Conception and writing

The second serial of Doctor Who was always planned to be futuristic, due to the historical nature of the first serial, An Unearthly Child. In July 1963, the serial was titled Doctor Who and the Robots, to be written by Anthony Coburn and directed by Rex Tucker;^[4] the latter was also set to direct the fourth serial, Doctor Who and the Mutants, for which script editor David Whitaker commissioned comedy writer Terry Nation on 31 July, impressed by his work in the science-fiction series Out of This World.^[5] Nation had written a 26-page outline for a story entitled The Survivors at his home, influenced by the threat of racial extermination by the Nazis and the concerns of advanced warfare, as well as taking influences from H. G. Wells' novel The Time Machine (1895).^[6] Impressed by the outline, producer Verity Lambert extended the serial from six to seven episodes on 8 August, to better express Nation's story.^[7]

Show creator Sydney Newman and head of serials Donald Wilson were unhappy with the serial, having wanted to avoid featuring "bug-eyed monsters"; however, with no other scripts prepared, they were forced to accept the serial for production.^[8] The serial was later brought forward to the second in broadcast order. Due to other sudden commitments, Nation quickly wrote the scripts for the serial at the rate of one per day.^[7] On 16 September, following Tucker's departure from the show, Christopher Barry was appointed to direct the serial.^[9] Lambert's original choice for director was Richard Martin, but Wilson wanted Barry to remain in charge. However, Barry's other work commitments led to a compromise by the production team: Barry would direct the early episodes of the serial, and Martin would trail him to gain more experience.^[10] The serial went through a number of working titles during production, including The Survivors and Beyond the Sun, before settling as The Mutants towards the end of production.^{[11][lower-alpha 1]}

Design and music

Dalek at Doctor Who Experience

Raymond Cusick in 2003

This serial introduces the Daleks, the show's most popular villains, designed by Cusick.^[12]

The designer originally assigned to this serial was Ridley Scott, later a famed film director. However, a problem with Scott's schedule meant that he was replaced by Raymond Cusick, who was thus given the task of realising the Dalek creatures.^[13] Cusick based the design of the Daleks on a man sitting in a chair.^[14] Cusick's original design was tubular, with a plain skirt section, bumpy midriff with one pincer arm, and a short head with an eye-lens; Lambert rejected this design as being too expensive. It was decided that the designs should be more comfortable for the actors, allowing them to be seated. Cusick's second design was shorter, with a diamond-patterned body and larger head, and two double-jointed claw arms; one of the arms was replaced by a suction cup, due to the low budget of the production. The design was refined to fit over a small tricycle, and the arms were moved further down to allow the operator to see out of a metal gauze above the midriff. Lights were added to the dome to indicate which Dalek was speaking, as suggested by Barry.^[15]

Shawcraft Models—who had designed parts of the TARDIS set—worked with Cusick to design the Daleks; when Cusick met with Shawcraft's Bill Roberts to discuss the project, he used a pepper pot to demonstrate the Daleks' movements.^[16] The prototype (known internally as "Shawcraft One") had a wooden base, with the skirt section made using fibreglass. It stood at four-foot six-inches, allowing a small seated actor inside. The BBC approved of Shawcraft's designs, allowing three weeks for the final models. While Cusick wanted six Daleks, the £500 budget only allowed for four.^[17] The final models stood at four-foot eight-inches, painted in silver with grey trimmings, and light blue balls on the skirt; the lights on the domes were Christmas tree lights covered by a ping-pong ball, operated by the actor inside.^[17]

Nation once claimed that he came up with the name "Dalek" after seeing a set of encyclopedias with one volume spanning the section of the alphabet from Dal – Lek. However, he later admitted that this was a story for the press, and that he had just made up the name.^[18] Barry commissioned Tristram Cary to provide the serial's incidental score, having worked together on No Cloak — No Dagger; while Newman disliked Cary's work, Barry and Lambert convinced him otherwise. Barry had heard some musique concrète music and, intrigued by it, asked Cary to compose a strange and simplistic electronic score for the serial. About twenty minutes of music was used in the serial.^[19]

