Doctor Who - Genesis Of The Daleks

The Time Meddler

Doctor Who -
Genesis Of The Daleks
Airdate: 8th March 1974 - 12 April 1975
BBC 1 - Region A/B Blu Ray Six Episodes

Warning: Some spoilers.

Okay, so the next story in my re-watch of Series 12 of Doctor Who is the much acclaimed fan favourite Genesis Of The Daleks. Even Tom Baker cited this as one of his favourite stories but, I have to say, this one always left me a bit cold. Alas, any hopes I had that I might, with age, revise my reaction to this serial as anything other than having to sit through a dull story, faded very quickly as I watched.

This follows on from The Doctor and his companions Sarah (Elisabeth Sladen) and Harry (Ian Marter) using the teleport at the end of The Sontaran Experiment (reviewed here) to return to Space Station Nerva after making the repairs to the system they promised in The Ark In Space (reviewed here). However, this is not to be, as their transmat beam is intercepted by none other than the Time Lords themselves, who have a mission for The Doctor. This is not unprecedented throughout the run of the show but it was with Tom Baker that the Time Lord culture and The Doctor’s place in it were explored a little more thoroughly than their brief mentions and appearances in the previous 11 years.

The mission is simple... The Doctor, Sarah and Harry have been transported to the planet Skaro, back to when the Daleks were first coming into being. Their mission, destroy the Daleks before they become the lethal menace that they become for hundreds of thousands of years (or more). As far as the Daleks are concerned it all starts here with their creator, Davros (played here by Michael Wisher), who we meet for the first time. Despite his ironic death at the end of the sixth episode, he would of course, return to face off against The Doctor many times over the years including Tom Baker’s second and final story against the Daleks four years later, in Destiny Of The Daleks. Out of the two, I’ve always loved Destiny Of The Daleks and not had much time for Genesis Of The Daleks so I hope, if the BBC get around to releasing the latter on Blu Ray at some point in the next few years, the experience of the second Davros story lives up to my memory of it.

Another thing I absolutely hate about this is it kinda changes the history of the Dalek race somewhat. Oh yes... I forgot... some people call it revisionism... I call it meddling with things the original Dalek creator (Terry Nation) should know better than to tinker with. The fact is, before this story the warring race against the Thals were called the Dals. However, from this moment on in Genesis Of The Daleks until the present day stories, their name has been changed into a stupid anagram of their future selves, the Kaleds. This is pretty weak and, frankly, unforgivable... you don’t mess with continuity.

Now, Genesis has some interesting elements and, for a family show airing before the watershed, it’s quite bleak and dark. We see the Thals and Kaleds at war with each other but, this earlier incarnation of the Thals are far from the race of blonde haired, blue eyed pacificistic hippies we meet in both the William Hartnell stories and the first Peter Cushing, big screen adaptation. Instead, they are virtually interchangeable with the Kaleds and, yeah, I did get confused a lot re-watching this as to which set of species I was looking at from one scene to the next.

The bleakness continues as the war combat scenes are very reminiscent of the trenches in World War Two and the Kaleds (and possibly the Thals as well, if I got this right) are all pretty much parodies, in uniform and attitude, of the Nazis. This whole World War Two atmosphere was touched upon again in the 2015 series of the show starring Peter Capaldi as The Doctor, with the early days of the planet Skaro maintaining that pessimistic vision. Here in Genesis, though, it’s a full on blatant set of references right down to a form of Nazi salute and even, in the first episode, Davros’ main henchman Nyder wearing something similar to an Iron Cross (it was ditched after the first episode for maybe spelling things out a little too clearly).

Something which really bothers me about the writing on this one is that, for an extremely intelligent Time Lord, The Doctor really doesn’t seem very clever in this at all. For example, in a typical case of the writers painting themselves into a corner for a dramatic situation, we have The Doctor using a detached Dalek gun to destroy some tapes made by Davros, containing information about future Dalek defeats which he was forced to give him in an interrogation. However, straight after this moment, The Doctor and Harry find themselves locked in the room and can’t do anything to shift the lock until they are freed later on in the story. Gee... it’s not like they even thought to use the same Dalek gun which was just laying on the table by the door to blast themselves free?

