And th First Doctor encountered them in the Dead Planet among others. 

My Doctor was #4, Tom Baker.  In 1980 my parents took our family to England for a summer vacation.  My first exposure to Dr Who was Destiny of the Daleks, episode 2.  I thought it was good fun but I laughed at the hokeyness of the Daleks (and the Movelans with their silver bodysuits and dreadlocks). 

Then we saw City of Doom.  Which took place in Paris.  A week later we went to Paris and spent 5 days in a hotel on the left bank.  I didn't see it when I watched the episodes when I was in London, but in City of Death, The Doctor and Romana have scenes running back and forth in front of a cafe.  Which was the same cafe we ended up having breakfast in for 5 days a week later.  I noticed this odd coincidence when I saw City of Death again, years later.  Wierd.

Later I saw most of the Tom Baker episodes and a few of the Peter Davidson ones when they were broadcast on PBS.  Later, up at college, my friends and I gathered in the TV lounge on Saturdays to watch The Doctor battle the bad guy du jour.  We saw Tom Baker and Peter Davidson and some Colin Baker as well. 

When we could wrest a TV away from idots watching football.  It was the same football game they were watching in every other TV lounge in the dorm!  Can't you go join the people on another floor and let us have ONE TV to watch something else on?  Please?  Rick took to sabatoging the TV in the basement on Friday evenings so there would be a free TV for us.

Anyway, I was familliar with those 3 Doctors vfrom watching the episodes and I read the adventures of the first two Doctors in the Target books.

I think I've seen all the Tom Baker episodes at one point or another, all 7 seasons of them.  HE is my doctor.  Eccleston and Tennant were fantastic (not too wild about Matt Smith) but there's something about the original that will always stay with you.

 The reason the Doctor didn't know about the Daleks conquering Earth is that the timeline had been changed.  The First Doctor had a storyline called The Dalek Invasion of Earth in which the Daleks had invaded Earth in the 22nd century with the intent of enslaving humanity and turning the entire planet into a spaceship they could use to invade other worlds (the 10th Doctor made, I think, an oblique reference to it in The Stolen Earth), and they are subsequently defeated.  Day of the Daleks is basically an alternate timeline story in which the peace conference delegate getting assassinated led to a nuclear war which crippled the ability of humanity to resist the Dalek invasion in the 22nd century.  

That's okay, I think mr.vaux would have taken some of your thunder away today with his top 5 good things about the prequels. 

You should have your own day for the saga review.  I still refuse to buy it until I've read more reviews and even then I probably won't until it drops another 40 bucks.

I know Hobbs, I have another star Wars toy article coming though...