Such was the impact of the Daleks in their first Doctor Who story that they almost immediately became ripe for being sent up by other programmes – or, at least, for making jokey guest appearances in them.
There aren’t many details about the Dalek cameo in the children’s variety show Crackerjack on 12 February 1964, or what was the basis of the Dalek sketch that featured in Hi There! on 18 February (all we know is that the Dalek was authentically voiced on that occasion by Peter Hawkins) – but these appearances were certainly topical. A few weeks later, on 7 April, Mike and Bernie Winters included some Dalek-like monsters in their ‘Doctor Shmoo’ sketch on Big Night Out (subsequently released on the DVD ABC Nights In). And long after the dust had settled on their debut, the Daleks were still sufficiently remembered to feature in the Roy Kinnear sitcom A World of His Own. In the episode broadcast on 21 August, Roy’s character, Stanley Blake, livened up a shopping trip by imagining it being interrupted by two Daleks.
With 1965 qualifying as the year of Dalekmania, the Daleks turned up in all sorts of unexpected places. In the episode of Hugh and I broadcast on 11 April, a Dalek was present at a party to cheer up the young residents of an orphanage – though in this case the Dalek was there, not as an alien menace, but purely as a television prop, just as other Dalek props were being loaned out at the time to fêtes and children’s homes. Later that year, a silent Dalek could be glimpsed in the 8 September edition of The Wayne and Shuster Show. At the end of a long sketch, the Canadian comedian Johnny Wayne tried to chat up the Dalek – “What’s a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?” – only for the Dalek to electrocute him with the traditional negative effect.