A friendly face and a series of small shocks

If you hadn't already guessed, I was at Magna for a Dr Who convention 'Time War 2010', staged in support of the BBC Children in Need Appeal.

All of the Dalek's from yesterday's photographs are home builds; none are BBC produced. Enthusiasts spend significant amounts of time constructing full size working Daleks. Most are powered by wheelchair motors (or similar) and have working dome lights, eye stalks and light-up lazer guns. It is quite a surreal experience to hold open a door for a passing Dalek!

I was at Magna with a couple of friends who are in the process of building their own Daleks and they had a table to display some of their part-build stuff in the exhibition room. Alongside their bits of Dalek, sat this...

It was amazing to see the number of children who would enter the exhibition room, spot K9 and run over to greet him; smiles broad from ear to ear! He was definitely a favourite! This K9 was built by Sacristan in the early 80s and is about 2/3 the size of the screen version. Except when he is on an outing, he lives in my friend's living room.

The table next door to us, held this...

Although only part built, this Dalek was beautifully crafted and had the added bonus of a remote controlled dome and eye stalk. I had a highly amusing hour or so watching a whole series of people examining this apparently inanimate object, only to jump in shock when it suddenly moved! One child physically leapt back around 18" when the eye stalk he was staring up at suddenly began to lower and stare back! I have to add that, once they had figured out what was happening, all of the surprised people were fascinated by the remote control and quite a number even had a go.