Watch out, the exterminators are back...
DALEKS are set to return to TV screens, but the alien mutants will have enjoyed a revamp before they do battle with The Doctor.
The 13th Time Lord, played by Jodie Whittaker, will finally face the show’s most famous foe in a Doctor Who special on New Year’s Day.
The Daleks have not appeared in any of the 10 episodes in the current series.
Along with other retro monsters – including the Cybermen, Autons and Weeping Angels – they were banished by new boss Chris Chibnall.
But viewers will soon be treated to a new-look fleet of Daleks who are expected to have ditched the brightly coloured exteriors they were given in 2015’s “New Dalek Paradigm”.
Giving the Doctor’s arch-nemesis another chance to try to exterminate the human race in the festive special is likely to prove a crowd pleaser.
Despite showing up briefly in Matt Smith’s final appearance as the Doctor in 2013, Daleks have never taken centre stage in a festive episode.
The metallic mutants were last seen in action during Peter Capaldi’s second series in 2015, when they appeared in The Witch’s Familiar along with their creator Davros.
Speaking before the new series launched, head writer and showrunner Chibnall was adamant that only new baddies would feature.
“I don’t know how many times I need to say it,” he sighed. “There are no old monsters this series. OK?”
His predecessor Steven Moffat previously admitted it had been a mistake to redesign the Daleks.
He recently said: “The fault resides entirely with me – not with the brilliant team who made the new Daleks... it was my mistake.”
In the 1960s the Daleks were silver, by the 1980s they were black and the bronze version arrived with the reboot of the BBC show 13 years ago.
The Christmas special will feature guest appearances from Call The Midwife’s Charlotte Ritchie, Indian Summers’ Nikesh Patel and Save Me’s Daniel Adegboyega.
A BBC spokesman declined to comment last night, but the hourlong episode is said to be set at New Year and involve “a terrifying evil, stirring from across the centuries of Earth’s history”.
The special will be the only outing for Doctor Who in 2019, with Chibnall’s delayed second series now likely to air early in 2020.
A hint about the return of the Daleks is expected to come in the trailer at the end of Sunday’s series finale.