A deep dive into the Daleks shown in The Planet of the Daleks shows a surprising source for the color schemes. Television Daleks have largely not used bright color schemes, other than those overweight Daleks that Matt Smith faced. But Terry Nation, when putting Daleks into non-Television formats, had used ones with bright color schemes.
The Supreme Dalek as seen in The Planet of the Daleks
The black & gold, and red & silver color schemes - was this their first appearance?
The earliest sighting of Daleks with black & gold, and red & silver was from Countdown Comics, drawn by Gerry Haylock.
The question is whether Gerry Haylock got this color scheme from the Radio Times article, or what?
A careful look at the history of the Daleks owned by Terry Nation shows that it was the other way around.
Terry Nation appeared in an episode of Whickers World. This is the first known footage of his ownership of these four Daleks. They were later found to have appeared in the TV Movie. None of these Daleks had red/silver or black/gold color schemes.
In 1972 the Daleks in Countdown Comics were shown.
Careful study of pictures of the Terry Nation Daleks showed that in 1972 they still had the color scheme shown in Whickers World.
Further - when Terry Nation was later commissioned to write a 10th Anniversary Dr. Who episode, he borrowed heavily from the story line in Countdown Comics. The title, "Planet of the Daleks", came from Countdown Comics, as did the color schemes.
The first appearance of the Black & Gold dalek as a physical object was at a school. This is one of the Whickers World Daleks, repainted, and the other one shown here also appeared in the Whickers World footage. It had been used as a stunt dalek in the TV movie.
The REAL Story Behind the Dalek Supreme
About the Author(s)
David Herron:
David Herron is a writer and software engineer focusing on the wise use of technology. He is especially interested in clean energy technologies like solar power, wind power, and electric cars. David worked for nearly 30 years in Silicon Valley on software ranging from electronic mail systems, to video streaming, to the Java programming language, and has published several books on Node.js programming and electric vehicles.
