The Man Who Invented the Daleks

by Alwyn Turner

  The Daleks are, of course, duly destroyed, leaving just enough time for a final message from the Doctor to the survivors of the Thal mission. ‘Throughout history, you Thals have always been known as one of the most peace-loving peoples in the galaxy,’ he tells them. ‘When you get back to Skaro, you’ll all be national heroes. Everybody will want to hear about your adventures. So be careful how you tell that story, will you? Don’t glamorise it. Don’t make war sound like an exciting and thrilling game.’ (The message would presumably have been different if Nation had been allowed the slaughter of the Thals that he’d originally planned.)

  It may not have been the most original piece of work that Nation ever produced, but ‘Planet of the Daleks’ was a big hit. Benefiting from extensive publicity about his return to Doctor Who, it attracted the largest audience – 11 million viewers for the first episode – the series had enjoyed since the story ‘Galaxy 4’ back in 1965. It also won good reviews. ‘Even though the Doctor has defeated the Daleks countless times, they still represent the ultimate bogeymen,’ wrote Stanley Reynolds in The Times. ‘The Daleks are the boss space horrors, something to get the children hiding behind the sofa in happy anticipation of twenty-five minutes of fear. Saturday’s episode, written by Nation himself, more than justified one’s faith in the Daleks’ intrinsic menace.’

  The fact that serious newspapers were prepared to review the show was a recent development. There had long been a split between generations on the subject of the Daleks. A contributor to a BBC audience research report at the time of ‘The Daleks’ Master Plan’ caught it perfectly. ‘I cannot for the life of me see what my children find so fascinating about this rubbish, but fascinated they certainly are,’ he noted. ‘They go absolutely mad about the Daleks, God knows why.’ The same continued to be true to some extent in the 1970s; the chat show host Michael Parkinson was baffled that his children should be frightened by such ‘harmless things’, while acknowledging that like all kids ‘they’ve made Dalek noises around the house and played at exterminating’. But there was now a growing recognition that the Daleks were here to stay and that, however elusive their appeal, they were something special.

  Huw Wheldon once declared that the four greatest achievements of television were Quatermass, Maigret, Gilbert Harding and the Daleks. Now Richard Boston, television critic of the Observer, was prepared to go considerably further. ‘It is, I suppose, beyond dispute that Doctor Who is the best thing that has ever been done on television,’ he wrote in 1974. ‘But what has above all distinguished the programme is not the Doctor or the Brigadier or the TARDIS or the music or even the screaming girls but the Daleks.’ He went on to compare them to Billy Bunter, Jeeves, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes and Superman as creations of prose fiction and comic strips that, like Frankenstein’s monster, ‘have grown out of the creator’s control’. In short: ‘they are among the immortals, the only products of television that have passed straight into mythology (with the possible exception of Robert Dougall).’

  ‘Planet of the Daleks’ was followed by ‘Death to the Daleks’, written in 1973 and broadcast in February 1974. The first episode went out five days before the General Election that swept the Conservative government of Edward Heath out of office, and – amid the chaos and power cuts of the three-day week – there was something particularly apt about a story that starts with the TARDIS stranded on the planet Exxilon, drained of all power, with the Doctor having to resort to an oil lamp for illumination. (For long-time Nation-watchers, there was a happy memory here of Uncle Selwyn, which had centred on the dying trade in oil lamps.) The loss of power is also suffered by the Daleks, who have similarly arrived on Exxilon, leaving their weaponry neutralised and forcing them into an alliance with the Doctor and his companion – now plucky journalist Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) – and with a small human group, the latter having come in search of a rare mineral that can cure a plague affecting Earth and its Outer Worlds.

  This suspension of hostilities is not welcomed by all, as one of the humans makes clear: ‘My father was killed in the last Dalek war. I hate the thought of working with them.’ In the reluctance to collaborate with the old enemy, one might again see shades of current affairs, with the controversy over Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community, an event that was often portrayed at the time in terms of the Second World War. (THE BIGGEST SELL-OUT SINCE MUNICH and UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER were two of the headlines chosen by the left-wing newspaper Tribune to cover the story.)

