The iconic sci-fi villains almost designed by Ridley Scott
In terms of influential figures in the world of sci-fi cinema, few have had quite as big an impact as Sir Ridley Scott. When he made Blade Runner in 1982, he inadvertently influenced generations of future filmmakers with his take on a dark, twisted future. Three years earlier, he’d made Alien, another movie that is still beloved and supported today as part of a massive franchise. If you thought this was all impressive, then you should hear what he almost did before he’d made it to Hollywood.
Prior to his sensational feature film career, the Englishman was the founder of Ridley Scott Associates (RSA), a commercial production enterprise. RSA were responsible for some pretty seminal TV adverts during the 1960s, including the famous Bike Round commercial for Hovis. The short, which features a young boy pushing a pedal bike around the cobbled streets of a Yorkshire town, is one of the most recognisable in British history. It was voted the country’s ever favourite advert in a 2006 poll.
And even before he’d founded RSA, Scott was an apprentice in the world of TV drama. In 1963, he started working for the BBC as a set designer. He was assigned a bunch of big shows, including Z-Cars, but his biggest moment came when he was asked to work on a brand new science fiction show—Doctor Who.
A young Scott was given the task of designing assets for the second-ever serial of the legendary programme. As any Whovian worth their salt will know, that four-episode run was named ‘The Daleks’. As this name would imply, this was the introduction of the Doctor’s most notorious enemy: the toilet plunger-wielding, Time Lord-exterminating scourge from the planet Skaro. This means that, as part of his designing duties, Scott would have had to have come up with a design for one of the most iconic villains in sci-fi history.
Unfortunately, this crossover between two cultural juggernauts wasn’t to be. According to Shannon Sullivan, a treasure trove of Doctor Who info, a scheduling clash prevented Scott from working on the entire project. Verity Lambert, an influential producer on the show, decided she wanted one person to work across the entire story. Raymond Cusick, an older designer who was an actual employee of the ‘Beeb’, was brought in instead, and the rest is TV history.
Cusick, under the supervision of Daleks creator Terry Nation, brought the terrifying space Nazis to life in a pretty modest fashion. He admitted to modelling the creatures’ designs on a pepper pot, which is pretty in keeping with the more homely aesthetic of Doctor Who at the time. Yet, Cusick’s design has endured for over 60 years. There have been a few minor modifications to the Doctor’s most famous foes over the decades, but the main template hasn’t changed. When you look at how much some of the other classic Who monsters have changed from their debuts—the Cybermen are unrecognisable from when they first appeared—the Daleks’ consistency is nothing short of remarkable.
It seems that Scott has never spoken about his ideas for the monsters. In an alternate universe somewhere, the Daleks are hideous, HR Giger-inspired super-lizards with acid for blood. Oh, what could have been…
