Doctor Who: 10 Things Everyone Always Gets Wrong About The Daleks

We've all been to a hastily put-together exhibition about robotics in a local museum, right? Those ones that include the Daleks and the Cybermen on their list of famous robots in pop-culture?

Well, they're wrong: both the Daleks and the Cybermen are not robots because they're not wholly mechanical. They both contain a rather gruesome biological element, be it a one-eyed squid or a grisly human corpse ala Revelation of the Daleks.

The same goes for the Daleks behind the scenes too. Many people assume that they're radio-controlled, but there have been manual operators inside those casings from the very beginning.

Dalek operators like John Scott Martin and Barnaby Edwards are celebrities in their own right, which is something that can't be said for many other Doctor Who monsters. Having an organic component – or an actor – inside a Dalek is key to their appeal.

This changed in the Chris Chibnall era, when the skinny junkyard Dalek and the Dalek security drones were built for Resolution and Revolution of the Daleks, respectively. These new Daleks were remote-controlled, meaning that there was no longer a need to have an operator inside them.