS : I was offered the part of the Dalek over the phone, thanks to various people recommending me: @BriggsNicholas  ‪@twilightstreets‬ and Mike Tucker among them.
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NICK BRIGGS : The second assistant asked me for recommendations. I told him I'd have a think. I asked Gary Russell, he recommended you. So I phoned the guy back and recommended you.
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BARNABY EDWARDS : I love the thumping bass of this first New Who theme.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : Big West Wing fan, so here are people walking in a corridor talking American politics. Though now I just wince at their lack of social distancing.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : Dalek was broadly based on Jubilee, a Big Finish audio I'd written for Colin Baker. Russell had heard it, and seized upon the idea of this lone tortured Dalek as a means of reintroducing them.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : Dalek could never be Jubilee. This had to be a story for a fresh audience who may very well have never even heard of Daleks, and would wonder why the big villain in this new Saturday night series was a pepperpot. We had to turn Jubilee's overfamiliarity on its head.
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BARNABY EDWARDS : We shot this on location in the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.
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NICK BRIGGS : Ah. Corey Johnson.  quite a character
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : You can always tell how powerful a man is by whether people laugh at his bad jokes.
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NICK BRIGGS : Intruder window. That was funny.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : My Big Finish plays were grotesque comedies, and the characters were weird and outlandish and cruel - the better to contrast with the reality of the Doctor and his companion.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : That's fun, but it's tonally very different to the series Russell was creating, which felt real and emotionally grounded. It took me a few drafts to stop populating the base in Utah with nasty bizarre caricatures. Russell was very patient.
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NICK BRIGGS : That first scream got an incredible reaction in the readthrough.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I seem to remember the use of the word 'canoodle' caused some controversy because of its sexual content. Seemed odd at the time. Seems odder now.
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NICK BRIGGS : canoodle | kəˈnuːd(ə)l | verb [no object] informal kiss and cuddle amorously: she was caught canoodling with her boyfriend.
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BARNABY EDWARDS : This is such a great script. I was at university with @ShearmanRobert, so it was a great to work with him professionally.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : If I'd known it was going to be a hashtag 15 years later, I'd probably have come up with a funnier name. ‪#TheMetaltron‬
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I wanted the Dalek to be much more damaged by the torture, really falling apart. But look at how iconic it looks. I was wrong. This is *the* defining image from the episode.
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NICK BRIGGS : Here we go!  Such great memories of working on this with Chris.
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BARNABY EDWARDS : I was inside the Dalek for every single shot, even the ones where it doesn't move. Chris Eccleston wanted a living thing in there and I was happy to be that thing.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I remember how alarmed I was when I first saw the way Chris performed this scene. The lines I wrote could be played very arch and aloof, like an old-fashioned Doctor. But Chris puts such venom into them. Amazing.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : And seriously, just imagine what this would be without Nick Briggs. Refusing to be constricted by it being a voice performance, going it for it full throttle. He's such a terrific actor.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : Time War! I remember asking Russell for details, and he said it was all smoke and mirrors, we'd never need to know much. Ha!
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NICK BRIGGS : All this Dalek dialogue is taken from the on-set recordings. There are all sorts of inconsistencies in the modulation from different takes, because we were having a nightmare with signal interference from the lights transmitter.
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BARNABY EDWARDS : I arrived several days early so that the interior of the Dalek could be finished off to fit my body. All future operators have had to fit my body shape. Sorry, folks.
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NICK BRIGGS : I remember a bus driver in Chicago saying he'd seen this scene and thought that Raph Fiennes was the Doctor. [crying with laughter emoji]
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I had a joke that Van Statten preferred his own name for the Dalek, and stubbornly called it Metaltron right to the end. Most of my scripts are built on bad jokes.
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NICK BRIGGS : It was fun to perform both characters of this scene in the audiobook reading
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : There is one bad joke that actually made it from first draft all the way to broadcast. I shall cheer when we get to it. I like to hope you may cheer too.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I modelled Adam upon me, but younger, more handsome, and cleverer. It was so flattering when the fan base took him to their hearts. I know he is a very popular character.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I got the call inviting me to write a Dalek story for Doctor Who when I was riding upstairs on a London bus. It's very dangerous to be given good news on a bus, because you want to race about whooping, and you could cause an accident.
