Genesis of the Daleks

Along with Remembrance Of The Daleks, this is a story I find inexplicably popular among die-hard fans of the series. It is admittedly nice to see the origins of the Daleks, and it is a story which lingers on in the memory, but so many of the elements fall flat that I can’t help but feel that it could have been done so much better.

I have to admit, I’m not a Terry Nation fan, and nowhere more clearly are his limitations demonstrated as in Genesis. His dialogue is functional and characterisation for the most part non-existent. There were genuine opportunities for warmth and camaraderie – Sarah and her fellow rocket escapees, for example – but were wasted by characters saying what had to be said and nothing more. In short, Genesis Of The Daleks is six episodes of relentless exposition. So many of the characters are stony-faced militarists that there is little for most of the actors to do other than state things, making it a rather shouty episode.

And that all makes it rather hard to care about any of it. Neither side in the war shows much in the way of humanity; even obligatory girl-solider Bettan could have been anyone, and the poor actress doesn’t get much to do with the lines she’s given. The fey Star Trek blondies of the original Dalek story have gone to be replaced by just more bog-standard soldiers. The Kaleds dress up like Nazis and talk in a clipped way, but don’t particularly distinguish themselves other than that.

There’s too much padding – the rocket climb is one of the most pointless subplots in the history of Doctor Who. Everyone is far too gullible in episodes five and six. The Nazi symbolism is way too obvious… it would be far more effective in my opinion to have allowed the apparent ‘evil’ of the Kaleds to speak for itself rather than rely on lazy shorthand, particularly Himmler-a-like Nyder.

That said, Davros is a good new character and the leads are as marvelous as ever – particularly Tom Baker, who has to inject Doctoriness into the flattest and most functional of Terry Nation’s dialogue.

A couple more points: from reading reviews of the story on this and other sites, it seems there are a couple of commonly-held fallacies floating about. Firstly that the Doctor chickens out of destroying the embryonic Daleks himself and leaves the wires on the floor for the Daleks to trigger the explosion. From watching it again, it’s pretty clear that the Doctor just get spooked by the Daleks and drops the wires (silly boy). Secondly, it’s often pointed out that a thousand years is rather a long time to dig out a blocked tunnel. Actually, the Doctor is referring to the evolution of the Daleks in the destroyed incubators. In the event, he’s proven wrong anyway as Davros isn’t quite as exterminated as we are led to believe…