DOCTOR WHO:  GENESIS OF THE DALEKS

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#4: GENESIS OF THE DALEKS (6 Parts) 
ORIGINALLY AIRED: 3/8/75 to 4/12/75
WRITTEN BY: Terry Nation 
DIRECTED BY: David Maloney
PRODUCER: Philip Hinchcliffe 
SCRIPT EDITOR: Robert Holmes
	

The Daleks loom large in DOCTOR WHO's mythology. They were the first monster on the program, surfacing February 21, 1963 in the second adventure, THE DALEKS, written by Terry Nation. GENESIS OF THE DALEKS marks the 10th Dalek story.

It is rather hard to account for Dalek popularity. They don't look particularly menacing, resembling a conical salt shaker on wheels, with no interesting facial features. They have an irritating and monotonous voice. And, despite their reputation as the most evil creatures in the universe, they are rather easy to evade. You just have to run up or down stairs; the Daleks are unable to follow.  In his autobiography, WHO ON EARTH IS TOM BAKER?, Tom writes:  "I was already meeting small numbers of fans who constantly wanted to talk about my attitude toward Daleks.  Of all the monsters in all the stories, I have no doubt that the Daleks were the most successful.  They could not go upstairs, of course, and they always screeched at the top of their voices about how they were about to destroy me but somehow, with the help of Lis Sladen and the writers, I always escaped them."

The Dalek costume is inhabited by a man sitting on a chair who pushes the costume along with his feet. Voices are done by separate performers.  Tom continues:  "When we were rehearsing at BBC North Acton, the chaps playing the Daleks never wore their top bits.  This meant that during the scenes when they were threatening me, they held out their right arms in place of the regular sink plungers.  They took it all very seriously, of course, and this only added to the fun.  Very often the cast of Z CARS would creep into the back of the rehearsal room and watch us with delight.  They particularly liked my turn-of-the-century style of pretending to be frightened. . . .  As the rehearsals went on, it seemed to me that the BBC was missing an opportunity to make two programmes for the price of one.  If they had recorded the rehearsals and the arguments that went on, they could have cut some excellent stuff for light entertainment."

The opening of GENESIS OF THE DALEKS somewhat resembles the last Patrick Troughton show, THE WAR GAMES, with its gas masked soldiers disappearing into a thick fog. The Doctor's transmat beam is interrupted by a Time Lord, who has brought the Doctor, Sarah and Harry to Skaro at a time just before the Daleks are created. The Doctor's mission is to avert their creation, or alter their development so they aren't so evil, or discover a weakness that can stop them. The Time Lord gives the Doctor a bracelet-like time ring, as the Doctor's TARDIS is still on Space Station Nerva.

Almost immediately the group is split up. The Doctor and Harry are captured by the Kaleds, while Sarah is attacked by a group of Mutos and rounded up with them by the Thals. The Kaleds and Thals have waged a bitter war for a thousand years; the Mutos are the genetically scarred remnants of the Skaro population who inhabit a wasteland between the two opposing forces.

The Doctor and Harry overcome their captors, and the Doctor knocks out Kaled communications with his sonic screwdriver. However, they are recaptured and the Doctor is forced to turn out his pockets, bringing to light his sonic screwdriver, yoyo, jeweler's loupe and, oh yes, an etheric beam locator for detecting ion charged emissions.

While waiting to be put through a security scan, the Doctor demands of the Kaleds: "What, no tea?" After being roughed up during the scan, the Doctor sadly concludes, "No tea, Harry." He loses the time ring in the bargain.

At this point we are introduced to Davros, a crippled Kaled scientist. The lower part of his body is encased in the Skaro version of a wheelchair, which resembles the bottom of a Dalek. He is so old (he's been a scientist for over 50-years), his eyes are not discernible in his wrinkled face. A life support system is hooked to terminals on his bald pate, with a blue light in the middle of his forehead.

The Kaleds are suffering from genetic mutation due to years of chemical warfare. The scientists in the Kaled bunker believe Davros has been working on the Mark 3 Travel Machine to house their ultimate mutated form. Unknown to them, however, Davros has further tinkered with their genetic development, producing a ruthless creature with no conscience: a Dalek!

These embryo Daleks are yucky amorphous masses kept behind locked doors in laboratory jars. Their impact is immeasurably heightened by slavering slurpy sound effects provided by Dick Mills. When the Doctor catches sight of the flesh and blood part of the Daleks, he tells the Kaled scientist: "You've got troubles."

