Doctor Who and the Genesis of the Daleks by: Terrance Dicks

 

Doctor Who and the Genesis of the Daleks was written by Terrence Dicks, based on Genesis of the Daleks by Terry Nation.  It was the 23^rd story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

It’s honestly surprising that I would be taking a look at Doctor Who and the Genesis of the Daleks now, about a month after Big Finish Productions releases their ‘adaptation’ of Terry Nation’s original drafts in Daleks: Genesis of Terror!, so the story itself has been on my mind.  This is not a review of the Big Finish adaptation, but it is interesting that in novelizing the story Terrance Dicks does make an attempt to incorporate some of Nation’s original ideas.  The Kaled and Thal armies are portrayed as quite young which adds this very melancholic air to the story that wasn’t there in the television story, Dicks really understanding what makes the script work and adapting it in this way is a fascinating way to get the story out on home media.  This novelization was released in 1976, only a year after the television serial broadcast, and the original serial was commissioned under Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts’ last batch of stories.  While it would go under the pen of Robert Holmes for script editing and Hinchcliffe producing, Dicks still had a strong connection by nature of being there for early pre-production and that shines through in this novelization.

 

The prose somehow manages to accurately capture the direction of David Maloney, especially in the way that it portrays the scenes set in no man’s land, Dicks being incredibly vivid and frank about presenting the deaths of the soldiers.  While this is clearly a book aimed at children, as are the rest of the novelizations, Dicks isn’t compromising the darker aspects of the serial, attempting to amplify the horror of radiation and Davros’ genetic experiments.  Nyder and Davros’ scheming and betrayals of the rest of the Kaleds still hits the difficult beats to portray and the Doctor’s dilemma is nicely portrayed.  The issues come in the fact that Doctor Who and the Genesis of the Daleks has to almost compress things in places, as due to the popularity of Genesis of the Daleks means that Dicks attempts to keep every event while adding more moments, such as an extension to Davros’ death where it is made explicit that there, his body is completely destroyed which made sense as it was clear that the character wasn’t intended to come back.  There are also just these added extra moments that means the pace has to almost rush to get to the ending without expanding the page count, when it’s so clear Dicks is having fun writing the novelization.

 

Overall, Doctor Who and the Genesis of the Daleks while being a step down from the televised version of the story still maintains the artistic integrity and purpose of the story unlike other versions made to capitalize on its popularity.  It was the only way to experience the story for at least five years until the first LP release, and is helped by Terrance Dicks’ mastery of prose.  8/10.