10 Secrets We Learned From Doctor Who Season 17 Boxed Set
4. Daleks With Legs!
The Dalek props in Destiny of the Daleks are notoriously tatty. Due to inflation, and tightening budgets the production was forced to use the same four that had been in use for years and been lying dormant in a prop store since the end of Genesis of the Daleks.
So how did they use this paltry number of props to present an imposing Dalek army? As ever with Doctor Who, very creatively. As the script called for a whole army to explode at the climax of the story, cheap plastic replicas were made purely to be blown up. Incidentally, the man pushing the plunger on the TNT was Tom Baker himself!
Before their inevitable destruction, the plastic Daleks were deployed to bolster the numbers on location, shot from a distance. As they weren't built as robustly as the original props, the actors sent to operate these replicas were forced to hoist up their Dalek skirts and walk! June Hudson claims to have photos of the walking Daleks making their way precariously along the Jurassic Coast but sadly, they don't feature in the documentary.