Only One Race Can Survive! - The Daleks, 1963
Sydney Newman, 1986: "Being a real aficionado of science fiction, I hated stories which used bug-eyed monsters, otherwise known as BEM’s. I wrote in my memo that there would be no bug-eyed monsters in Doctor Who. And after a few episodes, Verity turned up with the Daleks! I bawled her out for it, but she said ‘Honest, Sydney, they’re not bug-eyed monsters – they’re human beings who are so advanced that their bodies have atrophied and they need these casings to manipulate and do the things they want!’. Of course, the Daleks took off and captured everybody’s imagination. Some of the best thing I have ever done are the thing I never wanted to do. It’s true! It’s worked out that way".
Like most periods of the show's history, Doctor Who's inception was a tumultuous time behind the scenes. Script editor David Whitaker, in what would quickly become a desperate hunt for reliable writers and workable scripts, approached writer Terry Nation having seen some potential in his script for ABC TV's science-fiction anthology Out of this World. Despite having, by his now admission, no faith in the programme, Nation soon found himself out of work and committed to a six-episode serial that would air fourth in the season's run.
Initially entitled The Survivors, Nation's original pitch to Whitaker was quite different to the story that eventually made it to screen but kept a lot of the same themes and allegory intact. Nation's serial originally featured three races; the Daleks, the Thals and a third species whose ancestors were responsible for the neutron bomb that devastated Skaro and had returned to the planet to make amends. The set-pieces were more extravagant in initial drafts and the Daleks less definitively villainous but producer Verity Lambert was impressed with Nation's work, offering him a seventh episode to allow greater expansion of his ideas.
David Whitaker, 1979: "Terry Nation didn’t want to write for us, considering it rather demeaning that he’d even been asked."
Terry Nation, 1987: "I had no faith in the show. It was the old writer’s axiom, ‘Take the money and fly like a thief’."
As Nation continued to work, the programme's production elsewhere became more fraught. The two serials commissioned for writer Anthony Coburn required increasing rewrites, the initial first story that would become Planet of Giants was deemed unworkable and budgetary concerns had ensured John Lucarotti's epic Marco Polo would not fill the intended third slot. Much to the dismay of Donald Wilson and Sydney Newman, two of Doctor Who's three founding fathers, Nation's The Mutants suddenly became the strongest contender for the second serial.
Verity Lambert, 1980s: “The crisis came when Donald Wilson saw the scripts for the first Dalek serial. Having spent so much time defending ‘Doctor Who’, he saw the Daleks as just bug-eyed monsters, which went against what he felt should be the theme of the science-fiction stories. There was a strong disagreement between us, in fact it went as far as Donald Wilson telling us not to do the show. What saved it in the end was purely that fact that we had nothing to replace it in the time allotted. It was the Daleks or nothing."
David Whitaker, 1979: "Actually, that Dalek story was educational in a subtle way – it showed the dangers of war, pacifism and racial hatred. It contained many admirable and idealistic truths in it, and it was also a jolly good adventure story."
To this day, Terry Nation is somewhat of a divisive figure in the Doctor Who fandom. On the one hand, we have the man who penned what is arguably Doctor Who's most important, formative and defining serial. He is the creator of, not just an iconic monster but, iconic worlds and the core spirit and characterisation of Doctor Who itself and its leading ensemble. Yet, on the other hand, we have a writer who made no bones about his disinterest in the scripts he was writing. It has not become controversial among fans to condemn Terry Nation as a lazy, even hack, writer. One of these things is probably true; Terry Nation was a very lazy writer. But to call him a hack? Not in my opinion. Terry Nation is a very simple writer, certainly. The man's approach to structure was very traditionally rooted in the sci-fi serial format, his style of dialogue would not seem out of place in then contemporary comic books and his plots could never be described as complex or involved stories.
