The TARDIS is nearly torn apart in a time corridor. The Doctor and Tegan explore one end: a warehouse on modern-day Earth, where they find an escapee from the Daleks named Stien. At the other end, Turlough is on a Dalek battleship, which is invading a space station in the future. A bomb disposal squad arrives at the warehouse, and the Doctor helps them investigate some mysterious cylinders. On the space station, the mercenary Lytton intends to free the imprisoned Davros. The Daleks have lost their war with the Movellans due to a virus which afflicts only their kind... and they intend to rescue Davros so that he can create a cure.

The Daleks had appeared regularly in Doctor Who between 1963 and 1967, and again from 1972 to 1975. Subsequently, however, they had featured only in 1979's Destiny Of The Daleks. As plans for Doctor Who's twentieth season began to come together in early 1982, producer John Nathan-Turner and script editor Eric Saward decided that the time was right for the Daleks to return. A potential obstacle was their creator, Terry Nation, who was now living and working in Hollywood. The production team did not anticipate that he would want to write a new Doctor Who script, but they recognised that Nation's consent was a prerequisite for any new Dalek story. As such, it was agreed that the scripting duties should fall to Saward himself, since he would then be in the best position to respond to any changes that Nation might demand. The BBC normally forbade script editors from writing for their own programme, so formal permission for this plan was requested on March 29th, 1982.

Around the same time, Nathan-Turner contacted Nation's agent, Roger Hancock, to obtain approval in principle for the new adventure. To his dismay, Hancock responded that Nation would not permit anyone else to write for the Daleks. He felt that his creations had been badly treated by others in the past, notably when David Whitaker wrote 1966's The Power Of The Daleks and 1967's The Evil Of The Daleks, and when former script editor Douglas Adams heavily revised Destiny Of The Daleks. For a time, it appeared that plans for the Dalek story would have to be dropped.

Overwhelmed by his first fan event, Terry Nation gave the green light for a new Dalek serial

In July, however, Nathan-Turner met with Nation himself at a Doctor Who convention in Chicago, Illinois. This was the first fan event that Nation had ever attended, and he was gobsmacked by the reaction he received from the audience, and the extent to which they clamoured for the Daleks. Overwhelmed by the experience, he gave Nathan-Turner the green light for Saward to start working on the project. Saward immediately began assembling a storyline entitled “The Return”, also known as “Warhead”.

Having found success writing for the Cybermen in 1982's Earthshock, Saward wanted the Dalek adventure to be cast in the same action-oriented mould. Having viewed previous Dalek serials, Saward decided that it was essential to include their creator, Davros, in order to alleviate the tedium of Dalek dialogue. He also wanted to introduce a new character, an anti-heroic mercenary named Lytton, who might be popular enough to bring back in the future. Meanwhile, Nathan-Turner indicated that Saward should pick up on several plot points from Destiny Of The Daleks, and address both Davros' imprisonment and the war between the Daleks and the robotic Movellans.

The completed storyline for “The Return” was despatched to Nation on October 7th. Production was due to begin at the start of January 1983, so a rapid response was needed to give Saward time to write his scripts. Unfortunately, weeks went by without comment from Nation. Faced with the choice of abandoning the Dalek narrative or gambling that Nation would eventually approve the storyline, Nathan-Turner and Saward decided to keep “The Return” on the schedule.

When Nation finally contacted the production office, he indicated his general happiness with “The Return”, although he wanted the Daleks to seem more formidable. He also refused permission for Davros to be killed off, and he requested the removal of the Dalek Emperor -- which Whitaker had introduced in The Evil Of The Daleks -- in favour of the Supreme Dalek. Saward now had to hastily finish his scripts while also addressing Nation's concerns. The writer was disappointed with the end result, which he felt was overstuffed with incident. Around this time, some consideration was given to renaming the serial “Return Of The Daleks”, since the location elements of the production would make it virtually impossible to preserve the secret of the villains' identity.

“The Return” was assigned to director Peter Grimwade, whose last work in this capacity had been on Earthshock. Unfortunately, in November, the BBC was crippled by labour action on the part of its electricians' union. One consequence was the cancellation of the studio dates for Enlightenment, the fifth story of the season, which tied up a number of crucial plotlines. When the strike was finally resolved at the end of the month, Nathan-Turner had little choice but to reassign “The Return”'s two January 1983 studio blocks to Enlightenment. Location filming on January 4th and 5th was cancelled outright.

