Adam's Dalek

My Daleks

Way back in 1973 the Radio Times published a special souviner issue to celebrate 10 years of the Sci-Fi TV show, Dr Who. Inside this issue was plans on how to build you very own, full-size Dalek. Being only 8 or 9 at the time I often looked at the plans wishing I could build one myself, but thought the brazing of metal for the gun, and fibreglassing the dome, was beyond me. I kept that issue of the Radio Times, and every couple of years I would look at the Dalek plans longingly but deciding each time, that I couldn't make the dome and would put the magazine back in the cupboard.

Fast forward to 2005, Dr Who has been gone from our screens for 20 years but its being brought back. Memories of watching the show on a Saturday evening come flooding back, along with the desire to build a Dalek again. I search the internet and find a couple of groups of Dalek builders with vastly superior plans for building your own Dalek. I join up, download some plans and decide that I'm going to build my Dalek at last, with so much help and support these Dalek building groups give each builder, I'm not going to let the dome put me off any more.

Well it took about a year from start to finish, to build my silver and blue, classic style Dalek. The dome probably took the longest time to make, but I discovered that fibreglass isn't so scarey as I first thought. I've had some fun taking the Dalek out in public, and made some good friends of other builders along the way. Its an unusuall hobby, but I have fulfilled a dream I had since 1973.




ABOVE: Newley completed, first photo shoot in the garden (click photos for bigger)

BELOW: Photos of the Classic Style Dalek with a new dome (click photos for bigger)

By the time I had built my classic style Dalek, the Dalek building community had worked out most of the measurements for the new, re-styled Dalek, that was brought back in the new series of Dr Who. This Dalek (commonly known as an NSD, which stands for New Series Dalek), has much more detailing than the originals and presented quite a few new challenge to builders. I quite like the NSD, even if it wasn't quite as elegant as the early Daleks were, so I had a go at building one of them too. This Dalek took 18 months to build and is modeled on the first Dalek to apear in the 2005 series, later Daleks in the series have changed slightly, but these differences are hard to spot.