 | Did Terry Nation Steal the Daleks? |
Terry Nation and a Dalek
Back in 1963, Terry Nation was better known to the world of entertainment as an author of light comedy, specifically with Tony Hancock. When he was asked by the production team of Doctor Who to contribute a script, Hancock reportedly steered Nation away from the prospect, stating that a children's TV series was beneath him. His script the 8 part epic that introduced the Daleks, featured contributions from script editor David Whittaker and the BBC special effects team led by Raymond Cusick.
Interviewed in DWM, Nation was very aware of the work that Cusick put into the Daleks, but pointed out that legally, he could not own any of it.
"I started to write for Tony Hancock, the most beloved comic in Britain. He had a Thursday night show that was giant, tremendous. We were working in a theatre in Nottingham, and my agent called from London and said 'The BBC wants you to do a think called 'Doctor Who', it's for the children's television slot, science fiction', and I said 'How dare they? I don't do things like that!', but then I'd been asked because of this 'Out of this World' story. Well, this particular night, Tony Hancock and I had a big dispute. I wanted him to try some new material, and I'm not sure if I was fired or if I walked out, but the result was that I was on a train back to London, thinking 'Hey, wait a minute! I'm out of work!'.
"I went and talked to David Whitaker, the script editor of 'Doctor Who', and I came up with a story idea. They liked it, they bought it, and that takes us up to where the Daleks started. I don't know to this day what the enormous appeal of the Daleks was. I've heard all sorts of ideas about it, but they were slightly magical, because you didn't know what the elements were that made them work. I'd been a cinema-goer all my life, and loved going to what were rated in those days as horror movies. Whatever the creature was, somewhere in your heart of hearts, you know it was a man dressed up, so my first requirement was to take the legs off. Take away the humanoid form, and we were off and running.
"Further inspiration came from the Georgian State Ballet, the Russian dance trouple which was performing in London at the time. There was a dance that the women did, where they wore floor-brushing skirts, and evidently took tiny steps, so they appeared to glide across the stage. There was no suggestion of what form of locomotion they were using. That's what I wanted for the Daleks. The rest of it comes easily, you put on an eye, and something else for hands. We made a big mistake with the hands, of course, we should have been smarter, but I had no faith in the show. It was the old writer's axiom, 'Take the money and fly like a thief'. I really didn't think that it could work.
"After the Daleks, I was for a short time the most famous writer on television. The press interviewed me, there was mail arriving in great van loads. There was stuff coming to my house that said 'Dalek Man – London', and I was getting lots of them. Almost all the kids wanted a Dalek, and nobody was quick enough. The BBC, not being the great commercial operator, wasn't ready, so there was no merchandising, there were no plastic Daleks, there were no buttons, there were no anything. My God, was that to change! Within the year, there were Dalek everythings.
"Raymond Cusick made a tremendous contribution, and I would love to be glib enough to put it into percentage terms, but you can't do that. You start with something that's a writer's dream, that he's put down in words, and amended, and added to in conversations. Something starts there. Cusick didn't get anything, to my understanding. I think they may have given him a hundred pound bonus, but he was a salaried employee, and I think he knew the nature of his work, and it was what he did every week. The copyrights resided with the BBC and myself, and there were lovely legal words to cover these things, so that before they could merchandise anything, they had to have my agreement. I was very lucky. The salt cellar part is the legend: that gave Raymond Cusick the idea for the shape. He was restricted by budget, obviously – it wasn't a big budget show we were doing. But yes, he made a tremendous contribution. Whatever the Daleks are or were, his contribution was vast."
(Via DrWhoInterviews, the remainder of the interview is very interesting as well and touches on Nation's opinion of the Seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy.)
When the Daleks became a smash hit, Nation enjoyed immense monetary success and claimed sole ownership of the monsters, something that kept the other creative parties involved from sharing in the profit. Personally, I've always held that it was a collaborative effort between Cusick, Whittaker and Nation rather than just one person, but now there is another party entering the mix, that of Nation's former employer, comedian Tony Hancock!
Via Guardian.uk:
Could a surprising figure have been the uncredited real creator of the Daleks? In Alwyn W Turner's just-published biography of Terry Nation, the Doctor Who writer usually seen as the metallic exterminators' father, the possibility is floated that they were dreamt up in late-night sessions with a comedian Nation was then collaborating with, who subsequently claimed he came up with the idea of an android that was "an inverted cone, covered in ping pong balls and with a sink plunger coming out of its head". This was no less a figure than Tony Hancock, whose reaction when the robots first appeared on screen was "That bloody Nation! He stole my Daleks!"
I recall reading something about this years ago but can't recall the source. This could be nothing, but if it goes anywhere, I imagine that it could infringe upon the Daleks being used on screen in the BBC Wales series.
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