Fans of Doctor Who might meet a familiar creature from the hit science fiction series at this year’s Ridge Meadows Home Show.
Stan Stanley and his son Adam have created a replica Dalek featured in the BBC television program.
Daleks, a fictional extraterrestrial race of mutant aliens, made their first television appearance in 1963.
In the program, Daleks attempt to take over the universe, exterminating what they see as inferior races.
The replica Dalek “will startle everybody,” said Stan.
It is 1.6 metres tall and it moves on wheels.
“This will be an automaton. It will have light motion detectors, a voice and so on,” said Stan, who modified the original creation.
The Dalek will react if anyone goes near it. The head of the creature will turn and it will survey the audience in the vicinity.
It will go up and down and turn right and left. Lights will flash in its ears and there is a light in its main stem.
It will also say “Exterminate, Exterminate,” like the character on the television show.
It was Adam’s idea to build the Dalek 15 years ago, while teaching English at Thomas Haney secondary.
“It was an experiment to see how much learning could be accomplished with an unlikely goal and a diverse community of students,” said Adam.
He was inspired by his daughter, who was four years old at the time and who just received a tiny plastic model of a Dalek on a trip to England.
Then one of his students did some research and they discovered that people actually construct these things.
Adam contacted the BBC and received plans to make the creature.
More that 100 students were involved in its construction.
When they were building it, the students had a difficult time getting the head of the Dalek right.
“The BBC were so surprised that a group of kids in Maple Ridge were making this sort of arcane thing that they sent us a real head for it from England,” said Adam.
Then the Dalek followed Adam as he moved from Thomas Haney to Samuel Roberton Technical, where he became vice-principal, and last year to Alexander Robinson, where he became the principal.
But he had nowhere to store the Dalek at the school, so he put in his father’s warehouse, where Stan took an interest in it.
He changed the lights and had an electrical engineer develop the electronics for it.
Initially they were going to use it to advertise Stan’s invention, the EZ-RISER, a mobility device. Now they simply want to show it off.
The Dalek will be on display throughout the whole weekend.