Genesis of the Daleks Part Six

The one where the Daleks turn on their creator, Davros...

I didn't notice at the end of part 5, but in the reprise I heard the Doctor scream Sarah's name in agony, which just makes the whole thing even more upsetting. As he's being throttled to death by not one, but three Dalek mutants, he calls out for his best friend, Sarah Jane Smith. Not macho man Harry, but Sarah. How touching...

Genesis of the Daleks has a few moments which have passed into Doctor Who legend, but chief among them - and one of the most legendary of all Doctor Who scenes - is the "Do I have the right?" scene which follows here. The Doctor questions whether he has the right to commit genocide, to wipe out the entire Dalek race, simply because they will go on to destroy so many other other peoples and races. Surely, that would make the Doctor just as bad as they are? Sarah is the audience's voice of reason here, reminding the Doctor what the Daleks are capable of, but then he puts to her that old time traveller's favourite, would you murder the child Adolf Hitler so that he didn't grow up to slaughter millions as head of the Third Reich?

The Doctor doesn't say Hitler, he refers to a non-specific dictator, but he's essentially referring to Davros, and this is of course the story at the heart of The Magician's Apprentice 40 years later, in which the Twelfth Doctor meets the child Davros on the battlefield of Skaro, and is faced with the question of whether he should kill him before even Genesis of the Daleks can get going. I love this cyclical theme running through Doctor Who's Dalek history, spinning off in different directions, backwards and forwards in time. If only writer Steven Moffat hadn't gone so far as to give Davros his eyes back, but that's another story...

Anyway, so... does the Doctor have the right? The Doctor is doubtful, but writer Terry Nation chickens out by having the decision taken out of his hands by the arrival of Gharman, who believes Davros has surrendered, so the Dalek production line will be halted anyway. The Doctor drops the live wires, relieved he doesn't have to become a genocidist, but I feel cheated by Nation, who has allowed our hero to avoid addressing his moral responsibility, either way. This is coumpounded later on when the destruction of the incubator is caused by a Dalek rolling over the wires, rather than the Doctor doing it (although there is a delicious irony to that).

In the lab, Davros puts forward a reasoned and very well-argued case for the Daleks to carry on, and points out to Gharman et al that there's a very handy Big Red Button marked "TOTAL DESTRUCT" which will destroy everything in the bunker except the room they're in. Why have a total destruction mechanism at all, and why have it so easily accessible, without any kind of failsafe or shield, just over there on the table? I know everybody's fond of a Big Red Button (see: The Christmas Invasion), but it's a rather naive design choice to have the button so big, so red and so accessible.

Still, it's hard to knock David Spode's set design too much because, when in tandem with David Maloney's tight direction, Dudley Simpson's tense score, and Duncan Brown's moody lighting, it makes the whole story so atmospheric. Genesis of the Daleks really was one of those times when everything and everybody came together at their best to create a remarkable serial. Even the serial's weakest point, the rubbish mutant clams, are lit sympathetically to reduce the hilarity!

There's a great character moment when Davros picks out Kravos, who he designed a pacemaker for to keep his heart going. "Will you now turn that heart against me?" appeals Davros, keen to get Kravos on his side. It's a brief moment, but adds so much to Davros's background as a pioneering inventor and scientist. He saved Kravos's life once, and now he attempts to use Kravos's conscience to his own ends. It doesn't work though, and handsome Kravos ends up as dead as everybody else.

All of the rebels are mercilessly and brutally exterminated when hordes of Daleks glide into the lab and cut them all down. Their screams of agony are powerful. People do not die quietly in this story. I love how the camera zooms in on Nyder's implacable face, as he clearly enjoys watching Gharman die. The Daleks are directed really well too, often seen in shadow or silhouette first, gliding along the corridors like silent assassins. They only speak when necessary, which somehow makes them scarier, more scheming, than their chattier counterparts (this was also used to great effect in David Whitaker's two Troughton Dalek stories).

