Season 12 - Tom Baker - Genesis of the Daleks

For Day 4 of our year with the Doctor we decided to check out the 6 part serial from the twelfth season of Doctor who featuring Tom Baker as the Doctor alongside Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan.

Tom Baker is a real fan favourite and he is also one of the longest running Doctors with his time on the show spanning 7 years from 1974 to 1981 and amassing 7 seasons in total. Tom Baker, with his crazy hair, wide eyes and ridiculously long scarf played the Doctor as a heroic, kooky alien with a love of jelly babies and a true compassion for other creatures. From the start of this episode it is easy to see why this often tops polls for the favourite episodes of the era and was a true representation of Tom Baker in the peak of his time in the Tardis.

After years of dominating our TV screens as one of the most terrifying and intelligent of the Doctor’s adversaries, it was finally time to learn the origin of the Daleks and the writers did not disappoint. This is also the first episode to feature Davros, a truly marvellous villain who would inspire many more stories and give children nightmares for years to come.

The Daleks are hateful elitist creatures, who have been born of mutation, encased in metal shells and have been working to destroy every race other than their own ever since their creation.  In our episode the Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry become stranded on Skaro at the command of the Time Lords. They provide the Doctor with a time ring as his only means of escape and insist that he bring about the destruction of the Daleks at the eve of their birth before he can return to his Tardis. 

The Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry find themselves in the middle of a Skaro civil war between the Thals and the Kaleds, two camps of humanoid aliens native to the planet. Just to give a little background the Thals were once a proud warrior race until they were suppressed by a war with the Dals, another tribe of warriors. When the Dals won the war the Thals put down their weapons and became pacifist farmers. 

Shortly before the Doctor arrives on Skaro the Thals are forced to take up arms again against the Kaleds (an evolved form of the Dals) as radiation spreads across Skaro and the Kaleds attempt to wipe out all of the Thals and mutos (another tribe of humanoid aliens who have been mutated by the burning radiation). 

This episode has clear political under tones and parallels with the Nazi dictatorship of the 1940s allowing the episode to explore themes of morality and to touch on much darker elements of humanity such as prejudice and genocide including some pretty horrific scenes involving gas mask wearing corpses, nuclear weapons and mutations due to powerful radiation. This episode sees the Doctor faced with the decision of wiping out the Daleks before they can begin to dominate planets or allowing them to survive, a difficult decision made more difficult by the Doctor’s foreknowledge of the alliances made stronger by the common cause that is destroying the Dalek race. 

The Doctor and his companions get caught in the trenches of a fire fight between Thals and Kaleds they are set upon by a poisonous radioactive gas which puts them all to sleep. The Doctor and Harry are taken prisoner by the Kaleds but Sarah Jane is overlooked and left in the trenches alongside the deceased, Thal and Kaled alike. 

Once in captivity the Doctor and Harry are searched and questioned on their knowledge of the Thal hideout though they have no information on the topic. They are escorted to the laboratory of the Kaled scientists who are investigating evolution, mutation and radiation it is here that the Doctor meets Davros for the first time and lays eyes on the first ever Daleks known at this time as the Mark 3 Travel Machines. 

Davros is a scientist, a Kaled whose work has lead him to look for the final mutation of his race. In his investigation he created many wayward experiments which are housed in the sewers and vent systems of the Kaled base. Davros believes he has finally discovered the answer in his latest mutation, the only thing left to do is remove all semblance of weakness. He believes that compassion, sadness, happiness and love are the weaknesses of his race, eradicating these emotions in the minds of his creatures and sealing them into robotic shells which are capable of protecting the mutants from any harm whilst allowing them to wipe out any inferior species they come across. An incredibly intelligent and extremely evil plan from an incredibly intelligent and extremely evil creator. 

Meanwhile Sarah Jane has been taken prisoner by the Thals along with some mutos she meets on her travels. The Thals have a plan aided by information from Davros to blast a hole in the Kaled base using a rocket tipped with a mass of extremely dangerous radioactive materials. Sarah and the other muto prisoners are forced to load the rocket with the extremely dangerous chemicals causing them all to suffer from radiation poisoning weakening them greatly.

The Doctor and Harry manage to escape the Kaled base by befriending a Kaled scientist named Ronson who disagrees with Davros’ plan. The Doctor convinces Ronson to organise an uprising amongst key personnel within the military organisation. The Doctor and Harry rescue Sarah Jane from the Thals but the Doctor is captured and forced to watch as the Thals blow up the Kaled base using the information that Davros provided to wipe out a large faction of the Kaled people. It is then that the Doctor realises Davros’ plan.

Davros announces that all of the Kaled people have been destroyed to make way for their greater more advanced kin, The Daleks. He instructs the Daleks to make their way to the Thal base and ensure that everyone is destroyed. The Doctor organises the Thals and surviving mutos and leads them to the Kaled base, instructing them to set explosives around the Kaled base to organise the destruction of the Daleks. In the meantime the Doctor and his companions have to go back into the base in order to retrieve the time ring which was taken from the Doctor on his first imprisonment.

However the Doctor and his companions once again find themselves cornered by Davros and his Daleks. Davros interrogates the Doctor while he has Harry and Sarah Jane wired up to torture devices. He wants to know details of every defeat the Daleks ever face so as he can overcome them. The Doctor is forced to tell the truth while Davros tapes his confessions because if he doesn’t Sarah Jane and Harry are tortured. However when Davros leaves to speak to his scientists his prisoners are set free by a group of renegade Kaleds who survived the explosions and are plotting to over through Davros and his Daleks.

The Doctor retrieves his time ring, Davros is overthrown by his own Daleks who have achieved complete independence and dub themselves the supreme race, and the Thals successfully blow up the entrance to the Kaled base with the Daleks trapped inside and the Doctor is content that he has delayed the Daleks by a few thousand years.

This episode is a fantastic example of Doctor Who at its prime, the longer episode lengths allowed the story lines to be complex and intelligent but also full of detail with multiple lines of narrative. The story flowed well was fast paced and didn’t at any point underestimate the intelligence of its viewership. All in all it’s a big old ‘thumbs up’ to the writer Terry Nation and Director David Maloney.

Much as Tom Baker is a favourite Doctor, Sarah Jane is widely appreciated as one of the most iconic assistants and the first assistant whose job specification was more than just screaming and looking beautiful and well-dressed at all times. In this adventure Sarah Jane proves herself as strong, confident and very capable as she attempts to orchestrate an escape amongst the mutos despite being dizzy and exhausted and suffering from severe radiation poisoning. Harry is a regular action man and coupled with the Doctor’s charm and wit, Sarah Jane’s intelligence and Harry’s helps the team become virtually unstoppable.