But why should any of these things be flaws? So, the man could write in the mould of classic sci-fi serials? Doctor Who was in the mould of a classic sci-fi serial and what Nation understood so well was that week-to-week structure that so many of his successors, and a good deal of his contemporaries, failed to get a hold of. Sure, Terry Nation serials are awkward stories to binge but they were never designed that way. Ever tried reading Oliver Twist more than one chapter at a time? It is horrible. Every individual chapter is truly an episode unto itself with great moments of character and action that effectively recap the story and move the grander plot forward. This is why, despite the unusual length of seven episodes, The Daleks still holds my attention for the whole runtime. Possibly more than any other writer's work on the original programme, Nation's episodes are consistently great to jump into just as single episodes. This also goes hand in hand with the very direct and simple dialogue really works as well. It is never subtle but it is always efficient and perfectly compliments the flavour of adventure serial that Nation consistently captured. Terry Nation is a good writer. Obviously. He is so good that even when he could not care less, and most of the time he did not, he could always deliver fun and beyond competent scripts.
Terry Nation, 1978: "It was quite a good eerie beginning and, at the end of it – the last frame of the picture – we saw a bit of a Dalek. We didn’t see a whole Dalek. And the phones started to ring. People saying, “Christ, what is that thing? A week later, the Dalek appeared."
The Daleks is a masterful blend of serialised action/adventure, thought provoking science fiction ideas and positively chilling horror that is well beyond the brief that Nation was given. From the moment it begins, this serial is unsettling. There is, of course, a brilliant dramatic irony baked into the premise that operates as both a clue to what is really going on and a genuinely compelling danger for our heroes. There is a school of thought that has concluded that The Daleks is too long but, again, I feel that this is a very contemporary mindset that somewhat misses what this story is going for. Say what you will about Destiny of the Daleks, for a not-at-all random example, but the first episode of this story, titled The Dead Planet, is not an exercise in killing time until the Dalek shows up to menace Barbara at the end. Despite what we know now, The Dead Planet does not have a reveal at the end. There is no frame of reference for the audience to project onto what is happening at all. Instead, the episode is a slowly rising crescendo of intrigue and tension that spans from the sparseness of a silent, dead forest to the gradually more claustrophobic and unfamiliar terrain of the city until Barbara gets cornered in an unknown corridor by an unknown terror. It is beautifully constructed adventure fiction that plays on the natural marriage of primal horrors, being the least creatures alive on the planet, and the imagery of contemporary nuclear warfare.
An Unearthly Child is a story defined by juxtaposition and survivalism which are both ideas that Nation picks up on beautifully in his story but he also brings themes of morality, identity and action. The Daleks is an almost biblical parable. With An Unearthly Child and The Daleks, the two core identities of the show appear to emerge. The former is a cynical and unrelenting programme that believes in unstoppable forces of nature that, no matter how hard we try to escape them or destroy them, will always be there at the core of our beings. With the latter, it is something more optimistic. A programme that is insistent, no matter how devastating the situation, that we can affect our destinies and help those around us to strive for better lives where we learn from our mistakes, can change and move forward. It is this version of Doctor Who, unsurprisingly, that the majority of the franchise believes in.
One thing Wilson did insist upon this serial was an experienced director whom he could trust to steer the ship and Christopher Barry was called in to take the job. Barry, however, was in the midst of other commitments leading to the unique situation where he only directed part of the story – episodes one, two, four and five. Richard Martin made his directorial debut with episode three and went on to direct episodes six and seven as well as the following serial and the Daleks' immediate next two appearances. Barry would also return to the series directing serials infrequently until 1979. As excellent as Martin's work in this serial is, and he realises some pretty spectacular imagery and visual effects for a little programme and with no experience, I could sing the praises of Christopher Barry all day. His choice of camera shots are incredibly dynamic throughout the episodes he helms with some particularly creative uses of angles and composition that really get the best out of these tiny sets. So many classic Doctor Who stories are hampered or even ruined by flat and uninspired direction (and eventually Barry will be the culprit of such a thing) but The Daleks, for my money, stands proud as one of the most cinematic serials of its era.
