Written by Terry Nation Directed by David Maloney
Producer Philip Hinchcliffe Script Editor Robert Holmes Designer David Spode
Six episodes 8 March-12 April 1975
Above right The prototype Dalek demonstrated by Davros at the end of Part One.
To convey the origin of the Daleks, writer Terry Nation seems to have imagined that three stages of development would be seen on screen.
First, their humanoid creator, Davros, was to be “contained in a specially constructed self-powered wheel chair [with] similarities to the base of a Dalek”. Stage directions also noted the “single lens wired to his forehead” – surely a precursor to a Dalek eyestalk. The production team could have used an existing Dalek skirt, but a shorter version with fewer panels was specially constructed instead.
Secondly, when a prototype Dalek is seen at the end of the first episode, stage directions described it as “more primitive [and] less well equipped” than usual, so not a pre-existing prop. “There is no mistaking that it is a Dalek even though it has no sucker arm.” In the next episode, this prototype is fitted with “a version of a Dalek gun and a sucker arm”, the word ‘version’ suggesting that these, too, would be of new design.