Trivia

He claimed that he based the Daleks on the SS and the Nazis. This was made particularly clear in what many consider his best script for the series, Genesis of the Daleks: Part One (1975), in which the character of Davros made his debut as a Hitlerian megalomaniac willing to commit genocide and supported by a deputy, Nyder, who is eerily reminiscent of Heinrich Himmler.

According to Doctor Who (1963) producer Barry Letts on the DVD commentary for the serial Planet of the Daleks: Episode One (1973), Nation made so much money from the success of the Daleks that he drank champagne every day.

He was very protective of the Daleks and the production team of Doctor Who (1963) had to seek his permission to use them. He was very unhappy with Douglas Adams's treatment of the Daleks as script editor on Destiny of the Daleks: Episode One (1979), believing he'd sent them up, and took some persuading to allow the series to use the Daleks again, but did eventually allow Eric Saward and Ben Aaronovitch to write Dalek stories in the 1980s on the assurance that they would not be sent up. Nation personally selected John Peel (not the DJ) to novelize the Dalek stories that he had written and would personally ship him any documents that he had held from the 1960s.

Before his involvement in the development of Doctor Who (1963), Nation had been a comedian and a script writer for Tony Hancock on his ITV series Hancock (1963). He would recall that it was his split with the comic which prompted him to pen his first Dalek saga.

He had a daughter called Rebecca.