The cast are all excellent with great moments to shine. William Russell is always on good form and one of my favourite moments of the serial is when he smashes Susan's flower. It's a brilliant and revealing character beat for him. Jacqueline Hill is great and has some epic girl bossing toward the end ("Do you always do what Ian tells you?" "No."). Carole Ann Ford sells the desperation of Susan's mini-quest very well but let ustake some time to single out for praise is William Hartnell who turns in possibly the defining performance of at least his first year in the leading role and steals every single scene that he’s in. Considering the overly aggressive and immoral characterisation of An Unearthly Child, it was not necessarily a given that Doctor Who would be a likeable character any way moving forward but this is the story that first truly defines him. He is still arrogant, selfish and perhaps a little morally ambiguous but he is also shown to be deeply passionate, delightfully witty and shows more than a handful of moments of genuine charm. I love how character driven the plot ultimately is with little more than the Doctor's selfish, stubbornness to please himself that puts the whole crew in danger. It is worth mentioning too how the fluid link saga things on the TARDIS' identity as a machine, in the literal human understanding of the word. Very rarely beyond this serial would the TARDIS actually be treated in this way by the narrative, as opposed to simply being a magical element that carries us from A to B. The Doctor's actions are cruel and self-interested but by the time he is encamped among the Thals and one can see his delight in getting to know their people and their science, he suddenly becomes such a fully realised person in ways that he was not before. The Doctor is a scientist and an explorer, not some vindictive wizard with indefinable motives.
While the presentation, and perhaps core value itself, is a little dated, I also appreciate the Doctor's, and the rest of the main cast's, push for the Thals to be proactive as a peoples. It is a little clunky on the whole and comes off as a pretty pure endorsement against pacifism (though Ian's line "Pacifism only works when everybody feels the same" is a difficult claim to refute) but the nature of the message, insisting that standing up to oppressive forces and taking control of one's own life, is one worth conveying and an essential step in the development of the Doctor's morality. We are not entirely there yet, this is not a heroic character (indeed, he actively causes the Daleks to die), but this is the biggest leap we will get until the Daleks' next appearance.
Speaking of, let's get into the Daleks themselves. It is remarkable how close they are to being fully formed in their debut story. It disappoints me no end that this version of the Daleks, the calculating Nazi scientists allegory, is so ill-frequently represented in subsequent media appearances. The Daleks barely kill anybody at all in this script, largely seen just deliberating and experimenting in the labs of their cities, making the few uses of their weaponry a genuinely awesome shock for the audience. It is also a lot of fun seeing the original educational edict play out, for the only time with the Daleks; they cannot leave the floor of their city for they are powered by static electricity.
The true unsung hero of this production continues to be Ray Cusick, the BBC designer who somewhat infamously took over from a young Ridley Scott who was too busy to take on the job. Before even getting to the main event, we should note that the production design all around is stunning on this story. All of the sets and costumes that are dripping in glorious futuristic aestheticism that would make Star Trek jealous. The Daleks look incredible and, again, it is too easy to take for granted how truly iconic they are. The most radical redesign in the entire barely strays at all from their original realisation here. Even watching them today, it is unbelievable watching them in action. Just how smoothly and freakishly the creatures glide around their home world. They are just so thoroughly alien and it was one of the best choices of the production that their true nature is never actually revealed. How is it possible for the Daleks to be so far from anything resembling humanity? It is left purely for the imagination and to great effect. While Nation was very keen on the image of a gliding creature, allegedly inspired by the the Georgian State Ballet, Cusick was the one who really created the visual identity of the Dalek creature.