Meantime, Sarah and Sevrin, the Muto who saved her life, are forced by the Thals to pack the nose cone of a rocket with distronic explosive. Since the slave labor is expendable, there is no protective shielding, so Sarah and the other captives are in danger of expiring from distronic toxemia after only a few hours exposure.

The Doctor and Harry are befriended by Ronson, a Kaled scientist who disapproves of the way the Daleks have been genetically altered. They escape through a tunnel inhabited by mutated animals created by Davros' earlier experiments. The special effects in this sequence are particularly bad; Harry is attacked by a very unconvincing giant clam. Its lionlike roar only underscores the lifelessness of this prop. Later, on their way back through the tunnel, they are "attacked" by a group of giant clams. Our heroes dash past these completely stationery creatures, while the Doctor delivers the laughable line: "They're not very fast."

Sarah has led an unsuccessful escape attempt from the Thal rocket site. When the Doctor enters the Thal city to rescue her, he walks right up to the guards and politely asks: "Excuse me, can you help me? I'm a spy." Surprisingly, neither Sarah nor any of the other slaves is dead of distronic toxemia. The Doctor frees everyone and sends Sarah and Harry back to the Kaleds with perhaps the most characteristic and frequently-heard of Tom Baker's lines: "Off you go."

GENESIS OF THE DALEKS provides two more showcases for Tom Baker to portray agony. First he is electrocuted--although not fatally--at the Thal rocket silo and later he is attacked by embryo Daleks when he enters their incubation chamber to plant explosives.

The Doctor displays Hamlet-like hesitation over whether to destroy the genetically conditioned Dalek embryos or not. Would killing them make him no better than they are?  From Tom Baker's autobiography, WHO ON EARTH IS TOM BAKER?:  "Great discussions ensued during rehearsal when we examined the section of the script that dealt with the possible abortion of the Daleks.  It really was a scream.  I am trying to remember if it was David Maloney who put in the line, 'Have I the right?' as I played with the Dalek umbilical cord.  Of course, I didn't interfere with destiny and that must have been a great relief to Terry Nation who was really quite fond of his Daleks.  Who could possibly blame him?  To have created the creatures that terrified millions of children all over the world was an amazing achievement.  And so I blew the chance of changing the whole history of the planet Earth.  Looking back on it I can't say I regret it.  Perhaps if the Daleks had been the inventors of tobacco the BBC would have asked me to cut the cord.  Who knows?"

The Daleks themselves, seen briefly in an early episode, aren't really involved in the action until parts 5 and 6. At this point, their trademark cry of "Exterminate" rings out. When they fire, the optical effect depicting the impact of their weapons is exactly the same as it was in the first black and white show--a negative image.

Davros threatens to torture Harry and Sarah unless the Doctor reveals all he knows about future Dalek defeats. Reluctantly, the Doctor complies. Afterwards, in a detention cell, the Doctor meets Gharman, the pacifist head of the military elite. Gharman helps them escape again, when even the Doctor's sonic screwdriver won't open the door.

Davros, never very stable to begin with, goes completely insane at the end, after he betrays the Kaled race. But the Daleks, unable to accept orders from an inferior being, turn on him. They kill Davros, Nyder--his chillingly efficient right hand man--and all the remaining Kaleds.

The Doctor destroys the audio tape recording containing his knowledge of Dalek defeats and regains his time ring and other belongings. He has delayed the development of the Daleks for perhaps a thousand years, but he feels--although they will eventually terrorize the universe--out of the Dalek evil eventually must come something good.

It is impossible to ignore the Nazi overtones of this story. Davros certainly rants like Hitler about the purity of the Kaled race; and his military elite give him the typical Nazi one-arm salute. It is mentioned over and over the remaining Kaleds in the bunker are the elite. And Davros is responsible for a holocaust which wipes out an entire civilization.

GENESIS OF THE DALEKS raised the hackles of some British fans because it contradicted a previous version of how the Daleks came to be, written in 1963 also by Terry Nation. Unlike most American TV shows, DOCTOR WHO never had a "bible"--that is, a book containing character biographies and guidelines to what happened in the past on the show. As episodes are not rerun in Britain, and at this point the show was not widely syndicated, there was no attempt to conform to any previous plots, especially something mentioned briefly in a story last seen 12 years (and 3 Doctors) ago.

