Inspirations - Destiny of the Daleks

In order to launch Season 17 with a bit of a bang, producer Graham Williams decided to bring back the Daleks after a five year absence. He had been reluctant to use them in his first couple of years, feeling they had been overused in the past, with their impact diminished. He was also of the opinion that he had overused the Time Lords, or Time Lord lore, over the last two years and wanted to move away from them. He and his new script editor Douglas Adams approached Terry Nation, and found him agreeable to the idea - so long as he got to write the story. They then had to wait a while as he was still busy preparing the third season of Blake's 7. Nation had hoped to have a crossover between B7 and the Daleks, but his producer had vetoed the idea.
As it turned out, this was to be the last story which Nation wrote for Doctor Who, as he would soon up sticks and move to the US.
For Destiny of the Daleks, Nation opted to go for a straight sequel to his creations' last outing - 1975's Genesis of the Daleks, which had introduced the character of Davros. Nation liked the character as he was more interesting to write for - even he admitting that the Daleks could be a little boring when it came to dialogue - and he was keen to resurrect him.
Williams had read an Isaac Asimov story in which two great battle fleets had become locked in a stalemate due to their reliance on logical strategic battle computers, and so Nation introduced this element into his new story. There had to be a good reason for the Daleks to return to Skaro to find their old creator, and so he devised the long-running war between the Daleks and another robotic race called the Petrans (who would later be renamed the Movellans). The Petrans were originally envisaged as being all female. In the first draft, the Daleks didn't want Davros himself - just some technology from his life-support unit.

For some inexplicable reason, Nation wrote the Daleks as though they were wholly robotic - even having the Doctor comment that they once had organic components as though a thing of the past. When next written for, by Eric Saward, this development was entirely ignored, despite Nation having script approval.
When he wrote the first Dalek serial back in 1963, Nation had regretted killing them off at the conclusion, and decided not to make the same mistake with Davros. He was certainly fired upon by his creations at the conclusion of Genesis, but the screen had gone to a white-out and we never actually saw his destruction. When he contributed to the 1977 Dalek Annual, he had made sure to mention Davros' in-built automatic life-support systems, although he had also earlier written that Davros' brain was now housed on one of the moons of Skaro.
Nation was insistent that he would not include K9 in his story. John Leeson had left the programme during the break between seasons, and a new voice artist had been recruited - actor David Brierley. He wasn't employed on this story as K9 wasn't going to feature, other than a brief scene in the TARDIS at the beginning where he was struck down by laryngitis. The croaks he makes were produced by Roy Skelton, who was going to be doing the Dalek voices.

One of the reasons Nation was happy to bring back Davros was because he had been impressed with Michael Wisher's performance. Sadly, Wisher was unavailable, being on tour in a play, and so David Gooderson was cast in the part. The costume, chair and mask had all been on view in the Blackpool and Longleat Doctor Who Exhibitions since 1975, and were in a dreadful state of repair. The mask was patched up as best they could but did not fit Gooderson very well, and the heavy brown make-up used around the mouth in some scenes does rather give the suggestion that Davros has been munching chocolate bars throughout his supposed hibernation.
The Dalek casings were also in a very poor state, and can clearly be seen to have been haphazardly patched up in places, with no uniformity to the paint schemes. A number of crudely made lightweight plastic ones were created for the location scenes (filmed at the same quarry in Dorset which had featured as Atlantis in The Underwater Menace). These would be seen to be carried by extras - bobbing about rather than gliding. As he hated the Daleks so much, Tom Baker was allowed to detonate the VFX explosion which destroys the suicide squad at the conclusion.
Nation loved to reuse elements from previous Dalek stories, which is why the TARDIS doors become blocked early on - preventing the Doctor and Romana from escaping. He had used this in The Dalek Invasion of Earth with a bridge collapse, but here it is a rockfall. Come to think of it, The Chase had also seen Daleks being blatantly carried on location across sand dunes - so an unintended homage to another earlier story.

Graham Williams had toyed with the idea of Romana, as a young Time Lord, simply being ready for her first regeneration - suggesting it was a natural process all Time Lords went through at a certain age, rather than always being the result of fatal injury. He even thought about casting a different actress as Romana for each story of the season. As mentioned last time, however, Mary Tamm had noticed how Tom Baker had got on well with Lalla Ward, playing Princess Astra in The Armageddon Factor, and she had half-jokingly suggested to Williams that he employ her as her replacement.
On screen, no explanation for Romana's regeneration is offered and, much to the dismay of fans, Douglas Adams chose to play with the process by having her try on various other bodies before settling back on the likeness of Astra. This seemed to fly in the face of accepted canon about Time Lords having a limited number of regenerations. We can now excuse this in hindsight, as it was later explained that regenerations were "pliable" in the first 15 hours.
There is a sequence on the Movellan spaceship where the Doctor and Romana play Rock-Paper-Scissors, to demonstrate a logical impasse. This game goes all the way back to the Han Dynasty in China (206 BC - 220 AD). A later Japanese variant was known as Frog-Slug-Snake. The thumb represented the frog, which could be beaten by the little finger denoting a slug, whilst the index finger representing the snake beat the other two.

As well as the Romana regeneration sequence, Douglas Adams made his presence felt in other ways. When the Doctor becomes trapped under a concrete pillar he takes a book from his pocket to read whilst he awaits rescue. This is Oolon Colluphid's Origins of the Universe. Colluphid had been referenced in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, where he was known as the author of a trilogy of philosophical works - Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway?.
Another scene which Adams rewrote was the one where the Doctor and his party escape from the Dalek city up a shaft. The Doctor taunts the Dalek pursuers: "If you're supposed to be the superior race of the universe, why don't you try climbing after us?". Terry Nation absolutely hated this. He did not like the Daleks being made figures of fun - one of the reasons why a Kit-Kat ad featuring them was pulled. The only time he grudgingly permitted them to be used for comedy was when Spike Milligan wrote the notorious Pakistani-Dalek Sketch for his Q series. Nation couldn't very well deny the man who had launched his career.
Season 17 was recorded out of order. Creature From The Pit had been made first, followed by City of Death - with Destiny being produced third. During the filming of City in Paris, Adams and his friend, Destiny's director Ken Grieve were prepping the Dalek story. Bored at the office in London, they went to the pub and, after a few drinks, decided to jump on a plane and go and join the cast and crew in Paris - turning up at their hotel unannounced. Williams was furious and sent them packing. After a few more drinks, they hopped on a plane to Berlin where they knew of some late night watering holes. Both flew back to the UK the next morning, with a very hungover Grieve having to go straight to the Dorset location to start filming.
Next time: One of the greatest Doctor Who stories ever written - probably...