Eggs - term - in - ate

The Doctor is back. Pitted against his deadliest enemies, the Daleks. Except this time they needed his help, which he had little choice but to give.

In a little over a year, it will be fifty years since I / we, first saw the Doctor appear on BBC TV. There have been nearly 800 episodes in that time - I cannot claim to have seen every one of them, but certainly into the early 1970s I must have watched them all.

During the time of Tom Baker and Peter Davison as the Doctor, I would have seen various episodes recorded in the studios of television centre. Tom Baker is such a character - he really did travel on the tube wearing that ridiculously long scarf!

There was a time when I shared an office with two of the earliest Daleks. I made phone calls, used a typewriter, generally did things, whereas they just stood there, motionless and ever threatening. They never failed to stop visitors in their footsteps.

They were designed by a BBC designer called Ray Cusick and were manned by people smaller than me! I could not comfortably fit in one, being 6'4". I imagine the more recent Daleks still have operators inside, but it would be easy to make them without that these days. They look so much sleeker now as well, those of the 1960s, looked, well, as if they had a sink plunger on the front!