Introduction

Dalek 63•88 is a research project about a very specific area of TV production: The provisioning of Dalek props for Doctor Who. This site documents every casing which was created for the programme, the individuals who worked on them, the companies that made them, and the events (both on and off screen) in which they were involved.

Begin the story with The Dead Planet

What’s New

Site updates - During our research for our YouTube series ‘Terry Nation Army’, snippets of information and images have built up just waiting to be added to the site. We have taken a few days off video research to spend some time adding them in! These pages have small updates… The Chase, The Daleks’ Masterplan, Five Years in […]

Series Eleven - Our investigation into Resolution from Series Eleven is now available!

Dalek 63•88 Merchandise - Fancy your own Dalek 63•88 T-shirt or mug? How about a notebook or phone cover? They are not only stylish but helps to supports us too! Our Redbubble store can be found here!

Support us on Patreon - We’d like to thank everyone who has supported us and given us feedback on our ‘Terry Nation Army’ series over on Youtube. We have been overwhelmed by the numbers of subscribers and views we have had! If you like to show your appreciation for us and have access to behind the scenes news, extra pictures, […]

Terry Nation Army has begun! - Our weekly Youtube series, Terry Nation Army, has begun! You can view it here on Youtube or via our dedicated page here. Please remember to subscribe!

Background

We’re Jon and Gav and we’ve been researching Daleks together since 2005. Jon started the whole thing in 2002 but Gav came along later with a shared interest to help revamp the whole site. It’s not the first attempt at a prop history and much ground work was laid down in articles by Tony Clark and Stephen James Walker in the 1980s, and by Mark Dando and Dave Muirhead in the 1990s. But often the production team contradicted each other and resources in those days were limited. With episodes now clearer than ever on DVD, and so many photos available, we decided the only way to tell the whole story was to start from scratch and work through every piece of visual evidence from the start.

After two years of exhaustive investigation, a new site was launched in 2007. But over time, new fragments of information came to light and some cracks seemed to appear in the reasoning behind certain conclusions we’d reached. As the niggles accumulated, it became obvious that it was time once again to revamp the site.

Following some helpful insight from researcher Simon Ayers, seven months of painstaking analysis resulted in a huge relaunch in the summer of 2010. A new timeline was finally created in which each prop could be followed from its construction until its last appearance on screen – and in many cases beyond.

Since 2010, over 200,000 visitors have dropped by and we’re immensely proud to have been featured on the BBC’s Click programme. In 2013 our research began to be used for the Dalek ‘costume’ profiles in the Doctor Who Figurines Collection Magazine and in 2014 we have been honoured to contribute a feature to Doctor Who Magazine.

We continue to delve deeper into the stories of these props and many new pages are currently under construction. Our research time is often limited due to our jobs but we hope to add new content whenever we can! (If you go on Facebook here and click LIKE, you’ll get all the news).

We have enjoyed everything that has gone into this site and we hope you enjoy reading it. We love getting comments and we’re excited to hear anecdotes about Daleks. If you have any private photos of TV props then please get in touch because they could solve the mysteries which still remain.

Acknowledgements

We’d like to express our sincere thanks to all the people who’ve shared photos and snippets of info down the years which have made our research possible.

For invaluable photos which made it all possible, thank you Richard Atkinson, James Russell, Robert Kew, Will Brooks and Tony Clark. For patiently answering our inane questions, thank you Mike Tucker, Stuart Brisdon, Martin Wilkie and Scott Wayland. For support, information, and general Dalek debate, thank you Richard Bignell, Simon Ayers, Steve Allen, Andrew Pixley, Andrew Beech, Mick Hall, Chris Balcombe, John Kelly, Derek Handley, Matt Parish, Mark Dando, Steve Murray and various members of Project Dalek Forum (John Darley, Tony S, J “MovieDalek”).