Dalek curry

The late, great, "I told you I was ill" Spike Milligan's take on Dalek home life, from his TV comedy series Q in 1975.



Here's the script.

Find out more about Spike Milligan here.

I wonder if it was actually Spike inside the Dalek - it's certainly got his mannerisms!

On Location - Yeti!

More photo's raided from the Beeb's website for the Classic series, this time behind the scenes location photos from the making of the Abominable Snowman...






You can download higher resolution images on the website here.

Amazing World of Doctor Who (1976)

Way back here I did a post on the 'Amazing World of Doctor Who' Annual which was produced at part of the Ty-phoo tea promotion.

Well, surprise surprise, you can download some of it here.

Restoration of the Daleks

Wow! What an excellent episode! And yes, we did get Daleks offering cups of tea on trays, but sadly Jammie Dodgers were not offered on the plate, but instead promoted to a major supporting role (I won't spoil the episode for those who haven't seen it!). Perhaps it will be an 'extra' scene added on the DVD release. Or more likely I shall just have to keep it as part of my personal imaginary world of Doctor Who. I am sort of glad - if the Daleks had offered "tea and Jammie Dodgers" then it would have started a whole debate about to dunk or not to dunk. As it is I am left wondering if the Daleks put milk in their tea first or last.

Anyway! The best episode of the new season so far, with perfect pacing of the storyline, delightful direction and awesome acting. 9/10! I must admit, I was slightly worried about Mark Gatiss writing this story, but he's done a damn good job, on what could have easily become a cringable cheesy charade.

I was suitably impressed by the speed at which the British war effort threw together the anti-gravity bubble technology that enabled Spitfires to fly in space - in less than the 10 minutes it took for the German bombers to cross the Channel. But this aside, the story was largely free of the logic-defying and explanation-deprived stuff which RTD had so regularly presented to us in the new series to date.

In fact I am detecting some hints that the new season story arc may be about to undo some of the RDT madness. Last week we had the Doctor referring to the Time War, or perhaps to the events of The End of Time, as a "bad day" and wishing that he could erase events. This week we have the loose end of Amy not knowing about the Daleks and the events of The Stolen Earth and Journey's End. Is Mr Moffatt planning to re-write a bit of recent Dalek history? Perhaps we (well, me and Amy) live in a different universe, and all that stuff happened in a parrallel one!

What else? Well, Scotland gets a mention again, for the third episode in a row, and also Post Offices, for the second time. And lots of Union Jacks. Again. And someone gets pick-pocketed, again, and Amy saves the day, again... all a bit too much two episodes in a row. Oh, and that crack...

And we're also left with a Dalek-made humanoid android pottering around on Earth. Now I am sure everything will be OK and they will all live happily ever after, but I just can't help but wonder if he picked up that Dalek gun off the table before he left... Now having Dalek controlled 'sleepers' left hanging around is not new to Who, in fact after 'Resurrection of the Daleks' we understood they had infiltrated our whole society... one day someone will pick up that loose thread!

I also found myself thinking about the superiority of the Phillips screw system, as opposed to the slotted screw, which the Daleks have obviously cottoned on to. Well, you would expect nothing less from the self-proclaimed master race.


Oh yes, and of course... new Daleks! (and ones which have obviousbly moved on from the Phillips screw to some sort of invisible press and clip system, I imagine). Now I'm not so sure about these, and I guess most Who fans will take some time to accept this new design. I'm not bothered about the colours, which I think is a nice throw-back to the classic old Dalek movies, but there is something about the shape which just didn't do it for me. There was a pleasing perfection to the proportions of a classic dalek, and these news ones just seam a little ugly to me, bulky in the wrong places (I can imagine the operators needed more elbow room). That and their overall 'plastic moulded' appearance bothered me. I must admit I examined this weeks Radio Times very carefully, half convinced that they had used toy models for the Dalek covers. I guess that this new 'simplified' version is as much to make the CGI and special effects easier (and replication by toy makers) as it is for the operators. Who knows, perhaps in years to come these daleks toys will still have their plungers and guns!

We also have different designations of Dalek:

White - Supreme (complete with 'Emporer' style voice)
Blue - Scientists
Orange - Strategist
Red - Drones
Yellow - Eternal

With Gatiss and Moffatt apparently having no idea what an 'enternal' Dalek is or does. Do we believe them? And after such a definate "We'll be back" ending? Surely they are lined up for either the season end or Christmas special...

The official Who website has the usual collection of clips to watch, galleries to browse and other bits and bobs to explore, including some nice concept art and graphics, and a 'must watch' Blue Peter clip on how to create your on Dalek cakes!



Eating Dalek cake with your cup of tea probably tops having it with a Jammie Dodger, although for me KitKats still win.

Note to self - must do more on bits from Blue Peter!

Take a break...

If you're not a fan of Jammie Dodgers (like me) then go for a Kit-Kat! I find they go very well with a nice cup of tea.


A 2001 advertising campaign for KitKat, featuring Daleks chasing people saying, in the standard Dalek tones, "We love you!" and "Give us a cuddle!", while the final shot had Daleks following a group of Hare Krishna devotees, chanting "Peace and love!".

