Holistic Review: It's gritty, and it's grim... but it's also extraordinarily well plotted, almost constantly entertaining, superbly directed, and Michael Wisher's performance is award-winning all by itself.

I find myself more than a little surprised by how rabidly I loved Genesis of the Daleks on this viewing. I've always thought it was a good story, but it's not one I would pick out of the pile to watch just for fun. I've always felt it was overly long (a criticism I have of practically any story with 6 or more parts) and depressingly grim in a warlike way. Not that it didn't have its positive points: two of my three earliest Doctor Who memories come from this story, so clearly I found it memorable as a child, but it's not as bright and monstery as near-neighbor The Ark in Space, or as funny as 95% of Tom Baker's other stories, and it's got Daleks in it. Six long, kind of dull, darkly-lit episodes full of lots of people shooting guns at each other, and loads of Daleks. That's basically how I've always viewed Genesis of the Daleks.

But, wow. Now that I've actually sat down to take the story apart, I'm amazed at what I've found. I shouldn't be - fandom's been holding this story aloft as the pinnacle of Doctor Who for probably decades. But I've never really believed it. And it's true that I'd still rather watch Delta and the Bannermen than Genesis of the Daleks any day, but... I know now that when I sit down to enjoy this story, it's not going to be a disappointment. Interestingly, I think Andrew kind of opened my eyes to how good it is. At some point during his Doctor Who education, he started assigning scores to each story out of 10 (balancing out factors like how well the Doctor was used in any given story, or how much he liked the way the companions were portrayed - Lalla Ward, incidentally, was an automatic 10 - the plot, the monsters, the silly hats (yes, really... Horns of Nimon scored quite well in that regard, as I recall), etc.). And if memory serves, Genesis of the Daleks was the first story I showed him that merited a 10 out of 10. (This may have been before the "silly hat" score came into being.) I must admit to being a little surprised, but I trust his opinion, and I knew he must have seen something in this story that I didn't quite get at the time. Now, I think I understand. The reason Genesis of the Daleks is so successful is multi-fold, but hinges largely on its incredibly tense atmosphere (helped along enormously by the scripting, the directing, and the pervasive gloomy feel), the intricate plot, and a few key performances.

One of the great keys to the success of Genesis of the Daleks is definitely its plot. Perhaps unusually for a six-episode story, I couldn't find any major plot holes to criticize. Everything happened for a reason, and those reasons made sense. Yet more pleasingly, the plot is far from straightforward. It constantly zigs when you expect it to zag, meaning that I found the story almost completely unpredictable. The number of twists in the plot, which help to drive it forward the entire time, is incredible. Terry Nation's writing skills really seem to have gelled in this story. He's written a story that clips along at a very good pace, and even though everything is terribly grim, he manages to keep the scenes interesting because they're all so tense! At any given moment there's at least one threat to the life of every major character, and the twisty nature of the plot means that yet more threats are constantly being discovered. And at the same time, it hearkens back to his earlier Dalek stories in that the "series of puzzles" he so enjoys are back in a way, but here they're presented more as a series of challenging situations that the Doctor and his companions have to get through, kind of like Ian and Barbara's treacherous trip into the Dalek city in The Daleks, but not quite as literally adventurous. But we've got the grim and boobytrapped Wastelands, the poisonous Thal rocket, the cave system full of mutated creatures, and the Dalek nursery, all of which add an extra element of interest to the already-fascinating Davros storyline. You could also argue that the various goals serve this purpose as well, and they also give the story an adventure-game feel. (1) Don't lose the Time Ring (a goal that motivates this entire story, particularly when it changes into "recover the Time Ring" - and I love the line "Be careful not to lose it. That Time Ring is your lifeline.", which sets up its importance very well.). (2) Destroy the Daleks or delay their creation. (3) Recover and destroy the tape recording with information about the future. It's really well-done, and it's kind of amazing that the plot holds together as well as it does, in the face of all these requirements it's juggling.