  But, as ever with Nation, these concerns were no more than glanced at in passing as the story rushed on, and here more so than ever, for at just four episodes ‘Death to the Daleks’ was the shortest serial he had yet written for Doctor Who. The reduced length worked greatly to its benefit. In the longer stories there had always been a sense of sagging in the middle, what Terrance Dicks referred to as ‘the curse of the six-parter’ (let alone the twelve parts of ‘The Daleks’ Master Plan’), but here, with the ideas coming thick and fast, the serial is entirely driven by the narrative. Credit is also due to Dicks as the script editor, who felt the need to give Nation a slight nudge to prevent him repeating himself. ‘The main necessity,’ he wrote, following a meeting between the two men, ‘is to avoid any resemblance to your previous show, i.e. a group of fugitives hunted through the jungle by Daleks. Instead of jungle, think of bleak, rocky, foggy quarry.’

  The central concept, however, was genuinely new. ‘The idea of a city that is a living organism,’ as Nation put it in a letter to Dicks. ‘A non-animal life, a truly monstrous monster.’ In the programme, an Exxilon explains to the Doctor the ancient history of his race: ‘They built a City that would last through all of time. They used their sciences to make the City into a living thing. It could protect itself, repair itself, maintain itself. They even gave it a brain. It then had no need of those who created it. Our people had created a monster.’ Long ago, the Exxilons had been an advanced people, travelling the universe, and the Doctor even suggests that they visited Earth, passing their knowledge on to humans – a jokey reference to the theories of the Swiss pseudo-scientist Erich von Däniken, whose book Chariots of the Gods? (1968) had become a best-seller by positing the theory that extraterrestrials were responsible for ancient construction projects. As a consequence of building the sentient City, however, the Exxilons have reverted to the level of a Stone Age tribe, worshipping the City as a god. It’s an excellent notion, a logical extension, perhaps, of the all-embracing womb-like cities of The Caves of Steel (the mention of Earth’s colonies on the Outer Worlds suggests that Nation may have had the book in mind), and for once the special effects were flawless, with the construction of the model of the City entirely appropriate to the conception.

  Both ‘Planet of the Daleks’ and ‘Death to the Daleks’ had their moments, but the creatures’ limitations still suggested that there was only a finite number of variations to be wrung out of them. They had not, of course, been created with longevity in mind, and their career thus far parallelled two of the biggest film brands of Nation’s childhood: Universal’s Frankenstein and MGM’s Tarzan. Both of those series had started with a strong opening feature (Frankenstein, Tarzan the Ape Man) that was intended to stand alone but was followed by an even better sequel (Bride of Frankenstein, Tarzan and His Mate), before each descended into repetition and self-parody, to diminishing artistic and box-office returns. Both characters then faded from the screen, only to be revived in later years by others with a purer vision and a determination to reinvigorate the myth, even if in Tarzan’s case, he had to wait half a century for Hugh Hudson’s Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984). There was a danger that the Daleks had gone down precisely the same path. A peak had been reached with ‘The Dalek Invasion of Earth’ and, although there had been good things in subsequent stories, a sense of treading water was becoming unavoidable.

  Breaking the pattern, however, it was Nation himself who was to reinvent the mythology, though he needed a little prompting
before he explored more deeply the creatures’ potential. Commissioned to write another Dalek storyline, he submitted a proposal that was greeted with something less than enthusiasm by Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts: ‘It’s a very good story. The only snag is you’ve sold it to us three times already.’ Unfazed by the accusation that his recycling of plots was starting to catch up with him, Nation replied, ‘Yes, you’re quite right. I’d better do you something else, then.’ As the discussion continued, it was Letts who came up with the killer suggestion: ‘“You know, Terry, you’ve never shown us the genesis of the Daleks. Why don’t you have a go at that?” And he said, “Oh yes, that’d be great.” And he not only picked up the idea, he picked up the title as well.’

