Daleks! Genesis of Terror – Review

Genesis of the Daleks is viewed as one of the finest Doctor Who stories of all time and has formed the basis of many future stories, Russell T. Davies even cites it as the beginning of the Time War he created. Now Big Finish is exploring the original script from author and Dalek creator Terry Nation with Genesis of Terror.

I want to get this view in early as it’s something I’m not fond of feeling concerning stories from Big Finish – I’m not impressed at what I found with this production and it seems neither were many listeners. What we’ve got is the first episode which has been fully dramatized and then a synopsis’ for each of the remaining five episodes each read by a different actor in the story, followed by a long interview with producer Philip Hinchcliffe on the second CD.

I have to agree with what I’ve seen other people saying and say that this does feel like a bit of a cash grab. Had the whole thing been dramatized then fair enough, but just one episode and an interview doesn’t warrant such a hefty price tag for a bit of a lacklustre release.

Now that that’s out of the way let’s get into Genesis of Terror! Over the years Big Finish has done a fine job of finding and adapting many lost stories which never got past the initial scripting or synopsis stage from the 60s/70s and 80s. And having adapted pretty much all there is to adapt, in recent years they have begun to explore some stories that had radically different first draft scripts to what we’ve eventually seen on screen, 2021’s take on Revenge of the Cybermen is a great example of an early draft script done right.

Perhaps we were silly for thinking that Genesis of Terror would be something similar and going into episode one with a full cast as well as Nicholas Briggs reading the script directions between the dialogue. And given how the first episode on offer here does work quite well, we’d be forgiven for thinking that the rest of the story would be presented this way. The basic shape of Genesis of the Daleks‘ first episode remains here with only minor differences like all of the soldiers being teenagers and the Doctor being brought to a garden by the Time Lords to be sent on this mission.

And despite getting quite a prominent image on the cover, Terry Molloy is only in the episode at the end, repeating Michael Wisher’s original dialogue. It seems like a waste of him as this is the only time we hear from him in this release. The story then continues to be told in a strange mix of third and first person with some referring to the Doctor as Dr Who while others, while in character call him The Doctor. That inconsistency was distracting and didn’t make for an easy listen.

The second disc sees BBC Broadcaster Samira Ahmed interviewing Philip Hinchcliffe and, as good and entertaining as it was, it doesn’t really break any new ground and tell us anything we didn’t already know. And we are forced to wonder why this release was green-lit.

At the end of the day Daleks! Genesis of Terror is a curious listen at best. It’s interesting to hear a slightly different opening episode but given how nothing is radically changed it was a different opening episode I think people could probably live without. Big Finish rarely makes a misstep with their releases but unfortunately, this is one and that’s a shame because they’ve done such a brilliant job with The Lost Stories up to this point.