Vintage 1994 Doctor Who Daleks Foil Trading Cards 🛸 Cards 1–3 of 6

Want the Whole Dalek Trio? 🛸 Vintage 1994 Doctor Who Daleks Foil Trading Cards, Cards 1–3 of 6

Size: 2 1/2" x 3 1/2"

New old stock from original factory card boxes, never circulated.

🛸 Cards 1-3 of Cornerstone's Doctor Who Daleks foil chase

These three are Foil 1, Foil 2 and Foil 3 out of the six-card Daleks foil chase Cornerstone Communications built into their 1994 Doctor Who card packs - about one foil per twelve packs, so nobody was pulling a full run easily out of a single box. The cards themselves carry a printed 1994 copyright, and the checklists that track this release put it as Series Two, out in 1995. There was a seventh foil too, Davros, but he never went into a pack at all - Davros was a factory-set exclusive. The whole run, Davros included, has its own set listing; this one is the first three, "Operators of the Daleks," "Designer of the Daleks" and "Creator of the Daleks," exactly as their own backs number and title them.

Flip any of the three over and read the small print along the bottom, because it's a little history lesson of its own. It says "Licensed by BBC Enterprises" - that was the name of the BBC's commercial arm from 1968 until 1 January 1995, when it was reorganized as BBC Worldwide, so the license line on these 1994 cards comes from the last stretch of the old name. It also says "Doctor Who Diamond Logo © BBC, 1973." That's the diamond logo in the corner of every front - Bernard Lodge's design, first seen opening "The Time Warrior" on 15 December 1973, and it stayed in the show's titles for seven seasons. Once the show went off the air at the end of the 1980s, a lot of the merchandise went back to it, the videos and Doctor Who Magazine included, which is how a 1994 card ends up wearing a 1973 logo. The last line hands the Daleks to the man who dreamed them up - "Daleks © Terry Nation, 1994," and on Foil 3 "Daleks & Davros" - because Nation held the copyright to his Daleks. He was still with us when these came off the press; he died in 1997. And the foil itself is on the fronts: the marbled metallic border on each one, purple and blue on Foil 1, orange and red on Foil 2, green on Foil 3.

🌉 Foil 1 - the Thames, and the man inside the Dalek

Foil 1's front looks to be the closing shot of the very first episode of "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" (1964) - a Dalek rising up out of the Thames. That scene was shot on the north bank by Hammersmith Bridge, and the ornate twin-towered bridge on the card has just that shape. Now turn it over. The back names Robert Jewell as one of the actors who worked the Dalek suits on screen, and he was one of the men inside a Dalek for that August 1964 location shoot. Front and back end up telling the same story from two angles - the shot by the bridge, and the man who was inside the machine in it.

🏛️ Foil 2 - Westminster Bridge, and the man who designed the Dalek

Foil 2's front isn't a maybe - that's Westminster Bridge, with the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben behind it, and a line of Daleks crossing it. The same August 1964 location shoot for "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" put Daleks out on Westminster Bridge, with press photos taken there as well. The back is designer Raymond P. Cusick's card, and it's a good one: he's the man who took Terry Nation's script description and turned it into an actual, buildable prop, landing on the "pepperpot" shape as the answer to hiding an actor inside it - seated rather than standing, wheels (and legs) kept out of sight, with the skirt Nation suggested finishing the look. Cusick designed the Daleks for the show from 1963 to 1966, and that early sketch, reminiscent of a salt cellar, became the prototype every Dalek since has followed.

👽 Foil 3 - Terry Nation, the writer who created them

Foil 3's front is four Daleks crowded together in what looks like a control room, and the back belongs to Terry Nation. He started out as a comedy writer, not a science fiction one, and didn't originally set out to write for Doctor Who - but the Daleks he created for the show's second-ever story became the thing he's remembered for above everything else, Blake's 7 included. That story went out under the title "The Mutants" and is known today simply as "The Daleks." Nation wrote ten and a half Doctor Who adventures in total, eight of them with the Daleks in them, and by his own account his favorite of his creations showed up later, in "Genesis of the Daleks" - Davros, the scientist who built them.