Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Doctor Who (The First Series): “Genesis of the Daleks”

If you see just one episode of the original Doctor Who series, it probably should be this one, which took place in the Tom Baker era. Granted, if you do see it, you run the risk of finding out how addictive watching Doctor Who episodes can be. And how hard it is to go cold turkey. (Why, you would almost have to wait until the show went off the air.)

Seriously, this is one of the more memorable episodes of the Tom Baker era. Elisabeth Sladen's Sarah Jane Smith makes a great Girl Friday for Tom Baker's Doctor and Davros, the evil alien scientist who invented the Daleks, makes a great villain.

If I had to choose the most memorable scenes of this episode, it would not be the endless action scenes that play up the similarities between the Daleks and the Nazis -- or for that matter, the scenes that play up the similarities between the Daleks' opponents and the Free French resistance movement. It would be the scene in which the Doctor tries to talk Davros into destroying the Daleks by likening their creation to that of a deadly virus -- only to find to his horror that Davros is fascinated by the concept of such a virus. But then Davros is a villain so the good Doctor really should not have been surprised.