What Happened to the Dalek Paradigm?
Guest contributor David Hobday offers an an in-universe theory.
Like them or loathe them, it is impossible to ignore the sudden appearance and even more sudden disappearance of the newer, multi-coloured Paradigm Daleks. They were introduced as a new race of Daleks to replace the depleted Time War models in “Victory of the Daleks”, but despite small cameos in “The Pandorica Opens” and “Asylum of the Daleks” they have all but vanished.
Now the real reason, of course, is that there was a negative reaction to the new designs (despite a 2011 poll on this very website showing that actually 65% of those polled were in favour of the new design), so the production team ‘wimped out’ and continued to use the bronze time war model from the RTD era. But what is the in-universe reason for their disappearance?
I saw one theory that said the New Paradigm, after escaping in “Victory” rebuilt the army using leftover bronze casings (to save on resources) and appointed themselves as an officer class (as suggested by Steven Moffat himself). The remaining colourful Paradigm casings were then destroyed when the Dalek flagship blew up in “The Time of the Doctor”, leaving only the bronze Daleks. Not a bad theory, I’ll admit, but I propose an alternative one.
What if, the colourful casings of the Paradigm Daleks are actually the old models and the bronze ones are the new versions? I shall elaborate.
Presumably, after “Remembrance of the Daleks”, the Dalek Empire was rebuilt (possibly by Davros, who we saw escaping in his escape pod, or possibly using the theory proposed in the novel War of the Daleks). Regardless of how they came back, we know that they did. But what if the Daleks that came back after the events of “Remembrance” were the New Paradigm design Daleks? So, let’s say theoretically that it was this design of Dalek that executed the Master in the 1996 TV Movies (we can also put their silly voices down to being part of the new design too!). But then the Time War breaks out, so the Daleks scatter their progenitor devices across the universe, with the New Dalek Paradigm design as a basis for a new Dalek race. However, over the course of the war, Dalek technology improves in order to keep up with Time Lord technology, and so they upgrade their casings to the bronze RTD models. But, after upgrading, because the progenitors have already been scattered, they are not updated to the new design.
Fast forward to “Victory”; the Time War is over, and the remnants of Davros’ army from “The Stolen Earth” track down one of the Dalek progenitor devices and use it to create a new race of Daleks based on the old Paradigm design. The new Supreme calls the bronze Daleks inferior, not because of their design, but because they are not made from pure Dalek DNA, and this is why they are exterminated. The New Paradigm then escape at the end of the episode and set about rebuilding the new Empire. However, what if they then discovered or re-invented the plans for the newer, technologically advanced bronze Dalek shell, and so made their new Empire using the Time War design, because it was better than their old Paradigm design? This would then explain why it is bronze Daleks we have been seeing ever since, and the colourful shells of the New Paradigm have vanished forever.
We could also further theorise that the Dalek Supreme from “The Magician’s Apprentice” is the same Supreme from “Asylum of the Daleks”, only he has been put into a new casing. The Black Dalek with him could be the new version of the Blue Strategist, etcetera.
So there we are. That is my theory. What do you think?
