It's day 3 of a 3 day Doctor Who blogathon!
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Once more into the Time Vortex for another edition of Doctor Who Is Classic!
Today's post takes us back to 1975 for a story with an impact that reaches to the modern era, a story that has been called the first salvo in the Time War.
Genesis of the Daleks
by Terry Nation
Terry Nation is the man who created the Daleks who gives is this story of the origins of the Doctor's most hated enemy.
Conscripted by the Time Lords, the Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan are sent back in time to the planet Skaro to the point of the Daleks' origin.
The mission: alter, hinder or stop the Daleks from coming into existence.
Our team is seperated from the TARDIS. Their only way home is a Time Ring given go them by the Time Lords that will take them back to the TARDIS when the mission is complete.
Skaro is not a great place to be stranded.
The planet has been ravaged by a state of near constant war between the Kaleds and the Thals with menacing Mutos in the mix between the two sides.
The story opens with a battleground where one army mows down the opposing side with machine guns. It is a very violent beginning that apparently writer Terry Nation did not agree with but director David Maloney was determined to set the tone that war is hell and Skaro is in hell. It is a dark tone that continues through the serial.
The Thals are working on a rocket to destroy the central base of the Kaleds. Well, more to the point, the rocket and it's radioactive weaponry is being assembled by slave labor from the Mutos and a captured Sarah Jane Smith.
Sarah Jane leads a revolt of the Mutos against the Thals to escape their poisonous rocket building captivity. Yay, Sarah!
A revolt that the Thals stop with deadly force, leaving only Sarah alive. Well, that's a serious bummer but in keeping with the dark themes of this episode.
Meanwhile over in the Kaled dome, the Doctor and Harry Sullivan are navigating the political and societal complexities surrounding the leadership of Davros.
Genesis of the Daleks introduces to Doctor Who the character of Davros, the creator of the next phase of Kaled evolution, the Daleks. He will reappear in subsequent Dalek serials and make it to the modern era with the 10th Doctor story, The Stolen Earth.
Most of the Kaleds are on board with whatever Davros is planning as long as it destroys those hated Thals.
But there are others who think that Davros is a total wackdoodle and needs to be stopped. Which presents the Doctor's best chance at stopping the Daleks at their point of origin.
But Davros has eyes and ears everywhere.
And his Daleks are closer to being ready than anyone knows, they are deadlier and more powerful than anyone expects and they are answerable only to Davros.
OK, about that last part....
Davros has done too good a job at genetically manipulating Kaled DNA and too good a job at programming the battle machines those mutated Kaleds will reside in, their meglomania becomes stronger than Davros' control.
This is a recurring theme in future appearances of Davros. Whatever role his ego defines for himself as creator of the Daleks, the Daleks will place themselves as superior to their creator.
They basically keep him around like a pet.
The Doctor rigs up explosives to destroy the mutated Dalek creatures in their laboratory nursery. But he questions his right to commit pre-emptive genocide against even as heinous and evil a race as the Daleks.
The Doctor ultimately decides he does not have that right and foregoes his options to completely stop the Daleks at their point of origin.
You may recall that this position is revisited in Journey's End when the 10th Doctor takes issue with his doppelganger, the Meta-crisis Doctor, who commits genocide against the Daleks.
The Doctor does slow their development but his view there are worlds and civilizations that have risen up to fight the Dalek threat, agents of hope, freedom and life to counter the oppression, tyranny and death brought by the Daleks.
Genesis of the Daleks is epic in it's scope and delivers a pretty strong story. At 6 half-hour installments, it suffers a bit from the padding indemic of the classic era but mostly it's a solid effort.
Props to the make up department who turned actor Michael Wisher into Davros with a visage of putrifying horror.
Terry Nation had intentionally modelled the Daleks from the beginning on the Nazis of World War II Germany and really leans hard into that comparison with Genesis of the Daleks.
This story remains a favorite of Whovians from the classic era and has stood the test of time to continue to influence Doctor Who even into the modern era.
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