Daleks and the First Doctor

[dbskyler]

I'm currently watching the First Doctor story "The Daleks" and enjoying it quite a lot. The Daleks have never been my favorite monsters, but I think I "get" them now for the first time. They really are creepy with the way they glide around, and the way their eyestalks move to look at you when they talk. Plus, it's so fun to see the "firsts":



-- The Daleks use the word "exterminate"!
-- A Dalek is blinded by putting something on its eyestalk (mud, in this case)!
-- We get a hint of what's inside! (I'm glad to learn that right from the beginning, Daleks were not machines, but creatures inside the machines.)

I'm looking forward to the rest (I'm right in the middle of part 4 right now), but I just had to stop here and post because guess what the Doctor just said? The Thals are walking into an ambush, Susan wants to warn them, and the Doctor said, and I quote:

"The Thals are no concern of ours. We cannot jeopardize our lives by getting involved in an affair which is none of our business."

I'm like, who is this???? Because it's certainly not the Doctor! It's fascinating to see how much his core character has changed since these very early days.

Comments

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

Actually no, I haven't read that story. That's very interesting! I was just wondering how much credit Terry Nation actually deserves for the Daleks, because it's the way they move and look that really makes them, and I thought that maybe it was actually the production designer (or whoever's in charge of monster-making) who should be getting all the royalties. But it sounds like Terry Nation came up with the way they look, too? I'm also amazed at how little Daleks have changed over the years. Sontarans and Cybermen have been redesigned, but Daleks are the same. Well, except for Moffat's latest Day-Glo colors, but I like to think that will turn out to be a temporary aberration.

[thisbluespirit]

It was Raymond Cusick who designed them, and as far as I know he never got a penny beyond his usual salary for it. (I think he also made the Dalek city model for that ep, too).

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

That's really a shame, because the Daleks wouldn't have been nearly as popular without his design.

[lolmac]

I managed to find an excerpt online:

‘It had to be . . . mechanical. And then in order to make it non-human what you have to do is take the legs off. That’s the only way you can make it not look like a person dressed up. I had seen the Georgian state dancers, where the girls do this wonderful routine. They wore floor—brushing skirts and took very tiny steps and appeared to glide, really glide across the floor. That's the movement I wanted for the Daleks.’

Also: 'Wishing to create an alien creature that did not look like a "man in a suit", Terry Nation stated in his script for the first Dalek serial that they should have no legs. He was also inspired by a performance by the Georgian National Ballet, in which dancers in long skirts appeared to glide across the stage.'

The Cybermen could be redesigned and still obviously be Cybermen (especially since the originals were really cheesy) -- after all, they're human-form robot-men, which is a very loose idea. But the Daleks were and are something specic to Doctor Who: not just a mechanical menace, but one with a specific, unique and immediately recognisable form. Attempts to redesign them, other than very minor tweaks to accomodate improved materials and filmmaking technology, wouldn't work, and I'm quite relieved that it hasn't really been tried. Compare the TARDIS: the inside can be redesigned, even completely and radically changed, as long as the outside is kept the same.

The Daleks have antigravity and better special effects now, but they still have that same silhouette, the silly plunger arm, and the eye-stalk. Thank heavens.

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

I've always wondered about the plunger -- well, haven't we all? -- but the eye-stalk is malevolent perfection. So is the way Daleks move (I guess we'll give that one to Terry Nation, and/or the Georgian dancers).

[lolmac]

We can give the idea, and the insistence, to Nation, and the specific image to the Georgians, who will be very happy and proud.

The plunger arm was because the Don't Make These Things Look Humanoid aliens had to be able to hold things; so, suction. Even if they'd been able to do mechanical hands at the time, that would have gone against the mandate to be non-human.

I also remember the debate over the name -- Nation had originally told the press that he got it from looking at a multivolume London phone book (or encyclopedia, or dictionary) with the letters on the spine DAL-LEK. He later pointed out, in a different article, that you only have to look at the publication in question to see that the answer was rubbish; there never had been volumes with that breakdown of letters.

Quite a bit later, I read a fascinating article by a fan, who had looked at the London phone directory at the time. It was in four volumes:

A-D
E-K
L-R
S-Z

The fan then drew a little diagram showing the books on a shelf, with the first two volumes on their sides and the third and fourth upright next to them.

D-A L S
E-K R Z

She concluded that Nation had, at some point while writing, looked up and seen the letters, and his mind had gone "DALEK! That works!" He'd had some notion that the phone book was involved, mentioned it in the initial interview, and then recanted when he realised it couldn't be true. The sudden popularity of the critters caught everyone by surprise and provoked a media frenzy, and how much success does one usually get when interviewing an author about the creative process?

It's pure speculation, but the phone book lettering is correct, and I think it's entirely likely.

An almost entirely unrelated item: Terry Nation moved from the UK to Hollywood in 1980. Blake's 7 was still on the air, but he was no longer involved (I believe he jumped, rather than being pushed, as they say). One of the shows he worked on was . . . MacGyver. *g*

He never wrote any episodes for it, but the first season included short standalone sequences that ran before the credits, known as "Opening Gambits". He wrote three of them (out of seven total).

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

Ha, the phone book thing is great! I love that someone went to all that trouble to figure it out, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were right.

Yay for Terry Nation and MacGyver! I'm kind of sad to learn that he didn't write an episode, though, because I'd like to see what he would have done with it.