I have been watching some (very) old Doctor Who episodes, including the first ever serial featuring the archetypal villains, the Daleks. In this story, the Daleks share a planet with their long-time enemies, the Thal. After a war culminating in the denotation of a neutron bomb, both races experience very different mutations. The Daleks have become shrunken beasts that get about in robotic shells, while the more fortunate Thals mutated into peace-loving blondes.
The Thals hope to make peace with the Daleks, but the Daleks have more fiendish plans and plot to lure the Thals into their city with a gift of food and then ambush them. It is a good plan, but it is the choice of gifts that left me bemused. There is plenty of fruit and some large tins whose contents remain undisclosed. These may be reasonable choices, although I do find it hard to picture the Daleks stacking melons with their plunger hands. But the trap also appears to feature stacks of toilet paper. Granted, toilet paper may be an appealing luxury for the Thal, who have been trekking through the jungle for a year, but the real question here is, why do Daleks even have toilet paper?
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Spoilers!
Does it still count after 50 years?
Food rationing from WW2 only finished in Britain in 1954 so shortages of fresh food and household consumables, which we take for granted and think of as odd for a gift, would still have been uppermost in many people’s minds. Toilet paper of a durable and soft quality would have been a luxury item even in the 1960s. I suspect those tins may have contained soap, an item virtually unheard of in Britain at the time and not in common use until the 1980s. The people at the BBC would have been unable to find any “soap” but based on descriptions from visiting Americans, and by analogy with Spam, may have simply assumed that it came in tins.
The Metal Dalek as you see is actually a protective case to protect the golem like creatures from the nuclear fall out….remember Davros, who only has half a protective case. They poo too.
@Whatsinitforme that does make sense, it’s the application of the paper using only a plunger and a laser that has me perplexed…
@stubbie Maybe the fact that they were giving away their bog roll indicates they had moved on. Like those glorious Japanese loos which warm, cleanse with gentle fountains of scented water and dry with a warm Sirocco to the anterior regions, a simple grate on the ground, concealing the appropriate accoutrement, directed to the Dalek’s undercarriage, would work. Of course rust could be an issue.