Trivia / Dr. Who and the Daleks

• Actor-Inspired Element: Keen amateur florist Peter Cushing contributed the name "lilium philadelphicum" for the flower Susan discovers growing on Skaro.
• Dyeing for Your Art: The male Thal extras, largely performed by Covent Garden porters, negotiated a special fee for having to have their chests and arms shaved.
• Friendship on the Set: Peter Cushing developed such a rapport with Roberta Tovey that he would only return for the sequel if she did.
• One-Take Wonder: As an incentive Roberta Tovey (who was 11 at the time the film was produced) was paid 1/- (5p) by director Gordon Flemyng every time she did a scene in one take. She made so much money, Flemyng didn't offer her the same deal for the sequel.
• Prop Recycling: Some of the Dalek models built for the film would find their way back into the TV series in the following years. In another rather amusing example, for a long time it was thought that the movie's TARDIS met its end in an episode of The New Avengers in 1976, blown to pieces by an exploding pram, but some detective work from the Dalek6388 site discovered that was actually Pinewood Studios' prop (each studio having a police box prop to play actual police boxes). The Shepperton prop used for the movie made various appearances in movies and television until 1971, playing a regular old police box once more.
• Referenced by...: The movies' Daleks have cameos in, of all things, Looney Tunes: Back in Action (in the Area 52 scene).
• What Could Have Been:
  • It was planned to show one of the denizens of the swamp of mutations, but the prop constructed for the sequence was deemed rather unconvincing. In contrast, a writhing creature designed to be glimpsed inside a Dalek casing was judged too unsettling for the family audience the film was aimed at^note the producers, in fact, prided themselves on not relying on gore, shock and sex like their rivals at Hammer, and Milton Subotsky himself apparently demanded the full shots of the Dalek mutant removed as he felt they were just "shock and horror for shock and horror's sake".
  • Originally the Daleks were to be armed with flamethrowers, but these were vetoed on health and safety grounds and because they were considered too frightening for a young audience. Instead, the guns produced jets of carbon dioxide gas from internally mounted fire extinguishers.

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