Dalek Gary (or, "Chicken Boo, but with an armour-plated killing machine")

[Ben Paddon]

Last night my friends at Kill9 launched a Kickstarter for a new project called Dalek Gary, a series of six shorts about a Dalek stranded in America with a non-functioning laser attempting to blend in with humanity and live as a human to learn their weaknesses. At the same time a British documentary crew has arrived to document the life of a working illegal immigrant in the United States, and guess who they’ve chosen as their subject.

I’m involved, cowriting the series with Michelle Osorio and voicing the titular Dalek. Michelle and I have been bouncing this idea around for a while, and it’s exciting to finally start working on it.

The last time I worked with Michelle was on Boomer’s Day Off, a Left 4 Dead parody which was very positively received and has been viewed over 2.2 million times on the YouTubes. So that’s something.

But anyway, check out the Kickstarter or I’ll get you. Cheers.

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[Jonathan Capps]

This is a thread I’ve just found languishing in ‘Pending’. Sorry about that, Ben!

[Seb Patrick]

Fortunately it got funded anyway without your “help”.

This looks good, although I’m intrigued to know how you plan to tackle any potential issues with the Nation estate, should they hear about it…

[Ben Paddon]

That was a topic of much discussion, but we’ve basically chosen not to monetize this series in any way, shape or form. Every penny we’ve been given via the Kickstarter is going to go towards production, and anything we have left over is going to be donated to charity. We won’t be selling any DVDs or Blurays either, though we are sending them out to Backers and will provide them free of charge to anybody who wants to screen Dalek Gary at a charity event.

AFAIK everybody working on the production is volunteering their time, too. Even the chap letting us use his Dalek is letting us do so for free, which is exceptionally generous of him.

Of course, how all of that translates legally is another thing entirely.

[Seb Patrick]

That’s a pretty good way to go about it! Like you say, if they did decide to challenge you legally you may have a problem, but making it specifically a not-for-profit (and potentially even charity-raising thing) means it’s hopefully something that even if they did clock it, they wouldn’t choose to pursue.

(Not having a go by pointing this out, by the way – just genuinely curious! People do get away with “parody” stuff from time to time, but the estate are notoriously prickly, and I think it’s the fact that you’ve used the name in the title that could cause them to take umbrage if they got wind of it. Hopefully not, though!)

[Ben Paddon]

Worst case scenario we drop the “Dalek” from the title, I s’pose. We actually talked about alternative titles a couple of years ago, but were never able to settle on something we like.

(Suddenly the idea of a “Derek” parody simply called “Dalek” has popped into my head.)

[genericnerdyusername]

There should be an audio podcast promoting this consisting of Gary and someone called Clive calling each other cunts while telling taboo-breaking stories. I have no idea what to call it.

[Author]

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