I like that neither side is portrayed as "good" in this war. The Kaleds are clearly the worst, being responsible for unleashing the Daleks on the world, but then again, that decision is limited to a very few people in their research bunker; most other Kaleds apparently object to these methods. The Thals, on the other hand - traditionally depicted as one of Doctor Who's great pacifistic races, up there with the Dulcians - are here shown to be brutal warmongers whose methods are no better than those of the Kaleds, as they kidnap prisoners and work them to death within a matter of hours. Even sweet little Bettan is a hard-edged military leader, deep down. I also think the longstanding war as a concept is well thought-through, particularly the little details like supplies being so scarce that the soldiers have to augment their high-tech uniforms and weapons with animal skins and primitive fighting tools.

There's another driving force behind the success of the plot, and it's one I've only begun to appreciate very recently, but it's crucial to both the intricacy of the plot and the story's believability. This miracle element, folks, is Davros. This is another surprise, because, me? Generally not a big Davros fan. I guess that's partly because I don't usually have a lot of love for mad scientists, who all too often come across as nothing more than ranting megalomaniacs, and that's kind of what Davros turns into in his future appearances. But here, he's contemplative and cunning. That quiet soft-spoken personality is really creepy, because you can tell that with each measured syllable, Davros is considering all his options, and plotting the course of events five steps beyond anybody else. He's very cautious and observant, being aware of exactly who he can trust, and never telling anyone more than they need to know. This scheming nature of his means that Davros springs a number of surprises on the audience, and his overriding self-interest leads him to make decisions that seem to come out of the blue, but turn out to be brilliant tactical manoeuvres. Despite his apparent rationality, it's also clear that Davros is a bit unhinged, which just makes him that much more unpredictable and dangerous. And unlike many megalomaniacs, Davros definitely does not suffer from the usual sort of tunnel vision; he's willing to adapt his plans to achieve the best possible outcome, and he's willing to think outside the box and accept things that are outside his experience. I think his best moment in the entire story is his decision to give the Thals the secret to destroying the Kaled dome, because with that one action, he essentially eliminates his entire competition: the Kaleds in the city who oppose him are all destroyed, which gives him justification to unleash the Daleks and wipe out all of the Thals in retaliation, and the implication of a spy/mole allows him to ferret out his opponents in the bunker. He also gets one of the big "classic" moments of the episode, in his conversation with the Doctor about the future evolution of the Daleks, which provides very interesting insight into the psyches of both Davros and the Daleks - Davros just doesn't think like most people, and this scene portrays that very well. The moment when he mimes breaking the capsule is superb, because you can see that Davros is mentally living out the scenario, and probably wishes he really did have a virus capsule to crush.

Of course, the best characterization in the world wouldn't mean a thing if Davros were played by a plastic palm tree. Fortunately, the production team had second thoughts about the inflatable foliage and brought in Michael Wisher to play the role instead. And Wisher is... incredible. His voice is absolutely beguiling, and he uses a mixture of pauses, intonation, vowel lengthening and intensity which, now that I think about it, would probably sound ridiculous on, say, a Bond villain... but for this character, it works beautifully, and makes him seem leagues better than practically everyone else in this story because you're hanging on every word that he says. I love the decision to give his voice a Dalek-y edge that becomes really pronounced when Davros breaks out of his soft-spoken mode and starts ranting. And his makeup and design are both top-notch, with the deep-set eye sockets, wrinkled face and black teeth. I particularly love the way Wisher makes Davros look so frail, with his shaky hand, and the way he never grasps a switch in his fingers but flicks them with his palm instead. The only problem is, they really never should have resurrected Davros - played by Wisher, and scripted as wonderfully as he was in this story, he would've made such a fantastic and memorable one-off character, and now I really see that his future appearances greatly diluted his effectiveness. But here, Davros is nothing short of brilliant.

This role of Wisher's may make him one of the best guest actors ever to appear in the series, but the regular cast certainly have nothing to be ashamed about; this is an excellent TARDIS crew, working together like a well-oiled team. Given the tone of the story, there isn't a whole lot of hilarious fourth-Doctor buffoonery, but Baker does get the classic line "Excuse me! Can you help me? I'm a spy." He also gets the other classic speech of the story, as he debates the morality of destroying the Daleks (which is a very nice parallel to Davros' speech, with both of them considering whether they could play God and both coming to very different conclusions), and it's his convincing gurning that really sells the episode 5 cliffhanger. I really like that the Doctor attempts to go through official channels in this story, and only takes matters into his own hands when it becomes obvious that the official channels just aren't going to work. He and Wisher are excellent foils for one another; their scenes together fairly crackle with energy.

