Garlic's not cut and destroyed!
Garlic's not cut and destroyed!
Garlic's not cut and destroyed!
Everybody tried to examine what it was about these things,
these sort of mobile pepper pots, which appealed to the audience.
And, of course, you can't dissect that.
If you could, you'd be right every time.
I think it was a combination of the voice, the language they used,
the way they moved.
They were sort of vaguely comic as well as being frightening.
I think it's a combination of the shape and the voice, really.
Exterminate, exterminate.
Garlic design!
If you think about the way the Daleks look,
I mean, the designer, Raymond Cusick, did the most fantastic job.
Mervyn Pinfield, who was Verity's assistant producer,
suggested that I got cardboard tubes.
First of all, get a large cardboard tube for the body
and then other cardboard tubes for the arms and legs
and paint them all silver.
And I said,
well, I said no.
The clearest thing about a Dyke which makes it look great
is that it has no legs.
It's the first monster, the only monster in Doctor Who really,
which works, which in no way replicates the design of a human.
But it makes it seem like it's a genuinely alien machine.
We all went down to look at it at Shawcraft and we said,
yes, well done, Ray, this is brilliant.
You know, which were not expensive to make,
but they looked as though they were sensory.
They had that sort of mechanised what's-out-there feel.
Within the Dalek, you kind of sum up what people thought the future would be,
so you have domes and those kind of things.
The first crack at an alien monster they do,
they get the design of the Daleks.
Quite a lot of the design decisions were born out of lack of budget.
We used to beg, borrow, steal and use things in a way that perhaps
were just not the way they normally were used,
like the sink plungers, for example.
The idea was to be very dynamic and show that it could suck anything,
metal, cloth, human beings,
actually pull them towards it by some magic grip.
Well, we had an old lavatory cleaner down the end of it.
That was all we could afford, but I was pleased with this.
I think Ray had done a brilliant job, and I thought these worked very well.
That head with the single eyestalk turns independently of the body,
and I always love it when a Dalek trundles into a room
and it's facing one way and that head just swings round.
And it's sort of a collision of kitchen utensils and household items
and something that looks like it might be able to kill you.
For whatever reason, all the decisions made at the time
turned it into an absolute 60s design classic.
And I remember going down to the producers' run on that particular Thursday,
that first one, and everybody wanted to get in them, including me.
We all wanted... So I just thought, there's something happening here.
TV action!
I suppose it's a question of when they're moving well and when they're lit well.
The problem with photographing the Daleks
was that you had to come in low or go in high.
They themselves are fairly immobile,
these tiny people pushing on golden-glow casters,
and you had to be there or there or swinging round them
to give them a sort of dynamic that they themselves did not possess.
And with the ordinary image-authoring camera,
if you tilted it at more than 30 degrees,
the stuff at the back of the tube fell onto the lens
and you'd have to re-tube them and you'd have cost vast sums of money.
But I was determined to make it look as exciting as possible.
They weren't actually that manoeuvrable,
so they couldn't go terribly fast and they couldn't whip round very fast.
They're completely impractical and they're still scary.
They were the Daleks' master plan.
They had them going through the jungle and they had all their flamethrowers on.
I don't think I've ever seen a Dalek look quite so beautiful.
I think that that 60s design in that wonderful black-and-white setting,
they looked like nothing on earth.
They are genuinely astonishing creations there.
Best for me is the way they looked in Genesis of the Daleks.
I love the colour schemes, which practically isn't a colour scheme.
They're practically monochrome.
But they did look rather impressive
as a silhouette with little details picked out in light.
And worst has to be the decision to show the Daleks
hobbling across the top of the sand dunes in Destiny of the Daleks.
Every little jiggle and movement.
They probably made them from lightweight fibreglass
so the actors could walk them through an area
where they wouldn't be able to glide.
And they looked pretty ratty at that point.
They'd been stored fairly poorly.
I think they might have even had bits of sellotape holding things on.
I remember seeing sort of flaky bits on the side of them
and bits of the spheres missing,
and so I think that was a low point, really.
80s Dalek colour schemes are an odd one.
In that cream and gold does seem an odd choice for Dalek livery.
I know that they do sort of conjure up an Imperial feel,
but more of a mint Imperial feel.