The Daleks stand before a carpet of Kaled corpses, but what's this? They seem to be turning on Davros, failing to heed his orders. For Davros created his own downfall, the very moment he gave his creations autonomy. By programming them with the survival instinct, and a quest for supremacy, he made them "dislike the unlike" (as Ace says in Remembrance of the Daleks), and Davros, despite his wheelchair, is not a Dalek. The Daleks realise they cannot take orders from Davros as he is an inferior being, and so they turn against him, taking control. His dreams of universal dominance come unravelled in a heartbeat.

The Daleks turn on the "loyal" scientists, and Davros begs their pity. "PI - TY?" grates the Dalek. "I HAVE NO UNDERSTANDING OF THE WORD." Touché! Davros has not allowed his creations to comprehend the one emotion that might save him, and as he turns in panic to his trusty Big Red Button, he is gunned down in cold blood by the very creatures he put on a pedestal. It would appear Terry Nation intended Davros to be exterminated here, even though you don't see him explicitly die. It's obvious we're meant to think he's dead. We hear him scream, we see his hand stiffen, and the screen fades to a whiteout. When Nation submitted the scripts for Genesis of the Daleks in the summer of 1974, Davros was probably intended as a one-off character, not unlike Temmosus, Mavic Chen or Morton Dill. Of course, he was too good not to return, which he did many times, but it might be argued that he was never better than in his first story, and perhaps should have stayed a memorable one-off?

The death of Nyder is disappointingly understated, but that's also deliciously subversive. You want Nyder to die, and die horribly, but even in death, he refuses to scream in the obvious agony he's in. He dies silently, refusing to show weakness right to the end. Farewell to another magnificent character, one that was lifted off the page by a tremendously sinister and studied performance from Peter Miles. Another, lesser actor would have made far less of the role as written, but Miles was perfectly cast and seemed to understand Nyder inside out. It's one of Doctor Who's finest ever performances.

The Doctor escapes the exploding Kaled bunker just in time, thanks to the trigger-happy Bettan. It's refreshing to have a tough female character in Doctor Who at this time, especially in a Nation script, and although Bettan isn't really fleshed out very much, her focus on the wider picture is thrown into contrast by Sevrin's quest to get the Doctor and friends out before the big bang. And Harriet Philpin does very well with what she's given (she'll go on to star in the Secret Lemonade Drinker TV commercials for R White's a few years later!).

The Daleks are entombed - for 1,000 years at least - and the Dalek leader addresses his audience at home directly, promising vengeance: "We are entombed, but we live on. This is only the beginning. We will prepare. We will grow stronger. When the time is right, we will emerge and take our rightful place as the supreme power of the univerrrrrrrrrrse!" OK, love, thanks for that.

And so the Doctor didn't win at all. He didn't stop the development of the Daleks; he merely delayed their progress getting out of the bunker. He failed, but he doesn't seem too fussed about it. In essence, his entire mission on Skaro was a waste of time and effort, because he has next to no impact at all. The Daleks will go on, they will escape and spread out into the galaxies and wreak havoc, just as they always did. The Time Lords will surely not be very pleased with this outcome.

The Doctor, Sarah and the criminally underused Harry spin off into the vacuum of space courtesy of the Time Ring. How do they breathe? Where are they going? The Doctor insists that out of the Daleks' evil, some good must come. Why he didn't insist on this at the start of part 1 I don't know, but we've had a wonderful time along the way. Genesis of the Daleks is a masterpiece in the Doctor Who canon, with a creative team firing on all cylinders, and Terry Nation in particular writing perhaps his finest script for the series. This serial is often named as Doctor Who's best ever story, in its entire 56-year history, and it's hard not to disagree.

Now, did somebody mention a Time War...?

First broadcast: April 12th, 1975

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The Daleks mercilessly (but logically) turning on Davros is a wonderful moment.
The Bad: The Doctor failing his mission - and not seeming all that bothered, or being pulled up on it by the Time Lords - does make you wonder what the point of it all was.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★☆ (story average: 8.3 out of 10)

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 05

NEXT TIME: Revenge of the Cybermen...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Two; Part Three; Part Four; Part Five

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/06/genesis-of-daleks.html

Genesis of the Daleks is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Genesis-Daleks-DVD/dp/B000EGCD5A