Raymond Cusick, who has died aged 84, designed the Daleks, the genocidal plunger-toting alien foe of the BBC’s heroic Time Lord, Dr Who.
Though the scriptwriter Terry Nation came up with the idea of the Daleks, it was left to Cusick to work out exactly what they would look like. He first considered mechanical creations, but hampered by time constraints and tiny budgets, and wary of technology that was “bound to go wrong” on set, he set about crafting a terrifying being around a human operator.
The process began with the less-than terrifying prospect of a grown-up crouched down on what amounted to a child’s tricycle. For Cusick knew that he wanted the creatures to glide “without visible arms or legs”. “So I drew a seat, 18 inches high, got the operator down on it, then drew round him. It [the Dalek] grew round him.”
As his idea took shape, Cusick explained the look of the monster to colleagues at the BBC. On one occasion, in the canteen, he picked up a condiment container, and steered it around the table, showing how the Daleks’ effortless propulsion could be used to creepy effect. The villains duly became celebrated as the “satanic pepperpots”.
When Dr Who hit British television screens in 1963, the Daleks and their shrieks of “ex-ter-min-ate” did not feature. They made their entrance only in the fifth episode, but had soon etched themselves onto the public consciousness.
Even before then, however, Cusick had a good idea of the effect they might cause. “Before rehearsals started the cast and other members brought their children along and they were shown the Daleks and talked to the Dalek operators,” he recalled. “But then when rehearsals started the operators got into the Daleks and started moving, and at that point all the children screamed and ran out of the studio.”
Such impact was achieved despite the Daleks being distinctly low-budget baddies. Cusick had initially wanted the roundels on the Dalek shell to light up when the creatures became agitated. All that was required were some light bulbs and a car battery. But when he proposed the idea he was told that car batteries would be too expensive. Only when one director complained that he could not tell which Dalek was “talking” was Cusick allowed to introduce an illuminated extra on the Daleks’ domes. Initially these took the form of ping-pong balls. “We never went in for anything elaborate,” said Cusick. “We couldn’t afford it.”
Raymond Patrick Cusick was born in south London in 1928. He enjoyed art at school and began to take evening classes. But his father, then in the RAF, disapproved, preferring Ray to take a course in “something proper” such as civil engineering. Duly enrolled at Borough Polytechnic, Raymond Cusick hated his studies so much that he left to join the Army.
There he fared no better, disliking his spell in Palestine just as much. Returning to Britain, he signed up to a teacher-training course. He taught art, all the while keeping an eye out for positions in the theatre and television, and in the late 1950s he spotted a job with Granada TV and successfully applied. Having giving his notice as a teacher, he appeared for his first day at Granada to be told that there was, in fact, no position available. “So I dashed out and bought another copy of The Stage and there was another job going at Wimbledon Theatre for a designer, so I went there and stayed for nearly three years.”
He moved from Wimbledon to the BBC, starting out as a designer on shows including Sykes and Hugh and I. He had just finished work on a children’s serial entitled Stranger on the Shore when the call came from Dr Who.
Cusick worked on the science-fiction adventure series from 1963 to 1966, but found that he was expected to work “25 hours a day, eight days a week” for “shirt buttons”. Told that “the honour of working for the BBC should be enough” he was, nonetheless, awarded a one-off payment as a reward for the fantastic success of the Daleks. Cusick said it came to £100. Terry Nation’s contract, meanwhile, awarded him royalties and a cut of the highly-lucrative profits from merchandising, netting him tens of thousands of pounds a year.
After a brief spell as a director in the late 1960s, Cusick reverted to art direction, working on such serials as The Pallisers, Duchess of Duke Street, When the Boat Comes In and To Serve Them All My Days.
He retired in 1988, living in Horsham and devoting his time to researching and writing articles about military history, notably the battles of the Napoleonic era.
Raymond Cusick’s wife predeceased him. He is survived by two daughters.
Raymond Cusick, born 1928, died February 21 2013
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