A volunteer helping to clean out a pond the in U.K. received “the shock of his life” when amongst the muck and garbage he discovered the complete head of a Dalek.
Marc Oakland, a 42-year-old sales executive, was wading through waist-high water as part of a volunteer effort to clean up a pond near Beaulieu, Hampshire. His group had already removed dozens of beer cans, a skateboard and even a foosball table when a large, oddly dome-shaped object bubbled up in front of him – a full-sized, nearly intact head of The Doctor’s most famous nemesis.
“It must have been down there for some time because it was covered in mold and water weed, and had quite a bit of damage,” Oakland told the Mail Online. “One of the dome lights was smashed, but the eye stalk was intact and the head and neck stayed in one piece as I carefully lifted it out.”
Unfortunately, although the volunteers conducted a “very thorough” search of the rest of the pond, no other parts of the Dalek were found; despite that, pond warden Tony Brown said that because of the attention the discovery has been getting, the exact location of the pond isn’t being disclosed. “The last thing we want are sci-fi fans descending on the pond frantically searching for other Dalek parts,” he said.
The head is being kept so it can be examined by a “Dalek expert.” Brown said he had no idea how long the head might have been in the swamp or how it got there in the first place, but noted that Doctor Who often took the Daleks on location for filming and that production had taken place in Hampshire at least once in the 1980s.
“Jon Pertwee also made a few Doctor Who episodes in the county during the 1970s,” he said. “Who knows, this might be the remains of one of the originals from the old TV series. I’m told they they were built to last.”
The Daleks are certainly durable; following their debut in 1963, the galaxy’s foremost exterminators became well-known as the Doctor’s deadliest adversaries and are also among the most distinctive and widely-recognized fictional villains ever created.
