Saturday 8 March 1975
Genesis of the Daleks
Nazi Paraphernalia
Taranium Core,
Episode 9
Sunday 11 October 2026
Taranium Core, Episode 9: Nazi Paraphernalia (Genesis of the Daleks)
Recorded on Sunday 19 July 2026 ·
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Transcript
Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to 500 Year Diary.
The only Doctor Who podcast, which has the strength of 34 thick, reinforced concrete.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Corey.
I'm Peter.
And I'm Simon.
It's the 8th of March, 1975.
It's been just under a year since the Daleks blew up over the planet Excelon and unwittingly brought an end to an entire era of Dalek history.
And tonight, 10.80000 people have tuned in to watch Terry Nation creating the Daleks again.
This will be a moment that will live in history.
It's time to discuss Genesis of the Daleks.
So, we talked last week about how Death to the Daleks was kind of the first opportunity that many people had to own a Doctor Who story at home of their very own.
But obviously the LP version of this was kind of that, wasn't it?
And I have to say that I've listened to it 5 times this week.
Can I just say, I stepped on the TARDA sold to a bleak planet.
Oh, look, that was...
Oh, so much to say about that.
I mean, for me, it was a cassette, not an LP.
I would listen to it almost every night going to bed.
You know, I'd have it on in my bedroom, 30 minutes either side.
So listen to it so much that the tape did actually break.
And I spent a lot of pocket money buying a 2nd one.
So special.
I mean, that whole edit, the fact that even though obviously cutting a 2.5 odd hours down to 60 minutes is, you know, there are some brutal choices and choices you can make because there's audio that you can, you know, move around.
But it actually taught me so much to edit that later in the day, you know, in the 80s, I was making my own condensed versions when, you know, when VHS tape, still very expensive.
You know, I created a 90 minute audio cassette version of the side of Urians, a 90 minute version of the 2 doctors, for instance, that sort of thing, by pausing and playing.
This is from a videotape.
But yeah, it's so brilliant, but it also taught me so much about language and how actors speak and the rhythm of lines and the fact that almost every line in this story is delivered by almost every actor so perfectly, it just lends itself to being on audio.
I think this audio, we probably all had the same experience, I think. really contributes to this story's immortality.
The fact that we knew the soundtrack so well.
We knew all of those lines so well.
And isn't it strange that we in Australia had the same common experience with the LP version of Genesis as people in Britain did when we were seeing the genuine article on television every year.
That's extraordinary, isn't it?
This actually makes me very sad because I had it on LP.
And when I came out, I divested myself of much of my Doctor Who collection, because I was now homosexual, so I didn't need that anymore.
I'm not entirely sure the 2 things are not...
I really had a long journey.
I've made my way back to myself, but I sold it and it's sort of heartbreaking that I sold it as part of unloading a lot of my collection, but prior to that moment, that record was played incessantly.
And I mean, I agree with you, Simon.
There's something about listening to, you know, sometimes Terry's dialogue is a little bit wooden, a little bit flat, but all of those actors really elevate every word that they're given in that story.
And as a theatre director, like with most Doctor Who, you really learn the importance of vocal technique and command of language and how to milk everything out of the words that you're given.
And yeah, I think the LP really brought that to the surface for me.
So yeah, I'm with you on that.
Just to expand on that too, Corey, and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts about this as a theatre director, is that the way that a lot of these lines are delivered in Genesis and in a lot of a lot of this era, in fact, the thing about how they're elevated for me is not just what's said, but the pauses so often when words are emphasised and then there's a pause and then the next sentence.
Too often in regular television, particularly regular television, this era, every line follows the next so fast.
It's like they're just eager to get it out so they can all go home.
You get a sense that they're almost treating this dialogue as if it's Shakespearean.
Can I just say, Simon?
Midnight, general. pause.
The order specifies midnight.
Absolutely.
And not to mention the Uber famous.
Thank you.
Long pause.
That's what I wanted to know.
The rhythm of that, you know, the fact that we could recite it perfectly, precisely to rhythm.
I mean, that's that LP version and a wasted childhood.
I was watching it last night, actually, and it struck me as being Shakespearean.
And so many of these actors worked on the stage as well.
So they bring that to the work.
And sure, it's a little BBC science fiction program going out on a Saturday night, but they all treat it so deadly seriously.
And they recognise the world that's being created in this story and the stakes that are being played.
And they bring that to every line and absolutely, a pause can be just as powerful as the words that are being spoken, if not more powerful.
And certainly with characters like Nider, for example, I mean, he doesn't have to work for his power.
He just has it.
And so he can absolutely say things like midnight, the order specifies midnight in such a way that there's no doubting his authority.
There's no doubting that if you do not meet what he's asking of you, you will come to a sorry end.
He doesn't break a sweat.
There's no beads of sweat on that man at all.
And that's what makes that character so delicious.
So I agree with you.
There's something Shakespearean about it as well.
Absolutely.
There's something about a meeting of the moment in Doctor Who.
And I think you couldn't get away with such portentous dialogue delivered so dramatically in a story like the Sontarian experiment or Revenge of the Side member, because this is Genesis of the Daleks.
And it is the story of these revisiting the beginning of the Daleks and their origins and the fact that it's become such a famous story amongst Doctor Who fans and viewers because it's so good.
It's like the case of Andrazani.
You can get away with a lot more because the stakes are very high.
And I think there's just something so suitable about that.
If we're going to use the example of Peter Miles, I think Nider is very important to this story.
He proves my thesis, I think, that every great Doctor Who villain also has a great henchman.
So you will see Magnus Greel and Lee Sen Chang or Tobias Vaughan and Paka.
And Neither is the purest example of that.
Davros, who I'm sure we will talk about, is a fantastic Doctor Who villain.
Nider, in his own right, is a fantastic doctor in villa.
I was going to say, I think, and in some respects, you'd say this about Lisa and Chang and Magnus Grill as well, is that they're not villain and henchmen, they're co-villains.
Yes.
Neither is 100%. collector me.
Exactly.
They are elevated, thanks to the dialogue, but thanks to Peter Miles, Nyder is elevated to one of the greatest characters in Doctor Who history, as a villainous characters, for me, level with Harrison Chase.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
And the scenes where he's actually plays different tempos.
So he's not just being commanding Nider, but he's sort of, he's fooling Garman into giving him the names of the other scientists.
He plays so many levels within that character.
Tom Baker on the behind the sofa, says in an affectionate way that Peter Malis has been dining out on that character ever since.
He's since passed away in the last few years, but he should.
Like, he contributed so much to this story and Doctor Who.
And in fact, Simon, remember, you and I have personal experience of Peace Miles.
I interviewed him in 1995 and he was absolutely lovely.
Lovely old queen.
He used to do kind of, you know, jazz recitals and we went along and saw one or 2 of them.
And he had this tick, which was so charming, where I was like his new confidante for the months after I met him.
And so he would occasionally phone up to where we were living because, you know, home phones back then, not mobiles, and he would ask to speak to me and Simon would say, yes, can I say who's calling?
And he would say, oh, just tell him it's his new friend for 1995.
Did he show you did he show you his Nazi paraphernalia that because he wears some of that?
As seen on screen?
seen on screen.
Yeah, briefly seen on screen, we might have.
At some point, David Maloney was like, darling, perhaps not for this story.
That marvellous scene with the Dr. Sarah and Harry, where they're getting the tape back from the safe, and he carries that scene, he is on a par with Tom Bacon.
Oh, he's so wonderful.
I cannot sing his praises enough.
It's just the way like it's like, you know, uh, you know, uh, Davos could never rise from his chair, correct?
And just the way he goes, well.
It's lovely, but it's so perfect.
It's just a line of dialogue, but it's not just a line of dialogue.
It's so brilliant.
I mean, another brilliant moment from Peter Miles is when he talks about mutos being discarded relics. of ourselves.
I mean, it's just...
Your views are not important.
He does it with such a lightness of touch, and yet the gravity of what he's describing, what it means to the story in general, and the history of this world that Terran Nation's built up in this story.