In their final classic appearance in Remembrance of the Daleks,
I think they'd really got the weight down
and they look really solid.
We jealous us!
When there was talk back in the 90s of,
oh, they're going to come back as spider Daleks or aqua Daleks,
why muck with it? I think it will still stand up really, really well.
And what's been delightful is that there's an entire generation
of ten-year-olds who love them,
which means that that decision to keep them as they looked in the 1960s
was absolutely the right decision.
Russell always said, we're going to be doing a Dalek
and you have to keep all the elements
because otherwise you may as well do something else.
One of the first things Russell said to us was,
you need to make this the most Dalek-y Dalek that's ever been seen.
Find all the bits that you like,
whether they be from the film, the TV series, the comic strips, the books,
whatever you find that you think has worked, put them on the new Dalek.
I was very keen to do a claw at some point
because I really loved the claws that they have in the movie Dalek.
It's a real mishmash of everyone's favourite bits of the Dalek.
The most difficult thing about redesigning them
was looking at the textures we applied,
so it looked like a proper metal tank
as opposed to something that was made in the prop shop.
One of the things Russell was very keen on from the word go
was he said they need to look like they're made out of copper and bronze.
Copper and bronze, always kept saying.
Copper and bronze, they need to look solid, they need to look heavy,
they need to look like they have been machined.
There were lots of surfaces on the original design
that didn't really have much going on,
so we went and added things like shut lines and rivets
and the kind of things you'd find on machinery.
It's a complete collaboration in terms of
no-one knows a Dalek better than Mike Tucker.
I was building these when I was 10 years old
out of cardboard and ping-pong balls.
It was sound because we hadn't altered anything,
so we're really standing on the shoulders of giants in terms of what we did.
The first time I saw the Dalek I'd worked on,
my first reaction was to run.
And then I kind of grew up and I was just immensely proud
to have worked on something which I've loved all my life
and it's such a huge part of everybody's childhood.
The Dalek voice.
The voices were always brilliant.
It doesn't look like it could be living,
and then this really horrible voice comes out of it
and you suddenly think, oh, my goodness.
Where are the time travellers?
It is something that anyone can copy.
The little kids were going around with their arms stuck out going,
Exterminate, exterminate!
The Daleks sound like petulant, panicky children.
Embark at once!
Yes, embark!
The Daleks almost feel like they're pretending they have no emotion.
These are robots, if they are robots at all,
sometimes it feels like they are on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
These humanoid, ex-humanoid type,
who were in a panic because they were in a shell.
You've got that wonderful Peter Hawkins, high-pitched Dalek voice
that goes up and up and up, and you always feel that in some ways
that they're just on the verge of losing it.
And I think to a certain extent everyone else has impersonated him.
David Graham did a fantastic job adding that sort of creepiness
and, I don't know, just slightly weirdness about that sort of way.
You know, it was, I don't know, it was dangerous and kind of like,
this Dalek's mad.
Why have I not been informed of this?
I know that Peter Hawkins had established, like, the Dalek Supreme,
Had this maniacal really high voice.
Which is quite painful to do.
For dynamics and for creativity,
we had to rely on trying to make these differences
between the Daleks, the stupid Dalek, the fearful Dalek.
They were all fearful, but some had a sort of Nazi edge to them.
And this thing of obeying, and some didn't want to obey.
There's the Dalek in The Chase that is given all these instructions,
isn't it, you know, and the Dalek commander's saying,
I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, and he's going, yes, yes, yes.
And then he doesn't go and do it, and the Dalek commander says,
I'm going to do it, you can't say to it.
Oh, yes, I forgot, I forgot, I was just saying yes a lot.
When you go back to some of the Hartnell stories,
you are aware that the first Dalek voices sound very strange indeed.
You see, what we forget now, we think that the Dalek voice
is a particular thing, and it should sound a particular way,
and really, you know, it wasn't in those days.
We are the masters of earth!
We are the masters of earth!
The way they've switched off the ring modulator or the mix of it is very low,
so what you've got is that, we are the masters of earth,
which would probably sound a lot better if it had a bit of ring modulation on it.
We are the masters of earth!
We are the masters of earth!
There is a Dalek that sounds proper in Dalek Invasion of Earth,
and when it's the point of view of the Dalek, when it's overheating,
when they've done something to it, it's going...
It's like you're inside the Dalek.
