Custom Figure: "Mission of Doom" Dalek

For those who aren’t so into scavenging or producing alternate parts, the release of the Jungles of Mechanus Dalek set opened some great new opportunities for Dalek customisers. With the thicker bases and extended dome lights at their disposal, it wouldn’t take much to produce the movie Daleks that Character Options are unable to produce themselves. The black and red Daleks from Dr. Who & the Daleks are a given, but for my latest custom I decided to dig a little deeper into the world of Doctor Who fandom. The result of that is the Mission of Doom Dalek, one that might be an unofficial colour scheme but still has quite the interesting place in Dalek history.

Mission of Doom (also referred to as Mission of the Daleks) is the name of an abandoned fan project by model maker Julian Vince, who created a number of replica Doctor Who creatures and had his work showcased on a number of occasions (one of the most notable being his Evil of the Daleks Emperor appearing in the More Than 30 Years in the TARDIS documentary). The project was based around the idea of a “what could have been” third Dalek movie, presumably based on The Chase given the appearance of Mechanoids in the footage. It also featured the Daleks’ Transolar Discs - the hoverbouts they used in the TV-21 comics. Though never completed footage of the project still exists on YouTube, as well as the Dalekmania documentary (which is where I first encountered it). For Mission of Doom Vince used a number of variants from both Dalek movies, but his drone design had a slightly new colour scheme. The body remained silver but the head, body and hemispheres were now a light metallic blue. Based on photos the standard rank Daleks had a black base but one amongst them had a gold base (matching the shoulder bands), and could presumably be have some sort of group leader. More information about and images from Mission of Doom can be seen on Julian Vince’s Dalek website.

This Dalek was made using a Jungles of Mechanus/totally not a movie Dalek as the base, with the body sprayed silver using Tamiya TS-83 metallic silver. The base was painted with Plastikote metallic gold. The blue on the body and dome was hand painted on using Green Stuff World’s “Shark fin blue” metallic paint, and the mid-section bands were also hand painted with Tamiya X-12 gold leaf. Finally, the new claw appendage was crafted by @ThePrydonian and then 3D-printed by NDWDesign. Keep an eye on their eBay page (Dalekidea) for various Dalek appendages and other 3D-printed Doctor Who figure goodies!

I’d had this custom planned as soon as I realised I had a spare movie Dalek to work with (I have another set to do the black and red Daleks, but they’re projects for another time), but getting it finished certainly wasn’t easy. The biggest obstacle was finding the perfect shade of blue for it, as most metallic blues tend to either be too bright or too dark. I finally stumbled upon the aforementioned “shark fin blue” it was perfect, but the paint itself is mainly intended for airbrushes. Not impossible to hand paint on, but admittedly I’m not great at avoiding brush strokes so need to work on that. The gold used for the base was the same Plastikote gold I used on the TV21 Golden Emperor, and wanted to test out how good it would he for the other movie Daleks. The colour is fantastic, but the spray came out a bit uneven in places so I was hesitant to use it on the body as well. The Tamiya works fine, but it would have been nice to have the gold match. Having been in an area lockdown for the past two months due to COVID its been difficult to get paint as usually I like to check the shades in person before purchasing. 

Despite these obstacles I’m pleased with how the custom turned out, but I’d definitely do some things differently if I did it again. Investing in an airbrush is a definitely a must for the future. The Mission of Doom Dalek will look great alongside the other movie Daleks (it feels like it would fit right in place as some sort of squad commander), and it’s nice to pay tribute to such a talented creator like Julian Vince in my own way. I wish more footage of his work still existed, but I’ll always have those fond memories of watching the Dalekmania documentary and getting a glimpse of what could have been.