Thinking the transmat beam will send the time-travelling trio back to space station Nerva, the Doctor is surprised to find that someone has interfered with the pathway of the beam, taking them to a war-scarred planet. When a Time Lord emerges from the fog and asks an incredibly huge favour of the Doctor on behalf of the Time Lords, the Doctor must go forth on the planet Skaro whence they where misled to and carry out the mission his race requests of him. His mission: to rewrite the history of the creation of the Daleks, so as to either wipe them from existence or alter their structure to make them less of a threat to the universe. Once the task has been completed, the Doctor and his friends are free to leave the planet by means of Portkey. Sorry, I meant the Time Ring that is gifted to them by the Time Lord.
When the opening scene began, I thought it was straight out of the World War II time period, but it turns out that the planet Skaro has been going through a war resembling that of WWII for years. As the Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith, and Harry Sullivan scope out the planet to find the place to begin their mission, they observe that the military equipment used appears to come from a long string of time periods. There are laser guns, bullet guns, poison gas, and methods of centuries-old warfare, as well as gas masks and radiation sensors. The Doctor explains that these methods were used instead of from old to new, but quite the opposite way around. They started from the newest technology when war first broke out until they ran out of new supplies, so referring to older methods of warfare. This could only mean one thing: that this war has been going on for an insurmountable amount of time, for countless centuries.
Seeking shelter in a bunker lying outside an enormous dome big enough to cover an entire city, the trio are bombarded by gunfire and poisonous gas. Hastily putting on the gas masks that decorates the faces of dead soldiers lining the bunker (to fool the opposing side that the bunker is guarded), the Doctor and Harry are taken inside the dome. Sarah, however, gets left behind...
The Doctor and Harry discover the history of the war on Skaro while in the dome of the Kaleds. The Kaleds and the Thals are the two races that inhabit Skaro, and for many centuries they’ve been at war against each other for domination of the planet. The Kaleds inform the Doctor and Harry that they have a team of advanced scientists that are working on the ultimate machine that will help them win the war. What is this machine? Well, none other than the Daleks. The Doctor is eventually introduced to the inventor of the Daleks: Davros. But the Doctor and Harry weren’t the first of the trio to witness Davros and the Daleks...
Sarah Jane, after waking alone in the empty bunker, wanders around outside the dome trying to find the Doctor and Harry, until she stumbles upon a secluded area inhabiting Davros himself. In hiding, Sarah discovers the Dalek for the first time, as Davros tests the Dalek by commanding it to exterminate a test subject. Sarah then runs away, into a group of Mutos, or former Kaleds that have been altered due to chemical mutations from the war. Sarah and the Mutos are then kidnapped by the Thals and forced to work for them, loading radioactive components into a missile waiting to be launched into the Kaled dome.
The Doctor and Harry, after being secretly freed by a trusting Kaled scientist, intend to rescue Sarah from the Thals, even though Sarah has her own methods of escape. Eventually, the three wind up back in the Kaled dome, where Davros himself harshly interrogates the Doctor by torturing his friends for information to improve the Daleks. Through great lengths of fruitless persuasion, strong alliances, and an awful lot of running, it is up to the Doctor and his two friends to impact the creation of the Daleks.
Like Planet of the Spiders, I’ve been informed countless times by many people that Genesis of the Daleks is the best classic Doctor Who serial ever written. And this time, unlike Spiders, I wholeheartedly agree. It gives me great pleasure to say that this is the BEST classic Who story I’ve ever seen. To be able to go back to the beginning of the Daleks, to witness their invention and their change as Davros takes the big step from remote control to total self control, it’s powerful stuff. There were many times when I was properly scared, and I’m a teenager! I can only imagine how the children of that time felt when they first saw this on transmission! It has great erratic pace, spread out so brilliantly into six thirty-minute episodes, and the suspense in every episode is heightened by the thrilling music. It also, like several other Who serials in the past, reflects some part of our own society that makes it relatable and tangible. Like The Sontaran Experiment, this arc looks back on the Nazis of World War II.
