Fifty years ago this very evening, on the far distant and very dead world of Skaro (or, if you prefer, a television studio in London), a former schoolmistress (or, again, an actress playing a former schoolmistress), got lost in an underground metal labyrinth, (or a tiny set), and came face-to-face with a hideously mutated shrieking alien creature, a bubbling ball of hate, all housed claustrophobically inside a personal vehicle which was both an armoured battle tank and, at the same time, a life-support machine, (or, again, a floor manager waving around a sink plunger on the end of a stick) and television history was made.
Miss Barbara Wright, as played by Jacqueline Hill, comes face to eye-stalk with the first ever screen presence of a Dalek, December 21st, 1963, screams the house down, and, in an instant, a legend, (as created by writer Terry Nation and designed by Raymond Cusick), is born.
Happy 50th Birthday to the Daleks, the stuff that a million teeny-tiny nightmares are made of.
Only you Martin.
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