It's hard to believe that this is only Harry's fourth story; apparently his experiences in The Sontaran Experiment have given him more confidence, as well as greater respect from the Doctor (shame that doesn't last), because he's extremely capable here. He and the Doctor show great teamwork in getting the gun away from Ravon, they cooperate with one another to great effect for almost the entire duration of the story, he figures out the most likely place for himself and Sarah to reunite with the Doctor, and generally he holds guns on people and knocks people out throughout the story without ever looking nervous or incompetent. I love the fact that Harry may be easygoing, but we really see his backbone here, the way he stands up to the Doctor and refuses to leave his side when they're trying to keep the mine from exploding, and bravely confronts evildoers throughout. He's also very convincing at portraying "my foot is being eaten by a clam", and I'd bet you money that Ian Marter wasn't drawing on any real-life experiences there! ("Well, I was thinking of this time at a seafood buffet when...")

Sladen, meanwhile, gets a very proactive storyline for Sarah, who copes on her own in the wasteland (despite running heedlessly through the minefield, as do the Mutos), counsels the Doctor to destroy the Daleks, and in her shining moment, organizes a very-nearly-successful breakout from the Thal dome, which was an extraordinarily brave thing to do. I love her slightly-irked reaction when Harry shushes her as they walk through the Kaled bunker, and her cry of "No, wait! He's coming! He's coming!" just before the Doctor rounds the bend of the bunker tunnel. Delightfully, both Sarah and Harry get to show their noble natures when Davros threatens them with torture, both insisting that the Doctor should ignore their plight and refuse to tell Davros anything about the Daleks' futures. Very nice! And Sladen is a pro at acting as if Sarah's being painfully tortured. Unfortunately, most of their plotlines are limited to the first three episodes; by the time episode four rolls around, Sarah and Harry are limited to tagging along behind the Doctor and lending him moral/artillery support - but still, it keeps them in the limelight, and it's not as if they're just sitting around in a cell waiting for something to do.

The guest actors are largely very good. I really took a shine to James Garbutt as friendly Kaled scientist Ronson; he's very well-cast, as he alone out of the Kaleds has a sympathetic look about him from the beginning. Of course, this being Genesis of the Daleks, at first you have no idea if he can be trusted, but ultimately he turns out to be a very likeable character. So of course he had to die, but then again, of whom isn't that true in this story? Actually there are some exceptions to that rule, notably my other favorite character, Harriet Philpin's Bettan. Philpin is a great actress with a melodious husky voice, and she looks very authentically Thal. What I particularly loved about her is that Bettan is introduced just as Sarah and Harry appear to have bought the farm, and she gels with the Doctor instantly, sticking by his side and asking all the right questions, and the Doctor treats her as a surrogate companion - so for a while, it looks very much as if Sarah and Harry have been killed midway through the story, and a new companion introduced! It's a brilliant move, and Bettan's appeal makes it very successful. Alas, once she and the Doctor split up, and he recovers Harry and Sarah, Bettan is relegated to much more of a background role, but at least she gets to seize the victory and entomb the Daleks in their bunker. As the other main surviving character, Sevrin - portrayed by Stephen Yardley - is also appealing, and a nice representative for the otherwise-unappealing Mutos (much as Wester singlehandedly redeems the Spiridon race in Planet of the Daleks). He and Sladen have a good rapport, and it's nice to see that he makes it through the end. Peter Miles is certainly very good as Nyder, although in a very unappealing way; Nyder just comes across as manipulative and cold-hearted and a bit sadistic. A very good aide for Davros, but not the sort of man you want to run into in a dark alleyway. Or even a well-lit coffee parlour.