Casting and characters

Actor Alan Wheatley was chosen to portray Temmosus, the leader of the Thals, having worked with Hartnell in an episode of The Flying Doctor in 1959; David Markham was originally considered for the role. Virginia Wetherell was cast as the female Thal named Dyoni, having previously worked with Martin. Dinsdale Landen was chosen to play Ganatus, but production date changes forced him to drop out of the serial; he was replaced by Philip Bond, with whom Barry had worked on No Cloak — No Dagger.^[20] The names of the Thals were revised in the final script: Temmosus was originally Stohl, Alydon was Vahn, Ganatus was Kurt, Kristas was Jahl, Antodus was Ven, Dyoni was Daren, and Elyon was Zhor.^[21] Four actors were chosen as Dalek operators, due to their small stature and muscular ability: Robert Jewell, Kevin Manser, Michael Summerton, and Gerald Taylor; Barry knew Manser as a sensitive actor who reacted well to voices, while Martin knew Taylor through repertory theatre. Due to the Daleks' electronic voices, it was considered impractical for the actors inside the machines to also deliver the dialogue. As a result, the Dalek voices were performed off-set by Peter Hawkins and David Graham.^[20] Barry contacted the Post Office's Joint Speech Research Unit for information on electronic voices. Two samples were provided: one using a vocoder with low and medium monotone pitch; and one using written computer characters, generating a sound which was less human but more time-consuming. While Barry enjoyed these methods, the BBC opted to develop its own method to achieve a similar effect, as some of the Dalek speech was required in studio during production.^[22] Martin worked with Brian Hodgson of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to find suitable tones; ultimately, the actors spoke through a lip-ribbon microphone, which was later given an electronic quality after passing through a ring modulator.^[23]

Filming

A week of shooting took place from 28 October 1963, consisting mostly of inserts of the city and models.^[24] Rehearsals for the cast began on 11 November; Nation only attended one session, due to work commitments. Some of the Dalek dialogue was pre-recorded on 13 November by Hawkins and Graham, portraying the higher-pitched "Dalek One" and lower-pitched "Dalek Two", respectively.^[25] Weekly recording of the serial began on 15 November;^[26] it was later discovered that the first recording was affected by induction—an effect in which the voices from the production assistants' headphones was clearly audible. The episode was re-recorded on 6 December, pushing the weekly recordings of episodes 4–7 back by one week.^[27] The final episode was recorded on 10 January 1964.^[24]

Broadcast and ratings

The first episode was broadcast on BBC TV on 21 December 1963, and was watched by 6.9 million viewers. The following episode received 6.4 million viewers. By the third episode, news about the Daleks had spread, and the episode was watched by 8.9 million viewers.^[28] An additional million viewers watched for the following two weeks, and the final two episodes reached 10.4 million;^[28] by the end of the serial, the show's overall audience had increased by 50%.^[29] To date, the serial has been repeated twice on the BBC: the final episode was broadcast on BBC Two late in the evening on 13 November 1999 as part of "Doctor Who Night", garnering 1.6 million viewers; and the serial was shown in three blocks from 5–9 April 2008 on BBC Four, as part of a celebration of the life and work of Lambert following her death in November 2007.^[30]

BBC Enterprises prepared to dispose of the 16mm telerecordings of the serial in 1978. When this was discovered by fan Ian Levine and BBC Enterprises Film Sales employee John Bridger, they contacted Sue Malden of BBC Archives to request that the destruction of The Daleks, and all other remaining 1960s Doctor Who serials, should cease. Subsequently, the remaining film prints were relocated to the BBC archives for preservation.^[31] A further copy of the fifth episode of the serial was discovered in the private collection of former BBC employee Francis Watson and returned to the BBC in 2004.^[32]

