Glossary of Primary Dalek Components
Fans of the Doctor Who television programme have adopted naming conventions to identify the various elements of the Dalek travel machine. These are listed below as an aid to tracking the detail changes made to the basic design to create variants. From the base up, the major components are:
- bumper: Also known as a ‘fender’. The projecting base of the Dalek.
- skirt: The section with angled faces, to which the hemispheres are attached.
- hemispheres: Also known as ‘hemis’, ‘sense globes’ ‘skirt balls’ or ‘Dalek bumps’, there are fifty-six of these (forty-eight on New Paradigm Daleks) fixed in four rows to the skirt panels.
- shoulders: The section between the top of the skirt and the neck bin.
- collars: Horizontal bands fitted around the shoulders.
- slats: Vertical oblong panels fitted to the upper collar.
- shoulder mesh: Diamond-section mesh fitted between the slats and the upper collar.
- appendage boxes: Projecting boxes housing the ball joints for the arm and gun stick.
- gun stick: Usually portrayed as a variable discharge energy weapon.
- gun rods: Longitudinal rods forming a cage around the gun stick.
- gun mantles: Octagonal cross-members bracing the gun rods along their length.
- arm: A telescopic arm, usually having two or three sections.
- plunger: Fixed to the end of the arm, this is a Dalek’s primary manipulating appendage.
- neck bin: The section between the shoulders and the dome.
- neck bin mesh: Mesh fitted between the neck bin and the neck rings.
- neck rings: Horizontal rings fitted around the neck bin.
- neck struts: Eight thin, vertical struts on the exterior of the neck bin, between the top of the shoulders and the dome.
- dome: The rotatable top component of the travel machine.
- dome lights: Lights fixed to the dome, which flash when the Dalek speaks.
- eye stalk: A rod projecting from the dome, which can pivot vertically.
- eye discs: A series of discs of varying diameter through which the eye stalk is threaded.
- eyeball: A spherical component fitted to the end of the eye stalk, shown in various episodes to contain the Dalek’s visual apparatus.
- eye lens: A circular lens at the front of the eyeball which, dependent on the variant (or occasionally the individual Dalek), is sometimes illuminated or has a central pupil.
- dome cowl: A structure which projects from the front of the dome and surrounds the eye stalk pivot. ('New Series' Daleks only)
Read more about this topic: Red Dalek
Famous quotes containing the words primary and/or components:
“It was the feeling of a passenger on an ocean steamer whose mind will not give him rest until he has been in the engine-room and talked with the engineer. She wanted to see with her own eyes the action of primary forces; to touch with her own eyes the action of primary forces; to touch with her own hand the massive machinery of society; to measure with her own mind the capacity of the motive power. She was bent upon getting to the heart of the great American mystery of democracy and government.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“Hence, a generative grammar must be a system of rules that can iterate to generate an indefinitely large number of structures. This system of rules can be analyzed into the three major components of a generative grammar: the syntactic, phonological, and semantic components.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)