I'm unusually fond of the Daleks here, too. They're very well-used, perhaps because they're not the focus of the story but rather used as a tool up until the very end. Given that this is a rare opportunity to see how they were first created, they're quite compelling. The best part about their storyline is that we bear witness to their evolution from servile (or apparently-servile) machines into reasoning creatures who overthrow and destroy the man who created them. There are a few oddities in their scripting - for one, the Doctor says that they were programmed to wipe out the Thals (and a Dalek too later refers to its programming), which makes them sound like nothing more than destructive mobile computers (War Machines!). And either the director overlooked something, or Davros equipped them early on with the ability to fly (which seems highly unlikely), because otherwise it's hard to see how the Daleks advance past the hallway-full-of-dead-Thals (can they just roll over bodies?) or cross the Wasteland (the terrain seems awfully uneven, although I assume they'd at least be able to detect and avoid the land mines). But, minor niggles aside, they work unusually well here.

Another big factor in this story's success is David Maloney's direction. The whole story looks very assured and slick, and he uses his directing to amp up the tension really effectively, enhancing Nation's already-tense script a great deal. Among his great shots are: the sudden pan back to the newly-appeared Time Lord; the Doctor's first look in the Dalek nursery, where you can see that something is moving in the green light but nothing is revealed; the racking focus from Tom Baker's face to the pair of wires he's holding; and the really awesome shot of Davros' hand flexing in pain as he's exterminated (what a brilliant way to get the audience to imagine how incredibly painful extermination must be). I think the scenes of the rocket escape attempt are among the most edge-of-your-seat stuff ever to appear in Doctor Who, and the freeze-frame ending - although they could have done a better job with the "freeze" - is really classic.

As I've said several times already - and which pretty much every review of this story is duty-bound to discuss - between the plot and the directing, Genesis of the Daleks has a very grim feel. At times, there are shades of The Deadly Assassin, the grim tone of which put me off that story for years, even moreso than the tone of Genesis did. It starts in the very opening moments, when several gas-masked men are cut down in a hail of bullets amid a desolate foggy landscape. There's a nice moment, too, when one of these men loses his helmet - and underneath we see a full head of hair, which makes you realize, this isn't just some faceless enemy, there's a real man in that outfit who's just lost his life. It's a nice touch. The dark tone of the story is maintained largely through the brutality of the Kaled and Thal militaries. Between the Kaleds' questioning of the Doctor and Harry, the Thals' treatment of Sarah, and the scenes of guns a-blazing and torturing machines, our crew never really get a chance to relax or be happy - they're fleeing for their lives from sadistic soldiers practically the entire length of the story. I'm glad that now I can finally step back a bit and appreciate the good points of this story despite its grim militaristic ambience, because it may not make this story fun to watch, but it certainly is vital to maintaining the tension.

Dudley Simpson's incidental music is awesome, as usual. It has a lot of those classic Hinchcliffe-era sounds that make you know you're watching an early Tom Baker story, and some cool touches unique to this story, like the rattling music toward the very beginning. And I love the sound of the Doctor walking over loose rocks - I don't know why, but I just associate that sound with Doctor Who now. As a child, anytime I walked over pebbles or shale, I was instantly transported to an alien landscape. The dripping-water sound of the caves is also very atmospheric. There are some great visual effects, most notably the shots of the Thal dome on fire, then exploding and finally collapsing - it looks brilliant and very realistic. And I'm oddly tickled that the electrocution effect is identical to the effect of the guns on board the Ark.

Minor points:

• I just have to say, that Time Lord? Looks a bit like the Flying Nun.

• I think the initial set-up scene is very well scripted here, the way the Flying Nun manages to pique the Doctor's interest (and the audience's) and makes the threat and danger clear from the very start.

• I've never ever caught this before, but I love the Doctor's line "Whatever I've done for you in the past, I've more than made up for." I suddenly realize now, that was not meant to be a straight line! Ha! Lovely.

• One option the Doctor never does seem to explore is the possibility of altering the Daleks' genetic development. Then again, maybe this is something he would've had to talk Davros into, rather than doing it himself. Since both he and the Kaled scientists try to persuade Davros to do it, and all of them fail, maybe that explains why the Doctor never considers trying to do it himself.

• The time ring is a very cool prop... I love the design of it, particularly the swirly symbol on the top.

