Build your own Dalek Part one
by Quentin Cockburn
As previously mentioned I have intimated that as part of our holiday program “we’ have initiated a Dalek build. On this I am complicit in being exactly what I despise. I’ve talked of freewheeling and unsupervised holidays, and here I am supervising the build as an over indulgent, cosseting parent. But you see that’s only half of it. I tried to avoid the onerous task of building the bloody thing, but my sons sheer bloody mindedness held sway. In the end there was nothing else for it… You see, the holidays before last they built a trench. I had no input in it. They wanted to do a trench, and sit in it pretending to wait for the Mujahadeen, the Iraqis, the Viet Kong, the North Koreans, the Japs, the Jerries, the Russians. It ‘s not the building that drove them, but the exercising of a fertile imagination. It’s the sheer pleasure they derive from getting themselves dirty, dressing up, and making a hole somewhere. There’s not enough of it. The army museum at Puckapunyal may have done it. And the kids were telling me something equally profound; ‘Leave us alone, let us make a huge effing mess, and at some stage could you please make an attack with rocks, clumps of dirt, and can we use your .22 rifle’?
Project Dalek we call it, began with a trip to London years ago. We missed the Dr Who show, though we purchased a palm sized Dalek, with press button ‘exterminate’ function. Returned to Australia and promptly forgot about it. About a year ago, Jasper became fascinated with the Old Dr Who’s. The ones from the 60’s and seventies. He liked the quirkiness of the sets, the costumes, and the eccentricity. The Shakespearian poise of the lead actors Hartnell, Troughton, Pertwee and Baker. None better than Baker, he’s the Sean Connery of Dr Whos’, witty, engaging, childlike, serious, and wise. Promising the eternal truth of not taking life too seriously. Then with a few excursion to the book shop, the plan formed, to build one. He was inspired by ‘International Day’. Last year he went as an Australian, tin helmet, belt, battle jacket, and pistol, subconsciously he’s projected Tony Abbots vision of Australia – afraid of aliens, defensive, paranoid. This year he would be a Dalek. Sic; an alien. Drawings of Daleks, cut away and realistic began to appear around the house. Plans appeared for engine units, voice modulators, and then, from card and ply the eye socket, the gun and the other ‘feely’ thing, all exquisitely designed and executed. A few weekends ago we collected all our scrap cardboard and began building.
Building a Dalek is not just an excercise in model making, it registers a protest. It proclaims most defiantly a return to home made props, cardboard, sets, and broom handle laser beams, as a real alternative to the sanitized perfection and 3D super-imagery of modern television. The BBC props department made the stuff ‘real’ because it was so obviously ‘fake’. The modern sci fi, by making everything ‘hyper-real’, has made it all fake. It’s a paradox. But true. The old genre exercised the viewers imagination as the receptacle for imagining. Now imagination is just ‘product’.
The cardboard cut out version seemed right. We didn’t pay for plans, for a “correct Dalek”, we just did it by eye. That’s the artistry. No self respecting Dr Who fan should use plans; there’s no innovation in that. We gave the cardboard Dalek a test drive, it worked well. Jasper fashioned a base out of marine ply. We purchased some coasters from the hardware, (there were none at the tip) and found that five casters gave speed and agility. We determined the drive position and control board for a voice modulator unit. We found speakers, an amplifier, and with some basic circuitry, we sub contacted the electrical engineering to our colleague Lewis, and the construction to ourselves.
Two weekends later we have assembled the base and mid section in plywood, attached the bumps, (polystyrene balls) and moulded in card the upper section. Our Dalek is taking shape.
