Revelation of the Daleks

I have mixed feelings about this release. I've never been quite sure why it seems to be such a huge fan favourite, given it's less Doctor Who and more 'The Adventures of Eric Saward Characters'. Even the Daleks are hardly in it. It is one of the best of Season 22, of course (second only to 'Vengeance on Varos' in my book), but that's not exactly hard to achieve. If it weren't for Graeme Harper's sterling direction, I doubt it'd be so popular. And I'm actually quite glad the Doctor didn't get to say "Blackpool" at the end.

Still, this cover actually came together very quickly. It's the only decent pic of Davros (the ones of the head in the jam jar are just too indistinct), although cutting out his fiddly head gear was time-consuming. Similarly it's the best shot of Colin from the story. At the last minute I decided to flip him round so he was facing into the cover. As I couldn't flip the whole image because his coat would have been backwards, this meant copying his head to another layer and flipping just that, then doing much tweaking of the collar line and shoulders to get it to sit right.

More awkward reversing was required to get the Daleks facing the right way - damn their asymmetrical gun and sucker sticks! In fact, the white Dalek just needed his gun flipping vertically to point upwards and towards his victim. The grey Dalek (and knowing I was going to colour him extermination-blue meant I could use a good-quality black-and-white shot instead of a fuzzy colour one) had to be flipped horizontally to face left, then have his head flipped back as originally it was pointing in a different direction to his body. Then the arms had to be swapped, and finally the sucker arm rotated to a drooping position. All work that was ultimately obscured by the inversion to negative and colouring for the exterminated effect! Oh well. Click here to see before and after images.

The background was some stock images of rocky walls and pillars taken down really dark. My original colour for the back cover picked up on the blue of the Doctor's cloak, but I was persuaded to take this darker, to nearer the rocky background of the front cover image, and I think this does suit the sombre tone of the story better.

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