Linking to The Sun makes me feel a little skeevy, but this is too funny not to mention: workers cleaning out a pond in England found a surprise: a Dalek! Evidently it was left over from a Doctor Who shoot some time in the past.
All I ever find in the puddles in my back yard is stuff my dogs left. If there’s a lesson in here I’m not sure what it is.
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The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.
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 | Bad Astronomy was chosen as one of Time.com's Best Blogs of 2009. |
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March 4th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Makes you wonder if there’s a TARDIS submersed in the English Channel.
March 4th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
It’s not actually a prop. The Daleks really did invade, but the British government is covering it up.
March 4th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Here’s my favorite line from the article…
“We’ve all agreed it best to keep the pond’s exact location under wraps. The last thing we want is sci-fi fans descending on the pond frantically searching for other Dalek parts.”
Well, I guess I can cancel my flight now.
March 4th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
^ Yup, hordes of those crazed scifi fans would be skin diving in the warm English waters to find Dalek pieces.
March 4th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Todd W. may be on to something. Do the metals match those from Roswell?
March 4th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Is anyone else afraid that top scientists will study it and accidentally wake it from cryo-sleep?
March 4th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
@Andy Beaton
Meh…the Doctor will save us.
March 4th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
@ Todd W
And the Ferengi took over the banking and insurance industry in states and messed things up.
March 4th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
@Davidlpf: Apparently, “Exterminate!” is not a valid Rule of Acquisition.
March 4th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Not to go on too much of a tangent, but I actually had to look up ‘skeevy’: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skeevy.
I gave you the benefit of the doubt and went with the first definition. Linking to the sun makes you feel disgusting or distasteful?
March 4th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
@PG, according to some we would better off if it was a valid Rule of Acquisition.
March 4th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Hmmm, how interesting.
March 4th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Let me guess… bet you raise sundogs, huh?
March 4th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
This is kind of disturbing. The BBC doesn’t have a policy for the safe disposal of Daleks? Who knows what kind of health hazard is involved here? I hope the environmental groups jump on them for this.
March 4th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
I’m just wondering where the rest of it is… :^@
March 4th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Doctor Who Fan:”These are not the Dalek bodies you looking for”
Park Keeper “These are not the Dalek bodies I am looking for.”
(lets see how many sci fi streams I can cross.)
March 4th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Kudos for best use of the word “Extirpate” I’ve read in 10 years.
March 4th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
“I’m not a Dalek.”
“But she looks like one.”
“They dressed me up like this.”
“Throw her into the pond!!”
March 4th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Doesn’t that Dalek look awfully nice for supposedly having been in the drink for 30 years? I suspect we’re being had.
That said, if this is really as represented, imagine that Doctor Who had been canceled shortly after the Dalek had been dumped in the pond, and long forgotten by now. Then, in 2009, SOMETHING big and gray and metallic with strange protuberances, that looked like it could hold a person, and had some basic wiring for flashing lights and so forth, turned up in a pond. What would we imagine it was?
March 4th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
[...] Long Lost Dalek Found Published 5 March, 2009 Humour Workers in England uncovered a Dalek in a pond! Click here for the story in The Sun. No, I’m not a reader of The Sun. I found out about the story on another blog. [...]
March 5th, 2009 at 3:09 am
Ha! Guess I was a bit too late with the Twitter-notifying. Blame my snot-filled sinuses.
March 5th, 2009 at 3:38 am
Romeo Vitelli said:
Hey, it was the seventies. No-one had policies for the safe disposal of anything!
March 5th, 2009 at 4:49 am
That’s no prop! I remember fighting that Dalek in a previous life. I thought no one would ever find it in the bog, but now that it’s been found it won’t be long before people replicate it and machines take over the world. Hmm. Come to think of it, why did I try to prevent that from happening?
March 5th, 2009 at 6:05 am
If it’s a recent forgery, they’ve done their homework. By the looks of it, it’s certainly pre-Time War.
Given the eyestalk finning, the dome-ish lights at the side, and the eyepiece itself reveal it to be what you’d refer to as a Pertwee-era Dalek – see this library for verification:
http://www.projectdalek.co.uk/files/reflib/07_Day_Of/index.html
For those interested in Dalek-hunting for fun and profit, this type is fairly early. No temporal shift capabilities, poor armour, small calibre weaponry and a fairly poor range of travel. As always though, they ARE capable of flight, so be wary.
Any reasonable energy weapon will have one of these in trouble, and even some particle weapons stand a good chance. This is well before they incorporated force-fields, so the eyestalk is a good aiming point. Failing that, I seem to recall that their rear armour is thinner, and that their bottom armour is even worse. Ever seen a Dalek run over a land mine? If yours flies further than my record of 127m, then I owe you a beer.
I’ve also found that these early models are very vulnerable to having their vision obscured – their self-repair capability is very limited, and self cleaning is pretty basic. I wouldn’t count on thrown mud doing the trick, but a decent heavy sack would probably have it screaming “I AM IMMOBILISED” in a way that’ll make you wonder how Daleks ever survived these earlier years…
Happy hunting!
March 5th, 2009 at 6:24 am
DON’T TOUCH THAT SWITCH!
March 5th, 2009 at 7:01 am
This seems in line with the other real tragedy the BBC did in the 1970s – erase hundreds (thousands?) of tapes with old programs on them for reuse, permanently destroying the records of many series including many episodes of Doctor Who.
Clearly someone (a committee I am sure) at the BBC had no sense of history.
Hopefully some day that Doctor will travel back to 70s England and stop the fools responsible for this loss to our history. Then he can head on over to Alexandria, Egypt circa 400 AD and stop the barbarians from destroying the Library there.
March 5th, 2009 at 10:27 am
This sounds like the start of a good episode…
“We found this thing in a bog, but we don’t know what it is… there seems to be something inside it, but as yet we haven’t been able to open it..”
“I think we need to call in Torchwood, maybe they have some idea of what it is.”
“Nah… let’s just try cutting it open first… what could go wrong?”