Wikipedia states that the Daleks' use in this advert was brought to an end by the estate of Terry Nation, who had not been aware of the usage. The advertising agency had mistakenly believed that the creatures were in the public domain.

However the excellent DalekLinks site states that it was endorsed by both the BBC and the estate of Terry Nation...

The Daleks used are 'fan-made' rather than Beeb props.

Nearly tea-time

"Would you care for some tea?"

Damn, I should have popped out today and got myself some Jammie Dodgers in preparation for tonight's episode. Anyway, time to make a cuppa and warm the tellie up (who rememebers when you actually had to do that for a minute or so before you watched your programme, unless you wanted distorted shapes and funny colours)...

I just can't wait...

I am confidently predicting that Daleks will offer the Doctor tea and Jammoe Dodgers in Saturday's episode. I'm going to be so dissapointed if not...

The original Dalek tea time

Now that last post and photo of Dalek family having tea stirred a memory, so a quick dig around and what do we have... a proper Dalek tea party with the original Doctor!


This is again from the RT, this one dating from Christmans 1964. Now I usually go to one of my fav linked sites, The Cuttings Archive, to get this sort of info, but the site HAS GONE! I'm hoping its only temporary, as it was a wonderful archive of early who RT stuff, and I can't stand to think of it gone! I should have donwloaded everything!!

So if I remember rightly, this was some little girl who won a RT comeptition and got to go and have tea with Dr Who and a couple of daleks. Wow. I'd kill to be able to have done that. Or maybe it was taken for a fictional story of a girl visiting the BBC and having tea with some daleks. I definately remember something about a fictional story... damn, something else to look up...

EDIT: 19/04/10 - I've found another little clipping relating to this, the article was called 'Alice In Wonderland' - a "fantastic journey into the world of television".

Dalek tea time

Just browsing the RT website gallery linked in my last post, and amongst the images of old RT dalek covers, there's a couple of odd images which I haven't seen before.


"Anyone for tea?"

And another...


I'm guessing due to their Christmassy theme they have been on the gallery for a while (perhaps since around Christmas time?).

The Eleventh Hour

Not sure about the new title sequence, or theme, but I'm sure it will grow on me. Good intro for Amy episode, and our new Doc, with the obligitory 'saving humanity from destruction' storyline thrown in as well. Really, he should know us all better than that and not bother. But if he's only got 20 minutes to save the world, I think it would have been nice if he'd done it whilst having tea and cake in a little English tea shop. Now that would have been impressive.

In fact I am dissapointed that tea wasn't even mentioned at all. I thought everyone knew that a freshly regenerated Time Lord liked a nice cup of tea. Shame, he didn't even realise he wanted a cuppa, no wonder the apple and yoghurt didn't go down well.

And I'm still confused by the duck pond... there must be more to that than meets the eye.

And we got a flashback sequence! OK, Cybermen and Daleks from the new series, among some others, but who spotted the old series style Sontaran, quickly followed by a Sea Devil, and then, more strangely one of those Hath fishpeople from 'The Doctor's Daughter', which as we all know was set on the planet Messaline, so very odd that they pop up here in a roll call of Earth invaiders.

I'll give it a generous 8/10, which considering the handicaps of having to introduce a new Doctor and companion (plus a new production team) gives me high hopes for the rest of the season. Really I think it should be less than this, but I've given an extra point for Amy's legs.

I'm hoping the new series will draw me out of my winter lethargy and that I may even get to develop this crazy little blog a little more... you never know, stranger things have happened...

Time for tea?

In 1976 TyPhoo Tea ran one of the best Who promotional offers ever, featuring the work of the great Chris Achilleos on the boxes, 12 photographic collectors cards, and a supporting hardback annual style album called ´The Amazing World of Doctor Who´, with an outstanding cover, again produced by Achilleos. Apparently there´s a wallchart to go with this, although I have yet to find a photo of this. Just a shame the cards are photographs rather than original artwork, but hey, you can´t have everything (not that us power crazed megalomanics listen to such sweeping statements).


You can still pick up the cards for a reasonable price on ebay and the like, and the album is also occasionally found. However the promotional boxes themselves are probably the most sought after and few and far between, after all, who keeps old tea boxes?!


I used a picture of the album on my post about Chris´s work (here), and should again plug Chris´s website where you can order limited edition prints of the cover artwork, and a great Tom Baker portrait, again used in the promotion. You can visit his website here.


Unfortuantely we were a PG Tips family (probably my fault as I was also an addicted collector of the free collectors cards which appeared in these, so my poor mum probably had no choice but to buy PG!) and I have never had the disposable income to buy the stuff second hand since. But as soon as I win that lottery...

When I originally posted this I had lost the source of these images, which I have now rediscovered. Who collector Mike Hall has an excellent site called Dalek-mania which contains a wealth of information on all things Dalek and beyond, including original props. He has marked these images as his own copyright, which we respect, but wonder if the artist and manufacturer (and designer!) also have copyright claims. As the images are in the public domain, and refer to a once publicially available item, we think it´s OK to reproduce them here in this context. However, please respect this copyright if you copy these images for your own use by at least crediting Mike and his site.