‘After the neutronic war, our Dalek forefathers retired into the city, protected by our machines.’ The second Doctor Who serial, The Daleks (1963-64), establishes both the principle that the Doctor fights alien monsters, and the most iconic of those he fights. Oliver Wake looks its influences, from HG Wells’ The Time Machine through Nazi eugenics to the movies of the atomic era, and at how Terry Nation’s script was translated through sound and visual design into perhaps the most important Doctor Who story of all.