We'll exterminate them at zero rate!
Exterminate them!
The day of the Daleks, yes.
Whoever is operating the time machine
is an enemy of the Daleks.
Whoever is operating the time machine is an enemy of the Daleks.
It's terrible, isn't it?
The actors doing it sort of almost believe that if they talk into the right machine,
like Darkse, that makes them feel strangely undynamic.
Oh yes, they are things that speak like that. It was a bit like that, wasn't it?
They might have said, looking round for a bit of advice,
and everyone going, probably.
Whoever is operating the time machine
is an enemy of the Daleks.
All enemies of the Daleks must be destroyed.
Exterminate them!
Exterminate them!
Exterminate them!
Exterminate them!
You are the Doctor!
You are an enemy of the Daleks!
Now you are in our power!
You will be exterminated!
You will be exterminated!
You will be exterminated!
If you get the Dalek voice right, it sells so much.
I was talking to Dick Mills, who worked for the Radiophonic Workshop,
and I was asking him all these stupid fan-ish questions
about the Dalek voices in different stories,
and why they were slightly different,
and, hmm, that's an interesting choice for that one,
and he said, oh, we never wrote it down.
We never wrote the setting down.
I was appalled.
Unimportant.
And it is quite amazing, the effect that a slightly different setting
on the ring modulator has, honestly.
The words of the Daleks!
Dalek dialogue is a hard thing to judge
because it works most of the time by not being very dynamic.
What you saw is what you got, and they were very straightforward.
I mean, not a very wide vocabulary,
of which the word mostly used was exterminate.
And then you put something in which sets people's teeth on edge.
Kill him!
I think the best bit of Dalek dialogue I've ever heard is Power of the Daleks.
Why do human beings kill human beings?
The Daleks are going to wipe them all out,
at least are true to what Daleks are.
And that thing when they say, I am your servant,
and they talk over the Doctor when he's trying to tell people
that they're nasty, and they're just going,
yes, I'm really nice, oh, yes, I...
That's very disturbing, that the Dalek would be that cunning.
No-one believes it.
They think the Daleks will do the vacuuming for them and the shopping.
They'll secretly poison the orange juice.
We're so used to the fact that most of what Daleks say is so functional
that when they leap out from that, it sounds terrific.
The chase is extraordinary because it's got a comedy relief Dalek in it,
and the first time I saw it, I couldn't quite believe it.
I quite like it when the Daleks say unusual things.
It's something that Russell T Davies spoke to me about before Dalek.
He said the thing he was keen on was the burning intelligence of the Dalek.
And to always feel that, as well as all the killing,
as well as all the ranting, it's in there and it's thinking things over.
The Daleks and the Sewers from The Hell In Rain are two parters
set in Manhattan, where one of them sort of looks over his shoulder
to make sure they're not being watched,
and it's the two Daleks having a private conversation
about their boss. I thought that was inspired.
And that's another one of those moments when they, you know, say,
oh, yeah, by the way, we have been thinking about this.
The hardest thing, seriously, about writing for a Dalek was my fear
that after all these years of them being off screen,
that there would be no reason why a child watching the show in 2005
would find them in themselves very impressive.
Sorry about that.
And it was trying to get that Dalek dialogue right,
that you had all the exterminates, but also felt that there was
actually a genuine, cunning creature inside.
My favourite Dalek line of all, I suppose,
and it's a little bit egotistical of me because I said it was...
You would make a good Dalek.
Rather than, oh, I'm confused by such orders, should I blow myself up?
I do not know. At that point he just sort of goes,
yeah, you're actually just like me, aren't you?
You know, which is just the worst thing that can be said to you
by someone you hate.
My favourite scene in that, and also the way that Nick Briggs does it,
is the scene where he talks to Rose,
and he doesn't do the Dalek staccato.
He talks like a creature, he talks like a human being
inside a Dalek case, saying that he's in pain and wants some comfort.
Don't you fear me?
And it's quite startling.
I think particularly if you only know Daleks at all,
to suddenly hear a Dalek which sounds like it isn't one at all.
Like it's all been a bit of a joke, that all this time,
all these Daleks out there racing around and shooting people
have been sort of acting up for each other,
but deep down they actually can talk just like you and me.
I felt, you know, that there's somewhere there was a...