Critical response

Following the broadcast of the fifth episode, the Daily Mirror's Richard Sear described the show as "splendid children's stuff", describing the cliffhanger as "smashing".^[29] Retrospective reviews were also positive. In The Discontinuity Guide (1995), Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping described the serial as "brilliantly directed, full of inventive touches and wonderful set-pieces"; they noted that the first four episodes helped to launch Doctor Who to success, but wrote that the last three "comprise a B-movie trek through hideous landscapes", comparing it unfavourably to Flash Gordon.^[33] In The Television Companion (1998), David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker praised the serial for introducing the Daleks and lauded Cusick's designs, but felt that the Thals—particularly after the death of their leader Temmosus in the fourth episode—were "faceless stereotypes" used only for plot, and criticised their costume design.^[34] In A Critical History of Doctor Who (1999), John Kenneth Muir similarly praised the Daleks, as well as Barry's "stylish" direction and the performances of Hill and Hartnell.^[35] In 2006, DVD Talk's John Sinnott, despite noting that "there are a few parts that drag just a bit", commended the script for allowing the characters to develop and holding tension unlike the previous serial.^[36] In 2008, Patrick Mulkern of Radio Times praised the strength of Nation's scripts, particularly the first three cliffhangers, but felt that "the urgency and claustrophobia dissipate towards the end", describing the final battle as "a disappointingly limp affair".^[37] In 2011, Christopher Bahn of The A.V. Club wrote that the serial is "quite solid, full of well-paced action and some interestingly subtle characterizations, though it definitely begins to drag around the fifth episode, with a long trek through swamps and caverns that moves the plot forward by about an inch".^[38]

In print

The Daleks was the first Doctor Who serial to be adapted as a novel. Written by David Whitaker, the book was first published in hardback on 12 November 1964 by Frederick Muller Ltd as Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks. A paperback release by Armada Books followed in October 1965 with a new cover and interior illustrations by Peter Archer. Two international versions of the book were released in 1966: a Dutch hardback edition, Dr Who en de Daleks, was translated by Tuuk Buijtenhuijs; and American and Canadian hardback editions were licensed to Soccer Books and Saunders, respectively. In July 1967, a North American paperback was published by Avon Books, featuring a photomontage cover by Paul Weller.^[42] In 1972, Universal-Tandem Publishing acquired the rights to republish the title as part of the new Target Books range. Renamed Doctor Who and the Daleks, the book was published on 2 May 1973 with a new cover painting of Hartnell. The release also received several translations worldwide.^{[lower-alpha 2]} A new version by Virgin Books titled Doctor Who – The Daleks, featuring a cover by Alister Pearson, was issued on 16 January 1992, and a reproduction of the Target book was published on 7 July 2011 with a cover by Chris Achilleos and foreword by fantasy author Neil Gaiman.^[43] An illustrated version of the book, with art from Robert Hack and an introduction by Neil Gaiman, was released on 3 November 2022.^[44]

A verbatim transcript of the transmitted version of the serial, edited by John McElroy, was published by Titan Books in December 1989, and reissued in 1992.^[45] An audiobook reading of the novelisation, narrated by William Russell, was published by BBC Audiobooks on CD on 7 March 2005, and later reissued on the five-CD set Doctor Who: Travels in Time and Space on 7 November 2005.^[46]

Soundtrack

Doctor Who: The Daleks
Soundtrack album by Tristram Cary
Released	15 September 2017
Genre	Soundtrack
Label	Silva Screen
Doctor Who soundtrack chronology
Doctor Who: Series 8 (2015) Doctor Who: The Daleks (2017) Doctor Who: Survival (2017)

Cary's music from this serial was first released on CD as part of Doctor Who: Devils' Planets – The Music of Tristram Cary by BBC Music on 1 September 2003.^[46] The music also received an individual CD release, along with sounds by Hodgson and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, on 15 September 2017.^[47]