10 'What Ifs' That Could Have Changed The Course Of Doctor Who

2. There Were No Daleks

dalek_2490953b I€™ll most probably get flayed alive for saying this but here it goes: without the Daleks, Doctor Who would probably have flopped. Or at most had a very short life and become a piece of largely forgotten 1960s ephemera like Jukebox Jury and Four Feather Falls. Initially, the mandate for Doctor Who was €œNo bug-eyed monsters€ in an attempt to keep the tone up. Verity Lambert (the programme€™s first producer) took a gamble with the Daleks and it paid off enormously, cementing both their popularity and that of Doctor Who. The Daleks were a ratings and merchandising juggernaut in their own right and by being the programme that featured them, Doctor Who€™s popularity took off like a rocket, enabling it to build its own reputation on the back of the boost that the Daleks gave it. If Verity Lambert hadn€™t taken that chance and BBC producer Sydney Newman€™s decision to steer the series away from aliens and snarling monsters had been kept, we€™d most likely think of Doctor Who as €œthat weird kids€™ show from the sixties about the old man in the police box€ while making crude jokes about him travelling with a fifteen year old girl.
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JG Moore is a writer and filmmaker from the south of England. He also works as an editor and VFX artist, and has a BA in Media Production from the University Of Winchester.