Having installed a Randomiser in the TARDIS to prevent the Black Guardian from tracking them, the Doctor and the newly-regenerated Romana find themselves on a strangely-familiar planet. Separated from the Doctor by a rockfall, Romana is captured by those responsible: the Daleks, who force her into slave labour. Meanwhile, the Doctor meets the coldly beautiful Movellans who reveal that the TARDIS has landed on Skaro, the Daleks' abandoned homeworld. The Doctor agrees to help the Movellans uncover the object of the Daleks' search -- which turns out to be none other than their long-lost creator, Davros.

When Graham Williams became Doctor Who's producer towards the end of 1976, he made a conscious choice to avoid using the Daleks right away. The popular monsters had last been seen in 1975's Genesis Of The Daleks -- their fourth appearance in four years -- and Williams felt that the Daleks were less effective when they were overexposed. It was not until late 1978, when Williams and script editor Douglas Adams were planning Doctor Who's seventeenth season, that the producer decided the Daleks had been rested long enough. He approached their creator, Terry Nation, to discuss a Dalek return in the Season Seventeen premiere. Nation's last contribution to Doctor Who had been the non-Dalek adventure The Android Invasion in 1975. Since then, he had been heavily involved with the BBC science-fiction drama Blake's 7 -- even suggesting at one point that the Daleks might make an appearance.

Around October, Nation indicated that he was agreeable to the Daleks featuring in a new Doctor Who serial, as long as he was the writer. However, his commitments to Blake's 7 meant that he would not be able to complete the scripts prior to the start of Doctor Who's seventeenth recording block. Rather than lose such a strong hook to the season, Williams decided to rearrange the production order; the Dalek serial would be the third to go before the cameras, although it would remain the first adventure broadcast.

Terry Nation was adamant that K·9 play only a small role, lest the robot dog upstage the Daleks

Destiny Of The Daleks was commissioned on December 20th. Williams and Adams suggested that Nation draw upon a short story -- one apparently written by Isaac Asimov -- about two armies, each reliant upon a battle computer which was logically unable to outwit its counterpart. Nation, for his part, wanted to bring back the character of Davros, the creator of the Daleks, whom he had introduced in Genesis Of The Daleks. Nation had been careful to depict Davros as being defeated but not destroyed in that story -- correcting a mistake he had made with regards to the Daleks themselves in their 1963 debut appearance, The Daleks. Nation was also adamant that K·9 should only play a small role in the narrative, lest the robot dog upstage his own inventions.

Destiny Of The Daleks underwent only minor changes during its development. K·9 was originally kept out of the action by virtue of being trapped in the TARDIS due to the rockfall, while Tyssan was initially named Valtan. The Movellans were first called the Petrans, and were conceived as being exclusively female. The Daleks were searching for Davros because he could supply information about special circuitry which would help them break their impasse with the Movellans. Nation wanted much of the action set after dark, but the Doctor Who budget could not accommodate any night shoots, and so it was rewritten for daylight hours.

Adams also made several contributions to the scripts. In particular, it fell to him to write the opening sequence involving Romana's regeneration. The original Romana, Mary Tamm, was now several months pregnant and so could not be asked back to appear in the scene. Adams decided that he would instead write the regeneration as a parody of the Doctor's costume changes in Tom Baker's 1974 debut serial, Robot, with Romana “trying on” different bodies instead of different outfits. Adams also wrote the scene in which the Doctor humorously taunted the Daleks about their inability to follow him up a vertical shaft, which Nation disliked. Although the Daleks' apparent design flaw had often been mocked in popular media, Nation believed that its acknowledgement within Doctor Who itself made the Daleks less menacing, and threatened their popularity with the viewing public.

Destiny Of The Daleks was assigned to Ken Grieve, directing his only Doctor Who story. Grieve developed a number of concerns about the production, and convinced Adams to accompany him to Paris, France, where Williams was involved in location filming for the season's second serial, City Of Death. Despite Williams' misgivings about Adams' absence from the production office, the trip turned into a continental pubcrawl which also encompassed a stop in West Germany, before the two men returned to London the following day.

One of the major issues confronting Ken Grieve was the deteriorating condition of the Dalek casings

One of the major issues confronting Grieve was the deteriorating condition of the surviving Dalek casings. The budget would permit some refurbishment, but could not extend to new construction. One Dalek was made up of elements left over from the Sixties, one was composed of “goon” components created for Planet Of The Daleks in 1973, and one was a mixture of both. A fourth Dalek was assembled from the top section of a “goon” Dalek and an unusually symmetric skirt section which had been built in 1978 for display at exhibitions. These diminished ranks were bolstered by six immobile, vacuum-formed Daleks which were intended only for long shots and scenes in which a Dalek needed to be destroyed on screen.

