Day 46: World's End

This story features the return of the Daleks to Doctor Who, as they rise from the river Thames, capturing the Doctor and one of his companions as they have taken over the planet Earth. This all takes place in the last thirty seconds of the episode, which is interesting because it was heavily advertised that the Daleks were going to come back this week in Doctor Who, and yet, they spend most of the episode hiding away, never feeling the need to make an appearance. This is a bold move from Terry Nation, the writer, as he balances out anticipation against boredom, choosing to keep the Daleks in the shadows and to focus on their effects rather than their presence. 

And so we are left with the Doctor and Ian discovering robotic slaves, and Barbara and Susan meet up with a resistance group. Susan, in particular, becomes more interesting in that she is becoming less interesting. She is responsible for getting the TARDIS out of the way of our heroes, twists her ankle in the process, and this means that she doesn't actually get to do much for this episode beyond these things, while her fellow travellers get into all sorts of exciting scrapes, she is left by the wayside. It is becoming more and more apparent that Susan is not needed in the series. She is often poorly written, being the only character to be inconsistently written across each episode, and every other character is far more interesting than her. What this means is, we are now reaching the end as far as Susan is concerned, and are getting ready to see her character go.