10 Doctor Who Real Life Alternate Timelines

7. What If Terry Nation's Dalek Series Had Been Picked Up In America?

Evil of the Daleks was touted as the final end for the Daleks - in Doctor Who, anyway. Terry Nation wanted to shop his lucrative property around, and he planned to sell a Daleks-only series in America. Nothing happened, of course, and Nation soon realized that the only way he could make money with Daleks, apart from licensing, was with Doctor Who. But what if there had been a Dalek series produced in America sometime after 1967? Science fiction on American television in 1968 consisted only of Star Trek (by then doomed on Friday nights at 10pm) and the newly-premiered Land of the Giants. This lack of competition would've been good news for any network doing the show. In the previous season, it would have been up against a much stronger Star Trek, Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea... A Dalek series would definitely have been in colour, though, and it would have looked good, especially with ABC or CBS producing it. Whatever else can be said about Giants and Lost in Space, they (sometimes) looked good. An American series would likely have used those gorgeous colour Daleks from the movies, and shooting on film means we'd likely have Blu-ray versions of the series on disc by now. But what would the plot be? Similar to Mission to the Unknown, probably. Marc Cory would be brought back from the dead to fight the Daleks at every turn - but where would the series go? And speaking of Americanisation, we've already seen how the Daleks sound in an American production, and that was the decision of a British director. Both The Prisoner and The Avengers were successful in America, but they were imports. It would make no sense for an American-produced series to retain the accents. Think about that: Daleks...with American accents. Even those of us brought up in America would shudder at that. Also, American sci fi series back then were short - the longest lasting no more than three seasons - and it's not clear how well Daleks would have done in the ratings. No one in America knew about them. The first movie was not released in the U.S. until July 1966, while the second movie wasn't released theatrically in the States at all. A Dalek series would have made much more sense if the BBC had produced it, even with the same production standards as Who. Terry Nation would then be in something of a pickle, though, since bringing them back to Doctor Who would no longer be so easy due to rights problems. Imagine the problems involved releasing the 1996 TV movie in America on DVD, only amplified. Would we really want a Dalek-less Doctor Who - even if we got a neat-looking Blu-ray set out of it?