Terry Nation, 1987: “Raymond Cusick made a tremendous contribution and I would love to be glib enough to put it into percentage terms, but you can’t do that. You start with something that’s a writer’s dream, that he’s put down in words, and amended, and added to in conversations. Something starts there... I think they may have given him a hundred pound bonus, but he was a salaried employee... The copyrights resided with the BBC and myself... he made a tremendous contribution. Whatever the Daleks are or were, his contribution was vast."
Ray Cusick, 1992: "Everyone was rushing around corridors saying ‘Oh, there’ll be Dalek films, Dalek soap, Dalek tea towels’, they thought there’d be lots of money. I was very friendly with Terry Nation and we appeared on a very famous show called ‘Late Night Line-Up’, and I remember asking him after the show ‘What about the films, Terry?’. And I never saw him again!"
As well we know, Terry Nation is not a subtle writer. In a lot of ways, Terry Nation's scripts seem to defy analysis. Funnily enough, this is something that he has very much in common with, a remarkably different Doctor Who writer, Russell T Davies – neither of them are particularly keen on subtext. As noted above and well documented at this point, there are parallels to be drawn between the Daleks and Nazi scientists. These cold and calculating survivors of a long and brutal war who skulk about in their underground bunkers, preparing to exterminate an entire race that poses no threat to them. As Ian describes them; "They're afraid of you because you're different from them" These are parallels that Nation was very intentionally drawing in his work (and would draw even more intently come Genesis of the Daleks)but there is a particular quote from Nation about his creations that I find deeply tantalising;
Terry Nation, 1978: “I can’t isolate one character [that the Daleks are based upon]. But I suppose you could say the Nazis. The one recurring dream I have – once or twice a year it comes to me – is that I’m driving a car very quickly and the windscreen is a bit murky. The sun comes onto it and it becomes totally opaque. I’m still hurtling forwards at incredible speed and there’s nothing I can see or do and I can’t stop the car. That’s my recurring nightmare and it’s very simply solved by psychologists who say you’re heading for your future. You don’t know what your future is. However much you plead with somebody to save you from this situation, everybody you turn to turns out to be one of ‘Them’. And there’s nobody left – You are the lone guy.
The Daleks are all of ‘Them’ and they represent for so many people so many different things, but they all see them as government, as officialdom, as that unhearing, unthinking, blanked-out face of authority that will destroy you because it wants to destroy you. I believe in that now – I’ve directed them more that way over the years."
This is a deeply interesting and revealing excerpt, in my opinion. Nation was a child during the Second World War, a fact that he often mentioned in interviews and something that continued to permeate his work. It would be hard to describe him as anything other than a man with liberal political values, many of which are on display in The Daleks. That being said, it is incredibly easy to read The Daleks as a condemnation of Nazi fascism, totalitarianism and racial hatred. Perhaps not is too easy. Let us take moment to consider the politics of The Daleks as a condemnation of, not the Second World War but, the post-war climate and even more directly on the UK itself. After all, it is not without note that the Thals are of typically Aryan physicality and even had German names in earlier drafts of the story. In real-world history, we all know that it was not the Nazis who dropped the first atomic bomb – it was the Allies and, while the plight of the Thals has a great deal in common with the Jewish in World War II, it is not especially difficult to shift the lens of the Dalek allegory onto the 'good guys' watching the programme. When considering this with the above quote, there becomes something almost anarchistic about The Daleks. Nation's story is a survivalist thriller in many respects (with a lot of the natural horrors, of course, being directly resultant of man-made atrocities) but his self-confessed anxiety for the future perhaps fuels the story's optimistic insistence that when everything is torn down and destroyed, life will prevail and we can begin again, better than before.
The Daleks presents strong ideals of community which makes perfect sense given the quote above. Nation's self-proclaimed fears seem keenly tied to isolation and that paranoia runs rampant in the terror of The Daleks. Take the sequence in The Survivors where Susan is racing back to the TARDIS on her own. The journey is horrifying and tense as she has no support or reassurance on her side. She is a young woman who is already dying and anything could be out to get her.The person who does find her, of course, is Alydon, a man from a kind, supportive and united community. The kind of community that could take on the Daleks. There are a lot of problems with this too though. The Thals are presented as, in Susan's words, perfect. They are peak physical performance, they look like humans and the villains, the irredeemable monsters, are physically inhuman.
