Milford Mercury | Local News, Sport & Entertainment

Designing Daleks with Uncle Bill

From the Milford Mercury, first published Thursday 28th Apr 2005.

TODAY the Mercury can exterminate Dr Who's belief that evil genius Davros invented the deadly Daleks.

And rather than chasing his arch-enemy through time and space, the good doctor should set the Tardis to hunt down the family of Neyland town clerk Gareth Hopkins!

That's because Gareth says his late uncle Bill Roberts is the man behind the trash-can terrors.

Gareth said: "My uncle Bill left Merthyr Tydfil and went up to London and set up his own business as an engineer. Back in the early 60s he was making the sets for the original `It's a Knockout' shows.

"The BBC sent some designs over to him about a new series they were making. They didn't work too well so he sat down with another engineer and thought about what to do.

"At that time the hovercraft had just come on the scene and nobody knew quite how it worked. So they put skirting around the bottom of the Dalek to make it look like it was floating and it went from there."

Gareth remembers Bill visiting with a scrap book showing the Daleks being constructed but there was one important thing that his uncle forgot. "He made eight Daleks but never took a patent out on them. He never thought it would be successful."

The Daleks are soon to make their first appearance in the brand new Doctor Who series and, this time around, are able to fly.

That cuts out the tricky question of how the Daleks could ever invade Earth without being able to negotiate those pesky stairs.

Gareth said: "I think the stairs thing was overlooked at the time but the Daleks were all about frightening people and using the element of surprise.

"As for flying I'm not sure what Bill would have thought about that but he always was ahead of his time."

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