Day of the Daleks is the first serial of the ninth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 1 to 22 January 1972. It was the first of four Third Doctor serials to feature the Daleks, which returned to the series for the first time since The Evil of the Daleks (1967). In the serial, the Doctor and UNIT investigate the attempted assassination of British diplomat Sir Reginald Styles, whose attacker apparently disappeared into thin air. Plot A British diplomat, Sir Reginald Styles, is organising a peace conference to avert World War III. In his study at Auderly House he is held at gunpoint by a soldier wielding a futuristic looking pistol, who then mysteriously vanishes. The shaken Styles believes that he has been visited by a ghost. The Third Doctor, Jo and the Brigadier go to Auderly House to investigate the mystery. The Doctor discovers a crude time machine and an ultrasonic disintegrator gun. He and Jo spend the night at Auderly House to monitor any activity. The machine turns out to be from the 22nd Century. As the Doctor tries to reactivate the time machine, three rebel fighters – Anat, Boaz, and Shura – appear from the time vortex on a mission to assassinate Styles. It transpires that the rebels come from an alternate future in which a war-ravaged Earth has been enslaved by the Daleks. The outbreak of world war has been attributed to an explosion at the 20th-century peace conference, and the rebels believe that by assassinating Styles, they can alter future events and prevent the Dalek invasion from ever taking place. The Doctor surmises that the rebel attack itself will be the cause of the explosion, and that the rebels are caught up in a time paradox. The time machine contains a homing device which alerts the Daleks to the Doctor's location. They launch an attack, and the ensuing battle shifts back and forth between the 20th and 22nd Centuries. The Doctor and Jo discover a future world of an enslaved society, overseen by a military force of primitive humanoid Ogrons, supervised by a powerful Controller, all under the command of Daleks. After escaping capture, they return to the 20th century, where the Doctor orders UNIT troops to evacuate the peace conference and lure the Daleks into Auderly House. Shura detonates a dalekanium