Like many I’ve suddenly found myself with a lot more free time over the past few weeks thanks to this Coronavirus lockdown business, and one thing I really wanted to dip my hand back into was the world of custom Dalek figures. It’s been some years since my last project, and the increasing scarcity/price of classic Daleks on the aftermarket hasn’t made getting back into it any easier. However luckily I was able to get my hands on a Classic Dalek Set #2 on eBay, so had three new canvases to work with. My first instinct is to always trawl through all the various Big Finish audios to find variants I hadn’t tackled yet, and this time my eyes turned toward the excellent Brotherhood of the Daleks by Alan Barnes. The cover for the story features a distinct red Dalek, revealed to a particularly special case as it’s not just a Dalek - it’s a Thalek.
Brotherhood of the Daleks is a delightfully trippy story which sees the Sixth Doctor and Charley Pollard return to the planet Spiridon, meeting a group of Thals still locked in combat with their age-old enemies. The story has a lot of bizarre twists and turns, including Daleks that believe themselves to be Thals (hence the term “Thalek”), Daleks with the star of Lenin on their cases and even a Dalek rendition of socialist anthem “The Red Flag”. Without getting too deep into spoilers it’s a fantastic story that’s well worth your time, and not that expensive to download from the Big Finish website either!
The Red Thalek was constructed using the Day of the Daleks gold Supreme Dalek as the base, with the eyestalk swapped with the one from the Evil of the Daleks Emperor Guard Dalek. The ball joints for the appendages were swapped with the grey ones from the Dalek Invasion of Earth Saucer Pilot to save having to repaint them. The red is a Tamiya spray, whilst the silver for the shoulder slats was Humbrol spray. The gun, chest band, dome lights and hemispheres were all hand painted. The silver used was by Tamiya, while the blue was Citadel's Kantor Blue.
This Dalek is similar but different to the more commonly known red Dalek pictured on The Mutation of Time novel cover. The main difference is the middle section, which remained grey on that version whilst this one has a red middle to match the rest of the body. The hemispheres also appear to be darker on the Thalek, however that could just be down to lighting. The Mutation of Time red Dalek has received at least one official toy in the past - the “chase” variant for Product Enterprise’s range of talking micro Daleks. This one on the other hand has yet to be fully realised as an official toy, making it the perfect choice for a custom.
Unfortunately I don’t have a whole lot of Daleks to do photo comparisons with as my collection isn’t in the same place I’m isolating in, but eventually when this is all over I’ll try to take some more snaps of this custom alongside his brethren. Red Daleks have always proven particularly popular among fans but they’re extremely uncommon among the Character Options range, so adding another one to my ranks seemed like a great idea. It’s a relatively simple custom to do so I’d definitely recommend giving it a try! It’s really gotten me back into doing these, so I hope Character think about re-releasing some of the classic moulds as part of their B&M range sometime in the future. As long as I can get the parts at an affordable price, I’ll keep making them!
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