21st December: Dalek Day

Today is Dalek Day, celebrated on the anniversary of the first appearance of the Daleks in Doctor Who in 1963.

1. The Daleks were conceived by science-fiction writer Terry Nation and the shells were designed by Raymond Cusick. Their gliding movement was inspired by a performance by the Georgian National Ballet, in which dancers in long skirts appeared to glide across the stage; and their temperament by the Nazis.
2. When Sydney Newman created the Doctor Who series, he distributed a memo with the instruction, no "bug-eyed monsters." He was furious when Nation created the Daleks, because he felt they violated this rule. Despite his protests, the Daleks aired, and turned out to be the biggest hit of the show, frequently voted the scariest monsters ever by polls, although in recent years the crying angels have overtaken them.
3. Terry Nation once said that the name came from the spine of an encyclopaedia which read "Dal - Eks" but later admitted that he'd made that story up and that the name had simply "rolled off his typewriter".
4. The word "Dalek" is in the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines "Dalek" as "a type of robot appearing in 'Dr. Who', [sic] a B.B.C. Television science-fiction programme; hence used allusively." You'll also find it in a Serbo-Croatian dictionary, as it is the Serbo-Croat word for "far away"- a coincidence which Terry Nation was pleased to learn several years after he came up with the name.
5. In their first appearance, Daleks could only move on the conductive metal floors of their city - but their mobility improved through the years. In a later episode, a Dalek emerges from the River Thames in London - showing they can not only move outside their city, but under Water. For a long time, it was assumed they couldn't cope with stairs. Hence the well-known Punch cartoon showing Daleks at the foot of a flight of stairs with the caption, "Well, this certainly buggers our plan to conquer the Universe" and a joke among Doctor Who fans: "Real Daleks don't climb stairs; they level the building." However, by the 2005 series, they'd figured out how to fly up flights of stairs and travel in space.
6. Voice actors who have provided the voice of the Daleks include Peter Hawkins, David Graham, Roy Skelton, Michael Wisher, Royce Mills, Brian Miller, Oliver Gilbert, Peter Messaline, John Leeson, Terry Molloy, David Gooderson and Nicholas Briggs, who supplies the voice for the current series.
7. The first Dalek operators were retired ballet dancers wearing black socks. Usually they were short actors who had a lot to do inside the casing. They had to manipulate the eyestalks, domes, and arms, as well as flashing the lights on their heads in sync with the actors supplying their voices. John Scott Martin, a Dalek operator from the original series, said that Dalek operation was a challenge: "You had to have about six hands: one to do the eyestalk, one to do the lights, one for the gun, another for the smoke canister underneath, yet another for the sink plunger. If you were related to an octopus then it helped." Nowadays, they still use short actors but some of the functions are operated by remote control.
8. Daleks have a weakness in that they cannot see very well. They have no peripheral vision and so it's easy to hide from them. It's also easy to slow them down by taking out the eyepiece so they cannot see at all.
9. The creatures inside the Daleks are described as "little green blobs in bonded polycarbide armour". Their appearance has varied, but they are always soft, vulnerable, and ugly. It is possible, once the creature has been removed, for a human to get inside the case and operate the Dalek.
10. There have been references to Dalek culture, beyond their unquestioned belief in the superiority of the Dalek race. One Doctor Who spin off novel mentions an opera based on Dalek poetry - which was lost to posterity when the entire cast was exterminated on the opening night. Comedian Frankie Boyle once suggested a line from a Dalek poem might be "Daffodils; EXTERMINATE DAFFODILS!"

Looking for last minute stocking fillers? For a fan of ghosts, superheroes and psychics? Here are some suggestions:

Death and Faxes

Several women have been found murdered - it looks like the work of a ruthless serial killer. Psychic medium Maggie Flynn is one of the resources DI Jamie Swan has come to value in such cases - but Maggie is dead, leaving him with only the telephone number of the woman she saw as her successor, her granddaughter, Tabitha Drake.

Tabitha, grief-stricken by Maggie's death and suffering a crisis of confidence in her ability, wants nothing to do with solving murder cases. She wants to hold on to her job and find Mr Right (not necessarily in that order); so when DI Swan first contacts her, she refuses to get involved.

The ghosts of the victims have other ideas. They are anxious for the killer to be caught and for names to be cleared - and they won't leave Tabitha alone. It isn't long before Tabitha is drawn in so deeply that her own life is on the line.

Paperback - CreateSpace or Amazon 

Or get the E-book: Amazon Kindle (Where you can use the "Look Inside" function and read the first few pages for free!)

Glastonbury Swan

Every few weeks, there is a mysterious death in Glastonbury. They seem completely unrelated - an apparent suicide, a hit and run, a drug overdose, a magic act which goes horribly wrong - but is that what the killer wants people to think?

The police are certainly convinced - but one of the victims is communicating to medium Tabitha Drake that the deaths are linked.

Who is killing all these people and why? 

This is what Tabitha has to figure out - before it is too late to save someone very dear to her.

Paperback CreateSpace or Amazon

E-book Amazon Kindle

Jigsaw

Within these covers you will find murder, mayhem, ghosts, romance, dungeons and dragons and alien vampire bunnies.


Paperback CreateSpace or Amazon 

E-book Amazon Kindle

New! From A Jack To A King

A royal palace is burning. The King and Queen are dead. The only hopes for an ancient dynasty flee to England for their lives.

A boy runs from his mother and the people he believes want to mutilate him, and vanishes, seemingly forever.

Gary Winchcombe, the experimental "super-cop" pursues a notorious gang of bank robbers, and starts to discover that his friends and neighbours have secrets he never could have imagined.

Tod Reynard wants to turn his life around. When he meets and falls in love with the beautiful Jade, he knows she might just be the one to help him change his life for the better. He cannot possibly know just how much.

When Jade's twin sister Gloria is kidnapped, old rivalries must be put aside and new associations formed in order to save Gloria's life and restore the rightful order of things.

Available from: Createspace, Amazon, Amazon Kindle

I have plenty more stories to tell, but I don't know yet which will win the race to the end of the pipeline. If you'd like to know:

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