It’s fairly cramped inside the Dalek casing and far less glamorous than the exterior would suggest! The operator has to sit on a wooden plank, which he shares with the large car battery that powers the animatronic head and lights, and has to twist his body in order to accommodate the telescopic plunger whilst simultaneously dipping his head to avoid the servos in the dome. It is pretty uncomfortable, I have to admit: claustrophobic, cold/hot, dark, airless and filled with sharp bits of metal and fibreglass. Cuts and bruises are a regular feature of Dalek work, to say nothing of muscle cramp and joint pain. Don’t forget you’re having to shift not only the Dalek’s considerable weight, but also your own – making twenty stone of Dalek glide like an ice-skater certainly takes its toll physically.
I’d love to claim there was room for a minibar and microwave in there, but sadly there’s barely enough space for the operator. Rumour has it that John Scott Martin managed to secure a thermos flask to the inside of his Dalek prow by means of two bicycle clips. The most I’ve managed was a packet of jelly tots in my pocket. We get released for lunch and, if we’re lucky, teatime. Occasionally they’ll take the tops off and some kindly runner will fetch us some water or a cup of tea, but it’s advisable not to drink too much for obvious diuretic reasons...
I watched the programme avidly when I was young, but I wouldn’t have classed myself as a proper fan - I never read Doctor Who Magazine or went to any conventions. It was only really once I’d gone to drama school that I got into it again – I shared a house with a Doctor Who fan and we’d relax after a hard day’s ballet by collapsing on a sofa and watching The Keys Of Marinus or something similar. By some strange process of osmosis, a surprising amount of Doctor Who knowledge has now crept into my brain, along with an abiding love for the show. My continuing involvement with Big Finish and the audio series of Doctor Who has cemented this fondness. So yes, I’d now describe myself as a fan: after all, I do now read Doctor Who Magazine and I do attend conventions, if only as a guest. Besides, I don’t think anyone could ever describe being a Dalek operator as ‘just another job’!
Of course. I think everyone who works on Doctor Who is aware of the show’s legacy and it’s longevity. We all want to get it right because we know that we’re not making disposable TV. From the Dalek perspective, there isn’t a single take where we’re not obsessing about the angle of our plungers or the smoothness of our turns. We want to do our predecessors proud. We even contrive to include little homages to previous Dalek stories: for example, in the two-parter which ended Series One, one of us suggested to Joe Ahearne that when we get an eye-stalk view of Rose being menaced in the Emperor’s spaceship it might be nice to have the plunger in shot – we were thinking of that great moment with Barbara in the first Dalek story – and he agreed. So we do care!
It’s quite tricky because there are three of you giving the performance: Nick Briggs doing the voice, Colin or Lyn moving the dome, and the operator inside. Imagine acting on stage with someone else speaking your lines from the wings and a second person moving your arms. That said, we always talk in terms of performance and it’s significant that all Dalek operators are professional actors and not puppeteers. What we lack in facial expressions, we try to make up for in timing and sensitivity to the other actors: whether you move quickly or slowly and what lines you move on are largely a matter of performance and that is, I suppose, why they hire actors. Anyway, I’m glad they do!
John Scott Martin once described the ideal Dalek operator as being possessed of four arms and it hasn’t changed much since his time: we’ve still got switches to operate, plungers to extend and guns to fire. I’ve done both old-style manual Daleks (in 30 Years In The Tardis) and the new animatronic Daleks and they’re each as complicated to operate as the other. The hardest thing with the animatronic dome is coordinating the head-first, body-second spins. I won’t bore you with the details, but this is much much harder than in a manual Dalek. Conversely, moving along and looking side to side whilst firing at people is considerably easier in a Dalek with an animatronic head. Swings and roundabouts. And let’s not forget that only half the Daleks on the new series are animatronic – we still have to do a fair bit using old-style manual domes.
We practise a great deal. For Dalek in Series One, I spent two days doing little else but turns and moves before we went into studio. When new operators come on board, we always schedule extra rehearsal time: the more Daleks there are, the more complicated the movement becomes, because we have to coordinate our actions and speed so we operate as a unit rather than as individuals (or not, as in the case of the Cult of Skaro).
You may imagine that as a Dalek operator I’d have loved to have been in probably the greatest Dalek story of all time, Genesis of the Daleks, but actually the Dalek movement for that story is fairly limited and set-bound. I actually think it would have been far more exciting to work on something like Remembrance of the Daleks which has lots of location and studio work.