And... I honestly find the whole reason for Davros creating the Daleks for the good of the Kaled race, because they know what they will mutate into and so need sturdy exo-skeletons to look after them, somewhat ridiculous. Honestly, how can you predict what you are going to evolve into... especially since it’s made clear that The Doctor is the first Time Lord that the Daleks have come across. It just doesn’t make much sense and, good as all the actors are, I just find the action dull, the humour almost completely absent and, iconic monologues and exchanges aside, somewhat hard to sit through.  Maybe at six episodes it’s just too long and could have, perhaps, been better served as a four parter. The music doesn’t seem to help matters either and doesn’t, I believe, give the story the lift it needs to make its points. Maybe a full on military march may have been a better route to go down on this one.

Either way, Genesis Of The Daleks is a story that is much loved and so nothing I say will matter, thankfully. It so impressed people at the time that I remember an abridged LP record album of the show was released by the BBC with linking narrative sections by Tom Baker between scenes, not long after it aired on television. I remember borrowing it from the library at the time and, guess what? That didn’t do much for me either. However, despite the ‘revisionism’, it did give the series a new, villainous character in the form of Davros and people still thrill when he turns up in the show occasionally to this day. So it’s not all bad... just not my cup of tea in terms of classic Doctor Who. Still, I am, very much looking forward to perusing the last of the stories which make up this season soon, featuring what are probably, to this day, the show’s second best remembered regular villains.

Doctor Who - Twice Upon A Time

Jodie Vivre

Doctor Who - Twice Upon A Time
Airdate: 25th December 2017
BBC 1

Warning: Here Be Spoilers... all of them.

Well this one was so much better than I thought it would be and I’m pleased Peter Capaldi’s swan song as The Doctor turned out quite as well as it did (with a few reservations).

Starting up with footage from The Tenth Planet (reviewed here) was something I didn’t expect because, right from the outset, it highlighted to modern audiences of the show just how wrong in design and voice the BBC got the reconstruction of the original cybermen at the end of the last series. So I don’t know why they chose to include specific footage of them along with the shots of Hartnell to contextualise where The First Doctor fits into all this. It does, however, work very well to get contemporary Who watchers up to speed as much as they would need and it had a lovely ‘merge’ moment where William Hartnell morphed, mid sentence, into David Bradley (not to mention The First Doctor’s then companions Ben and Polly transforming into different actors too). Bradley does a good job here and has great chemistry with Capaldi, it has to be said.

We then had him meeting up with Peter Capaldi’s incarnation of The Doctor (I refuse to call him The Twelfth Doctor anymore... War Doctor or not, every Doctor gets a number to help label them, in my book) at the end of the previous episode and we have both Doctor’s gabbling away and both refusing to regenerate. We then have a soldier 'plucked from time' on a battlefield during the First World War and accidentally deposited with both Doctors.

Now, I have to say, the identity of the mystery soldier, played here by Mark Gatiss, is really not that hard to work out once he talks about having a wife and children at home. It points to his relationship with another famous military figure who has been in Doctor Who history since his appearance as a Colonel opposite Patrick Troughton’s incarnation, The Second Doctor and, well, I’m not going to spell it out here but it did become fairly obvious at a certain point in the proceedings.

However, it’s a pretty good story with The Doctors coming face to face with a lady of glass who is part of The Testimony, a group of beings from the far future who record the memories and experiences of people just before their death and can become them. When The Doctor goes to a planet full of Kaleds it was, again, obvious that they were, of course, the Daleks but I have to say the identity of the person he was going to see actually did take me by surprise, for which I’m grateful. I just assumed it would be Davros but, instead, it was a character from very recent Doctor Who continuity from a couple of series ago, who made “its” debut in the episode Into The Dalek (reviewed here).

In Twice Upon A Time we get a nice conundrum about whether people are, in fact, the sum of their memories, the return (sorta) of Bill Potts and Nardole, a very atmospheric (and tear inducing) sequence set on a very specific night in World War One, a brief return by Clara Oswald (played by Jenna Louise Coleman) plus the restoration of The Doctor’s memories of what she looked like... and the whole episode is generally light on action and strong on ideas. Something which impressed me and which has been a key component of the show since it first started being broadcast 54 years ago. And I thought this was the story’s main strength.