It's not lost at all, and yet he doesn't work that dialogue.
He just kind of gently rolls it out.
And it's spine chilling, really.
It really gets under your skin.
You compared this to Caves of Andrazani, Peter.
And I think it does have a lot in common with it in that most of what's going on is political rather than just action.
And it's not something that I think Terry has really done that much of before in Doctor Who.
There's hints of it, I think, in early Daleks, masterplan, maybe...
Yeah, maybe, maybe, like in the last couple of episodes of Keys of Marathon.
But this very, very clear science fiction world, a little bit like Andrazani major in Andrazani minor.
You know, like there's this place that we have a real sense of, and we have different political groups that have things that they want that are different, and, and, you know, we start with the thals versus the Khalids and the Khalid government and stuff like that.
And then the college government obviously disappears from the 2nd half of the story for the obvious reason that they've all been blowed up.
And then we have the rebels or the resistance within the bunker.
Led by Space Betan.
I've always known her to her appearance in Bleak 7th of Devonshire.
You like her?
But like all of that stuff is so unlike Terry, do we think that it's Bob Holmes?
No, I don't think it's unlike Terry.
I just don't think it's something that he visits very often.
If we cast our minds forward to the 1st episode of Blake 7, the way back, we see a very similar society and political kind of dynamic at work.
Yeah, I think it's more to do with how he thinks he should write a Doctor Who story.
And I suspect in conversations leading up to the writing of this, or how are we going to do this, what's going to happen?
That's when perhaps he's given permission to explore that more, they discuss, yes, let's talk.
How are the Daleks, what is the circumstances around their creation?
And that's, I think, how we get to that point.
You see a lot of season one, Blake 7 in this story.
As I was watching it last night, I thought this, this is clearly what he had in mind for Blake 7 and maybe Hinchcliffe and Holmes were like, no, no, no, we're changing how we tell our Doctor Who stories.
You have permission to take this further.
Don't be afraid to take this further.
Whereas you get the sense that lets and dicks were always just slightly erring on the side of caution and we know that Lets has been quite vocal about I wouldn't have made those choices where I still producing Doctor Who, you know, certain things that were played out in the Hinchcliffe era.
He didn't think they were appropriate for Doctor Who.
But yes, certainly with the new team coming in, running the show, it feels like Terry Nation being given permission to really push the story forward into something that's, yeah, the precursor for Blake 7 for sure.
One of the reasons I think one of the reasons it's different and one of the reasons why I love it so much, easy because the Daleks are actually secondary.
They're not actually the most interesting thing about it.
It's the creation of the Daleks.
It's the world around that.
It's the same reason I like power of the Daleks so much is because the Daleks are not there from the get go being boring talking to each other.
They're reduced in presence.
And I seem to recall that that was one of the ambitions of doing this story the way they did it and about the subject that they did it so that whilst it was a Dalek story, the Daleks weren't going to be in it too much.
Am I right there?
Is that...
I mean, that was actually the brief that was given to Therio, the death to the Daleks, was to move the Daleks into the background, but I think it makes logical sense because you don't want to focus on the Daleks as characters.
You want to focus on how they became the Daleks.
I've always been on the fence about the Daleks.
I have to be brutally honest.
I've never really signed up to Dalek mania, so to speak.
And I'm with you, Simon.
My 2 favourite Dalek stories are this and power of the Daleks for that very same reason.
It's because they're actually not foregrounded, and they become much more interesting when they're a threat in the background rather than the main villain, as it were.
So I think that's why this story is really a favourite of mine for sure.
I mean, I think, you know, the combination of Bob Holmes and Terry Nation, both of whom, you know, have a tendency towards writing much bleaker and nastier Doctor Who than perhaps other writers.
Like I just think that that actually works incredibly well here.
Just watching this again reminded me of how great, I think, season 12 is, because I think it is really great and in its entirety, like all the way from robot to revenge of the cyberman.
It's incredible.
It's doing kind of what Daleks masterplan sort of wanted to do.
Maybe, maybe.
This is the 2nd story in a row that doesn't have the TARDIS in it, despite what the LP says.
That's the only time that...
I stepped from the time ring onto it.
I materialise.
And so this is bleaker and nastier than, I think, I want Doctor Who to be sort of generally.
And in our 1st flight through entirety, through season 12, there was a lot of talk about just the number of the sheer number of dead bodies that Sarah has to clamber over.
They have been at war for 1000 years, isn't they?
Oh, look, I see, it's funny because, I mean, for me, as I said last week, you know, and I've said before, Planet of the Spiders was my 1st introduction, episode two, to be precise, and I'm hooked from there.
So I see this very early in my Doctor Who live.
It is unquestionable that I'm a Doctor Who fan because of how all the stories from then, for as long as the repeat run went and I don't have the data on me at the moment, but it went right up to where it went up to.
But my god.
It would have been talons or invasion of time. something like that.
But the point being that I just had story after story after story.
Some are bleaker than others, but most of them are bleak.
The stakes are high, but not in a stupid way.
People die.
Yet, you know, there's still love and affection amongst the TARDIS team.
I just think it's not too bleak for Doctor Who this is.
That's right. can't overstate this. not threads.
It's exactly.
It's hardly threads.
It didn't mortally damage me as a seven-year-old, which I wasn't the time watching it. strong moral case, which is presented, which is presented in this story, particularly, but in all the stories.
It's always made me think the doctor is always at its best when it's trying to do what it does in this period and Genesis is one of the many pinnacles that you get in this in this era.
That's right.
And let me pick up Nathan on something that you said.
I was glad to hear you kind of talk about Robert Holmes interrogation in conjunction with each other because you've identified before that people don't want to give the success of horror of Fang Rock to Graham Williams because it's very good and because it feels like the previous era.
They want to take that away from him and say that he was somehow not responsible for that and it must have been homes or a leftover of Hinchcliffe or something.
People want to do the same thing with Terry Nation.
They don't want to give him the success of this story.
They want to say, oh, it must be because Robert Holmes rewrote it rubbish.
It must be because the Hinchcliffe home sensibility overrode whatever Terry brought to the table.
Nonsense.
This is absolutely unvarnished, distilled terry nation.
This is always what he has set out to do.
But he has the benefit of a sympathetic and simpatico production team delivering it for him.
I want to kind of say, maybe it's a yes and or maybe it's a yes, but I'm not for a moment suggesting that, you know, half of it's rewritten by Robert Holmes, although we do know that he was sometimes heavy-handed with the rewrites of some of his stories.
He was not in this case though.
Okay.
But everyone's not working in silos.
And that includes the director that includes the actors.
The tone is generated from the top.
Philip Hinchcliffe, Robert Holmes, set the tone of what they're doing in the conversations they have with Terry Nation during the script.
You know, they don't just say, oh, go off and write us a 6 part Dalek story.
It'll be about the creation of the Daleks.
Bye, send us the script in 2 months.
So this one's going to feel like.
This is what's going to be like.
There's discussions, there are scene breakdowns that are sent through, all that happens.
There is nudging.
There are suggestions.
And as I said last week, Terry was a professional writer.
He wasn't precious about, oh, I cutthrowout my idea from that page.
I'll go and have a nervous breakdown.
He'd say, yes, that's a great idea.
Let's do that.
All of those suggestions, he'd feed in.
Yes, they were probably on the same page on the overall tone, which he wasn't necessarily getting, perhaps from Marielets, maybe not getting quite so much from verity or others.
And so it's that, and that from the top, that extends to the production.
It extends to the hiring of David Maloney.
It extends to the briefing of David Melanie.
It extends then to what David Maloney is doing in the rehearsal room.
And the casting of Peter Mars, and how you deal with the actors and how the actors then respond to each other.
That this is not some great big joke that we're all just going to have fun and do a recording of that starts from the top.
And that, I think, is why you get a story like Genesis, and I think why people say that something like Horror of Fang, like, oh, you know, it's horror of Fang Rock is like, oh, leftover, Hinchcliffe and blah, blah, I can't possibly Graham Williams, is because Graham Williams is a different style of producer, taking the show in a slightly different direction, that has not yet kicked in properly.
