It had been the intention of the Tour supremos to fill the yawning chasm between Series 12 and 13 to use the newly discovered (at least that’s what the THT Brain Trust told us) technology of HD Re-classic-ation conferring HD quality caps to stories from the classic era of Doctor Who. And all of that was going swimmingly until …
The world went a little sideways (insert your own Inferno reference here). For pure punnage purposes we’ll call that B.C. (Before Corona).
Truth be told all of the work for Season 12 was done, dusted, and integrated into the site months ago, but there was one story in that grouping of five which hadn’t been written about yet, and that was 1975’s Genesis of the Daleks.
It’s a consequential story and has always been very well regarded by fans. And the shadow it cast which has run all the way up to the Peter Capaldi story The Witch’s Familiar in 2015. That’s a 40-year legacy and for one very simple reason, Davros. While the Daleks were of course very well established before Davros was a glint (albeit a desperate glint) in Terry Nation’s eye, the ‘ret-conning’ of Davros into Dalek lore, and the ‘human’ face he put onto the Daleks, not to mention the superlative performance of Michael Wisher, gave the Daleks a more relatable form for prospective Doctor Who writers to plot against. In fact it would be until Dalek in 2005 that the Dalek(s) would prominently feature in a story without the pull of Davros as an anchor. Eventually even that resistance would give way in The Stolen Earth.
A.D. (after Davros) the Daleks were completely different.
Images and caps for Genesis of the Daleks are now (and have been) online. And for Tour faithful, the best news of all is that HD Re-classic-ation is gearing back up again for another run quite, quite soon.