Terry Nation, 1978: "[Survival] is a theme that’s actually gone through my work enormously... I’m in that aeroplane and I’m waiting for the moment when they say, 'Can anybody fly this aeroplane?' – And I can’t, but I know that finally I’m going to be the one that has to do it."
On Saturday the twenty-first of December 1963, the fifth episode of the BBC's new science-fiction adventure serial, Doctor Who, aired in front of an audience of 6.9 million viewers. The episode was penned an up and coming Welsh comedy writer named Terry Nation and it was the first of seven chapters in a saga entitled The Mutants. Following a thrilling cliffhanger and the unexpected reveal of the serial's bizarre antagonists, something unexpected happened – Doctor Who suddenly became incredibly popular. Between episodes two and three, 2.5 million more viewers tuned in for the adventure with another 1.5 million accumulated by the serial's end. Doctor Who might have debuted four weeks earlier with An Unearthly Child but The Daleks, as it came to be known, is where the programme that has lasted sixty years actually premieres.
David Whitaker, 1979: "When it was shown, not very long after being recorded, we were, and I don’t mean this to sound smug, proved quite right."
Peter Cushing, 1970s: "I thought it was very good. Very well made."
David Whitaker, 1979: "The Daleks were a smashing invention, and I took to them at once. I would say they’re worthy of Jules Verne."
Verity Lambert, 1980s: "What was very nice, though, was Donald Wilson coming up to me after the Daleks had taken off and saying ‘You obviously understand this programme better than I do. I’ll leave it to you’."
Part II - Dr. Who and the Daleks
Terry Nation, 1987: "After the Daleks, I was for a short time the most famous writer on television. The press interviewed me, there was mail arriving in great van loads. There was stuff coming to my house that said ‘Dalek Man – London’, and I was getting lots of them. Almost all the kids wanted a Dalek, and nobody was quick enough... My God, was that to change! Within the year, there were Dalek everythings."
As we all know, the Daleks were incredibly popular with the British public. In a manner cheekily compared to the Beatles, the Daleks dominated pop culture with all assortments of merchandise and spin-off material quickly emerging on the market. Between Nation and Whitaker's The Dalek Book, TV Century 21's comic strips (also credited to Nation), Whitaker's novel adaptation Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks and any number of toys, costumes and promotional tie-ins, the impact and legacy of the Dalek serial was immediately felt. Nation was swiftly commissioned for a second serial, the decidedly less culturally penetrating The Keys of Marinus, and eventually asked for a sequel Dalek story but what could have been the most high-profile exposure for his creations that one could ask, strangely enough, came without much involvement from Nation at all.
In late 1964, American film producer Milton Subotsky approached Nation and the BBC about purchasing the film rights to The Daleks. For a fee of £500, Subotsky secured the rights and set about producing Dr. Who and the Daleks. As well as co-producing with Max J. Rosenberg, Subotsky was also credited for the screenplay with not insubstantial uncredited contributions from David Whitaker. The film was one of ten theatrical efforts by prolific television director Gordon Flemyng and marks the first of only two times (to date) that Doctor Who has been adapted exclusively for the silver screen.
Tom Baker, 1975: "There have been two Doctor Who films in the past, both rather poor."