• One thing that only occurs to me now is, if this was the first strike in the Time War, how did the Daleks learn about it? Davros certainly could have told them, I suppose, after they resurrected him.

• I wonder why the Doctor doesn't tell Sarah and Harry where they are straightaway? Surely Sarah at least would have wanted to know that they were on the Daleks' home planet!

• Ha. It struck me that, while this anachronism is still effective, these days the Doctor's comparison sounds amusingly old-fashioned rather than the height of modern technology:

  Doctor: "It's like finding the remains of a Stone Age man with a transistor radio."

• Silly Doctor. He warns Sarah and Harry that they have just blundered into the minefield, then what does he do? Promptly steps on the next available mine.

• Funny quote, thanks largely to Tom Baker's delivery:

  Doctor: "If I move my foot, it might detonate it."
  Harry: "Don't move your foot."
  Doctor: "I won't."

• I guess the gas weapons weren't filled with poison gas, given that Harry and Sarah both breathe in a few lungfuls and they both survive. (So what kind of gas was it, then? And why didn't they all grab gas masks off the first corpses they found? I mean, if I were wandering around on an alien battlefield, and all the corpses had on gas masks, I would assume that they were equipped with them for a very good reason!)

• Eewww.

  Nyder: "We'll find out what's different about them... by autopsy."

• Whoopsie! The base of the platform lift wobbles alarmingly as the Doctor and Harry prepare to disembark from it.

• Another nice delivery by Marter:

  Nyder: "Aliens?"
  Harry: "Humans. Well, I am, anyway."

• Interesting that there was apparently no recap at the beginning of part 2... I guess this story was just so packed with plot, they didn't always have time for those little touches!

• Jeremy Chandler delivers this line well enough, but something about his accent makes it funny:

  Gerrill: "All Norms are our enemies!"

• All this fuss about the Mutos being so deformed, but none of them look like anything more than very grubby rag-wearing ordinary humans. (errr, humanoids.) Although they do say that some are worse than others, so maybe we're just meeting the healthiest and most spry ones.

• And if anybody should know, it's him:

  Doctor: "You can't always judge from external appearances."

• Hmm, not exactly sure which character this is, but I think it's Drew Wood as Tane: hilarious delivery, the way he suddenly leans in to spit out the last word. Talk about melodramatic!

  Tane: "The work they're making us do kills."

• If the Thals are going through slaves about every three rounds (how long have they been loading this rocket?!), then wouldn't it make more sense to outfit them with radiation suits too, so they wouldn't have to kidnap so many people? Surely even if they could only use one or two workers a period, it would be less risky than constantly having to go out to snatch Kaleds from the doorstep of their bunker.

• Man alive, that scaffolding looks HARD to climb, particularly when the next bar is above waist-high on Sarah... I don't know how Lis climbed that thing. Talk about convincing, and scary! I hate heights! This scene, particularly the cliffhanger moment when Sarah falls off, is one of the two parts of this story that are among my very earliest Doctor Who memories (the other being from The Android Invasion).

• And my other early-childhood memory of this story is... the giant clam! I don't know why people hate the giant clam(s) so much, I think they're awesome! Every time I see one (which is actually not very often, if you can believe that), I think about it chomping down on someone's foot. Actually, there's a specimen in the middle of a tourist-trap seashell store in Mackinaw City, Michigan - it's kind of their pièce de résistance - and it was really hard to resist sticking my foot into it for a picture. Anyway, as a child, they terrified me.

• But, if the giant man-eating clam is chomping down on Harry's ankle, how does it help to bash the top of its shell with a big rock? Isn't that just going to compact Harry's leg even more? Ouch! The stalactite was a much better idea.

• Nice makeup job on the Doctor and Harry's hands, as they're trying to pry apart the bars in the cavern - they look really grimy and icky!

• The moment when Kavell tries to draw Ronson out about the Doctor and Harry is a great one - because we just don't know who in this story can be trusted, and Kavell certainly doesn't look trustworthy, but then it turns out he is (which we only realize once we see Nyder eavesdropping on their conversation, which he wouldn't have to do if Kavell were going to report Ronson's treachery to him).

