10 Most Paused Doctor Who Moments Ever

8. The First Appearance Of The Daleks (The Daleks)

Doctor Who The Daleks
BBC Studios

With classic Who becoming more widely available over the last several years - thanks to streaming apps like BritBox, as well as plenty of blu-ray releases - it's now much easier for younger NuWho fans to go back and check out the show from the start.

For those that do, those early Hartnell stories were likely paused quite a bit, due to the sheer amount of cultural icons that debuted across the show's very first serials.

An Unearthly Child saw the introduction of the Doctor, the TARDIS, the title sequence and the theme music, but due to their reputation as the Doctor's greatest foe, the very first appearance of the Daleks (in the following serial) has to be the most paused moment of the lot.

What's impressive to note here is just how little their design has changed over the last 57 years. NuWho fans will be most familiar with the bronze Daleks introduced in 2005, and in terms of their basic appearance, these aren't much different to the original 1963 Daleks. The eyestalk, the round bumps, the voice, the plunger - it's all there.

It's hard not to get goosebumps when that very first Dalek pops into frame in all its black-and-white glory, and it undoubtedly left many classic newbies scrambling for the pause button in order to get a good long look.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!