Trivia / Doctor Who S1 E2 "The Daleks"

• First Appearance: Of the titular pepperpot-shaped creatures who would become the Doctor's greatest enemies for millennia to come, as well as the Thals. Skaro itself debuted at the end of the previous serial.
• Inspiration for the Work: Terry Nation was influenced by the threat of racial extermination by the Nazis and the concerns of advanced warfare, as well as The Time Machine.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: Many within The BBC viewed this as some silly little filler story that would quickly be forgotten once a more prestigious purely historical story — which eventually became "Marco Polo" — aired afterwards. Instead, this ended up being the story which defined the entire series for over six decades. Downplayed in that "Marco Polo" was also extremely well-received; indeed, many fans would argue that it's not only the better of the two stories, but arguably even the best story of the entire First Doctor era. However, the series veered away from that type of story in the years ahead, and it really didn't help that "Marco Polo" had the misfortune of being one of the few stories to end up with no surviving material whatsoever.
• Missing Episode: Averted, but only narrowly so. This story was supposed to be junked, but by sheer luck fan Ian Levine saw that these episodes were marked for destruction and intervened. However, the first episode had to be filmed twice (after it was discovered that talkback from the production gallery had inadvertently been captured on the soundtrack), and the original version does not survive (apart from the cliffhanger, which was used as the reprise for the broadcast Episode 2).^note It has been theorised that the "talkback from the production gallery" explanation was an excuse to redo the episode, because it is unlikely that nobody would have noticed it at any point during the recording; dissatisfaction with the model of the Dalek city has been suggested as a reason for wanting to redo the episode, as the original and the one used in the remount are very different
• On-Set Injury: William Hartnell cut his hand on one of the Dalek casings. As a result, bands of sticky tape were affixed around the shoulder section.
• Similarly Named Works: The internal production title for this serial was "The Mutants". When another serial by that name came out eight seasons later, this one was retroactively retitled "The Daleks".
• Throw It In!: William Russell improvised the line about the room the crew has just entered likely containing the material they supposedly need to fix the TARDIS, feeling that after so much wandering around, the audience would probably need a reminder of what they were doing in the city in the first place.
• Troubled Production: Part One had to be re-recorded, due to audio interference that led to the instructions from the director to a production assistant being picked up by the studio microphones and audible on the taped episode. The re-recording occurred between the taping of Episodes Three and Four, and the cliffhanger reprise of the start of Episode Two comes from the initial, unaired recording.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally, the conflict between the Daleks and the Thals was less black-and-white. The titular species wanted to stop the possibility of the Thals starting another war. Then at the serial’s conclusion, an alien race would arrive on Skaro. The Doctor would explain that the aliens’ ancestors had actually started the war. They would apologize and wished to "make reparations and assist in rebuilding the planet". Because of time and budget, Terry Nation rewrote the story to explicitly make the Daleks villains and have a Downer Ending.
  • There was also much more drama surrounding a "great rain" — a meteorological event on Skaro — which would reduce the planet’s radiation levels enough for the Daleks to emerge from their city and confront the Thals.
  • There were more dangers that The Doctor and crew would have confronted in the original script, including mutated spiders and execution from a "Sonic chamber".
  • Ridley Scott, long before he became a famous director, was the original designer for the Daleks. But issues with Scott's scheduling meant Verily Lambert replaced him with Raymond Cusick, who went on to create their iconic look.
  • Earlier versions of the Dalek design had rounded bases; the final angular design was chosen because it allowed the option of making the base from separate flat panels, rather than as a single fibreglass casting. They were also supposed to have their gunstick mounted on a ring around the midsection, allowing a 360-degree field of fire, but this proved too expensive to do; the swivelling midsection would later become a permanent staple of the Daleks in "Dalek", roughly 42 years later.
  • Cusick wanted the orbs on the casing to be flashing lights whenever they get agitated using a car battery behind the seat. However, this was cut because of budgetary reasons. The flashing lights idea were added on the dome section when the director couldn't tell which Dalek was speaking.
• Working Title: The Survivors and Beyond the Sun.

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