Dalek dreams

see copyright notice. Page created 21-May-2026. Use the button groups above to navigate quickly around the site.

photo by Stan Robinson

As a scientifically-minded child in the 1960s, I was fascinated by two objects featured on TV. One was the gyroscope-like "galasphere" spaceship in Space Patrol. That puppet-based series was less popular than the likes of Stingray and Thunderbirds, but in my opinion much more captivating. In particular, I loved its quirky use of electronically generated sound-effect loops instead of background music. That probably inspired my later experiments with synthesisers! I spent many hours trying to make a model "galasphere" from cardboard tubes and rubber hose, but could never seem to get the proportions right. Watching all 39 episodes re-mastered on Blu-ray, I've enjoyed a mega-hit of nostalgia – I think one viewing will suffice though.

The other thing I desperately wanted to copy was a dalek from Doctor Who. Some of the monsters in that series seemed a bit infantile (even to an infant!), and the episodes going back in time bored me just as much as school history lessons. Daleks, however, were impressive, and looked (deceptively) easy to emulate. As the photo shows, it was more exciting to be a child in a makeshift "dalek suit" than to be its long-suffering parents.

Cut to 2010, and that creative urge was re-awakened by the appearance of a very detailed dalek image in Radio Times. For some reason I instantly thought of Upminster's famous landmark, the 1803 smock windmill; a few hours of intricate work with Corel PHOTO-PAINT resulted in this hybrid, which I named a windmek.

I thought I might offer it around for a caption competition! I even went to the trouble of contacting the BBC in case there were any intellectual property issues (the answer was that their lawyers didn't have a problem with my proposed game, provided I mentioned "kind permission of BBC").

So here we are in 2026, and I've just completed a virtual 3D model of a proposed hyperscale data centre, which features as part of a Havering Friends of the Earth campaign against its construction on green belt farmland. Having used my well-worn free copy of Caligari trueSpace3 to build the set and various props such as cars, I began to think a few daleks might add a touch of humour to the video, and shouldn't be that difficult to model.

Starting with an 11-sided polygon for the base, I used the "sweep" function to extrude a "skirt", then scaled down the top face and moved it slightly toward the rear. The middle section followed a similar process, this time with the vertices of the top face moved inwards to form a regular 11-sided polygon. The components of the "head" follow an 8-sided plan, with the dome (and many of the other, smaller features) made from truncated spheres. TrueSpace's Magnetic Tool was invaluable for positioning the 56 "bumps" on the skirt – once attached, they could simply be slid into place!

The wireframe outline shows the IK (Inverse Kinematics) joints I added, to assist in moving the various appendages. For example, you can drag the eyeball to any position and the dome and eyestalk automatically swivel as necessary. And the "arm" extension slides in and out as you move the plunger!

Most of the casing components are in solid colours, but I did resort to the texture and bump map images pictured, to save constructing a mesh and multiple armour strips. They're repeated 16 times around the middle part of the model.

The two lamp protrusions on the dome can be flashed in time with the dalek's speech, by keyframing the visibility of a pair of slightly larger, glowing ones. It's a technique I developed originally for the indicators and brake lights of modelled cars. I'd always regarded those dome lights as a gimmick, but of course, in the absence of mouthparts, they're essential to show which dalek in a group is speaking!

Here's a fully rendered frame on the set of the East Havering Data Centre simulation. There's more work to be done, not least to fine-tune the shininess of the casings, but first I'm taking a break from the visual stuff to concentrate on that distinctive dalek voice.

I've coded up a ring modulator, which applies a low-frequency sinewave (30Hz seems to be about right) to a WAVE audio file. Pre-processing, with a hard clipping function and some judicious pitch bending, works well, as does post-processing with a bit of reverb. These additional effects can be achieved with Sonic Foundry Sound Forge. A brief example:

Incidentally, my copies of the three packages I've mentioned, CorelDRAW7 Select, trueSpace3 and Sound Forge XP, all date from around 1998! They were written for Windows 98 and continue to run [almost] perfectly under Windows 11. A tribute, for sure, to both Microsoft and the respective authors.

So far, so good. Now for the storyline...

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