  The resulting serial, ‘Genesis of the Daleks’, was broadcast in the spring of 1975 and became one of the best known of all Doctor Who stories, being repeated several times over the coming decades, both in its original six-episode form and in an edited 89-minute omnibus edition (the latter version also being broken down into two parts). A novelisation, written by Terrance Dicks, was published in 1976 by Target Books, the biggest-selling of the 150 or so titles in the series, and an audio version was released on record, comprising excerpts from the original soundtrack linked with narration by Tom Baker. Nation’s earlier Dalek stories had already achieved a longevity that seemed to be denied their rivals, with the Peter Cushing films enjoying re-screenings on television and in the cinema, and with the David Whitaker novelisation of the first serial; now ‘Genesis’ was to become an even more familiar presence. When Doctor Who Magazine conducted a poll of its readers in 1998, ‘Genesis’ was voted the best Doctor Who story of all time. It was an opinion that Nation himself shared: ‘I think it was a smashing set of episodes, I loved them. David Maloney directed it and he found production values that hadn’t been there for ages. It seems to me that if you ask, “What’s the best Doctor Who series ever?”, from my point of view, “Genesis” would be it.’

  Certainly it has one of the very best openings to a story. Into a mist-clad, deserted wasteland come what look like troops from the trenches of the First World War. Some are machine-gunned in slow motion to the ground, others continue to advance past the camera and onwards. As they disappear into the mist, the Doctor (newly reincarnated as Tom Baker) materialises, to be confronted by a Time Lord (John Franklyn-Robbins), who has a mission for him. The combination of the new Doctor’s motley outfit and the Time Lord’s all-in-one black garment with jester-style hood (taken from Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal), set in the context of the warfare we’ve just seen, gives the sequence a disturbingly surreal quality. So does the Doctor’s behaviour, evoking nothing so much as the familiar image of the ageing secret agent as he accepts his task: ‘All right. Just one more time.’ Thereafter things get more solid, if no less disturbing. The Doctor, together with his companions – Sarah Jane has been joined by Surgeon-Lieutenant Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter) – has been sent to the planet Skaro in the pre-dawn of the Daleks, his mission to prevent the emergence of the creatures, or at least to shape their nature into a less destructive form.

  ‘I think this war’s been going on a very long time,’ reflects the Doctor, as he looks at the incongruous mixture of weaponry, both ancient and modern. ‘They probably started out with the most modern equipment, but no longer have the resources, have to make do.’ Indeed this turns out to be the centuries-long conflict, of which we heard in the first story, between the Thals and the Kaleds – the latter being the original humanoid form of the Daleks before they retreated into their protective shells. Now, however, we get a glimpse of its reality, with some scenes that made for gruesome viewing in what was supposed to be a children’s show, particularly the shot of a trench manned by corpses, propped up against banks of sandbags, guns in their hands, to make it look as though the position is defended. The Doctor and Harry are captured by Kaled troops, encountering first a general named Ravon (Guy Siner) and then a security commander from the elite forces, Nyder (Peter Miles), and the Nazi imagery that has always accompanied the Daleks is here made explicit. The Kaleds wear black uniforms and click their heels as they give each other Hitler salutes (not the outstretched right arm, but the jerking up from the elbow of the forearm, palm out). Just in case there is any doubt, Nyder wears black leather gloves and, around his high-necked tunic, an Iron Cross. ‘I think the imagery was suggested by the script,’ remembered director David Maloney of the Nazi accoutrements, ‘but I certainly didn’t regret it afterwards.’

  Nyder explains that there is also a third group on the planet, the Mutos, who are the scarred relics of ourselves. Monsters created by the chemical weapons used in the first century of this war. ‘They were banished into the wastelands where they live and scavenge like animals.’ They had to be expelled, says Nyder, because ‘We must keep the Kaled race pure. Imperfects are rejected.’ He speaks too in awestruck admiration of Davros, the greatest of all Kaled scientists, and the episode ends with Sarah, stumbling away from a group of Mutos to come across Davros for the first time. Together, she and we witness a moment of destiny, as the wizened, wheelchair-bound scientist unveils the first Dalek in the history of the universe.

