All the Daleks in existence

Some time ago BBC was searching for all the Daleks known to man… At that time I knew that something was happening, but I was not sure what and when. I knew, of course, that something BIG was happening, as usual when the Doctor is involved… but I had to watch the Asylum of the Daleks to find out exactly what: the Parliament of the Daleks. And, why not, the Prime Minister. Of the Daleks.

Some time ago, today, I found about the effort made to reunite every Dalek ever made… I don’t think it was all hard work, it must have been some fun some times along the way, but it’s interesting to find out more details about the job.

“It’s only when I read Steven Moffat’s script in its entirety that I thought: ‘Oh God, what are we going to do now?’” said series producer Marcus Wilson, who was tasked with the logistical nightmare of assembling Asylum Of The Dalek‘s pepper-pot party — most of which they didn’t even own.

“We needed help,” he said. “We called them back from the BBC, borrowed older ones from exhibitions, renovated a few that have been battle damaged over the years. A lot of the show came to be, however, from fans who lent us Daleks that they had built themselves — most of which were so detailed we could shoot on them in HD close to camera. Even [former show-runner] Russell T. Davies has a Dalek in his hallway, so we went up to Manchester to pick it up from him. We must have had over 30 different Daleks on set and we only had around five of our own.”

The two main sequences that required numbers was the Asylum (spoilers!) and the more grandiose Parliament scene, which features a CGI wide-shot with 20,000 Daleks — powered by Solid Angle’s rendering software, Arnold, a batch renderer that allows you to animate “render multiples and multiples of Daleks that maybe even a year ago we wouldn’t have been able to achieve on a television schedule.”

More information about how the Daleks and their CGI image have been used can be found here.

Related External Links

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• Review: Doctor Who, "Asylum of the Daleks" – Blog – Open The Fridge
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