A history of the Dalek props

Spotting the Props on Screen

This curious sub-plot begins at the end of 1965 with the announcement of a second film starring Peter Cushing in which he would battle the Daleks once again. For this big screen outing a large collection of Dalek props was assembled, including the five props built for the stage play Curse of the Daleks. With the addition of a further four casings, there were therefore nine hero props in action during the shoot in the spring of 1966. Three more rough props were created for the FX scenes.

After filming was concluded, four of the props were given to Terry Nation. Due to the similarities between the props in this film, finding an easy short-hand for telling them apart is difficult (as seen in the diagram on the Daleks Invasion Earth 2150AD page). Perhaps more so than on any other production before or since, the components of the props on the second movie swap an inordinate amount. Not only are the shoulders on different skirts in almost every scene, but the appendages swap, the eyes change, and hasty refurbishments introduce changes throughout. For this reason, the four skirts will be dealt with independently of the four top halves, because there is no such thing as a complete prop in this case.

The first top-half is easiest to spot and is labeled Movie Dalek B elsewhere on the site, but with so much swapping of components, these labels are not as useful as when tracking TV props. The slats at the front of the prop sag down as they reach the centre. This also results in a lift at the back. This prop also has a unique identifier which comes in very handy - the rivets which affix the slats to the shoulders are spaced very widely, at the furthest end of their respective slats. This top half is later repainted to become the gold Dalek in the film.

The second top-half is also easy to spot, and it's termed Movie Dalek E. Whist several of the props have unusually elongated front-slats, these beat all the rest. So much so that they have to be mounted higher in order to fit, and yet the one over the gunbox still nearly touches the ball-joint. The top line of the slats rises up from the back of the prop to the front.The two slats over the arm-box and the first behind it are all quite tightly bunched, and the second long slat behind the arm box is dropped slightly.

The third top only appears very briefly in the film during the Robomen rebellion. Movie Dalek H features two distinguishing features. Firstly, the neck mesh has a pale wash in certain sections as if it has been wiped with a cloth tainted with silver paint, or respraying was done without masking off the black parts. Secondly, the slat alignment is again haphazard. There is a big jump in height from front long slats to the first short slat, but then the slat ahead of the armbox is low again. This up-and-down slat layout is quite noticeable.

The final prop of the four is the one which is hardest to spot in the film. This is Movie Dalek I which was photographed along with Jill Curzon for publicity purposes. It not only sports the Curse-style gun which made it so distinguishable, but also has only six half-slats, and insufficient mesh to cover the gaps between slats over the armbox.

The first skirt is easy to locate in the film. On each of the front panels, on the second row of hemispheres down, there is a bolt just outside the hemisphere. This can be seen clearly when the Dalek shoots up at the escaping prisoner who then falls through the canopy, and later as the group of Daleks repels the saucer attack. It is interesting to note that during the rebel attack, this skirt is paired with the shoulders that have sagging front-slats, as will become clear later.

The next skirt is extremely similar to the first, however the bolts are closer to the edge of the panel than they are to the hemisphere. It is virtually impossible to find this skirt in the film, however it does appear in publicity photographs.

The third skirt has two bolts on its first left panel. One bolt is large and located roughly between the middle hemis on the panel, and the second is smaller and appears between the second-row hemi and the edge of the panel. This can be seen throughout the film although there are other skirts with quite similar bolts. This skirt is painted gold and black and paired up with the shoulders with the saggy slats to become the gold Dalek later in the film.

The last skirt is virtually impossible to find in the film. It has two bolts on the front panel (one large, one small) but unlike the Dalek above, it has a matching symmetrical pair on the other side.

The Whicker Man

And so in 1968 Alan Whicker paid Terry Nation a visit and thus revealed the four props he owned. The shots in the documentary are fleeting, save for the view afforded of a red prop. The other three in attendance are standard silver props, as they had appeared in the second film.

Refurbishments had taken place, but there were still enough identifying features glimpsed to piece the facts together and make sense of future appearances of strange movie props.

First and easiest to spot are the shoulders with the wide-spaced rivets indicating Movie Dalek B, which had started life silver and later appeared gold in the film. In the latter colour scheme its hemispheres had been painted black, and this feature was kept when the rest of the body-work was turned red. A variety of other quirks are visible in the footage, such as prominent screws holding the top collar to the shoulders. There is also a slat missing at the rear-left corner.

The next set of shoulders can be spotted via the slats over the arm-box being bunched up with the first slat behind. The second long slat behind the arm box is also slightly dropped-down. This reveals it to be Movie Dalek E which has extremely long front slats.

