Now, It Can Begin: Genesis of the Daleks — A Review

14th March, 2009.

Somehow?

It seems wrong to be looking at a Saturday night spent working, rather than watching a film.

Shift work, eh?

Still, I can’t complain too much, as it does at least pay the rent.

Or most of it, at any rate.

It also gives me a chance, while dinner’s cooking, to write a few quick thoughts about the photo’s you’re looking at.

And not bang on about the cinema, for a bit …

~≈Ω≈~

As you may or may not know, I’m a bit of a Doctor Who fan: and have been since childhood.

While I’m thoroughly enjoying the new series, it is nice to dig up up one of the classics from what, arguably, was a vintage period for the series.

Classic?   Is how I tend to view 1975’s Genesis of the Daleks.

It’s a very powerful piece of drama from a time when the BBC was knocking out some powerful stuff: the critically acclaimed I, Claudius, with Derek Jacobi, is another example from the same era.

That could well be fond, and powerful, memories of scenes from the story playing around my head.

There’s a very good example in Episode 5: a by-now-famous exchange between the Doctor and Davros that stayed in my head for years.   Davros goes into a rant about controlling a killer disease that sets the tone for the character for years to come, and burnt itself into my mind.

There’s another between Tom Baker’s Doctor, and Elizabeth Sladen’s Sarah Jane, at the start of Episode 6: over whether the Doctor should blow up the incubator room containing the embryo Dalek creatures, whether the Doctor has the right to commit genocide.

Combine that with Michæl Wisher’s riveting performance as Davros* – a performance with contempt and bile dripping from every syllable, a performance equalled, but never bettered, by succeeding actors – and I find myself with quite probably the best story of the classic run seared into my head.

It’s not just my memories …

As I write, I’ve got the dvd version playing in the the background – Episode 5, again, and things are moving to a head – and it’s not just my memories the series looks good in.

This is a Doctor Who story that’s seen some thirty-four years pass since its original screening, and right from the opening scene – of the Doctor being given the mission to destroy the Daleks at their conception, by an unnamed Time Lord superior, set against the war ravaged background of the Dalek home-world of Skaro – is still keeping me glued to it, and making this a very long piece to write.

Something – a scene, a piece of dialogue, one of the cliff-hangers – grabs my attention.

Now, I’ll admit, Doctor Who, as a series has had its ropey moments over the years.

Genesis of The Daleks isn’t one of them.

I personally place it with things like I, Claudius, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, House of Cards, the original Patrick McGoohan version of The Prisoner†, and a very specific episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, as some of the finest bits of TV, ever shown.

Good television turns up very rarely.

When it’s as good as this, I’ll do what I always do.

I’ll recommend that you watch it.

Genesis of the Daleks is a very good bit of TV, indeed.

* Michæl Wisher admitted in several interviews, that he realised one thing about the character, very early on: that he’d need a paper bag on his head, during rehearsals.

        Strange?   Not really.   He’d worked out, fairly early on, that the rest of the cast would not be able to see his face.   They’d miss all those little visual cues we all rely on – actors maybe more so than others – that tell us what a character’s thinking, when they say something. And that he’d be effectively blinded by the combination of mouth make-up, and prosthetic mask, and would need to work out how to effectively operate.   So he’d need that bag on his head during rehearsals learn how to work masked, how his fellow cast members reacted to him masked, and – the key to the character – how to project his voice MUCH more efficiently.

        It’s the voice that David Gooderson, Terry Molloy, and Julian Bleach – the actors who, in later years, took over the role – have all had to learn to access, when they came to play the part, but that Wisher did, first.

†        When I originally started this piece, I was writing about British TV.   I’ve got to include The Body — episode 16, of the fifth season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, where Buffy’s mother dies — in that list.   I feel it to be on a par: not only are Genesis of the Daleks and The Body — and Torchwood: Children Of Earth — fantastic episodes, and possibly the best episodes or stories the respective series have to offer: but they’re ALSO fantastic bits of television.