..a moment when you could have almost felt sorry for a Dalek.
Exterminate!
The bizarre and interesting thing about the Dalek death ray,
which is such a big thing about the Daleks exterminating people,
you know, blasting them into oblivion,
is that it didn't really exist tangibly until 1975.
You know, what we actually got was, you know,
a tube with some ribbons going...like that, you know,
and then you cut to a shot of someone with a negative effect.
And as a kid, I loved it.
It meant that if you were drawing scenes of Daleks
shooting little stick men, you could colour them in
with all the wrong coloured felt tips and that's an exterminated person.
You know, it's just a simple little video effect,
but it's quite disturbing, really.
I loved some of the deaths in The Dalek Invasion of Earth,
outside the saucer there, where the Daleks went,
kill him, instead of exterminate,
because exterminate was really invented by the media.
The Daleks did say exterminate right from the beginning,
but they didn't really... You know, it wasn't a chant,
it was a war cry.
The most agonising thing ever is to be shot by a Dalek
in Genesis of the Daleks.
The actors were really encouraged to really look like
it was a painful way to go.
The death of Ronson in Episode 4, it is the best extermination ever.
Exterminate!
Exterminate!
Exterminate!
No!
No!
It goes black.
The actor James Garber, he has his mouth open in a funny way.
Instead of the darkness you usually see in someone's mouth,
you just get this sort of horrible... this white, you know, and it's just...
And all the other Carlyds watching around
have to shield their eyes from the glare.
It is quite ghastly.
This one goes on forever.
They keep on having to shoot him and he staggers around
and there's this wonderful crack, crack, crack noise as he falls around.
I wrote to Jim all Fix It, soon afterwards, seriously,
asking whether I could be killed by a Dalek at one point on screen.
Not in Doctor Who, I mean, anything.
Jim will fix it. Casualty. Anything that would have had me on it.
And they didn't write back, for which I'm still quite angry.
My favourite was in Death To The Daleks,
when suddenly they had machine guns.
GUNSHOTS
SCREAMING
Primitive weapons moderately efficient.
I can remember watching that as a kid and thinking,
what a good idea, Daleks that actually shot bullets
and they have a little TARDIS for target practice.
Target model destroyed.
Substitute weaponry functioning satisfactorily.
Absolute moment of genius for me.
In Destiny Of The Daleks, there's this interminable scene
where they exterminate some extras who look about as bothered
as being shot by a Dalek as they would about the idea
that they might be missing Grandstand.
The supporting artists being shot seem to be quite happy about it,
smile and then look around for a comfy sofa to land on.
They genuinely, after they get shot, sort of just sit down.
Mmm, flop.
It's a siesta gun, not a death ray.
On the other side of the scale, you get some Dalek exterminations
which are a bit overdone.
So you get Del Hennie in Resurrection Of The Daleks
as Colonel Archer being shot and doing a sort of strange disco dance
as he goes down.
HE MAKES DISCO DANCE NOISES
He's really into that death. We can't take it very seriously.
It's a bit too much fun.
HE MAKES DISCO DANCE NOISES
HE SCREAMS
So, pair your beings!
The Daleks were the first.
I know that seems a very obvious point to make,
but because they were the first, they became quickly the iconic ones.
Every robot that's been done since is so deliberately trying
to avoid being Dalek-y that, as a result, they always fail.
What is it about these things?
People now do align them with the sort of Hitler salute type thing,
you know, with the arm going up, exterminate, you know.
But it's just a composite of so many things.
There is a total package of a fantastic idea,
very clear, clearly portrayed.
That fear, that mechanised quality
makes the Daleks one of the great horror stories
that children love to be frightened by.
You know that they are bad.
You know they will do terrible things.
And that also inspires the Doctor to be...
Because they're so bad, it inspires the Doctor to be more heroic,
so it makes the good guy who we love even more lovable and admirable.
But they are... It's the certainty of them.
You can play around with the idea of what a Dalek story can represent.
And because they are such, such iconic figures,
they actually don't ever snap when you bend them.
It's brilliant that way.
There's something about these things which has an appeal.
I mean, I couldn't... You know, I had no idea it was going to be that good
or that people were going to respond in the way they did,
but there was just something about them.
It's an absolute icon, something which is going to go down,
and it's going to be a part of film in history.