I Need Suggestions · 1:19am Jun 8th, 2017
I’ll start with the most obvious thing: The Daleks.
I’m writing a novel in which a new race of Daleks are bred on Earth from humans (it’s a long story) as a nod to Revelation of the Daleks. Then they are unleashed onto the outside world and start killing numerous human beings, before, for some reason, they leave the Earth and move to another planet to start a new Dalek empire.
A lot of fans get confused at this very concept because I’m not going to write them to be as powerful as the RTD-era Daleks, as they were made with a lower tech-level on our planet. A lot of the real horror is in their origins (well that, and that while they are not so invincible that they can’t be killed even after the heroes get their weak spot - seriously, they have a weak spot that’s not really a weak spot? If the weak spot isn’t a weak spot, why even introduce it? That’s just stupid- they are still well-armed and armored enough so that a single Dalek easily kill a normal guy with a normal gun without the Dalek taking any damage whatsoever). But in spite of the fact that I made the Daleks considerably easier to kill, they can still easily overpower entire populations, which still raises a question: Once the Daleks are bred and are released onto the world, how the Hell do you get them to leave?
Ideas I had included:
1. As Daleks have no natural immune systems but are instead dependent on their life-support systems, many Daleks are killed by having a bacterium strain in their feed, and thus suddenly greatly reduced in numbers. To avoid being overwhelmed, the Daleks retreat and regroup on another planet.
2. They are overwhelmed by armed forces of Earth because these new Daleks don’t yet have the technology to fight off the entire human face.
3. Turns out the Rutans helped make the Daleks possible, so naturally, the Sontarans were spying on the operation, and when the Daleks came out of their bunker and into the outside world, the Sontarans fought them off and drove them off-planet.
4. The Daleks didn’t really want to stay on Earth and leave because they had enough.
5. Some combination of the above.
All of these sound a bit like weak plot resolution because I wanted to have a story that emphasizes a much more hollow victory for the Doctor for once. I wanted the Doctor to feel almost hurt at the results, and yet very relieved that people survived in the end. Not every one of them can be a happy-go-lucky total win with all prizes claimed.
What do you think?
1 sounds like War of the Worlds. 2 sounds like most alien invasion movies like Independence Day. 3 sounds like a terrible plan for everyone involved (let’s recreate these omnicidal maniacs, surely nothing could go wrong!) so it wouldn’t get off the ground.
A possible idea is that the Daleks do the unthinkable: they negotiate. The Daleks break out of their containment, massacre hundreds or thousands, but then just stop and contacts the entire world. For some inexplicable reason, the Daleks decide to try diplomacy, which baffles the Doctor so much as UNIT and other Earth authorities are also confused, but try to at least see where things are going. The Daleks want off the planet (4), and decide to go do things relatively nonviolently. Things are tense, the Doctor tries to see what the Daleks are planning.
That’s all I got. But my idea is that these Daleks are doing things the Cult of Skaro way, thinking like the enemy to come with new ways to kill. And a new way not used by the Daleks is to get help and help others. They find it abhorrent, but the fact that they were made from humans makes them so self hating that the leadership go “We’re disgusting hybrids, might as well fight like them.” Leading to a more cunning and enigmatic Dalek enemy. The Daleks have manipulated before, like in Series 1, but this is the Daleks trying to be shrewd from a lesser position.
Another idea, the Daleks are contacted by the future. These future aliens promise to bring the Daleks out of Earth if they go along quietly. This will lead to a Dalek Empire that will ravage the cosmos, just as bad as the previous ones. The Doctor investigates and finds out that the future aliens are future humans (Time Agency? Justice Department?) who have decided to sacrifice the future of the universe for the preservation of their species and continued existence. The Doctor is sad that humanity would do such a thing, etc.
Really unfinished ideas off the top of my head.
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As intended! The Daleks were based off of my favorite H.G. Welles monsters, the Morlocks and the Martians. I thought about using that. It’s also meant to be an anti-eugenics story, and the bacteria was bred by a guy with disabilities, showing a bitter irony to it.
You got a point there; I have officially made a decision: I’m not using that one. Too conventional for Doctor Who.
The idea was that the Rutans wanted to sponsor the creation of a new type of Dalek that would kill the Sontarans for them. Of course they would not, but the Daleks didn’t want them to know that, or else they would not have the tech they needed from the Rutans.
That, however, is extremely original, the Daleks almost never do anything like this, and I will take it into serious consideration!
This too, is genius, that the humans have become Time Lords in their own right, and are intervening to prevent a disaster that would have rendered them all extinct eons ago.
Always remember K.I.S.S Keep it Simple Stupid sometimes the easiest answer is the simplest one.