  It’s a great episode, as good as Doctor Who ever got, and arguably Terry Nation’s finest achievement. There are some of his characteristic touches, but they are given new and violent twists. Sarah Jane is separated from her companions, as ever in a Nation story, but only because she’s been left for dead in a trench full of corpses; the familiar iconography of the Second World War is invoked, but is fused with images both from earlier periods and from the future to create a picture of perpetual conflict (Nation cited Wells’s 1936 film Things to Come as an influence here); even the traditional final-scene reveal of a Dalek is trumped by the debut appearance of Davros the Creator.

  The figure of Davros dominates the remainder of the tale. He is the leader of the Elite, a group of scientists who are housed outside the main city dome in a place known as the Bunker, and who represent an alternative centre of power in Kaled society, a sort of scientific SS. Through his research on the genetic mutations thrown up by the chemical weapons used in the war, he has concluded that there is no way back for his race. He has therefore accelerated the workings of evolution, as a Kaled explains, ‘to establish our final mutational form. He took living cells, treated them with chemicals and produced the ultimate creature.’ He then developed the travel machines that would house these creatures and thus bequeathed to the universe the Daleks. He’s a magnificent addition to both the Dalek mythology and Doctor Who more generally, following on from the likes of Mavic Chen, Tobias Vaughn (in the 1968 story ‘The Invasion’) and the Master and raising the stakes still higher as the ultimate in deranged but charismatic megalomaniacs.

  As Nation pointed out, ‘any crazy old mad professor is wonderful to have around’. Such characters had been stock figures in horror and science fiction since Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but Davros also has some very specific associations. Most immediately, the image of a wheelchair-bound deranged Nazi scientist drew on Peter Sellers’s title role in Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr Strangelove (1964). There’s a hint too of Leslie Charteris’s Dr Sardon from ‘The Man Who Liked Ants’, another scientist who was keen to speed up the evolutionary process. But even closer is another of the classic H.G. Wells novels, The Island of Dr Moreau (1896), in which, on an isolated island in the South Pacific, the eponymous scientist pursues a combination of vivisection, plastic surgery and education to turn animals of various sorts into passable imitations of human beings, almost in parody of evolution. The resulting creatures live wild on the island, but are in constant danger of reverting to their animal natures, kept in line only by fear of Moreau and by constant recitation of the Law he has imposed on them: ‘Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?’ they chant. ‘Not to eat flesh nor fish; that is the Law. Are we not Men?’ Much of this is echoed in ‘Genesis of the Daleks’, both with the Mutos out in the wastelands and with
artificially created monsters. ‘Davros’s early experiments were with animals,’ we are told. ‘Some of the things he created were horrific. And they’re still alive.’ When Sarah is captured by Mutos, one of them insists that she is what they term a Norm, and must therefore be killed: ‘Kill her! It is the Law. All Norms must die.’

  A common thread running through the tradition of the mad scientist had been the implication that creator and created share a single nature. That was, for example, the basis of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and the first film version of Frankenstein (1910) had acknowledged the element of the doppelganger with a scene in which the monster fades away while standing in front of a mirror, though his reflection remains; when Frankenstein subsequently looks in the mirror, he sees only the monster’s reflection looking back at him. Davros – ‘This thing that was half-man and half-Dalek,’ as Nation described him – takes the shared identity to a logical conclusion. The description of him in the script was quite explicit: ‘Davros is contained in a specially constructed self-powered wheelchair. It has similarities to the base of a Dalek.’ We never discover what it was that so scarred and destroyed the scientist’s physical body, but the chair has been developed as a life-support mechanism, leaving him effectively a cyborg. ‘The only really human feature we ever see of Davros is an ancient, withered hand that plays across the switch-packed surface of the control panel that stretches across the front of the chair.’ (The focus on the hand also echoes Dr Strangelove.)