Because I'm writing about Daleks at the moment, it's worth noting how much of Doctor Who's existence is down to their appeal, and how close they came to not existing as we know them.

Buckle up nerds, it's thread time.

Firstly, Terry Nation only wrote the Daleks because he had a young family and needed the money. He had just been sacked by Tony Hancock as his scriptwriter, because Hancock kept using old material on tour instead of Nation's and they got into an argument.

Secondly, The Daleks wasn't supposed to be the second ever story. Every other script considered was either scrapped or not ready to film. Even then the script faced resistance from the BBC who thought it throwaway science-fiction and not what Doctor Who was for.

It only got made because literally nothing else was ready to go into production.

But also there's the earlier versions of the script that we didn't get: the Daleks attacking the Thals to avert another war, the alien race who turned up at the end saying 'Oh sorry, we nuked you centuries earlier and feel bad about it, can we help youse out now?'

Had there been more time maybe the script would have changed again.

Designer Raymond Cusick only ended up on the story because Ridley Scott - originally slated to design it - had to pull out as he had a schedule conflict. Cusick took Nation's scripts and input from Jack Kine and produced something instantly recognisable

Brian Hodgson suggested the tech for the voices, having used it on an earlier show.

But outside of the production team the BBC management hated the story and the Daleks. They only allowed the production because nothing else was available.

Also the first episode had to be re-recorded due to a technical fault.

But then they got the feedback from the third episode, and it turned out that a lot of children who had watched were copying the Dalek voices and playing at being Daleks in the playground.

From this, Doctor Who's viewing figures increased enough to ensure its survival. The chain of circumstances had to be just so for this to happen: Nation getting sacked, other scripts not being good enough, no other script being available, Ridley Scott being busy...

If the production team had decided to go with another script just to stop the BBC Management from complaining, we don't get the mass appeal to children and we don't get Doctor Who being on telly now.

So, y'know, suck it up when the show panders to the children in the audience.