Doctor Who Dalek Costume

Being huge fans of the show, both of my daughters wanted Doctor Who inspired costumes this year. My youngest wanted to be nothing other than a Dalek….really? Although they are one of my favorite Doctor Who characters, I was just not sure if we could pull this one off. It is definitely the most extensive Halloween costume that we had ever attempted. Vague plans in hand, off we went to the local Planet Improvement Center to rummage through all sorts of recycled goodies. We came home with scraps of wood, connectors and screws for the skirt base, scrap plexiglass pieces, flexible baseboard, weather stripping, thin metal sheets, plastic screened rain gutters, wheels and many other odds and ends.

I will spare you the detailed step by step on this one, since I’m still not sure how it all managed to come together. Instead, I will add as many pictures as possible and give you some highlights. If you have specific questions leave a comment and I will try and reply quickly. The skirt base was fairly easy to put together, not counting the ridiculous number of angles that I had to cut. There is definitely a better way to do this, but I was using what I had available. The body and neck sections are made from metal sheeting and plastic rain gutters and held in place by glue and a crude pvc pipe/dowel system. I wrapped the top with a couple more layers of black screen. The rings are a hard weather stripping, wrapped around and hot glued into place. I made the slats by cutting thin strips of wooden shims and mounting them to a sized piece of scrap wood board. The skirt panels, arm boxes and armor plate on the head are all made from foam board and the bumper is hard foam wrapped in black duct tape. My husband came up with the ingenious idea to use plastic play pit balls for the hemispheres. The head was, by far, my biggest complication. It is made from paper mache, sanded and covered in a thick coat of lightweight spackle. This was then covered in multiple layers of acrylic gesso and paint to harden it. The base of the helmet and belt are made from flexible baseboard. We added wheels to the base frame and she can step inside and push it around.

Of course, at this point my daughter decided that she wanted the Dalek to open up, like Dalek Caan. Um, OK… It looked so empty when it was open so we sewed a Dalek brain. This was then stuffed, painted and covered it with a lot of decoupage sealer. We then scrunched it up with rubber bands and let it harden. After a lot of highlights and color adjustments I covered it with a gooey mess of silicone sealer. This still looked too plain so we used hot glue in water to make the stringy guts. Keep the glue gun up high and squeeze the glue into the water. This was probably my favorite trick that I came up with. Oh, and I added LED pumpkin lights in the ears and glow in the dark paint in random places throughout the process so that it looks cool at night, sorry, I don't have a picture of that yet.

It took us 3 months total to complete both our Dalek and TARDIS costumes. The Dalek was by far the more complicated of the two. I would say it was a good 2+ months of work. The total cost was somewhere around $150-$175. We do this because it's fun. We do this because my girls love to plan and help. I do it to show them that no idea is truly out of reach.....and, I might be slightly obsessive