The third top-half can be seen to have a high slat over the gun-box, and the long slat behind it is quite low, indicative of the up-and-down slat layout of Movie Dalek H - and with that distinctive pale wash just about discernable in the neck as Alan Whicker walks by, it can be confirmed that this prop is the one which is only featured briefly in the Robo-rebellion.

Lastly, a prop which spent its life lurking at the fringes of Dalek life, once again is only seen fleetingly, this time lurking behind Terry Nation. But in those brief frames, the narrow-bore gun barrel and just-discernable spokes indicate the 'Curzon prop', or Movie Dalek I. Just visible too is the gap above the gunboxes where the mesh is cut too low.

Several important things about this prop show it being worse for wear. Most obvious is the fact the arm is missing, a light is missing, and there are rods missing from the upper part of the neck.

Honey Monsters

The following year, two of the props were in use again, this time for a young women's magazine called Honey, whose cover proclaimed: "A girl's best accessory is a man" - but in this instance the accessories were in fact two Daleks. This April 1969 issue used two of Terry Nation's props in a fashion article that showed off futuristic white outfits. Photos were taken in a couple of locations, including outside the law courts.

The more identifiable of the two props is of course the red and black one. The colour-scheme alone is distinctive enough, but the photos also show the wide-spaced rivets on the slats, and the other identifying features. Third party photographs of the shoot taking place outside the law courts shows that during the day the left-hand light is knocked off, because it is present in photographs which appear in the magazine but missing in other shots. In addition, a slat is hanging off at the rear of the shoulders.

The red/black skirt has a large bolt between the middle hemis of the front left panel, with a smaller one above it, to the side of the hemisphere. There is no discernable equivalent on the other side, just as per its appearance as the gold skirt on the big screen.

The other prop present at the shoot is infrequently seen and so the Honey photos are a rare opportunity to see high resolution images of this Dalek. The shoulders are those of Movie Dalek H which has the up-and-down slat layout but also quite remarkably the neck is still in its 'dirty' appearance from over two years previously. These photos are therefore easy to match to that Dalek which is wrestled by two rebellious Robomen in the film - virtually the only time the prop features prominently on screen.

The silver skirt is the one which is virtually impossible to find in the film. Honey photos show its two symmetrical sets of bolts on each of the front panel (one large, one small).

The Supreme and the Red Top

Nation's four props began to swap sections and as time went on, less and less regard was given to which bit went with which. The repeated swapping of components suddenly took a more significant turn when one particular incorrect combination was repainted.

Some time around 1970, give or take six months, a silver dome and neck was combined with the red shoulders (with wide-spaced rivets) which in turned were placed on a silver skirt (with the second-row bolts). This silver/red/silver prop was then completely repainted black and gold. This configuration of shoulders and skirt is interesting because it happened to be the combination which appeared prominently during the original film, when the Daleks were crushing the rebel attack.

The red dome surviving since its Whicker's World appearance was used on the neck of the Curzon prop (which had missing neck rods even in 1968) and combined with the shoulders with the elongated slats. This was placed on one of the two remaining silver skirts, and so a new type of Dalek was born: The "Red Top". Photos of Nation's muddled Dalek would end up being used as reference material by artist Gerry Haylock in late 1971 which explains how this odd rank of Dalek ended up in comic strip along side the black/gold prop in an issue of Countdown from 1972.

In 1973 the black/gold Dalek was borrowed for Planet of the Daleks, for which it was repainted by Cliff Culley, but its colour did not change. A few months later, the photographer arrived for the Radio Times for Doctor Who's tenth anniversary issue. It is from these photos of Terry Nation relaxing at home with his jumbled film props that we best know the "Red Top", but it is clear from the time-line that neither this nor the black/gold prop's colour schemes were new in 1973.

Random Repainting and Swapping

In the meantime, the Daleks had been available to hire, so in the years that followed their jumbled repainting, they embarked upon numerous random outings for a variety of reasons.

When it was decided that Jon Pertwee would release a single in time for Christmas 1972, two Daleks were brought in to picket the record company, on the pretext that the record would somehow threaten the Dalek race. This bonkers publicity stunt for Pertwee's equally bonkers song I Am The Doctor produced an unexpected headline however when the Daleks in question were stolen. The press cutting reporting the theft reveals that even after sections had been repainted to make a new uniform colour scheme, swapping continued to take place.

The two silver skirts which did not appear in the Honey photos both had bolts either side of the hemispheres on the second row down. One skirt had bolts closer to the hemis than the edge of the panel, and it was this skirt which had been repainted black with gold hemispheres. The dome is also the repainted one gold, however the mid-section is a plain silver unbefitting the rest of the Dalek, so it is clear that there is a missing middle-section. This shows evidence of a lack of attention when picking and assembling components for publicity purposes. Both this prop and the other taken from Purple Records were later recovered.