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BARNABY EDWARDS : The beautiful rusty paint job on the Dalek was done the day before we filmed by the original set painter from Alien. It was like having an Old Master on set.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I wasn't allowed to tell anyone, of course, but I bent the rules and told my wife. "I'm bringing back the Daleks!" I said. " Oh, " she replied, and screwed up her face, "never mind."
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I asked her why she'd said that, and she told me that Daleks were just jokes, weren't they? Cumbersome pepperpots with useless sink plungers that had no conversation and couldn't go up stairs.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : So I made her write down everything she thought was silly about a Dalek, so my script could try to confront that, head on.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I named Goddard after her as a thank you. I'm not entirely sure she was sufficiently grateful.
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NICK BRIGGS : 'Make it talk again' is what they said to me after every take.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : We were cautious about using too many continuity references at this point. No Skaro, no Davros. Describe a Dalek for what it *is*, not as a Wiki entry.
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BARNABY EDWARDS : John Schwab, who plays trooper Bywater (he doesn't live long), is the guy who says 'Time for Telly Bye Byes' in the Teletubbies. This will be the greatest fact you hear this evening.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : Julie Gardner really wanted a scene where Chris got his shirt off. Just saying.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : Chris was so funny about doing a topless scene. 'I'm both fat and skinny at the same time - only in different parts of my body.'
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : This was a tricky scene to pull off. How much is the Dalek lying? How much is it genuinely emoting to Rose? You have to accept it both as lie and as truth for the drama to work.
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BARNABY EDWARDS : I think of this as my love scene with Billie.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I had the idea that the Dalek is like Lecter from Silence of the Lambs. Even in a cell, he's too dangerous to talk to. He'll get inside your head.
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NICK BRIGGS : 'Don't get too close'
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NICK BRIGGS : I loved this scene with Billie.  /  Joe, the director, kept asking me to do it slower and quieter to make Billie cry. It worked.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I had a much more grisly death in mind here at first! The body thrown about the room, the face burned off!
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NICK BRIGGS : Love the reflection of the light on the rear of the Dalek's eye
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BARNABY EDWARDS : This was such fun to film.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : When we started we weren't sure whether we'd be allowed to depict death in a family show. So I got really carried away when we at last got permission!
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BARNABY EDWARDS : Gotcha, sucker.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : Love the delicate way that ungainly sucker can operate a keypad.
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NICK BRIGGS : 'Initiate cellular reconstruction' had a lot of fun with that line
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BARNABY EDWARDS : When the set explodes around me, note that I was told it would be one small pyro.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : This bit is nicked from Full Circle, written by my mate @Andr3wSmith‬. The death of the Marshchild.
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NICK BRIGGS : Here come the guns!!!  So many bullets. I think they spent the entire allocation as the first shots were fired!
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : There's John Schwab as Bywater! I like John. On set he shared his chips with me.
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NICK BRIGGS : I was standing right behind them when they were doing all that shooting
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : Bywater is named after my friend Owen Bywater from school, the fan who got me into Doctor Who in the first place. In a very real way, this is all his fault.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : In multiple drafts I had a guard named Briggs too, after Nick. At that stage I had no idea he would be hired to do the voices, I just thought it would amuse him. I don't think I've ever told him that.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : Briggs got exterminated so often that eventually he just vanished from the script. Over the various drafts that happened to a lot of my characters. They were Dalek fodder, and all died pretty horribly.
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BARNABY EDWARDS : Telly Bye Byes, Bywater!
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : Have to keep reminding myself that inside the Dalek, wearing a sock over his head, is my old friend Barnaby Edwards. I was at university with him!
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NICK BRIGGS : It's interesting that the Doctor is the one wanting it killed.
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NICK BRIGGS : Love that spinning middle section
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BARNABY EDWARDS : The middle bit is CGI.
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NICK BRIGGS : All dead #TheMetaltron‬
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[daf]