With my normal actor’s hat on, however, I can categorically say that the story I’d most like to have appeared in would be City Of Death. I had the great pleasure of acting in Big Finish’s reworking of Shada and I know how wonderful it is to perform dialogue from the pen of Douglas Adams. Mind you, everyone involved in City of Death is damn near perfect, so I’m not sure whom I’d replace...
We all have to learn the dialogue, so we know when to move, when and to whom we’re speaking, and how to pace our performances. But I’m fairly sure that none of us have ever mouthed the dialogue to ourselves – we’ve all got black stockings over our heads anyway, so breathing is a complicated enough procedure never mind mouthing lines of dialogue!
It is tough, but we all sign non-disclosure agreements and so that’s that. Given the number of newspapers hungry for the latest Doctor Who scoop, it’s easy to see why Cardiff are so protective about these things. Most of my family and friends know not to press me, so I don’t have to lie too much. I take heart from the fact that two of my closest friends (both big Doctor Who fans) were utterly flabbergasted when the Daleks appeared from within the Void Ship at the end of Army of Ghosts – they phoned me up and called me all sorts of names for not telling them, but it was clear they had loved the surprise.
It varies. Dalek scenes are usually fairly complicated to film, so they’re always lumped together in whole day blocks, which means you’re inside your Dalek on and off for most of the day. We Daleks tend to be amongst the first to arrive on set (pick-up time is usually 7am) and the last to leave (usually at 7pm). The days are pretty full and most of the time you’re sitting in your Dalek (with or without the top section on). The exception to this rule is rehearsals: we’ve discovered that the most efficient way of rehearsing Dalek movement is to do it outside the shell with all the operators miming their actions. This allows the director to give notes and make adjustments far quicker than if he had to shout through the grill. It’s also more fun because we get to play off our fellow actors. The longest I’ve spent in a Dalek with the top on and without a break is five hours – the norm is two to three hours per stretch, with perhaps ten minutes off in between.
The worst part of the job? Well, it’s uncomfortable, extremely exhausting physically and hell on the knees. On the plus side, the crew and fellow cast members are uniformly lovely and it’s great to be associated with something that’s well-written, well-directed and well-produced. But I suppose the best part of the job is simply being a Dalek: how often does one get to play a cultural icon?
I like both equally. With acting, you have the immense pleasure of concentrating on only one thing – your performance – and honing it towards perfection. You can plan your character’s journey through the play, you know what they think and what they’re doing at every stage of the story. As a director, you are concerned with the big picture: with rhythm and pace, with getting the author’s message across, with meaning and structure and shape, and – most importantly, perhaps – with making sure everyone (from actors to sound designers to composers) is singing off the same song sheet. There is nothing that annoys me more than seeing a film, a play or a TV show where you have a lot of good actors each performing in a different style: one actor may be doing the kind of ultra-realistic acting which is the hallmark of Mike Leigh’s work, while another may be indulging in bold melodramatic flourishes (the sort of thing which is de rigueur if you’re playing a James Bond villain). In their own settings, they are fantastic; together in the same movie, they are messy and unsatisfying. And that is entirely the fault of the director.
As to whether actors make good directors and vice versa, I can only say that the best directors I’ve worked with have had at least some experience of acting, and the easiest actors to direct are those who understand the director’s modus operandi: that the structure and meaning of a play is more important that any individual character within it. From a personal point of view, having a knowledge of both disciplines is invaluable to me.
I wouldn’t want to play the Doctor, believe me! It’s a preposterously difficult role to carry off. They used to say that any actor can play Doctor Who and, to an extent, that’s true – but it takes a great actor to make it interesting. I’ve played plenty of villains in my time to know how enjoyable they are to breathe life into, but that wouldn’t be the role I’d crave. No, my favourite role has to be the Brigadier: a beautiful blend of comedy and pathos and heroism rolled into one of the most splendid creations in the whole of Doctor Who history. The trouble is, I can’t imagine anyone playing it better than Nicholas Courtney.
As for directing something, well I’d obviously plump for something from the pen of Douglas Adams, since he’s one of my all-time heroes. Failing that, I’d like to have a go at remaking The Myth Makers, every episode of which is now sadly lost. It remains one of the best scripts Doctor Who has ever been blessed with and I’d love to have a crack at it!
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