Doctor Who (1963) - Season 1

Even though Doctor Who co-creator Sydney Newman did not want the series to have 'bug-eyed monsters', it was still intended to be science-fiction, and any SF TV series requires special effects. This presented a challenge as even past the BBC's inexperience with science-fiction, its 'Visual Effects Department' only consisted of Jack Kine and Bernard Wilkie.

Kine himself explained; 'The problem Bernard and I encountered, was that our department was still very much two men and a dog in late 1963, we just didn't have the resources or the manpower to deliver a new alien and a selection of special props each week. So the majority of the work went to outside contractors for the first three years of the show.'

The main contractor that Doctor Who relied on in its first few years was Shawcraft Models, a modelmaking company run by Bill Roberts in Uxbridge. Shawcraft Models originally specialized in creating model vehicles for museums and exhibitions, but since the 1950s had been servicing Britain's film industry; among many other films, Shawcraft provided the Titanic model for 1958's A Night to Remember, and the model ships for 1960's Sink the Bismarck.

Shawcraft's first contribution to Doctor Who was working on the TARDIS console in the first serial, 'An Unearthly Child'. According to Jack Kine, while visualized on paper by designer Peter Brachaki, the console was a collaboration between '...the scenery workshop, partly by the props department and partly by us at visual effects. (...) (Shawcraft) were responsible for customizing the TARDIS console and putting a motor inside it to work the central column'.

The original TARDIS console prop.

According to designer Raymond Cusick, it was the BBC's stingy reaction to Kine and Wilkie's request for help that made them shun Doctor Who after their stint on 'An Unearthy Child';

'The first of several challenging discoveries was that BBC management had just denied Jack Kine's request for two extra Visual Effects staff. Jack's department had contributed to the first Doctor Who adventure and quickly realized what a drain it was going to be on their limited resources. With his request for more staff denied, Jack flatly refused to work on the series from this point. As a consequence and for the first time in BBC history, the set designer had to take on all the show's visual effects as an additional responsibility.'

As his luck would have it, Raymond Cusick was assigned to the very next serial, and a very effects heavy one at that...

'The Dead Planet'

'...Hideous machine-like creatures,they are legless, moving on a round base. They have no human features. A lens on a flexible shaft acts as an eye. Arms with mechanical grips for hands... the creatures hold strange weapons in their hands'.

That was how Terry Nation described the mutant Daleks in his script about a planet ravaged by nuclear war, heavily influenced by H.G. Wells' The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds as much as cultural fears of fascism and the Cold War.

Raymond Cusick remembered how he was actually the second choice of designer assigned to work on this serial; the original set designer being none other than Ridley Scott.

'The now very famous film director, Ridley Scott, was once a designer at the BBC just as I was. It was Ridley who had initially been allocated this adventure by series producer Verity Lambert, but he wasn't free to do the filming at Ealing Studios because he was already booked on those date, with Ridley and I sharing the designer credit between us. Verity the became concerned that the continuity of set designs might suffer with two designers, so Ridley got elbowed from the project and I got asked to do the whole thing'.

As said earlier, one of Cusick's main problems was that on top of designing the 'look' of the serials sets, he had to design its special effects, including the Daleks themselves. Cusick recalled in The Doctor's Effects as to how he managed to come up with the Dalek design:

'Verity and her associate producer, Mervyn Pinfield called a production meeting with the show's director, Christopher Barry and myself, to discuss all the show's visual elements. None of us could agree on much, other than the budget and the fact that we didn't have much time.

Having never done visual effects before, I had to be brutally honest at the meeting and explain that I had no idea how much the Daleks would cost to product. Mervyn suggested that we make them from sections of cardboard tubing sprayed silver, but I was dead against the cheapest solution of putting a man inside a costume. I wanted to get away from the fact that every robot I'd ever seen had two arms and two legs. I really thought that we could deliver something better than that.

We weren't much further forward after the meeting, so in desperation I telephoned Terry Nation to see if he could give me any clues towards the Dalek's appearace. Terry wasn't interested in talking to me. He'd already been paid for writing the scripts so technically his involvement with the production was over. The one useful thing he did say was that he'd recently seen the Georgian state dancers. They'd worn hooped skirts for one of their routines, which completely hid their feet and gave the illustion that they were gliding across the floor. This compounded my own instincts to design a legless casing of some kind.

