Genesis of the Daleks - Episode 1

If I am being honest, this is the story that I have been waiting for since the Tom Baker era started. I enjoyed ‘The Ark in Space’ obviously and there was something to enjoy about ‘The Sontaran Experiment’ but this is the one that I think not only cemented the Daleks’ popularity again but also Tom Baker’s stature as one of (if not the) best Doctors. This is the first Dalek story since the rather dreadful ‘Death to the Daleks’. That story did a pretty good job of making the Daleks look boring and dated. What this story does is freshen them up and also set them on a new journey in the shows history. From the opening moments, this story looks like it’s going to be different to anything we have seen before in Doctor Who. Not being filmed in a quarry but the ‘Apocalypse Now’ inspired slow-mo of soldiers being shot down and walking into the mist. The first scene between the Doctor and the Timelord effectively sets up the entire serial and gives us something to worry about in later episodes.

The thing that is clear in this episode is just how dark it is. It doesn’t have any of the warmth of ‘Robot’ or even ‘The Ark in Space’. This is highlighted when the Doctor and Harry are told that they will be hung and not shot like normal. The Doctor is threatened with being killed all the time but somehow due to the rather bleak setting, this seems to carry more weight and menace. The bleakness continues when Nyder (Peter Miles) makes his first appearance. If he were any colder then he would have frost on him. This is the story where Miles really shows us how much of a swine he could be (acting wise of course). Sadly we don’t get a great deal of him in this episode but what we do get is still fun to watch. The rest of the Kaleds that the Doctor and Harry meet aren’t particularly memorable and seem to be more like the humans that we meet in the previous story.

Davros gets mentioned in this episode and it’s a teaser for his appearance later on in the episode. For some reason, I always thought that his first appearance came later on in the episode when he walks into the lab not being outside. It’s a rather understated debut and leads to a great cliffhanger with Davros saying that they can now begin before the camera zooms in on the Dalek. Despite this cliffhanger not giving us much in drama or tension but despite this I still thought that it was a great cliffhanger and one that shows that ‘Death to the Daleks’ was a distant memory