On January 3rd, “The Return” was officially dropped from Season 20

Sadly, this meant that “The Return” would have to be dropped from Season Twenty, a decision which was made official on January 3rd. That day, Grimwade decided to take his crew out for lunch to commiserate. Nathan-Turner was not invited because Grimwade was instead intending to treat him to supper. However, this was not clearly communicated to the producer, who felt that he had been intentionally snubbed. The unfortunate misunderstanding marked the start of a steady deterioration in Nathan-Turner's relationship with Grimwade, and came at a time when the producer's rapport with Saward was also beginning to sour.

“The Return” was never far from the production team's thoughts and, when work began on Season Twenty-One in the spring of 1983, it was agreed that the story should be revised to air in 1984. A happy consequence of the delay was that Saward now had the opportunity to revisit his scripts, tightening up the excess of plot which he had been unable to address back in December. The story's title became “The Resurrection”, and finally Resurrection Of The Daleks. One of the few significant changes was that Tegan Jovanka would now make her exit from Doctor Who at the end of the adventure. Peter Davison, Janet Fielding and Mark Strickson had all elected to leave the programme over the course of the year, and so it was decided that their departures would be spread out across multiple serials. Fielding would be the first to go.

Instead of Grimwade, the serial was reassigned to director Matthew Robinson, a newcomer to Doctor Who. One of the major tasks which he faced was to recast the role of Davros. Michael Wisher had originated the character in 1975's Genesis Of The Daleks, but had been unavailable for Destiny Of The Daleks, resulting in his replacement by David Gooderson. Wisher had agreed to reprise Davros for “The Return”, but was now committed to a stage production of The Dame Of Sark during the revised recording dates. Instead, Robinson recruited Terry Molloy, whose extensive work in radio ensured that he had the vocal presence for the role. Molloy studied Wisher's approach to Davros in Genesis Of The Daleks to ensure a level of consistency. The mask originally worn by Wisher -- and adapted for Gooderson -- was too large for Molloy, and so a new mask was created using a cast of the actor's head.

The serial's postponement also meant that regular Dalek voice artiste Roy Skelton was no longer available to participate. Instead, Robinson hired Royce Mills and Brian Miller to provide the Dalek dialogue. Miller, who had played Dugdale in Snakedance a year earlier, was the husband of actress Elisabeth Sladen, who had starred as companion Sarah Jane Smith during the mid-Seventies. No new Dalek casings were constructed for Resurrection Of The Daleks, apart from dummies for special effects work. Instead, Robinson had to contend with a motley assortment of components, most of which dated from the Sixties; one top and one skirt section were survivors of the “goon” Daleks made for 1973's Planet Of The Daleks, while another bottom had been built in 1978 for display at exhibitions. In all, four Daleks were cobbled together for the serial.

Recording for Resurrection Of The Daleks began with location filming on September 11th and 12th, in the Shad Thames area of Bermondsey, London. At one point, Nathan-Turner and Robinson had a heated -- and very public -- row, during which the producer castigated his director for discussing matters with Saward, and demanded that he refrain from conferring with a writer or script editor in the future. Model filming then took place -- apparently at the BBC Television Film Studios in Ealing, London -- for which the attack on the space station marked the first use of a motion-control rig on Doctor Who. Meanwhile, during studio rehearsals, actor Rodney Bewes suggested that Stien should develop a stammer when under duress.

The remainder of Resurrection Of The Daleks was made in two three-day studio sessions. The first occurred from September 21st to 23rd at BBC Television Centre Studio 8 in White City, London, and involved all of the scenes set on the space station. The initial day dealt with material in Davros' prison and the passageway beyond, and on the bridge. Action recorded on the last two days was set in various corridors, as well as the laboratory and the airlock. Sequences in the self-destruct chamber were also taped on the middle day, and those in the TARDIS console room on the final day of the block.

Resurrection Of The Daleks then shifted to TC6, where the cameras rolled from October 5th to 7th. The first two days were dedicated to scenes in the warehouse; the floor on which the virus canisters were found was the focus of the first day, followed by the level hiding the time corridor on the second day. This left all of the material aboard the Dalek spaceship for the last day. October 7th also marked the end of Fielding's tenure as a regular Doctor Who castmember, although she would return to the programme a few weeks later to record a cameo appearance for Davison's swansong, The Caves Of Androzani.

