Doctor Who: Daleks - why the Sixties was their best decade

We all enjoy a great Dalek story. Was the best decade of the Doctor’s worst enemies their first?

(Photo credit: Doctor Who/BBC.

Image obtained from: official Doctor Who website.)

We’ve had many great stories in Doctor Who with those deadly pepper pots, the Daleks. But was their first decade of stories also their very best?

There’s something that I should clarify: I’m a big Dalek fan. Some people can get tired of their recurring appearances in Doctor Who, but I’m definitely not one of them. They’re a consistently dangerous threat that you know can be relied on to provide a good enemy for the Doctor.

However, even I must admit that just because Daleks appear in a story doesn’t necessarily make it good. This is definitely true in the New Series. Oh, don’t get me wrong, there have been some very strong Dalek stories over the years. We’ve had Dalek, The Parting of the Ways, Doomsday and The Stolen Earth.

But we’ve also had some weak ones, too. Evolution of the Daleks had some interesting ideas, but ruined it with some silly and unnecessary ones, especially the pig slaves.

Victory of the Daleks could’ve been a genuinely good story with some real tension, but it was both far too rushed and…well…it gave us one of the worst re-designs in the history of Doctor Who. What should have been a bold new moment for the show was gradually completely phased out.

The Classic Series did give us a couple of weak Dalek stories, as well. (Although, admittedly, maybe none quite as bad as what we got with Victory.) But overall, we got a lot more strong Dalek stories than weak ones.

Still, it makes you wonder: what was the best decade for the fearsome pepper pots? Not just in the Classic Series, but also the New? It was while I was listening to recent First Doctor audio The Dalek Occupation of Winter that the answer was obvious: the Sixties.

Back in the Sixties, a wave of Dalekmania spread across the UK. (Photo by Chris Ware/Keystone Features/Getty Images)

Dalekmania

There are a few key reasons why the Sixties stands out as the strongest decade for the Daleks. The first reason that springs to mind is that it was the decade that they were created, so naturally, the stories generally were fresher to tell back then.

Their first story, The Daleks, is undoubtedly a strong way for them to begin. It’s rich in atmosphere and buildup, and splitting the seven-episode story into two distinct halves – one of the TARDIS crew being captured by the Daleks and escaping them, and the second half showing the perilous journey back to fight them – was an absolutely genius move. The sets, for the time, also looked fantastic, too.

This high level of quality storytelling and even production continued with subsequent stories, too. The Dalek Invasion of Earth was a bold sequel showing a post-apocalyptic Earth under Dalek rule. For the second season, that’s an incredibly ambitious story to tell.

We’ve seen so many attempted invasions in Doctor Who over the years, but they’re usually stopped by the Doctor just before they have a chance to do some real damage. But this is still one of the rare times when we see what happens when the aliens invade and millions of lives are already lost by the time the Doctor arrives.

After two incredibly high quality stories, it’s no wonder that the UK was hit by “Dalekmania” – a flood of Dalek books, toys and even two big-screen remakes! Everyone was definitely eager for more Dalek stories, and more Dalek stories came.

From a light-hearted chase to a dark epic

If there’s one misstep during this decade – and it’s a small one, at that – it would be The Chase. This does have its audience, and it is a lot of fun. But it’s definitely the weakest Dalek story of the decade, too. There are moments when jokes are made at the Daleks’s expense, and it reduces their impact just a little bit.

But then again, it probably says a lot that this is the weakest Dalek story of the decade, and yet it’s still a very entertaining story. Particularly towards the end, where we get to see the Daleks versus the Mechanoids.

Hartnell’s last Dalek story, The Daleks’ Master Plan, was probably one of the most ambitious serials of the decade. Maybe even of all-time. Stretched to twelve episodes, this could definitely have suffered from major padding.

But, while there were one or two episodes that did have this problem, overall, Master Plan was a surprisingly strong and epic story. And, with not one but two companions getting killed along the way, (yes, I count Sara Kingdom as a companion,) one of the darkest, too.

The Secon Doctor only fought the Daleks twice on television. But both The Power and The Evil of the Daleks remain much-loved classics.

(Image credit: Doctor Who/BBC.

Image obtained from: official Doctor Who website.)

Fighting the Second Doctor

Patrick Troughton had only two Dalek stories during his era, as the Cybermen were his major recurring enemy. But both of those Dalek stories are absolute classics.

While working on a much smaller scale than previous stories, The Power of the Daleks is one of the very best Dalek serials, and indeed, one of the best “new Doctor” stories.

The Daleks are more deceptive in this one, pretending to serve humans and appear benevolent. But we know it’s only a matter of time until their full destructive power is unleashed, and the story builds up so much tension to that climactic moment. It really shows just what the Daleks are capable of, even when they’re not focused on huge, apocalyptic plans to destroy the universe.

Their last story of the decade, The Evil of the Daleks, is a perfect way to say goodbye to them (well, at least for a few years). Initially beginning in Sixties London, a great deal of the story moves to a Victorian house.

It’s a setting that works really well, especially with the Daleks contrasting so well against it. There are also many well-written human characters, and shows a family truly suffering under the Daleks’ control, which makes their evil work on a more personal level.

The end of an era

It all leads to an explosive climax on Skaro, where two armies of Daleks destroy each other and the Doctor meets their Emperor for the first time. (Surprisingly, it’s also the last time, at least on screen, until his eventual return in The Parting of the Ways almost forty years later.) As the Doctor witnesses so much destruction, he utters three words:

"The final end."

Now, we of course all know that that turned out to be very far from true. But it definitely worked as an ending to the Sixties era. It brought things back to Skaro, it revealed even more about the Daleks and their society, and the Doctor felt like he had truly dealt with them, once and for all. It really does represent the end of an era, or at least, one clear distinct era of Dalek stories.

More from Winter is Coming

Since then, no decade has really matched the Sixties for Dalek stories. Oh, I’m not saying there haven’t been any good Dalek stories since then. Far from it. The Seventies gave us several great Dalek stories, especially the unforgettable Genesis of the Daleks, one of the greatest Dalek stories of all time.

We also had the brilliant Revelation and Remembrance of the Daleks in the Eighties. The latter story I’m especially fond of, as in some ways it made the Daleks themselves a huge threat again after being constantly in Davros’s shadow.

But their first decade gave us a particular era of stories that was really special. In some ways, they felt more grounded and scarier. They also felt more threatening, and the human characters really sold just how dangerous the Daleks were.

We also had two amazing writers for the Daleks giving us their very best – Terry Nation and David Whitaker. Both wrote absolutely brilliant stories that worked incredibly well.

Overall, the Sixties captured the Daleks themselves at their greatest, and I wish more New Series stories aimed to capture the brilliance of that era.

Next. Review: The Dalek Occupation of Winter. dark

Do you agree that the Sixties was the best period in the show’s history for the Daleks? What’s your favorite Dalek story? And what would you like to see in a Dalek story in the future? Let us know in the comments below.

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Doctor Who: Daleks – why the Sixties was their best decade

By James Aggas | Nov 27, 2018