People are still responding to the the Paddy Russell's, the director of that.
People are still responding to how they they're used to making Doctor Who and what Doctor Who is.
And only then does it start to change and you can see that flow gradually take place throughout the rest of season 15.
But the time it gets Genesis and Daleks, in the middle of the recording block of season 12, the tone of Holmes and Hinchcliffe is well and truly established and that's what Terry's feeding off.
And of course, we have in this case, the Terry Nation draft of episode one to compare it.
It's called Dalek's Genesis of Terror, and it has been adapted by Big Finish. because it is very similar to the episode one that we get on screen.
There's cosmetic differences to it, and Robert Holmes has come in and he's tickled up the dialogue here and there, as Philip Pinchcliffe puts it, which is what he did with everybody.
It's what Chris Boucher does with Terry Nation on Blake 7.
But the basics are Terry.
It is his story.
He is just working in conjunction with what the script editor and the producer want.
I think a good producer and script editor team set out the parameters for which their writers need to deliver their script.
This is what we're doing with this season.
This is the tone that we're working towards.
But then they need to let those writers do what they do best, which is right.
As long as they've got the framework and they know which direction this season is going, aesthetically, tonally, what are we doing with our TARDIS team?
What do we need to consider from the previous story and the story that's going to come after it, which was particularly important with this season with the TARDIS, not in the picture after in space?
And then they empower those writers to do what they do best, which is an Terry Nations case, you know, do what he does best.
I agree with you.
I think you can absolutely pick the moments where Robert Holmes is sort of elevated dialogue.
I think there's also moments, and Tom, we know Tom, this was Tom's MO in rehearsal of Tom Baker, and possibly Ian Mata, finding moments in rehearsal where fantastic little quips and lines were added in in rehearsal.
I had a moment of revelation last night.
Did you have a moment of remembrance as well?
That too, I think.
You know, in our Messenger chat when I quoted no tea, Harry.
And then later in the story, they're in the holding song.
There is a kerfuffle outside and Harry says, perhaps it's the tea.
For the 1st time in my life, I heard that line.
And, you know, moments like that, I think, in such a dark story, to have little moments of levity like that, I think are just sort of little nuggets of gold.
I think that's probably come from the actors, I think.
I can't seriously credit terrienation with something like that.
But certainly I agree with you, the producer and the script debtor should empower the writer.
And it's interesting what you say, Corey, about basically the production team giving the writer the scope to do what he does best because Terry is doing what he does best here.
This is his checklist of kind of war and societal collapse and stark moral arguments, and it's like everything's been turned up to 200%.
It's the most perfect iteration of all of the things that he brings to Doc 2 and all of the things that we've come to know is his tropes.
And by default Doctor Who's tropes.
See, I don't think this is very homesy, despite the politics of it.
The comedy is lacking.
Exactly right, because Bob Holmes puts comedy and locates it in the guest stars and sometimes in the villains.
Nyder would have been a camper, funnier character. he's not a camp character at all.
I think that's a misreading of what he does, I think.
It's one of the things he does Uh, maybe.
I think there's...
I mean, what are the other Hinchley Vera stories?
Not stuffed Holmes writes for Black 7 or then for the Williams era and beyond.
Things like David Dacre's character in The Time Warrior, for instance.
Condo in Brain of Morbius is very funny in places.
Yeah, I don't...
Those two...
Yeah, maybe, okay.
Okay, but not anyway.
And, you know, like, obviously later, Paul Seed, the absolute goat of Bob Holmesville, and, you know, just absolutely hilarious without actually realising it and possibly without Paul Seed, even realising how funny he is.
And there's none of that here.
Like all of the comedy.
I think, Corey, you've correctly identified is happening among our regulars, you know, where they're making the lighthearted remarks to one another.
But no one, I think, in the guest cast is funny, really, in any way at all.
I mean, I suppose maybe what I'm talking about, is it's when Arch Spillen becomes funny.
I mean, there are certain sort of certain likenesses to Harrison Chase where the arch becomes camp and we've got the arch that becomes sort of camp sometimes with Peter Miles, as Nider, but he doesn't have the high camp of some of the others.
They're not allowed to go that far, I think.
Well, it's funny to ask, do you know what I mean?
Because we've heard it over and over again because we can repeat it and because it is so theatrical and artificial.
But in the actual thing itself, there aren't many laughs here, really, at all.
And that's not Bob Holmes's MO.
And it goes back to what we were saying about this being a high stakes important story.
It's like the caves around Desani.
There's nothing funny about what's happening to any of the characters in this story.
It's a desperate situation.
And also, you know, it's Terry Nation, his great gift is turning those kind of bleak preoccupations that he has, which are sympatico with homes in Hinchcliffe, into clean storytelling and adventure storytelling.
And so this has the structure and the antics of a Doctor Who story while at the same time being something elevated.
So, for instance, I think there might have been a couple of times when this was on where I didn't see episode one, whenever I see episode one, it's kind of like I'm not quite...
No, no, it wouldn't have been out of time. no one would do that.
What sort of monster do you think I am?
So you didn't know that now was where we could begin.
I certainly remember seeing it for the 1st time and not having seen it the 1st time through.
I may have missed it the 1st time through.
And there is that that really great.
I think it's a pretty great action sequence and we forget that that's something that Terry Nation does really well.
And it is where the doctor and Harry Escape.
That wonderful moment where you think they've got away with it and then Nyda just says, Ravon Down, which is so good.
And then they actually make their way up to the surface and then they're surrounded by people with guns and they have to go back down.
And all of that is kind of time wasting, except that we're here for action sequences as well.
It doesn't technically feel like capture escape either.
It's sort of deepening the desperation of the situation.
They can't get away.
And that's what I said before about these sorts of things.
It's padding only if it feels like padding.
Yes.
I mean, that's all missing from the LP for obvious reasons because it doesn't advance the overall plot, but it does advance the threats level and the fact that in some respects, it tells the car-eds that the doctor and Harry are something else.
They're not mutos and they're not fun.
And that's how you get neither involved.
We'll find out what's different about them by autopsy.
But that's what sends them to the bunker.
So there is a story progression there.
But it's how you plot out of 6 parts.
Exactly.
You don't just shoot your load the 1st episode and then just walk around for the next 4 episodes and then come back then.
There is a sense of, okay, if it's going to be 6 episodes, how do we pace out the story so that it doesn't get dull?
And it never gets done.
No, this Harry Nation by 1975 was someone who had almost unique experience of structuring a Doctor Who story.
Yes, but can I also add, for me, what episode once feels so much like is a heartwool episode.
And I don't mean that, that it's incredibly slow and Hartnell 1st episode, where it takes forever and that you only meet people at the end.
But there is something about the logic.
There is a, there are long sequences with just the TARDIS crew, while they're getting through the, the, the wasteland with the mind and the artillery raid and all that sort of thing where they're almost a shot for shot replica of what you see Wendy Padbury doing in Wargames. directed by David Maloney.
Exactly.
Even the rhythm of the shells.
Boom, boom, boom.
It's even the same as war games.
Well, I mean, the thing about War Games is that the doctor's shtick doesn't work in War Games, episode one.
I'm a desperate high station.
Yeah, yeah, that's right, because we're in a real war because we're in the 1st World War, which was a real thing that actually happened.
We're not.
But it's a real thing that actually happened and that the doctor can't fix because he's just a fictional character.
So he can't cope.
The doctor Shtick doesn't really work here.
He still gets to say funny lines.
He still gets to score points off people, but he can't talk his way out of things here.
And so like that episode one thing absolutely makes that clear.
His usual stuff is not going to work here because there's just too many people with guns around.
And I think you see that importantly in that early scene where the doctor gives one of his scripts.
Yes, you look the type and get struck.
Yeah, yeah.
Which doesn't usually happen to the doctor.
You also find in those scenes Terry's absolute gift for concise and expeditious dialogue, that wonderful moment where the doctor turned around and says, Khaled's, K-A-L-EDS.
Why, that's an anagram.
How interesting.
Yes.
Which teaches everything you need in 2 lines.
