Day of the Daleks used three props, to date the lowest number of props for a TV story.

Despite 'Day' being the first colour outing for the Daleks in colour the director resisted the urge to go over the top! The lead Dalek  was gold and the other two were gun metal grey. A colour that was used in almost all the stories following. Possibly the dark colour was chosen to help hide deficiencies in the condition of the props. The use of the pupil in the centre of the eye, first seen in 'Evil', and the oval between the gun boxes was made standard from now on. The domes were given new lights too which were car side-lights.

The gold prop had a film-style top half and original TV skirt, one grey prop had an original TV top half (with that thinner collar underneath the gun boxes) with a film style skirt leaving the last grey as an original top half with the 'Invasion' skirt.

Refurbishment of the props often meant small changes to areas of the props that made tracing their history easier in later years. Many of the additional bolts and screws had already appeared by the time of 'Day', and we have already pointed them out, but the advent of colour, better quality TV pictures in general and better publicity photos made seeing these changes easier from this period onwards. 

We have previously noted the difference between film skirts and TV skirts, but due to the better images we are able to see differences specific to certain props. For example in the above picture you can see a unique double bolt on one panel and single on another (which we refer to as a triple-bolt configuration). This pattern also appears on the other side of the skirt, which was a component made for originally for 'The Dalek Invasion of Earth'. In the picture on the left (the film style skirt) you can see single bolts and washers (double bolt). These are the sorts of features that enable us to follow the use of skirts through the following stories and several previous ones.

The story features an invasion of Earth by the Daleks at the climax of the story. One hell of a feat you may think with only  three Daleks! Well 'clever' editing was used to create the illusion of more props. I say 'clever'... but in reality the give away was that the gold Dalek was shown with the greys over and over again showing clearly that the same three were being used. The effect would have been achieved far better by showing multiple shots of only the grey Daleks.

Two of the props appeared with Jon Pertwee in a series of promotional pictures taken outside BBC TV centre around the time of 'Day'. Its fascinating to see the condition the props had already fallen into so soon after being refurbished. The eyestalk of the grey Dalek was very battered in particular.

However the Daleks were back... on the small screen... in colour...!