There are a few intriguing issues within the episode though. For example, if the encapsulated memories of The Doctor could shatter the glass beings then... how come they already were able to show The First Doctor the memories of all the things he had become up to Capaldi's point in time? My best answer to that is his memories (and not even his ego) could not, or at some future point in time, did not... shatter them. Because they obviously already recorded him at some point in the future of this incarnation’s timeline, just before death. So that's a bit silly, to be honest.

Another intriguing and, potentially, quite annoying thing, is that the BBC look like they’ve destroyed the TARDIS at the end. Blimey... just like a woman driver, not 60 seconds into his first female incarnation and she’s crashed the TARDIS (thanks to my cousin for that comment). Of course, there’s no way they can let this happen, I think, without a) divesting themselves of a lot of fans of the show over the years and b) taking away from the basic essence of the show... being able to visit a different point in time and space every adventure. I’m pretty sure the iconic TARDIS will be back on our screens before long.

The worst thing about the episode was... Peter Capaldi’s protracted ‘death’ scene was a bit long winded, waffly and... I dunno... felt kinda clumsily written, truth be told. Still, his performance was never less than his best and he’s been a great Doctor whose time has, I believe, come too soon.

Two things I really liked about the show were...

The First Doctor’s blatant, inadvertent sexism and the other character’s reactions to it. When Capaldi kept highlighting to him that he couldn’t say things like that in the current PC environment (in not so many words) it was quite funny but when Pearl Mackie’s wonderful performance as Bill Potts kicked in and she took him on regarding that issue... well it made for some nice comedy moments.

The other great thing was.. hooray. We finally have a lady timelord in the shape of a new, female incarnation of The Doctor. It’s way too early to judge how our new favourite time lady Jodie Whittaker is going to do in the role but she was pretty good here and I hope I’m right in having a lot of faith in her from the outset. Of course, when I was 14 years old and the prospect of a lady Doctor was first discussed, around about 1982ish, I was mortified by even the vaguest suggestion of such a thing taking place but... times have changed and hopefully the male youngsters of today are more flexible and evolved in their thinking to be stuck with that kind of attitude in their heads. I think this is a really good move and will hopefully refresh the series a little.

And that’s my take on Capaldi’s last story... not the best he’s done but, certainly, one of the best and more than I had hoped for from writer Steven Moffat’s last crack at writing the character, for sure. Twice Upon A Time was a really "not bad at all" episode of the current version of the show and a nice treat for Christmas Day. Looking forward to seeing what Jodie brings to the table in the Autumn.

Doctor Who: Asylum Of The Daleks

Kaled Days

Doctor Who: Asylum Of The Daleks
Airdate: 1st September 2012. UK. BBC1

Warning: Yep. Loads of spoilers trundling around on 
their little coasters, ready to exterminate you. Most of 
these things you will figure out within the first ten minutes 
anyway... but it’s always gratifying to figure them 
out on your own.

Weehay! That was a good one then.

I’m always a bit more optimistic when the start of a Moffat helmed Doctor Who season begins because the openers are usually pretty good, or at least intriguing enough to pull you in and suffer the potential decline of the rest of the series. Yeah, I know, I’m still cynical but the last season of Sherlock was nowhere near as good as the first either.

Anyway, this season gets off to a cracking start following the five short webisodes of Pond Life that the BBC made available as a lead in to this series.

The Doctor is suckered on to Skaro to undertake a rescue mission but it’s soon made clear that he’s trapped and he’s whisked away to help the Daleks lower a forcefield on their Asylum planet so the much better designed, but completely insane, nutter Daleks don’t get out into the universe. He’s given a kidnapped Amy Pond and Rory Williams, who have literally just signed their divorce papers, to help him and he’s baited with a crash landed survivor on the planet, who he needs to go and rescue.

And, yeah, okay... it’s completely predictable this female survivor who’s a computer genius is obviously going to turn out to be a Dalek in the final scenes... so much so that I wondered why they didn’t reveal it properly earlier and play with the drama of that subject a little more rather than pretend to surprise everybody at the last minute. However, the good news is, this didn’t make this particular episode any less enjoyable and I really liked the girl playing the Dalek stand in as it happened. Of course, it wasn’t until the end of the show that I realised, and this was then confirmed by the cast list since that character and actress are conspicuously absent from the Radio Times listing for the episode, that this is The Doctor’s new, post-Pond companion. Now whether she is playing the same character is another matter. I suppose she could be playing a relation of this character like what happened when Martha Jones joined the TARDIS crew as the same actress playing the sister of a dead character from a previous episode... but something tells me that’s not it.

