Doctor Who: 10 Best First Doctor Stories

Having originally being broadcast in December of 1963, World War Two was still well within living memory. Everyone except the youngest of children would have had some memory of being evacuated, participating or actively fighting in some way. That's an important detail to remember when viewing The Daleks, as it is what made the metal monsters so terrifying in the first place. Uniformed steel creatures that scream sentiments of racial purity and total destruction of anything unlike in enraged cries: it's a clear allegory for the Nazis. An allegory that would surely awaken a sense of unease and paranoia within an audience of the time.

In the second ever story of the show, The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan land on a planet that has been ravished by a nuclear war. From there, the travellers discover a metal city populated with the Daleks, and a petrified forest that has become the camp of the Thals, the survivors of Skaro's other species which the Daleks consider "horribly mutated" compared to themselves. It's only a matter of time before the Daleks attempt to wipe out the Thals in order to achieve complete Dalek purity, and it's up to the Doctor and co. to prevent a race war that would only result in the destruction of the entire planet itself.

In their first appearance, the Daleks are notably different from their more modern iterations. Firstly, they are unable to travel outside of their city as they require the static electricity in order to move around (meaning that the only thing needed to defeat them is a particularly thick blanket). As mentioned previously, there's also no cries of "Exterminate!", as that would come later as well. Even without these elements, it's still fascinating to see the debut of the Daleks. From their earliest appearance, the seeds are sown for them to become The Doctor's arch-enemies as he struggles to best them to the point where it would have made a first time viewer completely despondent. With their cries of death and genocide, the Daleks would quickly become one of the most formidable foes the Doctor has ever had to face.