When Callum Church was a schoolboy he had to cope with a Dalek in his garage the night before his school's autumn fair. His father, somehow, through a friend of a friend, apparently knew Terry Nation - or at least knew how to borrow his props, and the resultant photograph yet again shows a mishmash of coloured sections. The prop has the red dome, and the red skirt with black hemispheres - but the red shoulders with the wide-spaced rivets have by this stage been repainted black/gold, so in their place are the silver shoulders with the elongated slats at the front. The prop's lights have also been replaced by a pair of bulbs on ugly stalks. The red dome at this stage now showed a fair amount of damage around the underside of the dome.

Seven Keys to Doomsday

Towards the end of 1974, two of Nation's four props reappeared in order to promote the stage play Seven Keys to Doomsday. One of the props with which faux-Doctor Trevor Martin posed was the black/gold Dalek that had been used as the Supreme in Planet of the Daleks. Aside from a little extra damage, the prop was relatively unchanged from its television role. The other prop is more interesting.

The shoulders of the other Seven Keys to Doomsday prop have been extensively rebuilt, with the gun and arm boxes enlarged. The slats and mesh seem to have been reconstructed and may have lost all definitive identifiers but if anything, their layout hints at the up-and-down slat layout seen in the Honey photoshoot - which would make perfect sense, because the skirt bolts reveal this to be the silver skirt from the Honey fashion article.

This is six years since the prop was photographed for the teen magazine and the prop has undergone considerable changes. Aside from the rebuilt shoulders, the arm has a series of rails not unlike a typical gun, and the gun itself is merely a tube with a cone-shape attached to the end. The lights have become jam-jars just like its black/gold counterpart and the prop has been repainted. The slats and dome are now red and the skirt is black with red hemispheres. Along side the black/gold prop the pair must have looked very attractive in their nonstandard but similar colour schemes.

Remixed and Repainted Again

Six months later and things have changed yet again. A photo of one of the Nation props at a BBC Roadshow in summer 1975 reveals that the top half of the black/gold Supreme has not only been paired up the with the black/red Seven Keys prop, but repainted to match it, with the gold sections becoming red!

The skirt is clearly identifiable by two means - firstly the bolts do not match those of the black/gold skirt, and secondly there is a scratch across the third red hemisphere down on the second-right panel which appears in the Seven Keys to Doomsday photos and is unmistakable in the BBC Roadshow pictures.

The black/red prop stayed in this form for several more years at least. It appears on television twice in 1977, although not in Doctor Who. Breakfast cereal Weetabix used this prop (voiced by long-time operator John Scott-Martin) and a promotion for Selfridges shows the prop on display in a shop window. All four of Nation's props were allegedly hired for the Selfridges promotion, but whilst the Daleks were unloaded from a truck on Oxford Street, one of them was stolen. Since the black/red prop is the only one featured in the Selfridges film, this is the only prop we know was not the stolen one, however there are no photos of any of the four dated January 1978 or afterwards.

Only one more can be tracked from this stage onwards...

Up For Grabs

When Terry Nation moved to America in the early 80s, it was said that he donated his prop(s) to a Children's hospice. At least half a decade after their last verifiable appearance, it is impossible to say which of the four props survived and in what state. If the black/red Supreme/Honey combination had indeed been stolen, then three props (or rather, six different-coloured sections) should have remained.

Whatever was floating around during the 80s and 90s at the Children's hospice, only one prop seemed to emerge when the place closed in 1995.¹ A year after the closure, a Dalek came up for auction at Phillips on 16th June 1996 which was yet again a new mixture, and yet again a new colour-scheme.

The top half of the auction prop showed the unmistakable configuration of the "Red Top" with its elongated slats, which can be first seen in the movie when the Daleks have to "intercept escaping humans in river area." The skirt however is given away by the bolts. As they have the lower positioning on the second-row it reveals itself to have been the black/gold section which appeared as the Supreme for Planet of the Daleks on television in 1973. Considering the state of the prop halves in 1973, the auction prop was in surprisingly good condition when it was re-sold in 2000 to collector Mick Hall, where it remains one of the proudest items of his collection.

Assuming the Selfridges tale is true, then the black/red prop should still have been around in the 80s. One of the remaining pair would have been the stolen prop, and the fate of the other remains a mystery. One prop would have comprised the top half of the formerly-silver Honey Dalek (last seen painted black/red and heavily modified in Seven Keys to Doomsday photos), with the skirt which had been red/black in the Whicker's World clip (seen in Callum Church's photo)... And the second prop would have been the top of the Curzon prop (last seen silver in 1968) with the skirt from the "Red Top" (also last seen silver/blue in 1973).

And so ends the tale of Terry Nation's Daleks. Four props which were muddled, rehashed and repainted over many decades. One survives out there ... do any more?