Would redesigning the Daleks be too far?

Their physical design doesn't bother me much, but some variety might be interesting. I don't see a problem with a physically useless form for creatures that see themselves as supreme, but maybe they could have a lower class of worker daleks that are outfitted for manufacturing or other tasks. They've already done something similar.

I think they could behave a bit more alien. Hatred is an emotion, and while vile it still humanizes them to an extent. I think they would be scarier if they had a cold indifference to lesser lifeforms. You don't talk to a disease. I'm thinking of the martians from War of the Worlds:

"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water."

I remember watching Remembrance of the Daleks as a kid and feeling chilled by the Doctor's conversation with the group captain about the dalek's capabilities. Extermination really seemed to mean extermination.

*GILMORE: It would be foolish of me, I suppose, to hope that this mothership was not nuclear capable?

DOCTOR: That ship has weapons capable of cracking open this planet like an egg.

...

GILMORE: Shouldn't we send for reinforcements? Armoured units?

DOCTOR: Have you been listening to me, Group Captain? That spaceship up there has surveillance equipment capable of spotting a sparrow fall at fifteen thousand kilometres. Any sign of a military build-up and they may simply decide to sterilise the area.

GILMORE: And we have no defence.

DOCTOR: Frightening, isn't it, to find there are others better versed in death than human beings.*

/r/gallifrey Thread