Character Options’ Doctor Who action figure range, depending on who you ask, now numbers second only to the Star Wars toy line in terms of the sheer size of it, and let’s face it, a lot of that is different flavors of Daleks. For the most part, the figures are now sold solely through ubiquitous-in-the-U.K. retailer B&M, and almost always in box sets of either two or three figures; individual figures in the Jodie Whittaker era have been a rarity, with only Whittaker’s Doctor, Graham, and a reissue of the Judoon hitting stores in single packs. An interesting exception to this trend has been a handful of box set releases exclusively through Character’s web site, of which the “Jungles of Mechanus” box set is one. And yes, despite the title, it’s yet another Dalek set, though a very sneaky one.
The planet Mechanus is a major location in later episodes of the six-part story The Chase, which sent home original TARDIS travelers Ian and Barbara and introduced Peter Purves as Steven. And these Daleks are indeed seen on Mechanus, though they were borrowed from another production. But what production other than the BBC’s current series of Doctor Who would have built Daleks? None other than the big-screen adaptation of Doctor Who starring Peter Cushing. The BBC borrowed those Daleks to bolster the size of the Dalek force pursuing the Doctor through time and space and, by virtue of the movies having a longer post-production process than the television series, the movie Daleks actually made it to TV before they were seen on film. They were used primarily in background shots, but they were there, and therefore they’re fair game for Character under the license to produce action figures from the 20th century series.
But make no mistake – that cheeky loophole meant this limited edition release was Character’s way of dropping the Daleks from the Peter Cushing movies into their universe of TV-derived figures. And it was perfectly legal for them to do so since these Daleks appeared on TV first. They have a nice, unique color scheme, a livery that’s a bit less random than the “every other globe on the lower half of the Dalek is a different metallic color” scheme on some of the movie’s foreground Daleks. (The second Cushing movie, Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., saw all but the command-level Daleks decked out in the mostly-silver livery of the original TV Daleks.)
And as for the figures themselves? Character Options has more or less perfected the toy Dalek. The modular nature of the Dalek figures lets Character reconfigure them in any number of ways – tall base or regular base, mid-section verticle slats or none, and so on. Is the Doctor Who figure line saturated with Daleks? Sure it is – and the fact that “History of the Daleks” sets keep arriving on the regular at B&M stores clearly means that someone’s buying them. To paraphrase the old saying, 20,000 Dalek fans can’t be wrong, so Character Options must be getting something very, very right.
Why were these an online exclusive? Probably because this particular decoration scheme was so “inside baseball” that there was no point in loading B&M down with a lot of inventory. This was definitely a case where this offering was made specifically for those who were in on the joke. Plenty of us were, because this has not been the only “online exclusive” Character has made available through their website – but more on that later. (I, for one, appreciated being able to order directly from them and get a minty fresh set shipped overseas to me; the B&M sets have either been readily available after a wait, or they’ve been scalped to a ridiculous degree. Let’s keep skipping the scalpers.)
