By Iain Delaney: Dr Who started in 1963 and ran until 1989. They revived it in 2005 and has been running (more or less) continuously ever since. The series holds the record for the longest running sci-fi TV series and is arguably the longest running TV series.
The Daleks appeared in the second serial of the first series, and have been the Doctor’s nemesis ever since. Their non-human appearance, seeming invincibility, and single-minded desire to destroy all other lifeforms, have made them the terror of children everywhere for almost 60 years. So, of course, there had to be toys of them.
This example is from 1975 and was made by Palitoy in England. It stands roughly six inches tall and is made of tough plastic. Two AA batteries that you place in a compartment in the base power the toy. (These are called ’HP7’ batteries on box; thank goodness for standardization!)
You trigger the talking feature is by pressing the button on top of the Dalek. It will then say one of four phrases, “Exterminate! Exterminate!”, “Attack! Attack! Attack”, “You Will Obey”, and “What are Your Orders?” The sounds are very authentic; I suspect they copied them from the original soundtrack.
I’ve dismantled the talking mechanism so many times that I now have a thorough understanding of its workings. A stylus rides the grooves and converts the bumps in the grooves into sound, much the same way that the stylus on a record player works. Unlike using a piezoelectric crystal and electrical amplifier, the toy has a simpler mechanism to produce sound. The arm holding the stylus has a curved cross-piece that makes direct contact with the base of a small speaker. So the vibrations from the disk are transferred directly to the speaker in the same way an old gramophone works. It’s a very clever use of an old technology and like a lot of simple techniques, it stands the test of time. This toy from the 1970s still works, while some toys that use electronics that are less than twenty years old have failed and are impossible to repair.
The BBC Talking Dalek is long out of print but may appear on eBay from time to time.
Iain Delaney was born in the UK but moved to Canada at an early age. The UK heritage explains his fascination with British TV SciFi, including Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, UFO, and, of course, Dr. Who. After fumbling through high school, he fumbled through university, emerging with a degree in physics. With no desire to pursue graduate studies he discovered that a bachelor’s degree had little to no job prospects, so he took up a career in computer programming. In his off time he reads, watches TV and movies, collects toys, and makes attempts at writing. To that end he has a small number of articles published in role-playing game magazines and won two honorable mentions in the Writers of the Future contest. He is working on an urban fantasy YA trilogy and entertains delusions of selling it to movies or TV.
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Ah, nostalgia, though Doctor Who certainly isn’t “arguably the longest running tv series” – as a UK resident I immediately thought of the soap opera Coronation Street, which started on 9th December 1960 and has been running ever since (Wikipedia is showing 11,078 episodes, but it’s probably out of date). Actor William Roache appeared in the first episode, and he’s still there, aged 91.
HP7 batteries! Oh, my, that takes me back….
Actually, Doctor Who started in 1963 and ran until 1989 not 1985. There was a special appearance of the characters in 1990, in Search out Space. A fifteen minute Charity special – Dimension in Time in 1993. In 1996 there was a movie, which is part of the television canon. In 1999 there was another special starring Rowan Atkinson, Curse of Fatal Death. In 2003, an online animated web-series by the BBC called Scream of the Shalka, and the series was revived formally in 2005. So really, Doctor Who never actually went away, it just slowed down a lot between 1990 and 2004.
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Was the Paul McGann Doctor Canon at the time? My admittedly hazy memory is saying that he was not as it wasn’t until later that Mother, the BBC, retconned him into the Canon when he was became part of the new series.
His audiobooks (again if memory serves me right) are all on Big Finish and nothing there is Canon. Good thing too given how much story has been added there!
BTW David Tennant first played a Time Lord in Exile and Galanar, the third series of Big Finish’s Dalek Empire series which came out several years before he played the Tenth Doctor.
Big Finish stories do seem to be canon. Characters who have only appeared there have subsequently been referred to by name on TV.
Stuart Hall says Big Finish stories do seem to be canon. Characters who have only appeared there have subsequently been referred to by name on TV.
Stuart, which writer for the series started doing that? It’d require a familiarity with the Big Finish product that is quite deep.
I almost bought a more modern version of a Talking Dalek at Forbidden Planet many years and then talked myself out of it, because the box was too big for my suitcase, so I would have to take it as carry-on. Plus, the Talking Daleks had a reputation of randomly activating and the idea of a Dalek announcing “You are an enemy of the Daleks. You must be exterminated” during a security check was not very appealing.
I have a talking Big Bird purchased in 1978 and while the talking mechanism still works, the mechanism is so worn out by now, that Big Bird sounds distorted and slow.
As a kid, I used to pretend to interview Big Bird, but he only ever gave the same four answers.
I think the See-and-Say used similar gramophone style voice production
@Cat Eldridge: Sylvester McCoy, the Seventh Doctor in the original series, appears at the beginning and is seen to regenerate into Paul McGann’s version. To my mind that speaks to an intention to connect the movie to the previous version, and have it be canon.
@Cat Eldridge: Stephen Moffat was the writer responsible.
So just to be clear, the batteries rotate the record? No lights or wheels?