And again, it comes back. those beautiful pauses.
He doesn't have to say the words.
It just we all know what he's thinking.
It's just a brilliant line and a brilliant performance of that line.
Are we able to change direction and talk about how bloody brilliant in Mata is in this story?
I think this is Ian Marta's best story.
In watching it last night, I was reflecting on how much of a buffoon, Harry is turned into in revenge of the cyberben, and that might be Jerry Davis sort of not being fully across the character and the potential of that TARDIS team.
But because Sarah is removed so early in the story, we are given Tom and Ian for much of this story.
And of course, you know, Tom commands your attention whenever he's in front of that camera.
However, I would argue that Ian Mater, by doing very little, does a lot in this story.
He doesn't have a lot of dialogue, but every time he speaks, the line is full of thought and intention and integrity and clarity, and even when he's sharing the screen with Elizabeth Splayden as well.
So if we think forward in the story to where we get the famous, do I have that right speech, where he's about to blow up the Daleks.
And it's really, it's foregrounding Tom and Liz in that scene.
At Liz gets all the dialogue.
And in just is in the background, but he's never not present and serving the moment.
And I think it's a sign of what a brilliant actor, Ian Marta, really is.
And he doesn't have much to work with.
I mean, what do we know about him?
He's a naval officer and a doctor.
He's only qualified to work on, say.
And that sort of bit, really.
And yet he's able to sort of fill out that character and bring what we know about him to every moment in this story.
And if you can share the screen with Tom Baker, have very few lines and still absolutely command your attention.
Then I think you're a damn good actor.
And I just love his performance in this story.
Love it.
He's just so loveable.
Yeah, I think Ian Marta and Harry Sullivan, you know, combined, they, and you know, maybe it's just because these are the 1st episodes I ever saw.
But the 2 companions model, where yes, there is a more senior companion and a more junior companion from the point of view of, you know, leading actors, co-leads, et cetera.
I've always felt has been the perfect combination when you have multi-episode stories like this.
There's space for the 2nd companion sometimes.
Interestingly, I think maybe, yes, I think this is Ian Marr's best story, possibly Tear of the Zygons, I think maybe he's equally strong in that.
Although it's not actually, as you kind of, is implied there, because Harry doesn't necessarily have much to do in this, even though he is very important because he's an important sidekick for the doctor in so much of that 1st half.
The character of Harry has so much more to do in revenge in Ark and Space in Terror of the Zygons, even though you're right, he's made to be a bit of a buffoon in revenge, he has a lot more agency in those stories than perhaps he does in this.
And it's what we're talking about with Genesis.
The stakes are raised.
It's an important story.
And so Harry can't be a buffer.
Exactly.
It's more sober as character.
He's a soldier.
But also, the doctor treats him like a fool in revenge of the cybermen.
There's often Harry Sullivan's an idiot, yes.
Yeah, and there's that moment where the doctor gets his arm trapped in the sliding door.
I think it's in episode one of revenge inside.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
He pulls out of his... the dirtiest look, yeah.
And he goes, what have I done now?
And it's like, why is that happening?
Why is that moment happening?
But in Genesis?
There's such a strong bond between them, I think.
And look, you know, even Clamgate, where he gets his leg report in the giant clan.
I mean, he's both of them actually, they both bring it to that scene.
There's not a moment where they're not absolutely 100% behind getting Harry's leg out of that giant clam.
At the moment, I think, that really crystallises the dynamic between the doctor and Harry is when Harry holds the landmine steady for the doctor to get his foot off and you just have that lovely moment where the situation's been rescued and Harry's done well.
Tom's looking ahead and he just gives him a side to his glance and smiles and says, thank you, Harry, and keeps smiling.
It's beautiful.
It's just so great.
In watching that, I thought to myself, even a doctor doesn't argue with his doctor.
You know, when Harry says, don't you argue, doctor.
Again, he's not working that dialogue, but it is deadly, deadly serious, but in that, there's, he's, I think, I don't know what the doctor says.
He says, I can feel it moving under my foot or something like that.
Now he says, don't move your foot.
It's just...
Doctor, it hurts when I do this.
Well then don't move it.
Yeah, they're just wonderful together.
All 3 of them are wonderful together.
They're my 2nd favourite Tartist team after the Dr. Jamie and Zoe.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think I think this might be my classic era, favourite group.
I think he has some real steel at the end as well, where he is given the chance, you know, where they're sort of locked up in the bunker and staff at the end.
And there's that wonderful line as well in that scene that we mentioned before, where they're getting the tape out of the out of the safe.
And he says, come on, Nider, you can do better than that, which I just...
And that's a good use of that 2nd companion.
That's just throw in those sorts of lines and, you know, Ian Martin doesn't disappoint.
He doesn't go, oh, I'm only here to say this.
You know, he's completely in every scene he's in.
But he's also used because he is a young man.
He's used his muscle in the story occasionally.
He's overpowering guards and kind of charging down the corridor and, you know, looks quite good, I would say, in that kind of that, um, that car.
But also little things like an amazing.
He is a military man where the doctor's in the incubation room doing it.
He's wiring up the charges at the like the detonator at the other end. you know, focus kind of, I know what I'm doing here, kind of thing.
It's just lovely touches like that.
And he's never an overbearing character.
He might be sort of buffoonishly paternalistic towards Sarah, but there's never a sense that he's ordering her around or trying to assume kind of a paternal role across her.
Well, she wouldn't let him order around.
Well, exactly. that goes to the crocsesera scenes, but he never tries it.
Like, he's not a character who's trying to like keep her in the background or treat her like a feeble woman.
It's all played for laughs.
I mean, sort of later on where he has to try and remember to avoid calling her old thing or whatever, you know, like when she says no, he just go, oh, okay.
You know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. spit in his eye.
But also that lovely bit of physical comedy where they're looking at the map of the 2 domes and he sort of, he's talking to Guy Sina's character and he just sort of knocks the gun out of Guy Sina's hand and Harry just like, he catches it, but he didn't know it was coming and he just has to very quickly think on his finger, I have to do something with this and become, you know, the guy with the gun.
Military training.
He knows how to handle a gun.
Yeah, exactly.
That was a useful use of rehearsal time.
Yeah, yeah.
The Harry's, the surprise.
Oh my god, you've thrown me down.
Oh my god, I have to cover the other guy who's now on the phone.
You know.
And that marvellous bit where the doctor is wrongfooted by having the time ring taken from him and he says to Harry, it's vital.
And Harry says, yes, I know it's vital, but we don't want them to know.
Yeah, it's really good.
Sing his praises all day long.
Yes, yeah.
And look, you know, you know, this has been said a 1000000 times before, but it is it is such a tragedy that Hinchcliffe removed in Martyr from the series when he did, because I think the character was only just about to reach its full potential with that Tartar team.
And yeah, we lose a great character at the end of Terror of the Zygons.
And to his credit, Hinchcliffe has always said that that was a mistake that he made, he should have kept Ian Marta.
Yeah, it's a wonderful thing, yeah.
I mean, I do think there is something a little sad and lonely about just the doctor and the one other person that he knows and ever gets to talk to travelling together.
I always feel a bit sad about that and towards the end of the classic series where that's all we do.
I kind of just kind of think, you know, why don't Colin and Nicola have no friends?
It's very upsetting.
Why would you want to be around them?
They're always at each other.
I quite like being around them The entire production that is brought to Genesis is on another level.
This story is probably the most repeated Doctor Who story on British mainstream television.
So I'm not talking about sort of satellite repeats from the 90s or something, but repeat it on BBC One and BBC 2.
It was repeated often and way into the future after it was originally broadcast, and that's because it is such a strong production.
It's not a production that invites general public laughter at Doctor Who.
It is solid and elevated and well mounted in virtually every aspect.
You can quibble about something like the clams.
Obviously, we can laugh about that, but that would be like judging the aforementioned caves around Desani on the magma beast.
I actually like the clams.
I mean, I cancer.
The magnet miss is a far greater crime in 1984 claims are in 1978.
I would agree.
But it's a tiny blip in an otherwise exceptionally strong production.
