The Daleks

"I went and talked to David Whitaker, the script editor of ‘Doctor Who’, and I came up with a story idea. They liked it, they bought it, and that takes us up to where the Daleks started. I don’t know to this day what the enormous appeal of the Daleks was. I’ve heard all sorts of ideas about it, but they were slightly magical, because you didn’t know what the elements were that made them work. I’d been a cinema-goer all my life, and loved going to what were rated in those days as horror movies. Whatever the creature was, somewhere in your heart of hearts, you know it was a man dressed up, so my first requirement was to take the legs off. Take away the humanoid form, and we were off and running. Further inspiration came from the Georgian State Ballet, the Russian dance trouple which was performing in London at the time. There was a dance that the women did, where they wore floor-brushing skirts, and evidently took tiny steps, so they appeared to glide across the stage. There was no suggestion of what form of locomotion they were using. That’s what I wanted for the Daleks. The rest of it comes easily, you put on an eye, and something else for hands. We made a big mistake with the hands, of course, we should have been smarter, but I had no faith in the show. It was the old writer’s axiom, ‘Take the money and fly like a thief’. I really didn’t think that it could work. After the Daleks, I was for a short time the most famous writer on television. The press interviewed me, there was mail arriving in great van loads. There was stuff coming to my house that said ‘Dalek Man – London’, and I was getting lots of them. Almost all the kids wanted a Dalek, and nobody was quick enough. The BBC, not being the great commercial operator, wasn’t ready, so there was no merchandising, there were no plastic Daleks, there were no buttons, there were no anything. My God, was that to change! Within the year, there were Dalek everythings."

"Ray Cusick, the designer, took rough notes of my ideas for the Dalek’s behaviour, the electronic eye, mechanical hands, and so on, and although I didn’t have a clear visual image in my mind, when I saw his finished Dalek design it seemed very familiar. In fact the visible part of the Dalek is only a travelling case inside which there is the Dalek itself, a shapeless brain intercommunicating and interacting with all the other Dalek brains – although later there came a need for these to be organised through a Dalek Supreme."

"The Daleks don’t have any personal character, any conscience, or morality. They are totally bad. This has worried some American companies interested in them —Americans seem to think that even the blackest villain must have some redeeming features. They had to have a purpose, and I knew what: they were concerned with total domination."

"Aren’t we all interested in dominating other people? Total control, a machine-like desire, and the Daleks. It had a neatness that fitted. In the past only human endeavour has overcome this kind of evil. Man is a supreme creation if he is able to work with his fellows. There is nothing he can’t do if he gets down to it. I believe that what people want on television is entertainment, and action stories are what I want to write – there are plenty of other people to write sociological dramas - but if the Daleks have a message this is it. It’s so ‘nonsensically simple. Why do people starve and die in the streets and go on fighting – Vietnam for instance, all in the name of democracy!"

"DOCTOR: The floors are metal. All the floors are metal."

"CORNISH: That's Tom Spilsbury. He's the editor at Doctor Who magazine. The Daleks, he says, look like giant metal salt shakers. But they're somehow believable as evil-armored aliens."

"SPILSBURY: They're effectively a giant pepper pot, yeah."