Running Time: Approx. 64 minutes. Written by: Terry Nation. Directed by: Samuel Clemens. Produced by: Simon Guerrier.
THE PLOT:
The Doctor and his companions are taken out of time and space by the Time Lords. While Sarah and Harry remain frozen in time, neither seeing nor hearing anything, the Doctor is given a mission. If he agrees, he and his friends will be sent to Skaro, to a time just before the Daleks' development, in order to either avert their creation or affect their evolution to make them less aggressive.
After he agrees, the Doctor finds himself in the midst of a brutal, generations-long war between the Daleks' ancestors, the Kaleds, and their enemies, the Thals. The Kaleds are brutal, militaristic fascists whose society has become dominated by their chief scientist, Davros (Terry Molloy). Separated and scattered between the great, domed cities, the time travelers will need all their wits and luck just to survive.
And that's before Davros unveils his greatest achievement - the subject of the Doctor's mission: The Daleks themselves...
CHARACTERS:
The Doctor: Even in the televised Genesis of the Daleks, Baker gave one of his more serious performances. In this version, he's downright subdued. I suspect certain bits of business from television, such as him making an extended show of emptying his pockets or requesting tea from his captors - moments in which the Fourth Doctor's personality broke through the gloom - were developed during rehearsals. Those aren't present in this version and, in their absence, the Doctor seems far more carried by events than actually affecting them.
Sarah/Harry: The same as on television, the best moment Part One gives to Harry is the scene in which he helps the Doctor to avoid setting off a land mine, though the scene here is less vivid than what ended up in the final episode. Sarah Jane gets almost nothing to do and feels almost tacked on, her presence more a requirement of the contemporary series set-up than a proper participant in the story.
Davros: One potential draw of this release might have been hearing Terry Molloy act out some of Davros's iconic moments from Genesis. Unfortunately, this is only the first episode... in which Davros appears only in the final scene and speaks just a couple of lines of dialogue. Molloy plays his sole scene well, but there just isn't room for him to much of anything with it.
THOUGHTS:
Daleks! Genesis of Terror is Big Finish's audio recording of Terry Nation's first submission for what became Genesis of the Daleks. What that amounts to, unfortunately, is just an early draft of Episode One, followed by an outline (read by the cast) of the remaining episodes. Genesis tends to be ranked as one of Doctor Who's very best stories. By contrast, Daleks! Genesis of Terror tends to be ranked among Big Finish's worst releases.
I don't think it's a well-conceived release, coming across more like a padded-out bonus feature than a proper story. Still, I'm not going to be quite as harsh as fan judgment. I enjoyed the one fully-performed episode, and even the outline is enough to recognize that the story itself is solid. The presentation just doesn't make for a very satisfying listen.
This release's Episode One, while similar to the final version, has enough differences to be interesting. There are a few aspects of it that I actually prefer. World-building is even stronger here than in the televised serial. There's a moment in which Kaled troops count their ammunition after a skirmish. Seeing how little they have left, one soldier exclaims, "Davros help us," showing just how much significance the megalomaniacal scientist has attained. Also, Genesis features a narratively pointless sequence in which the Doctor and Harry escaped only to be quickly recaptured. That doesn't exist here, which makes this version a bit tighter and structurally cleaner. I can't help but wonder if it was added to offset an underrun.
Unsurprisingly, most differences clearly favor the final version. This draft opens with the Doctor appearing in a Time Lord's garden before being sent to Skaro; the broadcast version opens on Skaro, with memorable visuals that set the tone from the get-go. This version features two Kaled military officers, a fanatical young soldier named Raven and his cynical, war-weary superior, General Grainer (Peter Bankolé); on television, they were combined into a single character, General Raven. Finally, the captive Doctor emptying his pockets is played entirely straightforwardly here, whereas on television that sequence allowed for a minor moment of comedy, with Tom Baker milking the bit to let his/his Doctor's personality strike a contrast against the rest of the episode's bleakness.
If there were rough drafts of all six episodes, then I would consider this a worthwhile purchase. But once the complete first episode ends, the rest is just a narration of Terry Nation's outline with some music and sound effects overlaid. It quickly becomes clear that the story didn't change in structural terms between outline and broadcast. The only real differences between versions are a few moved cliffhangers, some elements (i. e., Davros's rejected experiments) that are described in generic terms to allow the production team to come up with something workable, and a gender swap for the Thal resistance leader - that last changed to a woman in the televised version, likely after someone realized that Sarah Jane was otherwise the story's only female character.
And... that's about it. Not only is it an outline: It's an outline of the same story, following the same structure, as what was broadcast.
OVERALL:
This really should have been bundled as an extra with The Ark, maybe on a "Fourth Doctor Lost Stories" box set - much like when Big Finish attached The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance to the release of Farewell, Great Macedon. Had that been done, I suspect that instead of being slated, Daleks! Genesis of Terror would have been acclaimed as an excellent "bonus feature."
Even as a full release, I think it's a bit over-hated. Most of the story may be an outline, but it remains an outline of a well-constructed story, albeit one that's so similar to the final broadcast form that I can scarce credit this as a "Lost Story." I'd only recommend it as a purchase if it were to rotate for a month onto the company's sharply discounted "Book Club" - but I'd still rate it as better than Big Finish's worst.
Overall Rating - Episode 1: 6/10.
Overall Rating - Daleks! Genesis of Terror: 3/10.
Alternate Version: Genesis of the Daleks
Previous Televised Story: The Sontaran Experiment
Next Televised Story: Revenge of the Cybermen
4th Doctor Audio Review Index
4th Doctor Television Review Index
Doctor Who: The Lost Stories Review Index
To receive new review updates, follow me:
On BlueSky:
On Threads:
No comments:
Post a Comment