And in fact, Terry Nation knew that because he talked in interviews afterwards where he said they found production values that they hadn't had in ages, which I took from him to mean that it was the best production since his 1st production, the Dalek.
If he's only watching his own stuff, right?
Which is fair enough, it is light years beyond what we've seen in Death to the Daleks and Planet of the Daleks.
And he's absolutely right, that there is a definite uptick in production value when you hit the Hingescliffe years, for whatever reason that is, screwing money out of the right places, scoring people to do better.
I don't know But there is that absolute uptick when you hit Ark in space.
But also what we pointed out before Simon is that everything sits in the hands of the director and Hinchcliffe with a couple of lamentable exceptions, or perhaps just one, got brilliant directors on board.
And so if you get a great director, you get a great production.
Look at David Maloney's productions before the Hitchcliff era, Planet of the Daleks, the Crotons, the War Games, which is actually very good.
But then look at the standard that he achieves working in conjunction with Hinchcliffe, Genesis, Planet of Evil, Deadly Assassin, Talents of Wayne Chiang.
Everything is elevated because you've got this great director in charge.
Just in terms of why this story looks so good, the production values are so high.
It's actually devoid of monsters though, really.
I mean, I think the clam is it, really.
Everything else that exists in the world that's been created in this story is incredibly easy to realise, I think, within the constraints of a BBC television drama.
They're not having to create a giant rat.
They're not having to do, you know, lots of CSO or there's no model spaceships.
So everything is completely credible.
Of course, it absolutely belongs in the world of the story, but it's not taxing the production from a special effects perspective in the way that other stories may do.
So therefore, what they are required to do.
They can do extremely well.
That's why I think it looks so great.
In fact, I think it's really telling that the thing that we've said before that we always wanted to see, which was the Dalek mutant, whatever lives inside the Dalek, and that was always, you know, like a hugely exciting moment where you get to see that happen.
All we get is that reaction shot where we're inside the incubation room looking at them looking into the room, and all that there is is the green light, and then again, just the incredible sounds coming from that room.
But we don't actually see it.
And in the novelisation.
I think the thing that attacks Tom at the end of part 5 is like a shifting pool of some kind of nutrient rather than an actual mutant.
I think might be in the script.
Right.
Because all it is is that sort of snot scarf thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Again, fairly cheap to realise.
Yeah, I think that's very well realised.
Yeah, because it's just this gunk, which he's clutching to him.
And when Sarah and Harry are pulling it off and it looks like it's attached and some hot.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And they're pulling bits off it too.
Like, it's this living thing that they're tearing to pieces.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Where I watch the story last night. at a friend's place, there were 2 young boys there, a nine-year-old and 11-year-old, and they walked in and out of the room often, but they were in the room at the moment.
The doctor comes out of the incubation room with this sort of part of the dalek around his neck.
And, you know, those boys, that age, they are your toughest critics.
And they were completely terrified and disgusted by what they saw.
They absolutely loved it.
So, you know, 1975, you can still bring it.
Absolutely, to this generation of young Doctor Who fans.
It's interesting what you said, Corey, about the effects because this story is very light on special effects.
Absolutely.
There's only a tiny bit of model work.
A lot of it's kind of done practically like the, you know, the Dalek sort of moving above the trench that Spacebatan and her cohorts are in.
It's all sort of done on screen.
There's no chroma key that I can think of.
No, there's a lovely cyclorama with lots of lovely lights.
I really like that Cyclorama with a different coloured gel.
I think it looks fantastic and with the Daleks being so dark and so glossy, you know, like they're very dark gray, they're very glossier and then they are across that background and never for a 2nd does it seem like anything other than a BBC studio, but I literally don't care.
I think it looks amazing.
Just on the Daleks, and I did mention last week with Death of the Daleks, the problem is, okay, they're on location.
They're in like a sand pit and it's going to be hard, but the Daleks are in good shape this story.
They are well put together.
Everything glides as you want it to.
And I think that image of the Daleks from that is what they're the Daleks to me because that's the story that was on so often.
And also, they're not taken out on location. not to look that great on location in studio.
You can shoot them properly.
Yeah.
There is one thing.
I mean, I think this is an immaculate production, but there is one thing my fan brain wishes had happened.
Not the kind of fan service that they did in the 1970s.
We might have had to have waited till the 80s or the new series for this, but I wish that the Daleks had looked like they did in the Daleks.
I wish that they had had that early silver with the blue balls on them and the nose slats as just that perfect nod back to the fact that the Daleks looked like that at the start.
Well, that introduces the whole other point, which is the fact that this story completely annihilates Dalek continuity up to this point.
Now, to us of our generation, that didn't matter.
This was Dalek continuity, and I, it's like, it's like the Dalek continuity you get before this is kind of the made-up version as opposed to this.
I mentioned this because I'd never really worried about that and didn't really think it was important because, you know, organised fandom did not exist back in the day.
There was no internet who, no one was chatting to their friends in the playground about how this completely destroyed the history of the darks.
It was only when I saw a post from Tony Howe, an elder Doctor Who fan, even older than we are as fans, he was watching the show right from the beginning on the ABC.
And he just happened to do a post about, I can't remember what it was.
Just mentioning Genesis of the Daleks.
I hate it that people say that Genesis is one of the best stories ever.
They have to remember for some of us, it completely destroyed everything we knew up to that point about the Daleks and I could never forgive it for that.
It's the Jan Vincent Rudsky...
Yeah, exactly. that people would say that.
Now, isn't it just interesting though that, I mean, and that's not the 1st and it's certainly not the last time that Doctor Who chooses to annihilate its own continuity?
Also not the 1st nor the last time that Tony Howe was wrong about something.
No, I'm not saying I agree with him, but I'm just trying to look through his eyes of, you know, he would have been a, I don't know, 15, 16 year old at the time watching Genesis come on or maybe like older, actually. probably was a bit older, actually.
And it's that thing where, you know, and we've all experienced it in different stories, how when you feel that the production team have betrayed you and it's just an interesting observation.
I think what is interesting is in fact what he does with the files here, because the files that he brings back in Planet of the Daleks, whom we hadn't seen after the Daleks, are quite different from the pacifist.
They're still blonde.
Okay, 2 syllable names, not 3 syllable names.
There's a bit of blonde, you know...
There is a little bit of blondness here, but not particularly, you know, not necessarily.
You know, they're all no, they're all they're all blonde.
They're all blonde.
In this?
Yep, they're all blonde.
Sometimes a dirty blonde.
Sometimes they're great, but no, even the old, like the thal leader, you know, you know, as to him, he must be punished.
He is definitely a blonde person who's gone grey.
Who's gone gray?
Okay.
Oh, fair enough.
Fair enough.
But we do lose the idea that they were sort of simple shepherds or whatever like that.
They were the warriors, remember?
Yeah, of course, they were.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But that was very definitely set up to make that story work.
And it wasn't anything that we had any particular sort of investment in.
And we did try and tell the story of the creation of the Daleks, didn't we, in the century 21 comics and things a bit later.
Never paid attention to that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I'm not surprised that they throw it all out.
And I think dialect continuity, such as it was, was kind of destroyed in the Dalek invasion of Earth, essentially.
Oh, exactly.
But not to the same degree.
They're called dolls then.
You know, it wouldn't have been that difficult to have called them dolls in this.
Except that you can't hear the difference between...
No, no.
And that's obviously why they call it tarlets and why because and also it's so beautiful because it's an anagram.
And it's a much better version.
It's like, no, no, I've got a better idea.
Let's call them this.
Well, talking about a better version.
I think that's why it doesn't matter.
Of course it doesn't matter.
I mean, fan preoccupations are all very well, but fans will forgive it if something brilliant comes along that overwrites what happened before.
So no one holds Genesis, the Daleks can say anything because it's Genesis of the dark.
It's amazing.
It's the same reason fans of a certain vintage have a strange relationship with deadly assassin, but most people and most fans do not because it presents time loads in a different fashion, but it's an excellent story in its own right, and so it gets that privilege.
