Image Credit: John Salway

Image Description: The Dalek Executioner & Dalek Strategist figurines

By John Salway

Name: Dalek Executioner and Dalek Strategist

Type: Figurines and magazine

Price: £19.99

Current TLV investment: £276.43

This third set of Time Lord Victorious figurines, following the Dalek Scientist and Time Commander, completes the fleet of new Restoration Empire Dalek designs with my personal favourites of the range, the Dalek Executioner and Dalek Strategist. But have my best boys been treated with the respect they deserve?

The Dalek Executioner is without doubt the sexiest of the Restoration Empire designs. He cuts a sleek figure in black and silver, with red rings accentuating the roundels, and aspects of his underside painted red as well. His sinister red eye, however, has not quite translated so well to the physical realm, with a lighter pink colour used instead. I think I can see why, because it does have a pinkish glow in some of the promotional artwork. However, without the advantage of lighting effects, a matte pink doesn’t really convey the correct effect. To put this in  perspective though, it’s a tiny dot of colour in an otherwise flawless model – I’m still very happy.

The Dalek Strategist has been my absolute favourite of the new Dalek personalities, and I’m pleased to report that his model is also a great success. Faithfully based on the original television Daleks, he’s chunkier by far, with a longer eyestalks and arms as well. In contrast to the other Restoration Empire models, he’s also got a perfectly flat base – after all, the Strategist is so old he doesn’t even have hover capabilities. But the real joy in this model is how well they’ve captured the battering and bruising his casing has sustained over the years. As well as plenty of rust, he’s got missing roundels, one that appears to have been welded back on, and one of his head slats is at an authentically crooked angle. It’s this delightful attention to detail that really tells the story of this Dalek’s career.

Moving onto the accompanying magazine, it continues the template set by previous releases with engaging graphics and some potted Dalek history. Unfortunately, I’m afraid typos and slight grammatical errors rear their head yet again. It’s particularly egregious in a feature on Dalek victims, where a heading of “Simmonds [sic]” is immediately followed by text correctly naming the character twice as “Simmons”. Again, these aren’t major flaws but they do let down an otherwise very professionally finished product.

The included short story, Exit Strategy, this time concerns the Dalek Strategist, and his thoughts and actions after the end of the Eighth Doctor audio Mutually Assured Destruction. Seemingly trapped on an exploding spaceship, the Dalek Strategist ruminates on what went wrong with his plans, and what to do next, before deploying that classic Dalek tactic of an emergency temporal shift. In fact, as far as the timeline goes, he may have invented this particular trick! It’s a neat little character piece that’s pretty unessential, but since it allows my favourite Dalek to escape, potentially to appear in future releases beyond Time Lord Victorious, it’s one I’m personally thankful for.

This third set of figures is undoubtedly my favourite so far, providing beautiful models of my two favourite Restoration Empire Daleks, and a story that gives me some hope this range of Daleks may continue onward. The manufacturers have certainly shown how well they can craft our favourite pepperpots, but for the final release, we’ll see how well they handle humanoids, as Brian the Ood, and the Time Lord Victorious himself, complete the collection.

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