Death to the Daleks

"The Exxilon Files", "Doctor Who and the Daleks"

"The One with the Killer City" (USA), "Dead Exxilons Don't Count" (Belgium)

Doctor Who solves some riddles and saves the Daleks from death

*** - it has a fair bit in its favour, but if we're being honest its reputation might be unfair

"The universe only has 699 wonders left. Do you fancy going to destroy another one today?" (extended scene on DVD)

"Inside each of those pants is living, bubbling lump of hate"

The unique incidental music was added just before transmission when the experimental laughter track was described as “tawdry” by the BBC’s Director of Noises.

As the title suggests, some Daleks die in this story. And in every other story.

Every Dalek ship carries a little model Tardis as Daleks are suckers (ha! A pun by jove) for high quality, collectable merchandise.

This is the only example of a mineral named after part of the bottom.

The Chelsea Bun described this serial as “Two weeks short of infamy” but added a correction the next week saying they should’ve said “Two weeks short of infamy”. The editor cried when it was pointed out that the first version was correct but smiled again when his sub let him know that the correction hadn’t damaged the paper’s reputation.

This story won “Best use of Time Filling Puzzles” at the British Procrastination Society dinner dance. Sadly the ceremony lasted over a week and Terry Nation had gone home long before his victory was announced.

It was also declared "second best story of season 11" in some poll or other. The other four stories all tied for third place.

One of the Exxilons was played by a very young Andi Peters

...is that you shouldn't let not having fingers stop you completing puzzles that require fingers

Si Hunt

"When considering Story XXX I find that a city sucking the life out of everything and a series of aggravating puzzles reminds me of the time Ian Devine and I were invited to the launch of the "computer" game "The Destiny of the Doctors" in Birmingham. We would normally shun such a tawdry and subnormal venture but we had heard that the item would be high quality and very collectable. We sat in the auditorium as a man from the BBC demonstrated the "game play" and we were regretting our decision to travel so far for so little when he played a video cassette tape of Anthony Ainley reprising his role as "The Master". The clip had only been playing thirty seconds when I felt the floor become damp. This was extremely exciting news and well worth nine hours on the train from Bendaton. The man from the BBC asked if anyone had any questions and I immediately put my hand up. He obviously didn't know who I was as he took several prole questions first. Finally my time came. "What production code was used during the shooting of this new material?" I asked. "Production code?" he said as if I was speaking an antediluvian dialect or, worse still, a subnormal foreign language. "It was just called 'the video clips for the game'" he replied eventually. "Don't be pathetically stupid" I quipped as I took a swing at him, "you have to have a production code. It isn't proper without a production code. I'm going to beat some sense into you" and it was only Ian Devine grabbing me firmly but fairly around the waist and holding me back which prevented me from giving him a jolly good thrashing. Sadly, but rather typically, the police chose to believe his pathetically transparent "no provocation at all" story and I was exiled from the city for a period of not less than one hundred years. So the tale at least had a happy ending <g>"

"I went to school with a boy who looked like an Exxilon" said Dalton Timothy in Sarah's Swimsuit. "We used to tease him about it constantly and we even nick named him 'Galloway'. I wish we could go back now and change it to 'Bellal' because that would make the joke funnier or funny." Elsewhere, Barry Mendal wrote an impassioned editorial in which he compared his lack of a copy of Death to the Daleks to "Mother Teresa being stuck in the middle of a hospital without enough bandages to save everyone." He offered a foot in exchange (but had, for technical reasons, stopped specifying they were his own body parts or even those of another human being).