I combined this information with Nation's scripted description and produced my first sketch of a Dalek. (...) From a practical point of view, I'd already decided that I didn't want a Dalek's interior filled with mechanics that could malfunction in the studio. I wanted to keep it simple and the only other option I had was to put a person in the casing to work it.'

Cusick's early Dalek design drawings.

'To start with, I envisaged this operator standing up and sketched out my first Dalek with a note that it would be five feet, ten inches tall. There were two reasons why my second drawing depicted a shorter Dalek. Firstly, I wanted to make it less obvious that there was a man inside it, and secondly, I realized that the operator would be stuck inside for long periods and would need to sit down. This killed two birds with one stone, because by seating the operator a Dalek's height was reduced to about four foot six inches.

The Dalek's external design followed on quite logically from the position of the person seated inside. The operator had to be able to see out of the top, manipulate the casings mechanical arms at the middle and propel the Dalek forward with his own legs hidden in the bottom. (...) We settled on a simple bench-type seat built onto the bottom casing, castors around the base, with a hole in the floor so the operator could push himself along with his feet.'

Design sketches by Jeremy Davies, who assisted Cusick.

It was then that Cusick went to Jack Kine and Bernard Wilkie for advice, as despite their refusal to work on the program proper he still needed their expertise. Jack Kine remembered how they created the first 'prototype' Dalek prop.

'Bernard Wilkie got involved on the project before I did, because I was working on something else. One evening when I'd finished what I was doing, I remember finding Bernard and Ray in our office, going balmy trying to construct the first full-size Dalek. Ray had a tiny budget, I can't recall exactly how much, but he literally built the thing from anything that was available. Bits of 2x1 inch timber, panels of hardboard, some wooden balls etc.

I rushed down to the props department to see what I could find, and I tbought back one of the early electric fan heaters made by The General Electric Company. This fan was circular, with a casing made from a bakelite material. It was this fan which became the head of the first Dalek.

Once the prototype Dalek had been built, their replication was contracted out to a freelance company called Shawcraft Models, who made four complete Daleks out of wood and fibreglass. (...) Back then we had to contract the work out, because we still only had a small workshop and a limited number of staff.'

Design sketch by Jeremy Davies.

Ironically, Jack Kine played an indirect role in influencing the design of Shawcraft's Dalek props, as Cusick remembered.

'I took my final sketches along to the Visual Effects Department and sought the advice of Jack Kine. By this stage, I'd pictured the bottom skirt section curved and had the hemispheres fixed onto it, thinkin that it would be built in fibreglass from a two-piece mould. Jack informed me that a curved base section would be expensive and that the protruding hemispheres would prevent the creation of a two part mould. Accepting Jack's advice, I redesigned the Dalek base into a series of flat wooden plates with four circular holes cut into each one. In this way, the hemisphees would be pushed into position after the base section was completed.

However, when Shawcraft had done the basic production of a Dalek casing and I went down there to see it, I was staggered to find that they'd made my recently redesigned 'wooden skirt' from fibreglass. When I asked why they'd ignored my directions to construct the skirt from wood, they explained that they didn't have a carpenter on their stuff.

They knew my budget was tight and consequently decided to save me the cost of hiring in a chippy by moulding the skirt from fibreglass. So, quite contrary to what Jack had said, I could have had curved Dalek skirts after all. After that, I never really bothered to ask the Effects Department for assistance, unless I had a pyrotechnics sequence in which case Bernard Wilkie would advise me on the best approach.'

Technical drawings by Shawcraft draughtsman Tony Webb.

The four Dalek props were built to the price of £250 each (which in modern UK currency would be £4'606 each), with each prop fitted with a set of three castors. The castors proved difficult to move, and so after the serial's second episode was broadcast, the props were sent back to Shawcraft Models and fitted with new wheels, giving them better mobility.

The props also were built with controls inside that allowed the operator to move the gun and the plunger arm. Cusick admitted that the plunger was never an intentional choice. 'It wasn't originally going to be a plunger, but it was all we could afford. If it had to carry anything, we had a large magnet screwed inside the plunger, so it could carry things on a metal tray.'

One intentional design element was the mesh around the Dalek 'neck', a trick that Cusick pulled from his background in theatre. 'For the operator to see out, it occurred to me that a device used in theatre is a gauze. If it's lit from the front you see the gauze or what's painted on the gauze; for a person behind the gauze, they can see through it!'