The Kaled race is all about sustaining the purity of their race. Early on in the war, the Kaleds and the Thals used chemical weapons to fight, and the chemicals mutated some of the Kaleds, changing them into the Mutos. Because the Kaleds want to keep their race pure (kind of like the Malfoys and their obsession about Pure Bloods in the Harry Potter series), they exiled the Mutos to the wastelands of Skaro. If any of the Mutos would so much as step into the Kaled dome, they were sure to be killed in a heartbeat. This strong belief of long-standing purity is like Hitler’s ideals of maintaining a pure, nationalistic German force. He was so sure that getting rid of the Jews, and other “inferior” minorities in his eyes, was the only solution to keep Germany pure. Even the Kaled uniforms resemble that of the Nazis. The Daleks, at first being merely servants and soldiers under the remote control of Davros, then developing superior beliefs of their own, of the 2005 series and onwards reflect these Kaled and Nazi views – that the Dalek race should be the only and superior race in the entire universe, and so everyone inferior to them must be exterminated.
Of course, the Daleks, like Hitler and his Nazism, are always defeated (with the occasional Dalek dematerialising in the nick of time and scuttling off to edge of the universe in order to regrow its race. Thanks, Russell T Davies), and the Doctor knows this because he’s the one who’s always defeated them. Unfortunately, Davros realises this and forces the Doctor to reveal every encounter with the Daleks and why they were defeated, in order to fix these flaws and weaknesses and the make the Daleks utterly invincible. Now that’s a recipe for disaster...
The big, moral-questioning situations of this story are when there are important choices to be made. The Doctor and Davros must make these choices. The Doctor, whose sole purpose on Skaro is fulfil the wishes of the Time Lords and to either destroy the Daleks or improve them, is forced to make the choice between exploding the Kaled mutation room, holding the growing Daleks, or not. While Sarah tries to convince him to detonate the room, saying that the Daleks are evil and that they will one day be the destroyers of the universe, the Doctor brings up the situation of whether or not one should kill a baby even if they knew that baby would grow up being a horrible tyrannical dictator. To kill the Daleks right there and then would make the Doctor just like them. Also, to commit genocide to the Daleks would mean the Doctor’s life would change entirely. After all, the Doctor met the Daleks for the first time in the second story of Doctor Who, so to destroy the Daleks would change his very being. He wouldn’t lose Donna Noble when he had to erase every memory of every adventure she had with him. He wouldn’t lose Rose Tyler when she is trapped across the void on the parallel world. He probably wouldn’t even meet most of his companions if it weren’t for the Daleks. He wouldn’t have to destroy both Time Lords and Daleks alike in the final acts of the Time War.
Davros is also given a choice, this time by the Doctor. The Doctor asks Davros if he could invent a hypothetical virus that could destroy anything and everything in the universe, would he do it. The Doctor hopes that he can dissuade Davros from doing so, and I believed he could as well, but Davros relishes the idea that he can destroy everything, making himself the supreme ruler of the universe.
This story is just fantastic. Before watching this serial, my favourite Doctor Who arc was The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End because of the return of Davros, the Daleks, and all the Tenth Doctor’s companions (and who doesn’t love the return of Sarah Jane?). But now, Genesis of the Daleks has knocked Russell T Davies’ series four finale to second place for me. Genesis has all the elements of a classic Doctor Who story: loads of running, deep reasoning, the separation of the Doctor and his companion, and the Daleks.
And what’s truly brilliant is the final scene of episode four. As the Doctor, Sarah, and Harry all hold on tightly to the Time Ring (Portkey!) and travelling in time back to space station Nerva (hopefully), this conversation ensues:
Sarah Jane: You don't seem too disappointed. We've failed. Haven't we?
The Doctor: Failed? No, not really. You see, I know that although the Daleks will create havoc and destruction for millions of years, I know also that out of their evil must come something good.
The Doctor: Failed? No, not really. You see, I know that although the Daleks will create havoc and destruction for millions of years, I know also that out of their evil must come something good.
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