From scary monster to a plastic toy in just months .......the Dalek

Now, I knew that the Daleks would make a return visit to the blog.

After all, since their first appearance in 1963 on series one of Dr Who they have cropped up regularly, dispensing a mix of menace, destruction, but always culminating with their defeat, until the next time.

On one level, how could anyone take a voice in a tin box seriously, when their answer to almost everything was “Exterminate”?

But of course, that is to ignore that Derek the Dalek was part of a television programe for children and that voice was far more scary, if you were just seven and cowering behind an arm chair.

Moreover, they the result of a nuclear war and that was even scarier, given just how close the world had come to a nuclear confrontation in the October of 1962, when the superpowers had squared up to each other over Cuba.

Over the years that aspect has slipped away and instead they are just another group of villains, but ones which have reached deep into British culture.

And the BBC along with toy companies were quick to fasten on to the potential and so here from 1964 are two adverts for Daleks.

They belong to Chris who told me “I still have these…. I got the Plastic Dalek in The Isle of Wight in Carisbrooke Woolworths in 1964 on school journey with school”.

Chris was still in primary school and the Daleks who had burst on to our TV screens in the December, were seen off in the February of the following year.

All of which just left a few months for those toy companies to design, manufacture and start selling the models.

Pictures; Dalek adverts, 1964, courtesy of Chris Weeks

On the pier at Weston-Super-Mare with a Dalek and a dark memory

Now, if you were born sometime between 1949 and 1958 and watched TV, the chances are, you were terrified of the Daleks.

A Dalek at Weston - Super-Mare, 2019

They first appeared on Dr Who in 1963 and have continued to reappear across the years, remaining the epitome of all that is evil.

It starts with that ugly voice, and the sinister machine which incases each one, and grows as you realize that they view all other life forms as inferior, fit only to be enslaved or exterminated.

Added to which they are determined to conquer the universe, and while they always get defeated, their malevolence coupled with their technical genius makes sure they always come back.

All of which makes them very scary, and best observed behind the armchair in the company of a dozen grownups.

But for me, aged 13, the fear was less the Daleks and more the circumstances which had created them.

They were the product of a nuclear war which had caused them to mutate and become reliant on that tin box in which they existed.

Atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945

Their enemies were the Thals, who by contrast were tall, and blonde but could only exist on the surface of the ruined planet with the help of drugs to counter the radiation which permeated everywhere.

And that for me was more terrifying, because when the Daleks made their first appearance on British TV, it was just a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the confrontation between the USA and the Soviet Union came close to a nuclear war.*

During the October of 1962 it is not an exaggeration to say the World held its breath, as the Super Powers squared up to each other with no apparent way of backing down.

On the Saturday of the crisis I was playing school rugby about 40 minutes from home and expected to see a mushroom cloud rise from the direction of London.

Nor was I alone, for in the last few years other people of my age have shared that fear, and we were not alone.

The US Secretary of State looked out of his office window and wondered if he would see the morning, while his Soviet counterpart quietly told his wife and family to leave Moscow.

And one friend remembered entering his front room to the hushed conversation of his parents which trailed off as he sat down beside them.

A Dalek at Weston - Super-Mare, 2019

All of which meant, that when the series was shown in the December of 1963, into the following February, the horror of what had almost happened was brought back out of the shadows.

None of the subsequent appearances of the Daleks have affected me in the same way, although even now I catch myself reflecting back to that first show, when Dr Who, his granddaughter and companions wander the petrified and irradiated forests of the planet.

Not of course that many people will share those thoughts, instead the Daleks have become part of the landscape with them even appearing on a postage stamp in 1999 and allowing this one to wander at will down the pier at Weston-Super-Mare yesterday.

Leaving me just this passing thought, that while the people of Weston may view Derek the Dalek with a mix of fondness and tolerance, I remember his grand father on the planet Skaro, along with those petrified forests and the chilling Dalek cry “Exterminate”.

Location; Weston-Super-Mare

Picture; a Dalek in Weston-Super-Mare, 2019, from the collection of Diane Thomas, Atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, Charles Levy from one of the B-29 Superfortresses used in the attack.
 This image is a work of a U.S. Army soldier or employee, taken or made as part of that person's official duties

*The story of one house in Lausanne Road number 24 .................... the missiles of October 1962, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=cuban+missile+crisis