Review by Cavan Gilbey

Genesis of the Daleks might just be the most beloved Classic Era Story, it’s the one that has topped opinion polls and fan rankings. A classic tale of the origins of sci-fi’s most iconic villains, of nuclear holocausts and the persistence of fascism. Its nihilism is matched by a strong script from Nation and fully realised by Hinchcliffe and Holmes, some powerful performances from a central cast who clearly understand the gravity of the script. With a successful Target Novel and cutdown record version, this story has clearly stuck with fans for good reason. From a production side of things there wasn’t actually many changes, just a couple of aesthetic differences that don’t change the product we ended up with.
So considering all this, considering the production history and the accessibility of Genesis, why even bother releasing this?

Daleks! Genesis of Terror reeks of greed. It is a cynically crafted and ultimately pointless addition to the Big Finish catalogue, an addition which does some significant damage to the good will the company has generated over the 20 or so years they have been producing Doctor Who stories. I cannot stress enough how this waste of plastic, money, and time frustrates me.

Firstly, there are no significant changes from what we ended up with on television. The episode one we get here, bearing in mind this is the only full cast episode made, is word for word and beat for beat what we have already seen on television. The only reason it takes the full 45 minutes to get through is because Nicholas Briggs thought that the stage directions needed reading out. This choice, as is confirmed by the interviews, an ego-stroking moment for Briggs because ‘we can’t have a Dalek story without old Nick.’ Speaking of the cast, they are on poor form here. Clearly not believing in the material at all, resulting in a Tom Baker performance that sounds like he has never acted before. Not that you can tell its Baker anyway since every cast member sounds like they were recorded in their bathrooms. This is inexcusably bad for a company who, prior to this, had released a large catalogue of stories recorded remotely; including Fourth Doctor stories. If this was recorded as soon as Lockdown was in place as a test audio to see the viability of the remote systems then I could at least understand the production being poor, but this late on it is simply unbelievable.

Secondly, the majority of the first disc is taken up by different members of the cast reading from the equivalent of Wikipedia summaries of the subsequent parts. This is the audio equivalent of those packing peanuts, filling out the set in an effort to make the box seem fuller. A couple of these are inexplicably read out in the first person from Harry and Sarah, but all this results in is ‘they’ ‘she’ or ‘he’ being replaced with ‘I’. So you may as well have just kept in all in the third person anyway if you weren’t going to change anything.

The theme of change brings me to my final grievance. This story is rooted in a story which ultimately does not change if you go back to its roots. The things we have got differently are simply aesthetic qualities that we can’t appreciate properly on audio; stuff like the Kaled soldiers being younger at around 15 years of age to have Hilter Youth Parallels. However this is still changed for the audio since they maintain the aged up versions we saw on television. It is noted in the interviews that the second page of this version of the script is missing, and as a result they have tried writing in something which evokes the style of Nation. While it was true that Nation had a vague idea for the daleks having conquered the universe but I don’t feel he was a clairvoyant as we are treated to a reference to the revival era Time War that feels ludicrously out of place.

As a bonus we get an interview with Philip Hinchcliffe about the production of Season 12 of the classic series. Sure it’s a fine interview, but due to Season 12’s superstar status we sort of know everything there is to know about this era because Hinchcliffe has been endlessly interviewed for numerous documentaries and magazines and books. Its nice but honestly could have easily carried its own release in the style of Big Finish’s other interview releases.

I’m aware Nekromantia is considered to be the worst story Big Finish has put out for Doctor Who, but I think we have found a new low. To give Nekromantia credit; it is an original idea, with original narrative concepts, high quality production and a cast that hate the script but still clearly do their best to give good performances. Genesis of Terror embarrasses every single name attached to it, it fails to live up to the potential a range like The Lost Stories holds and ultimately it damages the reputation of the most popular serial of all time. I’m not giving this a rating, it doesn’t deserve one. Don’t buy this, just don’t.

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