The Biography

Raymond Patrick Cusick (28 April 1928 – 21 February 2013) was an English designer for the BBC. He is best known for designing the Daleks, for the science fiction television series Doctor Who. Cusick joined the BBC in 1960 as a staff designer and was responsible for the set design of many Doctor Who stories, creating not just futuristic settings but also historical sets and dioramas. Another BBC in-house designer, future filmmaker Ridley Scott, had been assigned to design the Daleks in 1963, but scheduling conflicts saw the job handed to Cusick. Cusick worked on other BBC television programmes including The Pallisers, The Duchess of Duke Street, On Giant's Shoulders, When the Boat Comes In, Rentaghost and Miss Marple. As Cusick was a salaried BBC employee at the time he designed the Daleks, he was not paid royalties. Given the large revenue generated by merchandise featuring Cusick's Dalek design, he felt that he should have been paid a royalty (as was script writer Terry Nation, who created the concept of the Daleks but did not design them). When Cusick left Doctor Who in 1966, unhappy with the lack of recognition he had received for his work on the series, the show's producer and head designer did arrange for the BBC to recognise his contribution with an ex-gratia payment of around £100. In the late 1970s, he was a designer for the James Burke BBC programme Connections.