Each Dalek prop was fitted with a pair of Christmas tree lights fitted to the dome, each covered by a ping-pong ball cut in half. This was another last minute addition, according to Cusick.

'There was a cheap system, run off a battery where the operator could, with a little switch, flash the lights to indicate that the Dalek was speaking. That was a hurried last-minute thing! When I paid a visit to the rehearsal rooms, the director (Christopher Barry) said 'I've got one problem. When a particular Dalek has a line, I can't tell which Dalek is speaking'. I said, lights on the top which the operator can light up from inside!'

One of the Dalek props was fitted with a specially made 'eye' that could contract or widen to give it some level of character during speaking; this was one of Bill Roberts' additions, according to Cusick.

'A lot of the refinements I left to Bill Roberts. Workman-like structure details, it was his responsibility. I offered suggestions, and he worked on it. (...) The Dalek eye he said 'I found in a cardboard box, an iris from an old camera. How about if I built that in to the eye? (...) I've only got one so I can only do it for one Dalek'.'

The four operators inside each Dalek prop were Robert Jewell, Kevin Manser, Michael Summerton and Gerald Taylor. Christopher Barry, the serial's director, recalled why he chose these actors and what their job entailed.

'The early Dalek operators were chosen because of their size, and muscular ability. I worked with Gerry Taylor who was one of my favorite character actors, and he was a natural as far as I was concerned, not because he was strong, but because he was agile, and could respond very quickly.

Kevin (Manser) was another Australian, and again very small, but also very sensitive, so he would be listening like crazy to the amount of hysteria being whipped up by our two wonderful voices in the booth, and he would try to make the thing gyrate and move to that.

It was a matter of trying to listen, coordinate and work out what the thing was looking like, when you were inside! Very difficult thing to do, I wouldn't like to do it! They were very good.'

Michael Summerton also said about why the operators had to keep the props moving, even when speaking. 'I think it was maybe just to keep the momentum of a scene going and hold the viewers interest, rather than the Dalek looking like a piece of scenery.'

Summerton also had an amusing detail about the experience of working inside a Dalek prop. 'We didn't wear very much, needless to say! I used to work in a t-shirt, underwear and sneakers, because that was just more comfortable!'

The four Daleks, while perhaps the serial's highlight, were not the only props supplied by Shawcraft Models for the serial. Shawcraft also made a 'stunt' Dalek top half to be destroyed with pyrotechnics, a set of futuristic control panels and the Dalek city model miniatures.

Shawcraft also contributed the serial's other monsters, such as the lizard-like Magnedon; as the creature is dead in all its scenes, it was realized as a static prop.

Shawcraft also made the lake mutant, as Cusick explained. 'Bill Roberts built this thing which looked like a cross between an octopus and a crab, on a rubber bed ring with a hose that went off with air. So when the air was let in, the thing rose out of the water, and the eyes lit up.'

The Daleks, despite being a breach of Sydney Newman's policy against 'bug-eyed monsters', instantly made Doctor Who a success, with the Daleks becoming heavily merchandised and marketed in a media frenzy nicknamed 'Dalekmania'.

However, the royalties for the Daleks went to the BBC and to Terry Nation, the serial's writer. Raymond Cusick, despite being the designer, had to ask the BBC for any compensation.

'It must have been about eighteen months after the Daleks' debut on television that Dalek products started to appear. Toys, games, badges, sweets, wallpaper, you name it, there will be a picture of a Dalek on it. So I went to see Richard Levin who was the Head of the Design Department and asked him whether I'd be seeing any of the money that was being made by the BBC. He got back to me some weeks later to say that after much persuasion, the BBC had finally agreed to make me a one off payment of a hundred pounds. Which they did. I actually took home some eighty pounds, ten shillings and six pence, once the tax had been deducted.

A little while after that I got taken out to lunch to be interviewed by a journalist called Nancy Banks Smith. In addition to all the usual questions about the Daleks, she asked me whether I was going to make any money out of them. I explained that I was simply a staff designer, who having signed a BBC contract wasn't entitled to anything, but that I had been given a one-off, goodwill payment of £100. When the interview was published, I was quite surprised to find that it was a big feature article in The Guardian newspaper, with the dramatic headline; TERRY NATION, WRITER. RAGS TO RICHES. RAY CUSICK, DESIGNER. RAGS TO RAGS. I was immediately called up to the BBC's head office, where I had to explain that I'd simply given a standard interview and that it had been sensationalized by the newspaper.'

