Ray Cusick, the man who designed the original Daleks for BBC sci-fi show Doctor Who, has died aged 84.

He passed away in his sleep on Thursday night after a short illness, his daughter Claire announced.

After joining the BBC as a staff designer, Cusick was responsible for bringing to life a great many of the early Doctor Who stories with his set designs between 1963 and 1966. However, it is for giving form to Terry Nation’s Daleks in the second every story of the show, The Daleks, that Cusick is best remembered.

A mutant race encased in mechanical tank-like shells, the Daleks went on to become one of the iconic symbols of Doctor Who, a show that celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2013. Known for their battle cry “exterminate” the Doctor’s oldest foes have continued to appear in episodes of the programme throughout the years and have been the subject of numerous spin-offs including films, books, comics and television adverts.

Speaking in 2008, Cusick told BBC3 behind-the-scenes show Doctor Who Confidential that the Daleks were the product of logical thought.

“When I’m asked what I was inspired by I suppose it was really a system of logic because I realised that you’ve got to have an operator to operate them. If you had anything mechanical, 10 to one on the take it would go wrong, so you’ve got a human being in there who would be absolutely totally reliable…

“I then thought ‘Well, the operator’s got to sit down’, drew a seat, ergonomic height, 18in, got the operator down, and then drew round him. That’s how the basic shape appeared.”

Doctor Who actor and writer Mark Gatiss tweeted: “Farewell to the great Ray Cusick. His passing is especially sad in this anniversary year but his creation remains immortal. Daleks forever!”

Nicholas Briggs, voice of the modern Daleks, told the BBC:

“Extinction is not an option – If you say Doctor Who to someone in the street about the second thing they’re going to say is ‘Exterminate’,” he said.

“Lots of my friends who are not Doctor Who fans think that the programme is ‘Doctor Who and the Daleks’ – that surely the Daleks are in it all the time – which isn’t true but that is the impression.

“That’s the brilliance of the creation of the Daleks. They’ve made an indelible stamp on the series really.”

Beyond Doctor Who, Cusick worked on numerous other television programmes in the art department, including Z Cars, Dr Finlay’s Casebook, The Forsyte Saga, The Duchess of Duke Street and Rentaghost. He retired from TV in 1987.

He is survived by two daughters and seven grandchildren.

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-02-24/doctor-who-daleks-designer-ray-cusick-dies-aged-84

There goes another part of our collective childhoods.

All that are born are condemned to die
All that breathe, to breathe their last.

removes hat

If he’d made it to the end of the year, he would have celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first screening of the first Dalek episode (21 Dec 1963).

yeah, shame.

Still, for something that was pretty much thrown together on a low budget, it’s had a remarkable run.

Barbara is threatened in the cliffhanger ending of the first episode of the first Dalek story. This was the telly audience’s very first glimpse of a Dalek:

Who owns the Daleks now? I recall lots of intellectual rights property. The models are bloody expensive, I have a couple in with the robots but they have living things in them so not really robots.

Bubblecar said:

Barbara is threatened in the cliffhanger ending of the first episode of the first Dalek story. This was the telly audience’s very first glimpse of a Dalek:

One of the great cliffhangers of TV.

>Still, for something that was pretty much thrown together on a low budget, it’s had a remarkable run.

Actually the original Daleks were very expensive to make, which is why they were re-used time & again, even when they started visibly falling to bits.

Construction

Manufacturing the props was expensive. In scenes where many Daleks had to appear, some of them would be represented by wooden replicas (Destiny of the Daleks) or life-size photographic enlargements in the early black-and-white episodes (The Daleks, The Dalek Invasion of Earth and The Power of the Daleks). In stories involving armies of Daleks, the BBC effects team even turned to using commercially available toy Daleks, manufactured by Louis Marx & Co and Herts Plastic Moulders Ltd. Examples of such use can be observed in the serials The Power of the Daleks, The Evil of the Daleks and Planet of the Daleks. Judicious editing techniques also gave the impression that there were more Dalek props than were actually available, and continue to be used to the present day, such as using split screen in “The Parting of the Ways”.

Four fully functioning props were commissioned for the first serial “The Daleks” in 1963, and were constructed from BBC plans by Shawcraft Engineering. These became known in fan circles as “Mk I Daleks”. Shawcraft were also commissioned to construct approximately twenty Daleks for the two Dalek movies in 1965 and 1966 (see below). Some of these movie props filtered back to the BBC and were seen in the televised serials, notably The Chase, which was aired before the first movie’s debut. The remaining props not bought by the BBC were either donated to charity or given away as prizes in competitions.

The BBC’s own Dalek props were reused many times, with components of the original Shawcraft “Mk I Daleks” surviving right through to their final classic series appearance in 1988. Years of storage and repainting took their toll, however. By the time of the Sixth Doctor’s Revelation of the Daleks new props were being manufactured out of fibreglass, which were lighter and more affordable to construct than their predecessors. These Daleks were slightly bulkier in appearance around the mid-shoulder section, and also had a slightly redesigned skirt section which was more vertical at the back. Other minor changes were made to the design due to these new construction methods, including alterations to the fender and the incorporation of both the arm boxes, collars and slats into a single fibreglass moulding. These props were repainted in grey for the Seventh Doctor serial Remembrance of the Daleks and designated as “Renegade Daleks”; another redesign, painted in white and gold, became the “Imperial Dalek” faction.

New Dalek props were built for the 21st century version of Doctor Who. The first, which appeared alone in the 2005 episode “Dalek”, was built by modelmaker Mike Tucker. Additional Dalek props based on Tucker’s master were subsequently built out of fibreglass by Cardiff-based Specialist Models.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daleks#Construction

Freelance writers for the BBC were allowed to retain intellectual property rights over concepts and characters they introduced into individual serials. As a result, Terry Nation found himself co-owning the Dalek phenomenon of the mid-1960s. Nation was eager to find some way of divorcing them from the Doctor Who universe so that he could build a franchise which would not require BBC cooperation, and two such attempts were made in 1965.

from wikipedia

I don’t think at any stage did I believe that the Dayleks were a real danger and now that we know they were man made and harmless props on a set it’s reassuring that our sixth sense was right all along.

When the ABC repeated all the Dr Whos from the beginning earlier this century, they were allowed to show the earlier surviving Dalek stories but not the later ones, due to some dispute with Terry Nation’s estate.

However, peace must have been mad somewhere along the line, since Daeks have featured regularly in the “new” Dr Who