Grieve also had to deal with the fact that Michael Wisher, who had played Davros in Genesis Of The Daleks, was touring with a play in New Zealand, and was therefore unavailable to reprise the role. Grieve cast David Gooderson in his stead but, because the Davros mask had been designed specifically for Wisher, it did not fit Gooderson particularly well. As a result, the section around the mouth had to be removed, and make-up applied to Gooderson's chin. The mask, costume and travel unit were also in a dilapidated state, having been on display at various Doctor Who exhibitions since 1975; again, the budget allowed for only minimal repairs.

Two quarries were utilised to represent the surface of Skaro. The first of these was Winspit Quarry in Worth Matravers, Dorset, where work began on June 11th, 1979. The next two days were spent at Binnegar Heath Sand Pit at Wareham, Dorset, before cast and crew returned to Winspit Quarry on the 14th and 15th. For the first time, a Steadicam was used during the location shoot, permitting cameraman Fred Hamilton to achieve dynamic shots across the uneven ground without destabilising the picture. The Steadicam was a relatively new invention, having been introduced to the film industry in 1975, and only a handful were available in Britain; its use in a television production was virtually unprecedented. On June 20th, various effects inserts were filmed at the BBC Visual Effects Workshop in Acton, London.

Studio recording then began with a two-day block on July 2nd and 3rd, at BBC Television Centre Studio 3 in White City, London. On the first day, Grieve dealt with scenes in the ruined building where the Doctor was trapped beneath a pillar, the underground chamber at the bottom of the shaft, and the tunnel near Dalek Control. The next day focussed on the small room where the Doctor held Davros captive and the adjacent underground space. The Daleks' destruction of the Doctor's barrier had to be refilmed when smoke from the explosion was sucked into the fan built into Davros' chair. A visiting Doctor Who aficionado named Kevin Davies was accused of changing the setting on the fan; years later, Davies would direct various Doctor Who projects beginning with the 1993 documentary Doctor Who: Thirty Years In The TARDIS. This was not the only incident to befall the studio recording: the Davros mask was in such disrepair that, after cast and crew had gone home one evening, it was discarded by a cleaner who mistook it for rubbish. Fortunately, the mask was soon recovered.

The second studio session lasted three days, from July 15th to 17th, with recording taking place in TC1. The first day was spent on scenes in the underground area where the dormant Davros was found, as well as those in the TARDIS. Dalek voice artiste Roy Skelton provided K·9's laryngitis-induced coughing; this notion had been devised as a way to explain why the robot dog would sound different later in the season, now that David Brierley had taken over for John Leeson. The next two days were each dedicated to a single set: Dalek Control on the 16th and the deck of the Movellan spacecraft on the 17th.

Destiny Of The Daleks Episode One aired on September 1st, with Doctor Who positioned at the slightly earlier time of 6.10pm. An exception was Episode Four on September 22nd, which began at 6.15pm due to a bumper edition of Grandstand earlier in the evening. Doctor Who was now preceded by Junior That's Life and followed by Larry Grayson's Generation Game.

During the twenty-six weeks that Doctor Who was off the air following the conclusion of Season Sixteen, its timeslot had been occupied by a variety of programmes, most notably Jim'll Fix It in the late winter, Rolf On Saturday -- OK? in the spring, and the revival of Juke Box Jury over the summer. A more significant development was the industrial dispute which had roiled broadcast rival ITV, taking it completely off the air from early August. As such, only BBC2 provided any competition for Destiny Of The Daleks, which averaged 13.5 million viewers and reached an all-time high of 14.4 million for Episode Four. This was a fitting achievement for what became Nation's final Doctor Who serial -- although it would prove to be a short-lived record, and was quashed by the very next serial, City Of Death.

• Doctor Who Magazine #283, 20th October 1999, “Archive: Destiny Of The Daleks” by Andrew Pixley, Marvel Comics UK Ltd.
• Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition #9, 22nd December 2004, “One Step Beyond” by Andrew Pixley, Panini Publishing Ltd.
• Doctor Who: The Complete History #30, 2016, “Story 104: Destiny Of The Daleks”, edited by Mark Wright, Hachette Partworks Ltd.
• Doctor Who: The Handbook: The Fourth Doctor by David J Howe, Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker (1992), Virgin Publishing.
• Doctor Who: The Seventies by David J Howe, Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker (1994), Virgin Publishing.
• In·Vision #39, October 1992, “Production” edited by Justin Richards and Peter Anghelides, Cybermark Services.