One of the wonderful things the format of DOCTOR WHO allows is plots not bound by time. In this story, the Doctor goes back to a time before all the other Dalek stories took place, so anything which occurred in those stories could theoretically have been affected by the Doctor's meddling and might, therefore, never even take place. This is the fascinating paradox inherent in all time travel stories, but because it is not overt in GENESIS OF THE DALEKS, the British fans were not appeased.

It is difficult to think of any DOCTOR WHO guest cast member who has appeared more frequently than Michael Wisher. His roles with no character makeup include Rex Farrel in TERROR OF THE AUTONS, John Wakefield in THE AMBASSADORS OF DEATH (both Pertwee stories) and Morelli in PLANET OF EVIL (a future Tom Baker story). Disguised under makeup he played Kalek in the Pertwee story CARNIVAL OF MONSTERS and Magrik in the Tom Baker story REVENGE OF THE CYBERMEN. He also provided Dalek voices in three Pertwee stories: DEATH TO THE DALEKS, FRONTIER IN SPACE and PLANET OF THE DALEKS. However, the role of Davros was his finest hour on DOCTOR WHO.  Tom Baker in his autobiography:  "Michael Wisher, who can seriously be described as the creator of the character of Davros, used to work with a kilt on and a paper bag over his head to maintain his feel for the part.  He took his work so seriously that he would not remove the bag even at coffee break.  To see coffee and biscuits being pushed under the paper bag, followed by a cigarette, while the bag continued to express the most passionate views on how Davros felt about things was just bliss.  He did allow us to make a hole in the top of his bag so that the smoke could escape. "  Although the character is apparently killed off in this story, he miraculously revives in DESTINY OF THE DALEKS (Tom Baker), and returns in RESURRECTION OF THE DALEKS (Peter Davison) and REVELATION OF THE DALEKS (Colin Baker), but is never again played by Wisher and never again played so well.

Writing in her posthumously-published autobiography (Aurum 2011), Elisabeth Sladed noted of Wisher "...what a performance...  Oh, it's just someone in a horror mask sitting down pressing buttons, you think.  Then you watch the hand, study the finger.  Michael's timing is impeccable:  with the slightest of gestures, he managed to be threatening.  It could have been grotesque, over-the-top, cartoon-like.  On the contrary, this was a masterclass in restrained, less-is-more, plysical acting."

Peter Miles, so coldly efficient as Nyder, also played Dr. Lawrence in THE SILURIANS and Professor Whitaker in INVASION OF THE DINOSAURS, both Pertwee stories.

Dennis Chinnery, who plays Gharman, was Albert Richardson in the Hartnell story THE CHASE; and Professor Sylvest in the Colin Baker story THE TWIN DILEMMA.  From Tom Baker's autobiography, WHO ON EARTH IS TOM BAKER?:  "If I wasn't in the scenes being rehearsed, I spent as much time as I could with Dennis Chinnery who was playing a small part in the Davros story and who was also the world's greatest authority on the Shakespearean actor-manager of the 1940s, Robert Atkins.  As far as I know Dennis never did a one-man show on the subject of Atkins, but I wish he had.  From what he told me, I think Robert Atkins would have approved of my style of doing things and might well have given me a job."

Stephen Yardley, who plays Sevrin, plays Arak in the Colin Baker story VENGEANCE ON VAROS.

Hilary Minster, who plays a Thal Solider, played Marat in the Pertwee story PLANET OF THE DALEKS.

John Gleeson, also a Thal Soldier, plays Charles Winlett in THE SEEDS OF DOOM, a future Tom Baker story.

Max Faulkner has the distinction of playing both a Dalek and a Thal Guard in this story. He is also Adams in THE ANDROID INVASION and Nesbin in THE INVASION OF TIME (future Tom Baker stories); a Miner in THE MONSTER OF PELADON and the Second Captain in PLANET OF THE SPIDERS, both Pertwee shows.

Michael Lynch, who plays a Thal Politician, played Spencer in THE WAR GAMES, the last Troughton story.

Tom Georgeson, who plays Kavell, appears as the Detective Inspector in Tom Baker's last story, LOGOPOLIS.

John Scott Martin, among other monsters, has played Daleks in 11 stories. Roy Skelton has performed the Dalek voice in 4 stories, as well as provided other creature voices.