Part 2

ROBERT SHEARMAN : Of course the Dalek could go upstairs! We'd seen it before. And we fans all knew it from the comics anyway. But we had to sell it as a new thing. #TheMetaltron‬
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BARNABY EDWARDS : The guns are genuine Kalashnikovs with bolts put through the barrels. They make a hell of a noise.
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NICK BRIGGS : Half the alien weapons are hairdryers, though
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I don't believe any character at this point would really believe a murderous alien on a killing spree would be defeated by a staircase. Adam speaking like critics sneering at our show for years and years in the tabloids.
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NICK BRIGGS : The Blue Peter crew were getting in everyone's way at this point. Matt Baker started mucking about with my ring modulator later. I gave him a nasty stare.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I love how slowly Joe Ahearne makes the Dalek move. The deliberate cruelty of it. It knows there's no rush. It knows it will kill you.
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NICK BRIGGS : You just know it's going to kill her
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BARNABY EDWARDS : Finally, that whole climbing stairs thing is knocked on the head.
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NICK BRIGGS : THE moment for people who didn't remember Remembrance of the Daleks
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I should probably at some point have googled the population figures for Salt Lake City.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I went through a phase of writing lots of elaborate action sequences to show off the Dalek. This is the one that survived.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : There's a draft where the Doctor and Adam hide from the Dalek on the remains of the Roswell spaceship, tracking them using sentient mines. Dear God, it wasn't a very good idea.
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NICK BRIGGS : Ah, the 'Killing Zone'. We seemed to spend days here
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BARNABY EDWARDS : This was called the Killing Zone. I'm wearing goggles, a wet suit and ear protectors in there - but I could feel the percussive impact of the sound waves.
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NICK BRIGGS : Close up of the extra who leaked the storyboard shots to the tabloids there
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : Properly Omen, the music, isn't it? Murray Gold is amazing. With his demonic Welsh choirs!
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BARNABY EDWARDS : And now we see the reason for the wet suit.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : Joe Ahearne is great. Dear God, I love that image of the Dalek in the rainfall.
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NICK BRIGGS : The Dalek was on some high scaffolding there
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BARNABY EDWARDS : Millennium Stadium underground car park, if you're interested.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I structured the episode around 3 big encounters between the Doctor and the Dalek, each one showing how their characters are shifting. I think this is the best one.
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NICK BRIGGS : Those supporting artistes all got well soaked
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BARNABY EDWARDS : Utterly soaked already. And, yes, years later I do 'get rusty' or rather play Rusty.
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NICK BRIGGS : This whole bulkhead door thing ends up not making any sense, I believe ;-)
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NICK BRIGGS : Love this bit. Had to do it twice. Once under the stadium and once in the studio.
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NICK BRIGGS : Nice dribble
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : The story is, Chris wanted the dribble left on his chin in the final cut of the episode, to show how ugly the Doctor is by this point. I hope that's true.
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NICK BRIGGS : You would make a good Dalek. Genius line
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I really wanted the sense here that the Dalek is just *itching* to kill Rose. It doesn't want any bond. It is adamantly not her friend.
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NICK BRIGGS : They've run out of power to open it. But in a few seconds, they open it anyway. Hmm...
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I fix it in the novel...!
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BARNABY EDWARDS : Billie was so impressive in this scene. Those tears are real - not glycerine.
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NICK BRIGGS : It was onions. I always carry a couple in my pocket
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : Chris sells this speech so well. This is my favourite scene in the episode. About as far from the stars as you can get. Lovely.
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NICK BRIGGS :  Ring modulator suddenly disconnected during this bit and they wouldn't retake, so there's an obviously dubbed bit
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I should have made it clearer perhaps that the Dalek is wrestling with this new concept of love it's just inherited from Rose. Or not. You've got to keep the story moving on. Does stick out, though.
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NICK BRIGGS : 'What use are emotions... ?' He's canny that Mr Dalek
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I'm cheering! It's the hairdryer gag! All the way from draft one! Cheer with me! Cheer the joke that survived the edit!  /  Mind you, I cut it out of the novelisation. It couldn't survive forever.
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NICK BRIGGS : Loved that hairdryer joke
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BARNABY EDWARDS : Joe Ahearne wanted such precision on all these moves and I was so bruised at the end of each day's filming, but I think it's worth it. This looks great!
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : In early drafts I wrote that Van Statten had wanted the Dalek to sing it happy birthday. Remember it's his birthday at the beginning? He's being torturing a living creature for as crass a reason as that.  I still quite like the idea, but tonally by this stage it would just be so wrong.
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NICK BRIGGS : When the Dalek looked at Billie, the blue light was so bright it was hurting her eyes
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : You've got to feel here that the Dalek has really achieved something. A bit of daylight! A hint of the outside world. Its quest has been our quest as well.
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NICK BRIGGS : Dalek on tracks here...  /  Notice how it mysteriously got taller for a couple of shots
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : And there's the real Dalek! I can't help it, I'm genuinely moved.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : The Doctor is both right and wrong, and Rose is both right and wrong. That's the point.
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NICK BRIGGS : Billie and Chris weren't filming at the same time here, because Chris had to be away for family reasons. So Billie did all her dialogue here to a third assistant reading in. Then Chris came back a few days later. And Billie and I did all our bits again.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : The Dalek is disgusted by becoming more human, and killing itself is its ultimate rejection of what we stand for.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I love that even as it seems to bond with Rose, it is still screaming at her to obey, just like an ordinary Dalek.
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NICK BRIGGS : I do love the way the Dalek ends up self-destructing... The circling spheres etc.
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BARNABY EDWARDS : We're about to find out what those hemispheres are for.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : Those balls are the sentient mines I mentioned earlier, a hangover from an earlier draft. Not sure that works, to be honest. Still moving, though.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I never dealt with Van Statten properly. Russell wrote this, and all the mind wiping stuff. It's really good. (It's become a big part of my Target novel, plug plug. Poor Sven.)
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NICK BRIGGS : Comedy ending with Van Statten.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : Swansea begins with S. We should have said Swansea.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : There's one draft where Van Statten disappeared, and no one could find him at the end. And only as the TARDIS dematerialises do we see his head in a glass case.  /  I was never quite clear how it could have got in there, though.
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BARNABY EDWARDS : Anna-Louise Plowman had never seen a Dalek before and she thought it the funniest thing she'd ever come across. She had great difficulty not laughing in all our scenes together.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I shall leave you with one final anecdote.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : I have a vague memory that when we did the DVD commentary, Bruno expressed surprise that there would be room for all three characters travelling through time and space in a small box. The show hadn't been on when he was a kid, so he'd never watched it. And neither of Adam's two stories have any interior Tardis scenes, so it'd never been explained in any of his scripts.   
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : So he might be the only companion to appear in the show and never realise it was bigger on the inside than the out all the time he was making it.  I'm no longer sure any of that is true. But as anecdotes go, it amuses me, and I'm going to stick with it, so there.
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BARNABY EDWARDS : And that's it! Such an honour to be involved in such a brilliant episode.
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NICK BRIGGS : That whizzed by. Thanks everyone for watching.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : What an extraordinary thing Doctor Who is. Still so strong. Still so brave. I'm so proud I got to be a part of it.
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BARNABY EDWARDS : Thanks everyone for tuning in. I've extracted all your DNA via Twitter and I can tell you that you'd all make good Daleks! #TheMetaltron‬
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : Thanks, everyone! That was fun. I shall spend the next few hours trying to answer some questions. Bear with me, my finger is tired.
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NICK BRIGGS : Nice work. Brings back so many great memories of having so much fun working with you, Barney. Nx
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ROBERT SHEARMAN : Thanks for arranging this, ‪@Emily_Rosina‬ - and for all the tweetalongs. This has been brilliant. xx
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Emily Cook : It isn't common knowledge, but the Daleks were only one of the old monsters under consideration to return to the series for its revival. We can now exclusively reveal script extracts from @ShearmanRobert  early scripts that showcased some alternatives...

