Name: The Daleks Review ft. Nicholas Briggs - Doctor Who: The Fan Show
Uploaded: 2017-01-26T13:32:23.000Z
Duration: 12 min 6 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of manner

Last month we were chatting about the Cybermen. So it’s only fair that this month, we chat

Hello, I’m Christel Dee and welcome to the Fan Show.

This month we are talking about the Daleks and joining me to talk about the Daleks is

the fabulous Nick Briggs who has been doing the voices for the Daleks since 2005 and before

that for Big Finish which you are also the executive producer of.

That’s correct yes, and since I was 5 although I wasn’t the executive producer of Big Finish

when I was 5 although it sort of feels like that sometimes.

Before we get stuck in, Nick, as a Dalek expert, would you mind going through the creation

Well, as Terry Nation, the writer was asked to write a script for Doctor Who and he was

a writer for a big comedian back in the day or comic actor back in the 60s, Tony Handcock.

People may have heard of Handcock’s half hour. And so Terry Nation I think really felt

that he had arrived as a big proper writer and you know, to be asked to write for something

like a kid’s TV show, he rejected it out of hand. But then he fell out with Tony Handcock

who is historically known to be a difficult person to get along with and they had a big

was sacked. And so he quickly said to his agent, you haven’t said no to that BBC gig

for kid’s have you? So he worked… I don’t know how quickly he worked but it was something

And in terms of the fictional world, there are kind of two origin stories for the Daleks.

We’ve got the first time we see them in 1963, The Daleks where they speak of a war

and mutation but we don’t actually see their creator, the concept of a creator isn’t

introduced until Genesis of the Daleks in 1975.

Yes, I mean, no one really knows when that first Dalek story was set. The idea was, that

we sort of assume that it’s very early on in their development somehow but that doesn’t

fit with what happened in Genesis of the Daleks. The bald truth is folks that it completely

contradicted everything that had come before however you can sort of make them fit and

go well, they didn’t mention Davros because of X, Y, Z so I don’t know. There’s a

theory that the first Dalek story is actually the last Dalek story.

That is the complete destruction of the Daleks.

That they’ve somehow retreated to their city and can’t go outside anymore and that

That’s given me chills just saying that.

But yeah, I’ve always been crazy about them. And they are of course, and I feel immodest

saying this and it’s nothing to do with me really, the reason why we’re still here

about Doctor Who now is because Doctor Who would not have survived without the Daleks.

Also strangely feeling immodest and again, nothing to do with me, I would also say that

every other Doctor Who monster is kind of an attempt to be as good as the Daleks in

I know more recently we’ve had crazier, weirder things which have stepped away from

that but certainly all of those Classic monsters, all of them wanted to sort of capture that

Well, it’s interesting because the creation of the Daleks was obviously inspired by the

Nazis which in 1963, they hadn’t been out of rations that long, the effects of the war

happened 20 years earlier, they were still feeling the effects of that and I think to

see that reflected on TV was probably quite a big thing.

Also, there is undeniably something fascinating and cool about the design.

But also on another level, they’re very British because they seem to be very… Heath

Robinson I think was the name of the design which is bits and pieces put together.

They look like household objects and radiators, don’t they?

Well, I think there’s a reason for that because they only had £50 to make each Dalek.

Although that was quite a lot of money in those days.

I think the initial design was a lot more interesting if you look at the initial drawings

that they did but in the end they didn’t have enough money to make these props so they

get a sink plunger and a whisk, well, not a whisk but you know, it looks like a whisk

Yeah, necessity being the mother of invention. Quite often, the best ideas come up when there

are no other options on the table and you know, the whole thing of sitting down and

planning something and rejecting loads of different ideas and trying to make it the

best thing, sometimes that just comes to nothing.

You just need someone to say let’s quickly do that because we’ve got no time and no

money so let’s just do it. And the Daleks are an example of that.

The other thing that works for me with the Daleks, the reason that I think they’re

so popular, one of the reasons is that they are…

it’s like your fridge suddenly shouting at you that it wants to murder you, you know

Because I think now if we create a villain, we often make them smooth talking and corporate

because those are our paranoia about the world being run by unelected

corporations, that sort of thing. That’s our preoccupation. In those days, their preoccupation

was goose-stepping soldiers taking over your city.

Well in contrast to the Cybermen which we spoke about last month, constantly trying

to upgrade and improve. The Daleks, in their eyes, are perfect so why would they change?

And I think, as you mentioned earlier, that’s one of the keys to their success really is

that they are so consistent, we know what we’re going to get.

I think the changes in the Daleks are always detectable because they are, well, sort of

monotone in everyway so when those bumps occur so when they become a bit emotional,

or they’re very devious, you notice it more because it was coming from quite a flat level

in the first place. I mean, they changed their design from the first story to the second

they have them big bumpers, that sounds weird, but it’s to go over curbs and things. And

then they put the slats on instead of the hoops around the sides so they’ve evolved

design a little but the essential Dalek-ness as never gone away. Even with the new paradigm

Daleks which I know a lot of people didn’t like, they may not quite a have been the same

silhouette but it was still the same thing. You could absolutely tell that it was a Dalek.

If you go what’s that you’d go, well it’s a Dalek obviously because it’s got the dun