DEVIOUS - THE DALEKS 

It's not much of a secret anymore that the daleks are in our tale, but just when do they appear? - and for how long? You will have seen from our screen images and other photos what the film concentrates on other matters too, chiefly involving the Doctor's past. Indeed, the Doctor finds out the identity of his chief opponent quite late on in the story - and we have deliberately not shown any images from that section of the film for two main reasons. One, we don't want to spoil it for you, and two, we haven't filmed that bit anyway yet! Hee hee.

Anyway, back to the daleks. We have ambitious plans to use computer-generated models in conjunction with real actors, and the 3d models are coming along nicely. I will include an image of one of the models as soon as we are happy with the quality - probably... To content yourself until then I am including a few new scans of photos taken from the filming showing the real chaps in action.

This shot shows the doors into the interrogation room having been blasted away and a dalek entering the room. This is from episode 5 as far as I can recall. You should find a screen image elsewhere on the pages from the footage.

 We have striven to make the dalek props as accurately as possible. As far as we are aware the dimensions are accurate, and we have received compliments by none other than Jon Pertwee when he came down to film his scene! He remarked how fan-built daleks always seem to be better than the BBC props as they were often practically falling apart. Despite his well-known dislike of daleks, he did take part in a photo session with three of them and the Tardis Police Box, along with all of our main crew and actors.

So far, they have always caused problems during filming! We even found ourselves with the same problems as the BBC in "Death to the Daleks" when we had less operators than daleks! For the scene where one of our characters comes across four of them in the woodlands outside the scientific complex, you will see that one of them does not move!. The actor playing Nilan had to set off the various cameras himself before acting out the scene, as the cameramen were occupied being daleks!

On their most recent outing last summer the motor unit gave up on the one we had taken out. It was powered by two car batteries, although not for long on this occasion, and so the voice unit packed up as well as the motive power. C'est la vie! So we contented ourselves with a short photo session.
The scene shown below was also problematic. We had used mains power to get the dome lights to work, although when they were switched on and off along with the intended voice track they produced a noticeable click on the soundtrack which will have to be removed later. These two were powered in the old fashioned way - i.e. footpower. The one nearest the camera did a lovely turn on the way out of the room before the doors closed - by getting its rim half jammed against the door frame it managed to swing neatly into the corridor as if intended! The keen observer will notice the black mains leads (unless we cleverly blank them out in time).
One of the most irritating things about them is of course storage! Currently they are kept in three different locations. I currently have two of the oldest ones, whilst Steve has one, and Tony (the Doctor) has one in an upstairs room. The two with me don't give much trouble; being in an unused room in the west wing (!?), although they will be joined soon by another, since I have nearly completed building a new top half for close up shots.

The following picture shows four of them assembled for the sheer hell of it in Steve's old house's lounge before they went their separate ways. As a lot of scenes will only feature one or two we will only use those most conveniently located to the filming location although we will be needing all for the climactic final scenes. ( - If anyone knows of a good place to film which can must black walls and lots of empty space then we'd be interested to hear!!!)


They were built by Ashley using traditional methods. The sheer numbers of bits meant that repetition was the worst part! The first two were built with home-made spheres of fibreglass built integrally with the base panels.

These proved not to be too bad, although they were later replaced with some custom castings of plastic we had made for us. Allowing for the cost of the original mould, they worked out at 80 pence each (sounds cheap until you work out how many were needed). The same spheres (95mm diameter) were used for the eyepiece and arm spheres. The internal structures were generally plywood frames, with appropriate timber bracing where necessary.

Cladding of the base was with ply again, whilst the top section was cladded with 2mm black pvc. The gun box was built as one piece, with felt rings inside to pad the gun and arm spheres for smooth movement.

The photo above shows one during construction. (There is a cat inside for some reason best known to the cat). It has the slats attached (transparent 2mm plastic sheeting) but unpainted. The latest one actually had the slates painted on the inside, so as to ensure they would remain reflective.

The main advantage of our particular build of daleks has been their portability. With the exception of the one kept at Steve's house, the rest are able to be carried by an estate car with careful packing (and no passengers), or a Range Rover with ease.

Due to Steve's dalek being permanently motorised, its base will not split, and usually gets transported on the back of a trailer, which usually gets us noticed!

The dalek design and colour screen was based on the design used by the BBC for "The Evil of the Daleks", and "The Power of the Daleks" in the mid-sixties. There are no doubt subtle differences, such as the fact I have used an all-over silver rather than the slightly greyer mid-section as used in "Evil", and our blue may be slightly darker, but we don't particularly care to that degree - they are close enough for us.

However irritating they may have been in construction or transport, you can't beat seeing the footage for a day! (Assuming the day was successful, of course!)

Ashley - 15th February 1998