It’s actually quite intriguing. I guess she could be playing the same character and there’s some time-wimey stuff going on, which if Amy and Rory get completely written out of the history of time and space as I’m expecting them to at the moment, might be a possibility. Or it could be the Daleks know who The Doctor’s future companion is going to be and are using it as a signal for themselves or something for a future attack. Don't forget The Doctor would have a hard time ever recognising her as he doesn't know what she looks like. All he's seen is a Dalek. She could well be something left behind from The Doctor’s future timeline which, lets face it, would fit the writer’s modus operandi really well.

Either way, this true revelation of the Daleks in that they possibly have his future companion in their midst (and, of course, the jury’s still out on that one) means two things to me. One, Jenna Louise Coleman could well be a truly great personality to have in the show if her dialogue is written as well as it was in tonight’s show and I look forward to her true arrival as much as I’m dreading the departure of Amy, Rory and, possibly, River. Also, I am looking forward to Moffat teasing me with the three or four possibilities as to how this person can be the new companion for a while.. possibly this year, possibly next year... but either way it will give me something to write and complain about.

There were some bad things in this one too which I can grumble about now and keep myself happy with. Number one is... what the heck are all those old Daleks doing on their starship. I mean, c’mon, I hate... hate... the new designed Daleks but they exterminated all the old ones as being inferior (something which this episode specifically states they wouldn’t do, by the way, which seems to mess continuity up on a second level to my main point anyway) and then, as if by magic, they seem to be peacefully coexisting with their old incarnations in a way that defies logic... or rather... seems to point to clumsy writing continuity. This kind of fuzzy thinking seems to be happening a lot with Doctor Who over the last couple of years, since Steven Moffat took over the production. Take Pond Life, for example. The Doctor can’t get in to see the Ponds in the last webisode because they are not answering the door... but in other episodes it’s fine for him to shilly-shally around their house without an invite and leave a displaced Ood there and then come and get him again without them even noticing him. So I repeat... The Doctor can’t get in because they’re not answering the door? What?

Something else is... we were told was that this was going to make the Daleks scary again. Sorry. No it didn’t. Enjoyable to see them again but no, not scary. Certainly not as bone chilling as they were in their early stories with Hartnell, nor, for that matter, as chilling as we’ve seen them in the Russel T. Davies years. Nicely written, interesting concept (if full of holes the size of a Rasillon wormhole) but scary... nope. Not this one.

Would have liked to have seen a bit more of the older Daleks from all points in history of the show too, as it happens. Didn’t have time to morbidly dwell on the Dalek design details of yesteryear, or really even notice them, during the course of this episode. Never mind. I’m sure they won’t waste these new “retro models” and I’m sure we’ll see them all again really soon, is my guess.

Of course, not soon enough that some fans won’t notice that the BBC are only airing 5 regular episodes this year before the Christmas special. 5 episodes! I told you this would happen. The BBC are playing very tight with their budgets just lately and the inevitable result of those “split seasons” is they start putting half in one year and the other half in the next year... thus saving the cash for thirteen whole episodes some of the show’s fans won’t even realising they’re missing. Mind you... if they can lie about when the new actress is starting her stint in Doctor Who they can get away with anything I guess. I still haven’t forgiven them for saying Christopher Eccleston wasn’t leaving the show on national television just a week or two before his final episode. This is behaviour some of the shows legion of fans won’t take too lightly.

Another thing they won’t take too lightly is changing the bloody opening titles again. For goodness sake, the last two seasons had bad enough titles... this augmented version is even worse. Stop being crap with the Doctor Who graphics please! Bring back the 80s neon tube if it’ll help, but please do something!

Still... go out on a positive note. Good episode, well paced, bit obvious but stylishly done with some nice bright and colourful lighting in some places and, naturally, some great acting. And a new companion who dies shouting the words “Remember Me?” Intriguing, no? Worth taking a look at if you’ve been following the show thus far, methinks.