Doctor Who: 10 Episodes That Should Have Changed Things Forever (But Didn't)

10. The Daleks (William Hartnell)

The pepperpot€™s first outing on the small, black and white screen, was to alter the course of Doctor Who history forever. It instilled in the young viewers€™ minds the idea of these ruthless, evil, neurotic killing machines that yelled €œExterminate€ in a high pitched and excited tone. Playgrounds and busses were filled with excitable children running around pretending to €œexterminate€ each other. So it was that a long and complex relationship began with the Doctor that would turn them into his greatest enemy and eventually wipe out his people. But it almost didn€™t work out that way, the Daleks should never have made it to the screen in the first place. Save for Verity Lambert€™s impassioned pleas to Sidney Newman the whole thing may well have been canned (forgive the pun). As it was he did not want monsters and robots on the screen and the Daleks were destroyed at the end of the episode. They were to return, though, in the Dalek Invasion of Earth in 2164 when Terry Nation was asked to revive the popular enemy. So while the destruction of the species in the original story should have been the end of it, we are instead told that those were just the last original refugees left on Skaro.