Genesis of the Daleks - Episode 6

The cliffhanger from the previous cliffhanger works just as well at the beginning of this episode. At the beginning of the episode comes one of the most famous speeches and moments in Doctor Who. Its fair to say that there have been several such moments in this serial but this is perhaps this much more important because it sees the Doctor give a philosophical speech about whether you would stop a child if you knew that they would grow up evil and then the Doctor continues with saying that some worlds are better and are united because of their fear of the Daleks. This is a valid point and I would be surprised if people haven’t written a paper on this topic and cited this scene as an example. It’s a great scene because Tom Baker makes it work really well and is supported by Elisabeth Sladen, sadly Ian Marter is a bit of a spare part in this scene and doesn’t say a word until Gharman appears.

Another solid scene comes when Davros is trying to put his case to everyone which is clearly designed to stall things and one thing that he manages to achieve beforehand is to show that those opposing him don’t have the stomach for combat really. This ends quite grimly with all the Kaled scientists and members of the military being killed by the Daleks. The sight of all the dead bodies was quite a shocking thing to see on teatime telly.

Davros’ demise was a great one and one that people couldn’t have seen coming. It’s not an original thing that a creature has been destroyed/killed by its creation. The idea that the Daleks have already discovered that they don’t allow to think of anyone greater than the Daleks means that Davros’ use has come to an end. Michael Wisher has been a fantastic Davros is arguably the best of the actors to have played the role. Sadly no story that he features in will be quite as good as this one.

I was quite sad that Nyder met his death in this episode because I thought that it would have been nice for the character to pop up in a future story (perhaps even with Davros). The fact that you don’t actually see Davros’ death on screen allows the character to come back (and he does obviously). Peter Miles has been a very good supporting actor to Michael Wisher and did his job brilliantly.

At the beginning of the episode the Doctor nearly killed the incubation chamber but doesn’t do it. It’s quite apt that a Dalek does it for him. It means that the chamber is destroyed but the Doctor hasn’t committed genocide so it means that the character hasn’t done a truly appalling thing.

If there is one thing that I would have taken out is the stuff with the Thals and the mutos which just got in the way of things and with the Time Ring and Davros plot lines the story doesn’t really lend itself to much else. Even their goodbye at this episode is rather quick and short which suggest that they weren’t that important. The episode ends with the regulars swinging around with the time ring and the Doctor giving a speech which I always seem to miss because I am so amused by what they are doing.

I’m back to the stats thing and would like to point out that this is the 48^th episode that Terry Nation has written and it takes him 1 past Malcolm Hulke and becomes the most prolific writer in the shows history. This is David Maloney’s 31^st episode which puts him 10 behind Douglas Camfield and 4 behind Christopher Barry. Elisabeth Sladen has appeared in 42 episodes and it puts her 4 episodes behind Peter Purves and 6 behind Wendy Padbury.

As an episode I thought that it did what it needed to do and used every minute to do it. I thought that as a story it managed to erase the awful memory of ‘Death to the Daleks’ and now every time that there is a Dalek story in the classic era, there will be Davros in the middle of it. I think that it was one of the strongest stories that Terry Nation has written since the very first Dalek story. There has certainly been some critiscm of Nation’s quality in recent adventures but I think that this would have silenced those critics. This was one of the best stories of the season and some would argue the best but that is in the past now and tomorrow sees the return of a classic monster that hasn’t been seen in over 200 episodes and over 2,000 days (not in marathon days obviously).