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Doctor Who sweeps board in SFX sci-fi poll

The Doctor has been voted ‘Best Hero’ in an SFX poll of its readers; with the Daleks voted Best Monster; and The Master voted Best Villain; with various other Whoniverse characters peppered around various other polls.

I’m biased, but it’s tough to see how any other genre character can really compete with the Doctor – eleven faces and personalities; bigger-on-the-inside time machine; anywhere in time and space; mysterious background and abilities. Who could compare?

Blake’s 7, Babylon 5 and Farscape, three other series I have big soft-spots for, get a few mentions in the poll too, which is mainly dominated by the Trek franchise and various tedious vampire stuff.

Elsewhere The Master was voted best villain. A right and just result considering the brilliance of Roger Delgado and the sheer evilness of Anthony Ainley. Simm had his moments too. In his less interesting stories, including some of the recent ones, The Master is just a generic pantomime villain.

But gven something more interesting to do, all the actors who played the part have brought something new to the role in the way that every Doctor does. Seven shades of evil. Again, who could compete?

As it goes, I don’t really have much interest in the Daleks. Every new appearance since Remembrance of the Daleks – barring Dalek – has been an exercise in diminishing returns and I’m frankly rather bored of them now.

The Daleks, yesterday

Daleks have arguably been rebooted three or four times now, but beyond that original concept there’s not a huge amount to them. Most of the best Dalek stories since the 60s have concerned how people react to their presence and existence as much as anything – Genesis, Revelation and Remembrance specifically – although Day of the Daleks is brilliant sci-fi fun.

RTD and Helen Raynor failed completely in doing anything of interest with them in my opinion, and while Victory of the Daleks had some nice moment, it was pretty incoherent stuff.

Nevertheless, Daleks are slightly beyond that now. They’re such a massive icon it doesn’t really matter any more.

And now, in an SFX poll, they’ve trumped something called Lorne from Angel, the Aliens, Gollum from Lord Of The Rings, Gizmo from Gremlins, and the thing from, er, The Thing.

I wonder what Ray Cusick, designer of the Daleks, makes of it all. Legend has it he got an ex gratia payment from the BBC that amounted to £50, while Terry Nation bought a massive house in the country and a fleet of sports cars.

Cusick may not be rich, but designing the best monster ever isn’t a bad legacy.

Other Doctor Who-related results in the SFX poll include:

• K9 named fifth-best robot
• Cybermen named 13th-best monsters
• Davros voted fifth-best villain
• Captain Jack Harkness voted 11th-best hero
• Donna Noble, Rose Tyler and Sarah-Jane Smith are voted fourth, eighth and tenth as Best Heroine respectively

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Radio Times Daleks covers

Below are some covers from the Radio Times prefacing Victory of the Daleks and the new Dalek design.

It’s not clear if these are an all-new design or some kind of off-shoot of the usual lot or some kind of Churchillian invention specific to the episode, written by Mark Gatiss.

For the purposes of the cover, the Daleks are decked out in the primary colours of the three main UK political parties – a gimmick BMW introduced on April Fool’s Day this year.

The pictures below are vaguely spoiler-y, so worth avoiding if you don’t want to spoil yourself for Saturday.

• The Radio Times has a gallery of Dalek front covers on its site, including the following cracker for Day of the Daleks, by the great Frank Bellamy.