Now that’s what I call a decent headline for a local paper! Unfortunately its a little over-stated: for a start the the use of a plural is unwarranted as there was only one Dalek.
Nostalgia fans will be glad to see that it was a ‘classic’ model Dalek that was on the seafront guarding the washed up timber ((Yes – it *is* still there)) from light-fingered locals and tourists.
The story also contains the magic quote:
We managed to scare the earthlings present, patrol the wood in case of vandalism, and buy ice creams and obtain tourist information too
Perhaps the Daleks can be persuaded to visit the Liquid/Envy club in Crawley next time there is an under-18s disco…
The full story is here and includes a YouTube clip of the Dalek doing its thing.
Hey that’s not a classic dalek just an older one.
The classic daleks were the first ones in the original story set on Skaro when the Doctor and his companions and the local native people – The Thals, destroyed them. Those daleks were about 4 foot high and had two horizontal bands round the middle with a small satellite dish at the back rather than the vertical plates round the middle this one has.
The daleks became the 6 foot ones as a result of the Dr Who films with Peter Cushing. In those films they gave them different colours (to make use of the fact the film was in colour unlike the black and white TV of the day) and made them larger to take into account the bigger screen size.
This idea was carried through to the second dalek story on the TV Dr Who, “The dalek invasion of Earth” when they appeared as the Worthing dalek does above. I’m posting this from work so I can’t check my video of that story but from memory there was a reference to the changed look of them.
It happened when a dalek appeared out of the Thames, across the river from Battersea Power Station, and the Doctor said the difference in them would explain how they could travel over rough terrain rather than on the metallic plates they drew their static electricity power from in the first story.
Yes, you’ve guessed it; I’m a dalek fan.
As an aside did you go to the dalek exhibition at Southampton University about 6 years ago? They had over 50 there that fans had built and side by side were a couple of the BBC owned ones – the difference in the build quality of them was almost non-existent!
I am not going to fall into the trap of getting into a discussion about Daleks with somebody who obviously knows more than it is healthy to know on the subject, but…
…it depends on what you mean by ‘classic’. If you take it to mean ‘original’ then you would be right. If you take it to be the more subjective ‘established as the best’ then its down to your own opinion of what is best or most typical.
So I would say that classic Stevie Wonder is the string of 4 70’s albums from Talking Book to Songs in the Key of Life – and not the ‘Little Stevie Wonder’ albums of the early 60’s. Or that classic Clint Eastwood is just about anything between 1964 and 1977 (especially if Don Siegal directed it) and not his first films.
Being somewhat younger than you I have only vague memories of the 2nd Doctor – Pertwee took over when I was 7 – so for me a typical Dalek is the type featured in the 70’s
So I think the Worthing Dalek deserves to be called a classic – but I wonder what Paul Burgin‘s opinion is?
My boss has a story about a local comic shop when he worked in York who decided to send a guy dressed in a dalek costume out to promote the store. Due to a slight miscalculation in the gradient of the one slope they would have to travel down (York being pretty flat) he treasures the sight of a Dalek travelling at top speed down a hill being chased by a guy who looked, I imagine like the Comic Book Store guy from the Simpsons.
Skuds you are correct when you say I am older than you. :-((
My first Doctor was the first Doctor. :-))
I used to watch the TV version of the radio Goon Show – The Telegoons – and one week this was followed by the start of a new Sci Fi series, Doctor Who. I was enthralled by it but really cheesed off the following week to find that the Telegoons had been cancelled and the schedules reshuffled to repeat the first episode.
To the best of my knowledge the Telegoons were never shown on TV again and there is doubt as to whether any of those programmes were preserved.
Spotted this earlier today an thought you may be interested. It’s about half hour of reading displacment activity. :-))
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalek_variants
You do know they aren’t real don’t you?
:-))