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Reliant121 wrote:Additionally, they are virtually unstoppable by just about anything.

........confidently moving at the speed of a really really old man in a wheelchair by the look of it......

I am absolutely dumbfounded by the number of people here who are unfamiliar with DW.

Yes, they don't move fast... but they can fly, and they don't need to move quickly. If you run away from them, you are just going to die later; if you get to a more tactically advantageous area, it doesn't matter because you can't hurt them.

Reliant121 wrote:Additionally, they are virtually unstoppable by just about anything. Barring high intensity beam weapons, like the ANNEdroid.

Individual Dalek resilience has historically been somewhat variable. Time War variants require serious firepower to take down (like Jack's one-shot special), while earlier models have been taken down by RPGs, or simply being pushed out of a first-floor loading bay. What made the things scary was their utterly inhuman appearance, their somewhat intolerant attitude towards non-Daleks and the fact that no matter how many you killed, more of them would keep coming.

Unfortunately, I have only really seen modern era stuff. I occasionally catch an old rerun, but I don't really want to shell out for any box sets if they even exist.

Mikey wrote:I am absolutely dumbfounded by the number of people here who are unfamiliar with DW.

I'll admit, I'd never even heard of it (at least not to a degree that it stuck in my mind passed the moment) before coming here.

Lighthawk wrote:

Mikey wrote:I am absolutely dumbfounded by the number of people here who are unfamiliar with DW.

I'll admit, I'd never even heard of it (at least not to a degree that it stuck in my mind passed the moment) before coming here.

You can catch up on some of the relaunch stuff - the last three Doctors - on BBC America, and I highly recommend looking into some of the older stuff unless you have a complete intolerance for crappy FX no matter how good the story. As a fellow American, I recommend the Fourth Doctor - he seems to speak most to the american mindset.

Captain Seafort wrote:somewhat intolerant attitude towards non-Daleks

Congratulations on winning the Understatement of the Year award, BTW.

Mikey wrote:You can catch up on some of the relaunch stuff - the last three Doctors - on BBC America, and I highly recommend looking into some of the older stuff unless you have a complete intolerance for crappy FX no matter how good the story. As a fellow American, I recommend the Fourth Doctor - he seems to speak most to the american mindset.

If Netflix has it, I might give it a look. I don't really watch much tv anymore though, and from what I've gathered, there is a LOT of DW.

A lot, yes. 1963-1989, then 2005-present. Guiness (the book, not the stout) lists it as both the longest-running and most successful sci-fi show of all time.

To a Dalek, anything non-Dalek must be destroyed at ALL costs. There is no room for others, no compromise. They are inexorable, cannot be negotiated with. Their mindset is the worst of Nazism and other like philosophies taken to the extreme.

The thing about the Daleks was that they were so inhuman. You have to realise these things came on screen in the 1960s. At the time, bad guys were either monsters in rubber suits - mindless animals who attacked just because - or they were just people, like the Klingons or whatever.

The along come these metal things. They look utterly inhuman on the outside, they ARE utterly inhuman on the inside. And they aren't robots, they aren't disciples of perfect logic or anything like that. They have personality, they have emotion... but the only emotion they have is hate. Daleks will kill you because you have something they want, or because you're in their way... but even if you're completely helpless and unthreatening, they will STILL kill you, because Daleks HATE you. Yes, you, personally, they despise what you are and despise the fact of your existence, simply because you aren't a Dalek.

It spins out of WWII, of course; how the Nazis saw the Jews, that's how Daleks see every single living thing that isn't a Dalek. Run away, hide - they'll get to you eventually, simply because they plan to get to everybody eventually. You can't even join them, become an ally - they might accept you, but if so it will be for only as long as you are useful. The second you aren't, you're dead, dead, dead.

There weren't a whole lot of baddies like that around in the 1960s.

With Daleks, for me it's when I was born and grew up, sadly. Graham is 100% correct on how EVIL they are, how inhuman and such. The ultimate extension of Nazi philosoph ynad other such mindsets...

But me, being me, can't get past their looks... or that in 'Destiny of the Daleks', their weaknesses make them so pathetic.

They go tinman when it rains?

Lighthawk wrote:They go tinman when it rains?

More that they were treated as robots, incapable of acting outside their "programming", and therefore locked in a perpetual stalemate with their opponents.

Captain Seafort wrote:

Lighthawk wrote:They go tinman when it rains?

More that they were treated as robots, incapable of acting outside their "programming", and therefore locked in a perpetual stalemate with their opponents.

Was that the arc in which Baker tricked Davros back into stasis? Forgive me, but it's been over 20 years since I've seen Fourth Doctor eps. Yeah, that was more a poor treatment of the Daleks. They were not, after all, robots.

Mikey wrote:Was that the arc in which Baker tricked Davros back into stasis?

Probably - it was the non-Genesis Fourth Doctor Dalek serial.