I find Dr. Who and the Daleks to be a deeply fascinating cultural oddity but that fascination surrounding its existence ultimately fails to translate to the screen itself. Even if it was just rolled into production as a quick attempt to capitalise on the enormous success of the Daleks in yet another form of media, it is admittedly impressive how much of the picture really works. Bill Constable’s art direction is quite breathtaking at times, working beautifully with the luscious technicolor presentation. This is a gorgeous film just to look at and it really effortlessly realises the fullscreen, explosive world of the Daleks that previously only truly existed in the aforementioned comic books and annuals. I particularly love the latter sequences as our heroes scale Skaro's landscape amongst some gorgeous matte painting work. That being said, there is still something that speaks to me more about the 4:3 black and white glimpses offered in the TV version. The feeling of peering through your TV screen into these small corners of what feels like a larger, more dangerous world behind and beyond the camera is much more captivating for me than these much grander sets presented without ambition or flair.
Since I neglected them in my main review, let me quickly sing the praises of Peter Hawkins and David Graham as the voices of the Daleks. With the assistance of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's Brian Hodgson, the pair created the unique electronic tones of the creature's voices using a ring modulator. Their voices are immediately recognisable and they put in great performances though it is clear, in hindsight, that the sound of the Daleks still had some work to do. Hawkins and Graham's initial Daleks are much more monotone than they would later become with the pair only later landing upon the rising pitch and angry tones that would truly define them. They are excellent in the film as well but, it has to be said, the story is not served by how many scenes they have of dialogue amongst themselves. Obviously it makes sense to showcase the full-colour, enormous Dalek props at every possible opportunity in your big screen Dalek film but there is just no way around the reality that Daleks rolling about and talking amongst themselves as slowly as it seems possible they could is not compelling cinema.
Worse than just looking at Daleks are the flaws of Terry Nation’s incredibly serialised storytelling being put on full display here. While the screenplay effectively trims the fat, save for the Dalek scenes, the general structure of this story does not work well as a single feature film. It is a similar problem that a lot of novel adaptations have where the filmmakers just cannot get the chapters to effectively translate to scenes and sequences. Dr. Who and the Daleks also has a bit of a bland core cast. Barrie Ingham is a good Alydon and Peter Cushing works magic with his dottery version of the Doctor but Roy Castle's doofus take on Ian leaves much to be desired and Jennie Linden's Barbara feels so surplus to requirements that she just gets folded into Susan's character and then a generic love interest. The film is entertaining but a bit of a lacklustre watch on the whole. It is not a poor or even unnecessary addition to the Doctor Who canon. This is as good a 90 minute adaptation of The Daleks that could possibly exist. It is just also true that the best version of that story is, regrettably, not this.
Roy Castle, 1990: "[I]t was quite unusual. Very unlike anything I’ve ever done... [The Daleks] were brilliant. I think if you’d said to the producer, you must get rid of the humans or the Daleks, he’d have got rid of us humans in a flash."
Peter Cushing, 1990s: "Those films are among my favourites because they brought me popularity with younger children. They’d say their parents didn’t want to meet me in a dark alley but ‘Doctor Who’ changed that. After all, he is one of the most heroic and successful parts an actor can play. That’s one of the main reasons the series had such a long run on TV. I am very grateful for having been part of such a success story.”
In 2024, the prevalence of Dr. Who and the Daleks in the greater story of the programme has dwindled but it is worth remembering just how significant an event it was. While not a critical darling, the film was a box office smash in the UK and was often repeated on television over the following decades. For so many fans, Dr. Who and the Daleks was more readily viewed than great swathes of the television show itself. Even though The Daleks is the story that happened on television, it is not unfair to say that Dr. Who and the Daleks is the story many of us remember happening.
Part III - The Daleks in Colour
Russell T Davies, 2023: "I've got to be blunt, I've watched this, as a fan, a hundred times as a black and white show and I've never enjoyed it so much as in colour."
And so, we fast forward, to 2023 and the sixtieth anniversary of Doctor Who. Showrunner Russell T. Davies has made the entire back-catalogue available for streaming in the UK, three new specials are about to air and the boldest, most publicised attempt to bring the original series to the general audience since 2005 is taking place. Thanks to the work of fans such as Rich Tipple and Benjamin Cook, RTD spearheaded an all-new colorisation and re-edit of The Daleks down to a seventy-five minute length to offer an alternative "blockbuster" version for potential new fans. How many of the uninitiated took any notice of its appearance on iPlayer and sprucing on breakfast television remains to be seen but, nevertheless, Doctor Who: The Daleks in Colour arrived in our screens on the 23rd of November, 2023.