I think something tells me that Hinchcliff and Holmes were not particularly interested in honouring any of that stuff, to be perfectly honest.
Doctor Who was being made very much on their terms and they were not interested in what had really come before to any great extent.
The other thing, I think we have to remember.
I mean, I don't care about all that stuff, quite frankly, because I agree with you, Peter, it's such a bloody good story.
Who cares?
But with over 10000000 people watching the story on average, there's a safe argument to be made that most of those people are not Doctor Who fans.
And so they are not going to sit down on a Saturday night and sit there and go, hang on a minute, this is not what I saw back in 1963.
What is going on or whatever none of that is really going to be part of their thinking?
But it goes back to what we've said often is that, you know, in Britain, apart from the repeat of maybe 2 stories each year or like a 90 minute version of a 6 pass that they'd show close to Christmas, the show wasn't repeated.
It certainly wasn't old ones, certainly weren't repeated.
There was no expectation that people would remember or that people would care.
It's just a whole different mindset.
It's not that they didn't care in a negative way.
It's just, they didn't need to care.
The stories we're talking about, you know, probably weren't even available for overseas sale.
They were probably destroyed or up for destruction by the time this is being made.
The very thought of worrying about that is anathema.
And in fact, I remember in 96 when the telly movie was being made.
And Philip Siegel came across to a Doctor Who convention in a monopticon, I think it was, in the lead up to it.
And he was talking about, oh, how they'd created this Bible of the history of Doctor Who and how everything.
As our hearts sank.
In the hope, in the hope that there was going to be an ongoing series of these things.
And the number of us in that audience, I could actually hear the slight, uh, sigh.
No, that's not how we do things around here and we don't need that and we don't want that because you need to be able to chuck stuff ours because we've got a better idea now.
It's one of the reasons why whenever people talk about rebooting Doctor Who, which I think is meaningless and a terrible idea, you know, absurd time.
But I think it's that instinct is to tidy it up so that all of the Atlantis's and all of the dalek chronology and stuff can all be just done properly for once.
And that isn't what we do here.
And, you know, like, even in the, like, when is the Dalek set, 1000000s of years in the future, 1000000s of years in the past, who can say, like, I've got no idea what's going on.
None of that makes any sense at all.
And there's no reason why we have to assume that the Daleks and the Files have an accurate grasp of their own history. carrying them around on some tablets.
Exactly.
That's right.
So like that can't be a thing that matters at all.
But I do think that it's super interesting that he's created this world where there are no obvious good guys or bad guys.
And in fact, the people who are best, the people with the most moral scruples of the guest cast are all the Khalids who work in the bunker.
Collins who are rebelling against it.
And the Khalid government.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Some of the culture government.
So obviously the car, it's strange because it's actually, let's talk about the Carla government for a moment because the whole car-led military are presented as a fascist thing, complete with, you know, Peter Miles's iron cross for a for a short time at the beginning of the story, as mentioned, but the salutes and the way they talk to each other, the black uniforms, it's fascist, fascist, nuts, you know.
I mean, we all know that.
And yet the civilian government or at least those Mogren and these other councillors, friendly councillors, come across as kind of that middle of the road democratically elected kind of thing.
It doesn't kind of tally.
I mean, maybe, you know, the bunker was set up.
We need to research new weapons and so on.
And yet, yes, now the people at the bunk are the elite are effectively the de facto government because they can command the government to do whatever they want.
Davros makes that makes the comments about, you know, the Khalid people have given up much so that we can do this.
They deserve to know what we're doing.
It's almost like all of the efforts have been redirected into this bunker and so they get the best of the best.
But when the bunker wants to throw Davros off, and when it wants to establish some form of government, it's democratic, and it's about a vote, and there's a point, I think, where the doctor thinks that the Daleks are just going to be voted out of existence and he can go home, and it's Davros is the one who comes out against democracy and says that democracy, These are the creeds of cowards. such a brilliant so good.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The ones you will listen to a 1000 viewpoints and try to satisfy them all. such an amazing life.
It's brilliant life.
We haven't talked about Davros yet, by the way.
And we should.
He's pretty good.
Michael Wisher.
Yeah.
That performance, again, it goes back to what I was saying. not just what they say. the pauses.
You know, one of those other famous lines that we love, the tiny pressure on my thumb.
The delivery of that, the pause before the word tiny, it all is part of the magic that makes this.
Just say that line that he hits a great line and he absolutely makes it and Tom makes it with his disgusted look.
You are afflicted with a conscience.
Yes, yes, yes.
Just stunning.
But it's the mask is so good.
It fits him so well because it's grotesque without without what we end up with, even at the back end of the classic series, with the Terry Malloy mask, which I feel is going too far.
This is just so much simpler and therefore more elegant and you get more of a sense of an actor talking to.
And the thing that we don't get from any other Davros actor.
I mean, Michael Wisher is head and shoulders, but of anyone else who plays Davros.
Other people who play him get some things right.
Michael Wisher gets everything right and what he especially gets right is Davros' quietness.
Oh, yes.
His menacing, quiet delivery.
I have to say that both Terry Malloy and Julian Bleach do do that quite well.
Like the Davros quietness.
They both managed to do it.
They don't, but they don't do it as well.
And yeah, maybe it's because I heard the LP version. 1000000000 times.
And so his was the voice is the delivery.
But there is that thing, like, you know, again, the Nazi analogy and we know that Terry Nation had a thing about this being an analogy for Nazism and so on.
But remember Hitler would give his speeches and he'd start talking quietly, you know, at the Nuremberg rally and all that stuff and he'd talk quietly and then it'd escalate, escalation, then he'd be shouting at the end.
And that scene we were talking about.
And through the Daleks, I shall have that power.
It's thatty.
It's that, but also it's like when he's talking to Nyda, when he says, you will find the towards end, you will find the rebel leaders, you will surrender to the whatever the lines are.
And then Nider basically says effectively no.
I won't do it.
And then you will obey me and then pause.
You will do as I order and his absolute shout.
It is the change, the turnaround in just a line is just perfect.
But all Michael Wisher has is the dialogue and he has a hand.
I mean, he literally just has a hand. with his, you know, those fabulous nails on that hand and his voice.
That's all he has.
And yet he is able to communicate so much with the gentle tapping of a nail on the top of this. you know, it's so full of danger.
And what the hell is this guy going to do next?
Because we don't know.
We don't know what he's thinking.
And yet there is so much plotting, so much scheming, so much, oh, I don't want to use the word evil because I have a controversial opinion about evil.
I don't think people are born evil.
Now we're going off on a tangent.
I don't think people are born evil.
I think, you know, Peter Griffith, notwithstanding.
I mean, there's so much evil in Dabros.
It's delicious and it's all, I can't believe it.
It's all done through a fingernail.
It's just divine.
He does have a lower lip.
To be fair.
But also just one more line.
I need to highlight the absolute contempt in his voice.
After Garmin delivers the demands and Davros just says, have you finished?
The contempt in that delivery?
But you're absolutely right.
And just a discussion about evil, because that's actually is relevant, if I may say, to this story, and so many of the other better stories, is that you're right, people aren't born evil, and this sense of good and good and evil are choices we make rather than our natures.
And I think what Genesis of the Daleks does, is it communicates to us, how a person, a race might become evil, what are the circumstances that create evil to flourish, arrive, to flourish.
Well, I mean, we see it literally happening.
There's an argument about what the dialects are going to be and what, you know, what they're going to have.
And that wonderful thing about the word pity, which is brought up at the beginning and then becomes Davros's downfall, he dies simply because he hasn't allowed the word pity to penetrate the Daleks vocabulary bank.
Say that again.
He is a bit dicky.
But I think that that's exactly what's happening here because we have a conversation over what the Daleks are going to be and how are we going to imagine them?
What are they going to be here for?
There's that incredible moment where Tom suggests where the doctor says, why don't you make them a force for good?
Have you considered that?
That's incredible.
Yes, be remembered for that. amazing.
You see, that's why I think the story is such great Doctor Who, because it's where Terry's sort of pulp sensibilities and his moral force become indistinguishable from each other.
