Doctor Who returns later this month with the first appearance since 2010 of the Time Lord’s most fearsome adversaries in the opening episode of Series 7, Asylum of the Daleks.

> Order Series 7 Part 1 on DVD on Amazon.

To celebrate the comeback of the conniving cads, CultBox has selected seven of the best stories featuring Skaro’s most sinister, sink-plunging scumbags….

7. Day of the Daleks (1973)

Despite being a show about a time traveller, the original Doctor Who series rarely explored the pitfalls of mucking about with causality for fear of having to explain why the Doctor couldn’t just go back in time and do it all again if he made a balls-up of things the first time round.

One occasion it did, however, was in this Jon Pertwee adventure featuring paradoxes and pepperpots that is tremendous in spite of two things: an explanation that would leave Novikov eating his self-consistency principle in despair and the utterly superfluous appearance of the Daleks themselves.

6. Army of Ghosts / Doomsday (2006)

Series 2’s superb two-part finale in which the silly old human race gets in the way of the Daleks handing the Cybermen their silver arses on a platter.

This epic conclusion to the love-story-that-isn’t between the Tenth Doctor and Rose (except it’s nothing of the sort, of course, as we found out when the latter came back a couple of years later to grab herself some buff clone action) is as memorable for the unexpected appearance of the Daleks from inside the Genesis Ark at the end of the first episode as it is for the moving parting of the ways between Time Lord and companion at the climax of the second.

5. The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964)

It’s far too long, it has the most abysmal special effects ever – the wobbly flying saucer was the worst moment for puppetry on television until Mr Partridge was ‘murdered’ in Hi-De-Hi – and when it’s referred to in the novelisation of a later story, Susan’s boyfriend is unfortunately renamed David Cameron.

However, none of these things can detract from a splendid story with a wonderfully creepy opening episode, in which the Doctor brings his human companions Ian and Barbara back to London, only to find it devastated and deserted. The moment when a Dalek unexpectedly appears from the Thames is one of the greatest moments in the show’s history.

4. The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang (2010)

Only tangentially a Dalek story, perhaps, but the climactic end to the Eleventh Doctor’s first run was one of the finest Who adventures in the programme’s history – and the sight of one of the Doctor’s dreaded foes turned to stone was an instantly iconic image.

It was also unique to see one of them acting as part of an altruistic alliance that wanted to save the universe. Okay, so it involved getting rid of the Doctor, but it was still the most unselfish act by a Dalek since they appeared in that KitKat advert and didn’t demand star billing above Roy Keane.

3. Remembrance of the Daleks (1988)

After a dodgy run of episodes featuring crass, cartoonish characters, a main character who rolls his ‘R’s as often as he rolls on his arse and Bonnie Langford, the pills abruptly kicked in for Sylvester McCoy’s tenure as a Time Lord in this stunning kitchen-sink drama featuring a Special Weapons Dalek blowing things to bits, unsettlingly ordinary English fascists, a little girl who combines eerie nursery-rhymes with controlling the Imperial Dalek army and Beatles songs on the soundtrack.

As the Doctor’s replacement for Langford might have put it: ‘Ace!’

2. Dalek (2005)

The first appearance of the metal meanies (copyright Doctor Who annuals of the 1970s) in the revived series wasn’t a tediously overindulgent, BIGGER BETTER LOUDER series finale choking on the cream-cheesiness of its own opulence.

Instead, it was an understated morality play featuring a single Skarovian, a brutal and apparently compassionless Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and a well-meaning Rose Tyler who makes a ghastly faux pas. Why’d you fondle that Dalek and turn it from emasculated plaything of a billionaire humanoid to ruthless killer, Billie – because you wanted to?

1. Genesis of the Daleks (1975)

Despite being a crossover with that other WWII parable, ‘Allo ‘Allo! – well, it features Guy Siner (Lieutenant Gruber) and Hilary Minister (General Von Klinkerhoffen), anyway – Genesis of the Daleks is frequently lauded as the finest Dalek story of all time, and rightly so.

Not only does it introduce their creator Davros and make the parallels with Nazi Germany explicitly clear, it also features the wonderful scene in which Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor agonises over the morality of killing off the Daleks before they’re even born. In your callous face, Eccleston!

What’s your favourite Dalek story? Let us know below…

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Watch the trailer for Army of Ghosts…