• Keep an eye on Davros' nose in the close-up shots. Every once in a while, it seems to remain relatively stationary while the rest of his face moves around it!

• Well, for all its grittiness, Genesis of the Daleks still likes to pretend that you can be knocked unconscious by a blow to any part of your body. Here we have Harry rendering a Thal guard unconscious with a stomach punch, and Nyder knocking Gharman out with the old karate-chop-to-the-back (unusually, not the shoulder this time!).

• So I guess all that talk about distronic toxaemia was just to scare the slaves, because despite having loaded a nearly-fatal dose of explosives inside the rocket, neither Sarah nor Sevrin seems to be suffering in the slightest.

• If the scaffolding can be electrified, why didn't the Thal guards do that to start with? I can accept that maybe they didn't want to lose all their carefully-gathered slave workers, but since (a) they kill all but two of them anyway, and (b) the rocket was practically ready to launch, it doesn't seem like it would've been that great a loss. But maybe they did want at least a couple alive to finish packing the nosecone.

• Hmmmm. The Thals send that rocket awfully high when it only needs to clear the mountain range. If you didn't know better, you'd think they were launching it into space...!

• I love it. For once, it's the Doctor who's convinced that Sarah is dead!

• Great lines:

  Sarah: "Listen, I've been down tunnels before, and I've just had a rather nasty thought."
  Doctor: "Really?"
  Sarah: "Yes. Suppose something's waiting for us in there."
  Doctor: "That is nasty. Better not tell Harry, he's gone first."

• Unless Davros has the Doctor hooked up to a lie detector, one wonders why he doesn't just make up a whole bunch of spurious Dalek defeats. ("On the planet Deleteria, the Daleks were defeated when the Most Ambivalent Lady Kerfuffle drowned them in a vat of extra-spiked zabaglione...") Oh well, at least he's kinda vague. And it does ramp up the tension, since now the Doctor desperately has to recover this information from the future, before it makes the Daleks unbeatable.

• This one doesn't make a lot of sense though; Davros has never been anything but subtle!

  Harry: (re: quashing the rebellion) "Perhaps that'd be too obvious, even for Davros."

• During their confrontation, as the Doctor grabs Davros by the wrist, I love the way that Davros - for all his brilliance and cunning - looks like nothing more than a feeble old man who's no match for the Time Lord. (Except of course that, thanks to his brilliance and cunning, he is!)

• As much as I love the early shot that doesn't reveal the inside of the Dalek nursery, I am glad that we get a chance to take a peek inside later in the story, even if all we really see is one shelf of jars. It is enough to content me.

• When the Doctor prepares to stay behind in the bunker and destroy the Dalek embryos, wouldn't it make more sense to keep Harry and Sarah with him so that they could all Time Ring out immediately thereafter? It wouldn't matter if the bunker were destroyed, because they could still escape. But, again - it does add a lot of tension to the plot (and maybe he didn't want the Daleks getting their plungers on the Ring), so I can overlook it.

• I really like that the Doctor's moral dilemma is taken out of his hands, so that he doesn't have to decide - instead, a Dalek provides the solution by connecting the wires and blowing up the incubation room itself. (But I'm surprised that all that damage only slows them down by 1,000 years - maybe that wasn't the goal that the Time Lords had in mind when they suggested genocide?)

• I love the ending - it's so shocking to see smug Davros lose his cool when he realizes the Daleks have gained independence and turned on him. And the really neat thing is that Davros clearly realizes his mistake, and comes to regret removing their emotions, and nearly destroys them himself - but he's just a bit too slow (why does he hesitate so long when he could just slam his hand down on the button?!) and the Daleks kill him (!!!) before he can kill them (!!!). What a great payoff.

So, again, wow. This story has really won me over. I now find that the length is just right to accommodate the impressively twist-ful plot, and the grim tone, while not making the story enjoyable, makes it compelling. So it's still not a story that I'll pick up when I want a slice of comfort Who, but when I'm looking for an extremely well-made and edge-of-your-seat story, this is one to go to. And given its overwhelming popularity in Who fandom, everyone should see this story at least once.