And don't forget that we've said before, I've said before, Terry made the doctor into the moral figure that we know.
This is the doctor who said when he encounters the Daleks for the 2nd time we'd better pit our wits against them and defeat them.
He's the one who says to Brett Vion in Dalek's master plan, just you remember, young man, I'm not going to kill anyone.
Like so he's always setting out his store.
And I think Terry having made the doctor into that moral figure allows him to oppose Davros and the wider idea of the conception of the Daleks with such force.
And of course, Davros is the dark double of the doctor, isn't he?
He's the scientific advisor to a military organisation.
Gather as men of science.
I think we should talk about how brilliant David Maloney's direction is in this story.
I mean, for the most part, it shot in a series of corridors and a big laboratory, and many a director has fallen at the 1st hurdle, trying to make corridors interesting in Doctor Who.
And yet Maloney is in total command of what he's shooting and those corridors.
It's pretty obvious there's only 2 or 3 corridors that he can shoot down in the Khalid dome, those corridors in the bunker.
And yet he manages to give us the sense that the doctor and Sarah and Harry are travelling down different sections of these corridors all the time.
And it's the same when he's in the thaw bunker as well.
And as I say, other directors have succeeded brilliantly in making corridors look really uninteresting.
But Maloney just does a superlative job in really telling a story with very little.
And Corey, like all great directors, he turns the limitations into a virtue, where okay, you can't see the dialects travelling a long way down a corridor.
So what you get 1st is their shadow falling on the wall before they come around the corner.
That use of that silhouette where you can see the kind of that those horizontal lines, which I think we get, we then see again in the 5 doctors, I think.
Okay, that same silhouetto rise.
It's such, it's such a great thing.
I don't know whether we've seen that silhouette before, that shadow, but also with, you know, I mean, someone like Graham Harper comes along Asia and he's very showy.
There's lots of wonderful, impressive shots, cinematic almost, in terms of with their ambition.
David Maloney is using the multicamera studio environment with simple things like tracking rather than just zooming or just having static shots, just even that thing where the doctor is tied to the thing at the beginning of the interrogation, you know, why did you come here?
says Davros. and he says, to stop the development of the Daleks.
And you just get this beautiful track.
It's a track, not a zoom, meaning the camera itself is moving towards Tom.
And when you move the camera rather than just zooming, it just adds a whole lot of extra dimension to it.
Well, we were talking about episode one with Nider's entrance when the camera crabs back with Nider as he walks down the corridor.
But the less showy shot, which also works really brilliantly, is when the doctor and Harry are running towards the lift and the camera is moving down the corridor with them.
It gives a real sense of depth and place.
Yes.
And of course, David Maloney has the gift of what another thing that Terry does brilliantly, which is the set piece.
And so this story has 3 or four extremely well remembered scenes because they are so well done.
You just put your finger on one, Simon, which is the one where Davros is interrogating the doctor and Sarah and Harry are tied up and being tortured, which is, you know, it's an awful scene when you think about it, the companions actually being tortured, and yet it's so well done.
It's well shot, it's well played, and it's a very powerful scene, and it's 2 people sat there talking to each other, and it goes from the interrogation, segues into another brilliant scene, which is the doctor challenging Davros, about if you had a virus in your laboratory, would you release it?
Those set pieces happen throughout the story, and they are a gift for a director.
What about that incredible set piece where Sarah leads the breakout?
Yeah, in the miss our silo.
And I don't quite know how this works.
Is this set set up twice in 2 different places?
Yes, so there's a little bit of it, which is in the studio, but most of it's done at Ealing.
Yeah, but there is a fair amount of, like, because we do see shots up the rocket and when the rocket actually moves and stuff.
So it does seem to be quite high in the videotape studio in the television centre as well.
But the scene, because there's a wonderful moment where they are clambering up that scaffolding and the camera is just moving up with them is keeping up with them.
That's all.
Yeah, yeah. when suddenly it's on film. and it just looks spectacular.
Like that's an amazing action sequence.
And again, I think it's darker than I normally like my Doctor Who, and particularly the sort of dangling her off the thing and that... incredible line, isn't it?
Where, you know, I think some people say you're not dead.
No, you did before you hit the ground.
I don't believe that, do you?
Which is so, so brutal.
But that scene is just beautifully shot. like an incredible action sequence.
I think, but the key word here is coverage.
Maloney is able to get the coverage he needs to tell the story and give the scene, the pace and the stakes that it needs.
So if we go back to the interrogation scene.
A lesser director would do all of that in wide shot.
You have Davros over on one side, the doctor in the middle and Sarah and Harry sort of tied up on the other side and there's your shot.
But he intercuts between Davros, the doctor, the companions, the tape, Davros, the tape, you know, so on and so forth.
And so that creates the tension.
But if we go to the scene where they're climbing to the top of the rocket, I mean, that would have taken quite a while to shoot because we're talking film, it's single camera.
So he's got to get every single shot from every different angle.
He's got to get that crane going up at the right pace.
He's got to get the actors going up at the right pace to meet the travel of the camera.
He's going in for close-ups when that Khaled guard tries to help Sarah climb and he gets shot.
And then you cut to him hitting the deck and his eyes are open as he hits the deck.
Oh, good.
It's gruesome. know, the coverage he gets.
And, you know, we're talking limited time. got available to him to shoot these things and he's absolute, like a canfield, obviously, he's absolutely maximising the amount of time he's got at his disposal and getting the coverage he needs so that he can tell the story that we see on screen.
It's great, great direction.
And one of the things he does in that interrogation scene is he opens it with a big wide pan across all of the characters.
So you capture Sarah and Harry tied to the table and Nyda and Davros and then the doctor.
You know where everyone is placed in the scene and then he can move his cameras in and get tighter.
Can I just say, I would have loved if the doctor in that scene had recounted all of the adventures that we've seen on screen.
So he's talking about, you know, the Dalek invasion of Earth in the 21st century, all of that.
In 2000.
Never mind.
I would also love him to say something like the Dalek attempt to capture us on the planetoridius in the space year 1965 was spoiled by me jumping up from behind a sand.
Yoo-hoo, auntie.
Encouraging it to glide over Barbara's cardigan into a pair.
Yes, it's no excuse, really, because, you know, the 1st edition of Terrence Dix and Malcolm Hulk's Making of Doctor Who, had adequate synopses of all these stories. which the terror would have made.
No, he's done what he does in the Daleks masterplan. and he said, Earth, Mars, Venus.
We're done.
We're done.
Don't forget the planet.
Hyper off.
Space is 17,000, was it?
Maybe Tom could have just pulled out a copy of the making of Doctor Who and slipped it across the counter to Gabros.
Anyway, read that over a cup of tea.
But is this the 1st time?
I suppose you get it a bit in Inferno.
This is the 1st time where you get a sense that the doctor is trying to, and being asked to change the course of history?
I mean, I think I think there is something really unusual about this because, and Terry Nation hasn't been interested in this and when he was sort of a going concern in the early 60s, this was not what the show did at all.
But we're going back in time to change established history.
And that makes the doctor dangerous and it makes, you know, that that idea, that 2nd only to the time ring is that tape, because that tape is going to make things worse, that in fact, the doctor is going back in time and is catastrophically failing in his mission, because he's going to make them more powerful than they ever were.
You know, they very quickly accept that the doctors from the future, which good, you know, that's fine.
Yeah, let's just get past them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tedium.
But that becomes a huge thing from another world.
No, but I love the way, but I love the way Davros says it is beyond my scientific comprehension, but it is not beyond my imagination.
That's a wonderful way of expressing it.
And you know, it goes back to what we're saying about the stakes of this story.
The doctor can go back and change history and the story because it's important and the Daleks are a mythical force and they're very important to the Doctor Who universe and they're very legend.
And it's the fact that the time lords are sending him to do this.
It all adds up to what an important story this is.
Not just quality wise, not just the fact that we love the story because it's so well done, but it's very important in the Doctor Who firmament.
Yeah.
And, you know, that becomes inherent to the premise of the show by the new series where there has been a time war between the time lords and the daleks that's happened offscreen while we were all busy reading new adventures.