The film in question is an interesting but flawed experiment. Certainly, the possibility of colourising the ancient history of Doctor Who has been a tantalising one for decades now and something many fans, myself included, have been eager to see. In and of itself, this is a fine thing to strive for and, in this respect, The Daleks in Colour is incredibly successful at it. The colourisation is breathtaking. Not only is the colourising itself incredible but the choice to eschew real world reference points for the sets, costume and lighting in favour of the most vibrant, almost psychedelic options that they could possibly think of is the correct choice. The entire production has a sense of 1960s pop and visual style that slots in seamlessly with then contemporary productions to the extent where it looks like this could always have been the plan.
What feels very much not like it was planned, however, is the runtime. On paper, chopping up the serial makes a good deal of sense. Seven episodes is a big commitment to somebody uncertain of the original show and with 1963 pacing being what it was, the decision to pare things down matches well with the mission statement. Alas, the editing in this film does not work but not because the idea is bad. Dr. Who and the Daleks has proven that paring down the script can lead to a generally well-received and, for many, preferential product. Yes, Dr. Who and the Daleks is, in many ways the elephant in the room. While the decision to choose the debut of the Daleks as a story to hook in new fans makes a lot of sense on paper, the fact that the Subotsky adaptation exists at all makes it a little difficult to justify.
The direct comparison is ultimately unfavourable and not just because of how many of the colour choices seem direct inspired by it. The Subotsky film's existence awkwardly lampshades the fact that what one is watching here is not an eighty-two minute feature designed to watched in one sitting. This is an almost three hour one awkwardly cobbled together with jarring new musical cues. Many of the technical choices employed such as speeding up the film, tightening up gaps in the dialogue and recording new Dalek dialogue to disguise swathes of cut material all amount to a very obviously cobbled together experience.
Still, this experiment was necessary and this is a great little curio of the franchise but the awkwardness of the production and its core appeal as an alternative proves it unlikely, in my opinion, to ever actually attain its goal – enticing new viewers to watch the Hartnell era. What The Daleks in Colour is is an alternative to the original and a glimpse into an alternate history for a captive fanbase. It could have been an amazing leap forward but remains, instead, a noteworthy first step into uncharted territory.
But what of that original serial then? Well, in my opinion, The Daleks still holds up today as one of the best stories in the history of Doctor Who and a landmark moment in science fiction storytelling. But this is not for everyone. BBC television of the 1960s is certainly not for everyone; I watched this with my partner and we both did feel the length when watching the episodes in close proximity. Even so, I do strongly implore checking out the first two episodes in the serial for some of the most intriguing and moody sci-fi adventure storytelling you might ever see in Doctor Who. In December 1963, Terry Nation and the Doctor Who team created some wonderful episodes of television. And that was not the end of the story.
Terry Nation, 1987: "I don’t know to this day what the enormous appeal of the Daleks was. I’ve heard all sorts of ideas about it, but they were slightly magical, because you didn’t know what the elements were that made them work."
Sydney Newman, 1986: “Someone once told me that there was a question in Trivial Pursuit, ‘Who created Doctor Who?’. You turn the card over and it says the answer is Terry Nation! I wrote a rather stinging letter, demanding the destruction of all the Trivial Pursuits that had that mistake in them, hinting at some fabulous compensation that they should give me for demeaning my contribution to (laughs) world culture! I got lawyers and everything, but I didn’t get anywhere. They just said they would withdraw the card. I even wrote to Terry Nation for his support, and he sent me a very nice letter back.”
*This title would be adopted by fans despite not appearing on any documentation at the time. It became officially endorsed with the 2001 VHS release
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