It’s easy to forget that Doctor Who was originally meant to be an educational show for children.

When the BBC’s Head of Drama, Sydney Newman, first developed Doctor Who, he envisioned it as being a show in which an eccentric old man known as the Doctor and his granddaughter, Susan, would travel to past eras and meet actual historical figures and witness great events firsthand.  Accompanying them would be two teachers, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, who would make sure the kids at home understood what they were watching.  While Newman allowed that, in order to keep the kids watching, there would be occasional episodes that would focus more an adventure than learning, he also said that the show would not feature any “bug-eyed monsters.”

The first serial, An Unearthly Child, stayed true to Newman’s concept.  After stumbling across the TARDIS while investigating the homelife of their newest pupil, Ian and Barbara found themselves traveling to pre-historic times with The Doctor and Susan.  Susan was played by Carole Ann Ford while Ian and Barbara were played by William Russell and Jacqueline Hill.  Playing the role of the Doctor was veteran actor William Hartnell.  Hartnell was 55 years old when he first played the Doctor but he looked and came across as being much older.  He played the Doctor as being a crotchety old man, one who resented being saddled with two new companions and who could be quite rude to those he considered to be his inferior.  This was early in the series so there was no talk of Time Lords or anything else that Doctor Who fans now take for granted.   Susan even took credit for naming The TARDIS, the Doctor’s time machine that, on the outside, appeared to be a blue police call box.

An Unearthly Child introduced the UK to the Doctor.  It got respectable ratings and reviews.  Viewed today, it’s also pretty boring and it’s easy to see the limitations in Newman’s original concept.  Hartnell plays the Doctor as being so ill-tempered that it was a surprise that he didn’t just jettison Ian and Barbara into space.  (I used to watch Doctor Who on PBS with my father.  The first episodes that we got were the Tom Baker years, followed by the Peter Davison and the Jon Pertwee episodes.  It was only then that PBS started showing the Hartnell episodes.  To go from Baker, Davison, and Pertwee to the grouchy Hartnell was indeed jarring.)  If the show had continued in the style of An Unearthly Child, it probably would not have lasted for more than two series.

Fortunately, the second serial changed everything.

Written by Terry Nation and originally called The Mutants, the second serial introduced The Daleks, the shrill-voiced cyborgs whose cries of “Exterminate!  Exterminate!” made them almost as popular as The Doctor himself.  Squid-like creatures who lived in tank-like robotic shells and who spoke in electronic voices, the Daleks lived on the planet Skaro.  Centuries of nuclear war against the Thals had left the Daleks mutated and trapped in their shells but they were still obsessed with exterminating all of the Thals and eventually conquering the universe.  With their robotic exteriors, the Daleks were bulky and often moved awkwardly.  (The recurring joke is that all the Doctor has to do to escape the Daleks is find a staircase.)  But because the Daleks were so relentless and so determine to exterminate everyone who wasn’t a Dalek, they were still intimidating.  Writer Terry Nation based the Daleks on the Nazis, a comparison that was undoubtedly easy for British audiences in 1963, less than 20 years after the end of World War II, to see.

A seven-episode serial, The Daleks premiered on December 21st, 1963 and ran through February 1st, 1964.  While the serial was airing, word spread about The Daleks.  The first episode was watched by six million viewers.  The seventh and final episode was watched by ten million.  Four million people were brought to the show by The Daleks.  Sydney Newman may not have wanted bug-eyed monsters on Doctor Who but no one could argue with ratings like that.  While the First and the Second Doctor would still have a few strictly historical adventures, The Daleks paved the way for the future of the series.  The Daleks would return many times.  The cavemen from An Unearthly Child were never seen again.

The Daleks opens with TARDIS materializing on the planet that will later be identified as Skaro.  The Doctor and Susan want to explore.  Ian and Barbara are upset because they want to go back to 1963.  (Ian and Barbara always annoyed me but, of all the companions on the original series. they probably did have the most realistic reaction to being swept up in the Doctor’s adventures.)  The Doctor flat-out lies about needing to get mercury to repair the TARDIS and uses it as an excuse to explore a nearby city.  Soon, The Doctor, Ian, and Barbara are the prisoners of the Daleks while Susan meets the peaceful Thals in the forest.  The Daleks and the Thals have been at war for centuries and it has destroyed their world.  The Doctor tries to broker a peace, which just leads to the Daleks killing even more Thals.  The Doctor can be excused because this was his first meeting with the Daleks.  The Thals should have known better than to trust the people who specifically decided to become cyborgs because they didn’t want to ever have to stop fighting.

Seen today, The Daleks holds up fairly well.  At seven episodes, it runs a bit long and, for those of us who grew up with Tom Baker and Peter Davison in the lead role, William Hartnell’s Doctor takes some getting used to.  The nonstop bickering between The Doctor and Ian gets old quickly.  The Thals are almost too naive to be believed.

But the Daleks themselves remain a brilliant creation and, even when seen in grainy, black-and-white, it is easy to understand why they became a phenomenon.  Their relentless determination to destroy and exterminate make them intimidating but what really stands out about the Daleks is how forthright they are about what they want.  It’s not just that the Daleks want to exterminate you.  It’s that they’ll tell you that they want to exterminate you, as if it’s the most reasonable desire that any creature could have.  (One reason why The Thals are so unsympathetic is that they keep falling for Dalek tricks, despite the Daleks being pretty honest about their hatred of the Thals.)  From the minute that the Daleks make their first appearance, cornering Barbara in their city, they give Doctor Who a jolt of energy that it very much needed.

This serial ends with The Doctor convinced that the Daleks have been destroyed and will no longer be a threat.  Of course, The Doctor had never been so wrong.  The Daleks would return and Doctor Who would never be the same.