So like it is, it is hugely important.
We touched on, but we need to talk more about the overall morality here, about the morality of the doctor committing genocide, regardless of who and what the Daleks are of saying, I'm actually going to destroy them forever.
They will never exist as we know. those brilliant scenes.
Another one of the brilliant scenes that's used been used in clips packages ever since.
But it's one of the things that struck me as a child and centred my morality about the way things are and and it actually ends, even though he fails to prevent the development of the Daleks and okay, he slows them down by about a 1000 years is all that happens.
This concept, this optimism that this program ends on, which is, it's just given in that speech about some things might be better with the Daleks, future worlds will become allies.
It's an interesting point of view for that part of history.
When everyone involved with the show's creation has a living memory of the 2nd World War and the horrors that people face 1000000s of people, the entire race of people was tried to be annihilated.
But something... debts and displacement and years of trauma.
But something good came of it.
Yes, the world order, which was set up after the Second World War is now coming apart.
But for the rest of the 20th century and into the 21st, it changed the world.
And it's that thing of, you know, to have good, we have to have evil and to have people doing good things there responding to the evil.
And as well as that thing of, you know, evil things only happen because good people do nothing.
There is that morality which underpins this as well.
And that optimism that no matter how bad things get, there is still light at the end of the tunnel.
And the fact that even if you have an evil situation, you will have good people inside of it. like when you have Ronson, where he's, you know, he's on board with Dr. Ross Stewart.
He reveres Davos.
He, you know, he calls him a brilliant person. scientist. our greatest scientist.
Yes.
But then he's the one who cracks and says, but you know, it's being perverted.
It's turning to evil and he can't, he can't, in all good conscience, move forward with it.
And Garmin, the same.
They all reach their own in carnival.
They all reach their own conclusions that, no, no, no.
We started in the right direction, but something has gone wrong and good men are in that group.
Can I just save Garmin?
was stupid.
A stupid waste of life.
Our intention has always been to have a bloodless revolution, had enough of killing and violence.
Not one of the most...
I think we've got the pronunciation of his name incorrect.
I do believe it is Garman actually.
It is correct.
You are quite correct.
We all stand corrected.
So I have to say that I think we do fudge the morality hero. little bit.
Because we can't have the doctor succeed because we need the Daleks to be in future stories.
And so we want to try and at this point in the show, we can't have the doctor lose outright.
And so he snatches a kind of victory from the jaws of defeat here with that speech at the end.
I do wonder about how to take that scene where he has the 2 wires because, like, when we say genocide, it's just the contents of this room, it's like charging the doctor with genocide for killing, like, 6 vervoids or whatever, does seem a little bit excessive.
And obviously, generally speaking, I don't want the doctor to be killing people in Doctor Who.
I think, generally speaking, it's better if he doesn't do that.
But I mean, these are sort of whatever they are in jars and stuff.
And it just strikes me that in that scene, you've got Sarah, who has had the advantage of having met the Daleks, which works really well.
And ordinarily in a scene like that, Sarah would be right and the doctor would be wrong, don't you think?
Generally that's the way that Doctor Who tends to work.
The doctor usually writes in Sarah as well.
Well, generally the companion humanising the doctor.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But nevertheless, it still works that way.
I just because you can see her kind of wanting to do it.
Snatch those.
Yeah, she's there kind of barely containing herself.
She makes great points.
If it was a disease, you wouldn't hesitate.
Why is this different?
You know, this is what you were sent here to do.
It's great.
It's just amazing.
I really love the fact that the story returns to that as its final beat, like you said, Nathan, in the final speech, where the doctor reiterates that, yes, you know, we didn't succeed.
We only delayed them by a 1000 years, which Sarah gives a great, oh, only a 1000 expression too.
But he says, you know, out of all of their evil must come something good.
That's a brilliant way to end the story.
And it leaves you with optimism that the doctor will win the wider battle.
You know, the Daleks are not going to take over the universe.
It's all going to fall to bits.
But the great thing is, it opens up the fact that you can have a story because we know that Daleks have to be invented and they have to go on and so on and so on.
So it gives us an opportunity to have a story where the doctor does lose.
And I think that's one of the other reasons I've always loved this story, is that, you know, he doesn't destroy the Daleks because he can't.
And therefore it gives it a different feeling than anything else, even regeneration stories, where the doctor dies, quote unquote, does not have the same, Oh god, what have we actually achieved?
The great thing about what he says where he says, I've only really been able to delay them by about a 1000 years.
If you think about the experience that Terry Nation and obviously, or everyone who worked on, or most of the people who worked on the story have had in terms of the end of World War II and the supposed crushing of extreme far right fascist ideologies in favour of a new world order, We now find ourselves in a place where those things are coming very much back into the world that we're living in.
And you can feel that that sort of ideology, and that way of thinking, pressing down on this new world order that we have enjoyed for sort of 50, 60 years.
So the story is absolutely speaking to the world that we live in now and the pressures that the global order is currently facing.
And that's got a lot to do with the lack of living memory of that last major conflict.
That's one of the reasons we're in this situation is because our society has allowed ourselves to forget the Second World War.
Certain parts of it have allowed themselves to question some of the things that happened during that war and the reasons why the war happened and the shadow of the 2nd World War stretches throughout the rest of the 20th century.
And it's so unfortunate that except for those people who care to find out about it, it's vanishing.
Which brings us back to Terry.
One of his great preoccupations is the pressures on civilisations of where they end up and how they end up.
And so this is his timeless argument in one package.
And I think when people treat Genesis of the Daleks as an exception, it should be treated as an exception because of its quality and because of what it brings to the show.
They tend to treat it as an exception to Terry Nation as well, to deny his authorship.
And I think we cannot do that.
This is terri nation.
No one else would have written this story, and no one else would have been able to employ his moral arguments to have the resonance that the story still has now.
Yeah.
It's often said that success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan, right?
And but success does have many fathers, and in this instance, yes, I entirely agree with you, this story cannot exist without terrination and his obsessions, his interests, the way he tells stories, but all of it is elevated, the moment he hands that script over.
It's all elevated by everybody, everybody that touches it from that and that is what makes it so great.
Well, that's all the time we have for this wave.
We'll be back next week.
Give the Daleks a week off in the android invasion.
In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts and you can keep up with us on our website, 500yeardiary.com, where you'll find our social media links, as well as links to all of our other podcasts, including the entirety of flights or entirety, which comprises every episode of our 4 Doctor Who podcasts.
Until next time, if you happen to run into Yar Velling, maybe remember to give him a hug for us.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
Good night.
20.
What's 20.
It's like, it's after arranged 20 of the Dalek creatures to be put to the Dalek machines.
That was 500 year diary, starring Nathan Bottomley, Peter Griffiths, Corey McMahon and Simon Moore.
The theme was composed by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, Nazi paraphernalia, was recorded on the 19th of July 2026 and released on the 11th of October.
So the moral of this week's episode is this.
If a timelord asks you to go back in time to bury a bunch of fashists in a bunker deep underground, the correct answer is yes, sir.
What do you reckon?
Absolutely.
That's good.
Yeah, thank you. was pretty great.
Cool.
Yeah, that was awesome.
What fun.
I'm feeling a bit unpodcasted lately.
Well, because I've been doing this, but Joe and I have had a few weeks off because I had to...
Oh, you've been without?
Oh, yeah. over it.
Yeah.
Well, you know, like we're about to do Muds Women on very sexist episode.
Classic Star Trek.
Yeah, classic Star Trek.
Which would be terrible.
But, yeah.
Just going back to the care thing.
I mean, this is not for the thing.
But the care thing that I've often talk about, things like within the clam, where Harry takes, when he Carrie's foot gets out of the clam, it's all wet and mucky and so on like that.
Now, in a different production, it doesn't look any different.
It just looks a little bit crinkled.
Do you know what I mean?
It's those sorts of things.
Do you remember when Turlo fishes Perry out of the water and then gets her into the TARDIS and she's instantly dry?
Yes, yes, exactly.