Here's a tasty bit of Dalek for you - a "steampunk" incarnation, which is engineer Alex Holden's entry for the The Great Crystal Cyberdrome Exhibition.

Steam Punk DalekOf the Dalek, Holden reveals that the Dalek component itself is actually a bubble-bath bottle from Woolworth's!

At the time I had no idea what I could use it for, but it looked too cool to pass up. I disassembled it and spray-painted the parts with a can of gold Plastikote paint after masking off the two silver arms on the front.

The wheels, cylinders, chimney stack, and 'bumpers' came from a rather tacky brass model of Stephenson's Rocket I bought for £5 at a car boot sale. The brass brush on the end of the gun is the head of a rotary wire brush attachment that came with a mini-drill set. The pressure gauge, dome, whistle, safety valve, water level gauge, and valve are all bits and pieces I had lying around the workshop (I used to be into model engineering).

All the brass parts were painstakingly cleaned and polished with Scotchbrite, Autosol, and Brasso. It is held together with a combination of screws, hot melt glue, and cyanoacrylate glue. I left the plastic bottle inside the body because the neck acts as the turret bearing - I haven't opened it so it must still be full of bubble-bath!

It truly is an excellent piece of work... how bloody great would it be to see something like this in the series?