Continuity adviser Ian Levine compiled clips depicting every Doctor and companion

Ever since he became Doctor Who's producer, Nathan-Turner had looked for opportunities to reward the programme's longtime fans. This included the development of extended flashback sequences, one of which had appeared in each of the three previous seasons. It was decided that Resurrection Of The Daleks offered the opportunity for another trip down memory lane, during the scene in which the Daleks probed the Doctor's mind. To this end, continuity adviser Ian Levine compiled clips depicting every Doctor and companion, including Turlough (from Terminus), Tegan (Logopolis), Nyssa (Black Orchid), Adric (Warriors' Gate), the Second Romana (Warriors' Gate), the First Romana (The Ribos Operation), K·9 (Warriors' Gate), Leela (The Face Of Evil), Harry Sullivan (Terror Of The Zygons), the Fourth Doctor (Pyramids Of Mars), Sarah Jane Smith (Pyramids Of Mars), Jo Grant (The Mutants), Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart (The Ambassadors Of Death), Liz Shaw (Spearhead From Space), the Third Doctor (The Mutants), Zoe Heriot (The War Games), Victoria Waterfield (The Enemy Of The World), Jamie McCrimmon (The Enemy Of The World), the Second Doctor (The War Games), Ben Jackson (The Tenth Planet), Polly (The Tenth Planet), Dodo Chaplet (The War Machines), Sara Kingdom (The Daleks' Master Plan), Katarina (represented by a publicity photo taken during the making of The Daleks' Master Plan), Steven Taylor (The Time Meddler), Vicki (The Rescue), Barbara Wright (The Daleks), Ian Chesterton (The Daleks), Susan (The Daleks), and finally the First Doctor (The Daleks' Master Plan). Unfortunately, the clip of Leela was inadvertently omitted during editing.

Had Resurrection Of The Daleks followed the normal transmission schedule for Season Twenty-One, it would have aired on Thursdays and Fridays in 1984, between February 9th and 17th. However, these dates coincided with the BBC's broadcast of the Winter Olympics from Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, meaning that Doctor Who would be displaced by Olympic Grandstand. Nathan-Turner was not keen to see the season split in half, and an alternative suggested itself.

Doctor Who was the only half-hour drama remaining at the BBC and, since the spring of 1983, plans had been afoot to reformat the programme for a forty-five-minute timeslot beginning in 1985. On November 22nd, it was agreed that Resurrection Of The Daleks would serve as a litmus test for this change, with a re-edited version of the serial screened as a pair of forty-five-minute episodes on consecutive Wednesdays. On February 8th and 15th, Doctor Who took the place normally occupied by the talk show Harty. On both occasions, it was preceded by the news and a Bugs Bunny cartoon short, and followed by Medical Express.

Resurrection Of The Daleks was still made available to international markets in its regular twenty-five-minute format. As originally edited, the cliffhanger for Episode One saw the Dalek emerging from the time corridor into the warehouse, while Episode Three ended with Davros' declaration about creating a new race of Daleks. On the other hand, some territories purchased the two-part version and created their own episode divisions. Regardless, the forty-five-minute installments performed well in the ratings, and the format was judged a success. This helped cement plans for a very different Season Twenty-Two in 1985...

• Dalek 63·88, edited by Jon Green and Gavin Rymill.
• Doctor Who Magazine #194, 23rd December 1992, “Archive: Resurrection Of The Daleks” by Andrew Pixley, Marvel Comics UK Ltd.
• Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition #1, 2001, “Hide And Seek” by Andrew Pixley, Panini Publishing Ltd.
• Doctor Who: The Complete History #39, 2018, “Story 133: Resurrection Of The Daleks”, edited by Mark Wright, Hachette Partworks Ltd.
• Doctor Who: The Eighties by David J Howe, Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker (1996), Virgin Publishing.
• Doctor Who: The Handbook: The Fifth Doctor by David J Howe and Stephen James Walker (1995), Virgin Publishing.
• In·Vision #74, October 1997, “Production” edited by Anthony Brown, Cybermark Services.