Happy anniversary to the serial that made the show a success

[Candlelight]

21 November, 1964, marks the 50th anniversary of the broadcast of "World's End", the first instalment of The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

An Unearthly Child hovered around the 4 million viewer mark; by the end of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, that number would be at over 10 million.

 

[Ithekro]

Daleks....saving the Doctor.

 

[Candlelight]

Whoops, didn't mean 'marks' the anniversary, it meant that was the original air date.

But you all knew that.

 

[Skellington]

10 million probably wasn't as big a deal in 1964 as it is now. (BBC2 began in April 1964, and as far as I know BBC1 effectively only had one competitor in the form of ITV.)

But in fairness the episode probably marked a watershed in the show's history, as it featured the return of a popular enemy that had been definitively beaten in a previous story. A canny move, and one that may have led to the transformation of Doctor Who from a show into a genre.