If you’re running a business there’s so much to do. So much to worry about. Costs not directly related to producing goods or services are known as overheads. They’re always there and must be accounted for. In the context of Devious, however, the overheads are an entirely different thing altogether. When they took over the Complex (before the start of our Devious story we assume) they installed the production line, weapon and other machinery and technology. The reactor, the power transmission lines and observatory dome may have been there beforehand but the Daleks certainly adapted this scientific base for their own needs. Huge spidery metal grids and gantries were constructed within the main large dodecagonal buildings to support their production line and other equipment.
How do the Daleks build and maintain all this? Slaves of course. Throughout the recorded history of the Daleks they have used slaves. Usually captured humanoids in great mining areas, or robotised half-dead zombies – the “Robomen”.
Whilst they may well have used slave labour in constructing their Complex there is no evidence of that now in our story of Devious. (We did think at one point to have the bodies of long dead slaves scattered about but our writing team veered away from this as too graphic). The implication is still there if you think about it: Daleks in their casings can surely only achieve so much on their own. So how does the Complex function now? The Daleks use their Overhead Grabbers!
First seen back in episode three we saw various types of overhead robot arms and carriers going about their business. There were overhead rails allowing these grabbers to traverse the whole of the production line sections, and maybe elsewhere we assumed? We assumed correctly, as in episode four we saw the Daleks unleash their formidable Time Weapon. The Weapon Control Dalek and other “drone” Daleks could call on the services of robot arms with grabbers in a similar way to the production line. The production line and weapon room overheads included the carriers – seen below…
The carriers, along with some of the grabbers had those distinctive blue lights. They generally had four arms cannibalised from Dalek {plunger) manipulator arms with articulated grabbers like suction cups.
The overhead rails were generally multi-tracked to allow more than one transport at a time, and also because some of the overhead transports and grabbers needed two rails to ensure stability. The transport carriers as seen above generally used just the one track and could nimbly make turns along the intricate pointwork.
Sharing these overhead rails in the production line – and the weapon control room – were the overhead robot arms. Some were great big grabbing machines and functioned like our own earthly car production line mechanical arms. Some had laser beam attachments for welding Dalek casings or some were used to electrify the Dalekanium powder in the 3D printing chambers.
Below we seen a grabber rushing to assist when some of the Dalek Brain Units started to explode in the Weapon Control Room…
…And (above) some robot arms had simple grabbing hands for more delicate work. You will notice that a lot of these types of arms had a Dalek eyeball attached. Can these machines think for themselves, or just followed commands with a bit of AI added? Certainly with those eyeballs they could ensure that they were completing their allotted tasks correctly and report back to control.
Again we see these grabbing hands in more detail above. Deceptively strong these hands can lift quite a weight as well this delicate work.
These overhead machines have already been most useful for the Daleks.
Actually we have seen them in another building as well – the main control room where a lot of the action has happened in this story.
When the Dalek brain units were damaged by the power overloads after the weapon was used (these Dalek brains are surely not powerful enough) we saw an overhead machine motor in with a huge set of grabbing arms and simply replace the Brain Units held in stasis force fields above the main console.
Very handy.