The Tenth Planet was the first Doctor Who story to feature Roy Skelton, who would continue to voice Cybermen and Daleks for more than 20 years.
“I did meet Roy Skelton,” says Nick, “and he was absolutely lovely. We never got to do a Dalek-off with each other, which I had been planning! And he was very nice about me when I became the TV voice of the Daleks. He did a lovely radio interview where he spoke very affectionately about me, bless him.”
On the 1992 BBC Video Cybermen: The Early Years, Skelton described the thinking on The Tenth Planet as being “a kind of computer voice so that it was half-human, half-machine.” In 1966, that was a science-fiction idea but today we’re more used to automated voices – announcing trains or ringing us up about potential PPI claims. Does that sort of thing affect how Nick performs the voice? “Of course. These Cybermen are very much in that 1960s style. You have to get into that mindset, and what Roy said was extremely helpful. I’m trying to faithfully reproduce what he did.