Welcome to Dalek 6388! A history of the Dalek props...

It's been many months hunched over tiny pictures looking at suckers, slats, paint marks and rivets! But we got there in the end...

'Doctor Who' and the Daleks. They are inseparable. Arguably without the Daleks, 'Doctor Who' wouldn't have survived its early years. But why did they last? Why did they keep coming back? Why are they, even now, still being voted the most popular monster in the show's history some 45 years after their first appearance? Interest in the Daleks takes many different forms, one of these being the props themselves. And it's this area we will cover on these pages.

The original Dalek6388 wasn't bad. Even if I say so myself! In broad terms it had it about right. There were details that were wrong but it was knocked up over a few weeks and with that in mind I was happy with it. But some time ago I was approached by the creator of 'The Mind Robber' website with a number of questions I couldn't answer. That lead to us completely rewriting the whole site.

Dalek prop history is a very tricky business. Over the years there have been many attempts to track the history of Dalek props, some more successfully than others. In early years of research it was sometimes assumed that the BBC made new props for each story, although this was quickly discounted!

There is a lot of confusing material to sort when attempting the history. Official material or memos regarding the props are rare. When there is material available it is not always reliable. Take the case of the Barnardo's Daleks (see 'The Daleks' and 'The Dalek Invasion of Earth'). It is known that a memo exists that states that arrangements were made to borrow back the two props that the BBC had given to Barnardo's. But so do a good many memos on other subjects which have been proved didn't happen. Can we the believe this material?

Both the tv and movie props were loaned out, repainted and put in exhibitions, and appeared on other TV shows. All this extra work took its toll on the props. Many would come back damaged meaning they would need refurbishing. This makes tracking a particular prop by original details very hard (although new unique details, created in the refurbishment, do help).

The testimony of people who worked on the show can also be questioned in some cases. This is controversial but necessary. Ask yourself if you can remember specific aspects of your own job from 5 years ago. Tricky isn't it? Now go back 30 or even 40 years... To a lot of these people Doctor Who was just a job. Not something to be catalogued and dissected. The famous phrase "the memory cheats" can be applied to the prop history too! Take for example the initial shot of the Dalek rising from the Thames in 'The Dalek Invasion of Earth'. This is said to be a model. The DVD production notes state this as fact. Take another look, then look at the other model work in the episode. This would have to be a case of the best model work ever in the show! It is clearly a standard prop. We haven't discounted this type of evidence completely though. We have used it more as a piece in the "jigsaw" of history rather than immediately believing it all as fact.

We took the attitude of starting with the visual evidence that could be collected. We have checked DVDs, videos and literally hundreds of images. We have been in contact with Doctor Who historians (to whom many thanks) and we have bounced ideas and theories off each other over the months to come up with our take on the history.

We can't say we're right and anyone who contradicts our version is wrong. How we've arrived at our conclusions is explained and with visual material to try to back it up. At every stage new images have cropped up, and very obvious facts have often been overlooked by us for a long time! The history is an ongoing project. We are always open to new ideas and theories. Just a few weeks before publishing we spotted a very obvious feature on a couple of the Sixties props which immediately changed our angle on all the stories after, running right through to the end of the Seventies, which meant another rewrite and emphasised the fluid nature of a project such as this.

Of course feel free to email us anything you like regarding the pages and the history. As Doctor Who fans we like to have our facts in boxes and tied down. We hate grey areas. But unfortunately Dalek prop history has grey areas with details we may never sort out, particularly in the early years.

We have chosen the main Dalek appearances for our history, but where props can be linked to the TV show in some way we have included them. Hence 'Curse of the Daleks' being given a page of its own.

We couldn't write a site like this without some help from a few people, so big thanks go to Andrew Pixley, Mike Tucker, David Howe, Tony Clark, Stephen James Walker, Mick Hall, Chris Balcombe, Dave Muirhead and the guys at the Project Dalek Forum, especially Mark Dando, Frankentony, J (MovieDalek), RobertK and James Russell.

If you like what you read please consider clicking the Amazon or Forbidden Planet links. Any purchases you make will help to keep the site running and aid further research into the prop history. We are hugely grateful for any help!

Ok, on with the history...

Jon Green & The Mind Robber