   

   

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ROBERT SHEARMAN : And if you enjoyed this, I'm doing it again tomorrow for my Big Finish play, The Chimes of Midnight
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NICK BRIGGS : Voted the best ever Doctor Who story ever, anywhere in the universe, I believe. ‪#PlumPudding‬
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[Replies From View]

The Prequel of the Daleks

[Malcy]

Martin Clunes was considered for the part of The Doctor according to the chat between RTD & Moffat. Big Clunes fan but not sure I can see him in the role.

[daf]

This'll be going in the Audio Adventures thread, but if anyone's interested - Big Finish are doing a Tweet along for Chimes of Midnight from 7pm tonight.
Free streaming on Soundcloud  [it's also on Spotify]

[Blofelds Cat]

Martin Clunes was considered for the part of The Doctor according to the chat between RTD & Moffat. Big Clunes fan but not sure I can see him in the role.

Wasnt it the Xmas special with David Morrisey that he was being lined up for?

[Small Man Big Horse]

Wasnt it the Xmas special with David Morrisey that he was being lined up for?

No, apparently it was when RTD was first bringing the series back and he considered Clunes and Hugh Grant, before deciding on Eccleston.

If anyone fancies reading it, it's available in pdf form on ReleaseBB btw.

[Blofelds Cat]

Ah..didnt know that...heard the Hugh Grant one and also Bill Nighy who politely declined...wouldnt have a problem with Clunes...light years better than the current incumbent...

[mjwilson]

It's from this month's DWM, quite a fun conversation.

[Mango Chimes]

I know it'd still be written well, and I know that Hugh Grant went on to put in a strong performance in a really good Davies TV show, but I can't imagine Doctor Who starring Hugh Grant or Martin Clunes being anything other than shit.