Shawcraft's Dalek props in publicity photos.

In a way, the Dalek props would go on to have their own 'careers'; not only would they be reused several times in the program itself, but they would be taken across the country for publicity photoshoots and exhibitions.

Jack Kine was more blase about the success of the Daleks, even decades later. 'I didn't hold out any hope of the Daleks becoming a success, Ray just designed them to the best of his ability and then got on with the next job.'

'The Keys of Marinus'

While 'The Dead Planet' had anchored Shawcraft Models to the program, 'The Keys of Marinus' gained another freelance prop-maker who would go on to contribute greatly to the program's monster effects; Jack Lovell.

Lovell's talent was in making costumes out of 'hard parts', such as armor or helmets; most costumiers and tailors were unfamiliar with materials such as rubber or fibreglass.

Thus Lovell's services were contracted by costume houses such as Bermans & Nathans, on whose behalf he made the armor for the 1956 Genghis Khan, or the 'crocodile soldiers' for the 1963 Cleopatra starring Elisabeth Taylor.

Daphne Dare, the serial's assigned costume designer, had already worked with Lovell on Doctor Who; for the serial 'Marco Polo', she had hired many sets of Genghis Khan armor and costumes from Lovell and Bermans & Nathans, respectively.

The script for 'The Keys of Marinus' (also written by Terry Nation, who had previously wrote 'The Dead Planet') was vague on describing the Voord's appearance. It was Daphne Dare and Jack Lovell who designed the Voord resemble an abstract cyborg.

Lovell produced a set of masks and webbed gloves made from vulcanized rubber, worn with purchased diving wetsuits. Wearing the costumes was an ordeal as Lovell explained;

'Instead of actors, the BBC hired some professional wrestlers to wear the Voord costumes in the studio. The reasoning here might have been that wrestlers are used to high levels of perspiration and boiling temperates during their competitions. However, after several hours in an all rubber Voord suit under the intense studio lights, a couple of these guys fainted. So just imagine what it would have bee light if they'd got regular actors into these costumes!'

The Voord costumes marked a first for the program; the costume designer's role in monster-making. By the 1970s, production designers like Cusick no longer handled the creature effects, but costume designers were coming up with aliens right to the show's final 1989 serial.

Raymond Cusick was also the set designer for 'The Keys of Marinus', and so also designed the 'Morpho' brains in the serial's second episode. Much like the Daleks and mutants in 'The Dead Planet', Cusick's Morpho designs were realized as physical props by Shawcraft Models.

'The Sensorites'

I haven't been able to find any solid information about who made the Sensorite masks; while Daphne Dare was yet again the costume designer, official publications say the Sensorite masks were a collaboration between Dare and makeup artist Jackie Cummins.

Yet is that actually the case? The Sensorite masks feel a bit too advanced for what a 'straight' makeup artist in the 1960s on a low-budget series was capable of. While this is conjecture, were the Sensorite masks perhaps another contribution by Jack Lovell?

Lovell would later on make other 'alien' masks from similar materials, and had a working relationship with Daphne Dare even for serials without monsters. Lovell was quoted in The Doctor's Effects: 'Daphne asked us to scratchbuild loads of historical (costume) props for Doctor Who on a fairly regular basis. I remember she kept sending me photocopies from references books and asking if we could replicate various bits and pieces from different time periods. I've no idea which particular stories we worked on, because at this early stage we weren't attending the studio recordings.'

So perhaps the Sensorite masks were another one of Lovell's contributions to the series? Again, this is just conjecture, but is it that unlikely?

Dare did at least add her element to the Sensorite jumpsuits when it came to making them believable as aliens; a cardboard circle on the feet, to imply the Sensorites had flippers for feet. It was ot easy for the performers to walk in them!

Sources:

• The Doctor's Effects (Steve Cambden, 2001)
  
• 'Shawcraft: The Original Monster Makers' featurette
  
• 'Creation of the Daleks' featurette
  
• The Dalek 6388 fansite (An indepth history of Shawcraft's Dalek props and more!)
  

Continued in Doctor Who (1963) - Season 2