Doctor Who series 5 trailer reveals redesigned Daleks

Saturday, January 02, 2010

It seems that Stephen Moffat is going to be something of a new broom: with the series 5 trailer for Doctor Who showing a redesigned TARDIS and Dalek.

The trailer was made available on the BBC’s website just after the transmission of part 2 of the End of Time.

As usual, the trailer only shows glimpses of what we can expect in the next series, but a frame-by-frame view reveals some interesting stuff.

Series 5 Dalek

Doctor Who Series 5 Dalek

It’s believed that the Daleks will return in the World War II/Churchill episode(s) and we do get an interesting shot of a Dalek in battle fatigues. We’re not quite sure why the Daleks’ normal armour and force field aren’t enough for World War II battle zones, or why a Dalek might need to carry provisions – but it does set the mood of the story nicely.

Doctor Who Series 5 Dalek

In a second shot, we catch a glimpse of what seems to be a totally redesigned Dalek. We only see the head of the Dalek, but from this we can see that the dome is different, with an inset horizontal groove, the eye is radically different and seems to have lost the cowl for the eyestalk, and the lights seem different. The neck also seems to be missing the vertical slats.

When Doctor Who returned in 2005, the production team was sensible enough to not radically redesign the Dalek – just to update it and make it look more solid. This looks like a more radical departure may be coming. Let’s hope that the redesign makes sense and looks good (unlike that rather poor red Dalek Supreme, which looked like a Blue Peter competition also-ran) and the team isn’t messing with a design classic simply to sell more toys now that everyone who wants one has a new series Dalek toy.