Forum:Pre-recorded Dalek voices for Mission to the Unknown

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I have heard that the Dalek voices by Peter Hawkins and David Graham were pre-recorded prior to the studio recording session for Mission to the Unknown on Friday 6 August 1965.

Why was this, and is this the first and only time in the series' history that the Dalek voice artistes were not present in the studio for the actual recording?

Freddie R. Aldous ^{talk to me} 14:33, February 24, 2012 (UTC)

Can you cite a source for where you heard this info? --Tangerineduel / talk 15:28, March 6, 2012 (UTC)

Well, Freddie, ya heard right. And the short answer to your follow-up questions is that at least some Dalek speech was pre-recorded right from the off. It wasn't unique, a big deal or anything particularly worth mentioning at the Mission to the Unknown page.

Nick Briggs' thing of being in studio all the time is a bit of an innovation. It's also completely necessary, as we find out in CON: The Daleks, because there is an effort now to make the dome lights synchronise with the speech. Back in the day, though, this wasn't done with the same attention to detail. According to Briggs, the Dalek operator himself pressed a button to illuminate his lights based on what he could hear. So it didn't really matter that the voice artist be in the room. Thus, as The First Doctor Handbook says about The Daleks, "the vocoder material was of particular interest but that it had been decided that something similar would have to be produced in the BBC's own studios as part of the speech would have to be done live rather than processed from tapes at a later date." (emphasis added) Sure, it was a bit cheaper to record live, but it wasn't necessary to the effect being achieved.

Turning to the specific question asked, The First Doctor Handbook doesn't make specific mention of the Dalek voices in Mission to the Unknown. And Director Derek Martinus didn't mention it when interviewed by The Frame. However, Andrew Pixley makes a cryptic reference in his article on the production of Mission in DWM 271. He says: "the creatures' voices were pre-recorded, as usual, by Peter Hawkins and David Graham". Pixley's sentence construction can be misread by people, through no fault of his own. No doubt some people mistakenly think the sentence is trying to say that Hawkns and Graham were the usual Dalek voices. But evidence about other Dalek stories indicates Pixley is right on the money. Grammatically, the sentence means that it was usual to pre-record the Dalek voices. This appears to be the truth.

Later scholarship about the Hartnell era — which is to say DWMSE 7 — definitely gives us pre-recorded Daleks for Mission:

"Wednesday 4 August 1965: The Dalek voices for the episode were pre-recorded by Peter Hawkins and David Graham at Lime Grove Studio R between 12 noon and 8pm."

But it also shows us that other episodes had pre-recorded Dalek voices that were simply played back:

• [Wednesday 20 October 1965]: The Dalek voices by Peter Hawkins and David Graham were recorded on the Wednesday before the Friday studio recording of ["The Nightmare Begins"]
• Friday 26 November [1965]: During camera rehearsals for "Coronas of the Sun", Hartnell pre-recorded the Doctor's TAREDIS loudspeaker dialogue, which was treated in a similar manner to Dalek voices. (emphasis added)

I don't have any doubt that, at least in the Hartnell era, it was quite common to pre-record Dalek voices. After all, since every actor during the period occasionally fluffed a line, it's rather remarkable how fluff-free the Daleks are. That alone indicates some level of pre-record.

czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">20:16: Tue 06 Mar 2012