The BF Time Team 007: The Genocide Machine

[Anthony Williams]

Another double-whammy this time round on The Big Finish Time Warp, as we look at both The Genocide Machine and Red Dawn! This thread is for the discussion of The Genocide Machine. Click here for Red Dawn...

The library on Kar-Charrat is one of the wonders of the Universe. It is also hidden from all but a few select species. The Doctor and Ace discover that the librarians have found a new way of storing data - a wetworks facility - but the machine has attracted unwanted attention, and the Doctor soon finds himself pitted against his oldest and deadliest enemies - the Daleks!

After 12 years since their previous appearance on television, the Daleks return! Did this play live up to your expectations? Have you revised your opinions since? Let us know!

Ant x

[stuartdg]

Average for me.The jungle setting evokes Spiridon and Kembel complete with Daleks and an ancient artefact,while cloning Ace is not dissimilair to Resurrection of the Daleks.There's nothing particularly wrong with the acting,although Bruce Montague as Elgin does irritate due largely to the pompousness of the character.It just feels as if nothing new has been done with the Daleks and their debut on audio

[SiHart]

The aim of this story seems to be to recreate the Dalek stories of old- so it feels like a greatest hits- Jungle! Someone called Tarrant! Duplicates! Special Weapon Dalek! Mad Dalek on the loose! Unfortunately that makes it feel derivitive and old hat I'm afraid.

However, the idea of the Wetworks facility and the way it's achieved is really rather good and a clever idea. The Library is also a decent idea (and one the new series obviosuly nicked too!) but even with the mentions of Time Lord Defences, Daleks waiting for 1000s of years and all that, it feels very small scale.

Maybe it's the characters that do it? A pompous librarian- well there's a bit a clichefor a start and the Prink character was funny for oh... seconds. You can imagine them chuckling away to themslves over that one in the BF studios.
As for Bev Tarrant. Sigh. What a horrid, unlikeable character she is. A cut price Benny Summerfield, without the charm, wit, warmth and well anything that made Benny a success. I really didn't like the character at all, and i think she's even worse when she comes back in Dust Breeding.

But for all that I enjoyed it when I listened to it. Maybe it was Slyv and Soph who thrown themselves into it and feel their authentic selves or maybe it was like comfort Doctor Who- nothing wrong with it, but nothing special either.

Decidely average I'm afraid.

Si xx

[MacNimon]

The aim of this story seems to be to recreate the Dalek stories of old- so it feels like a greatest hits- Jungle! Someone called Tarrant! Duplicates! Special Weapon Dalek! Mad Dalek on the loose! Unfortunately that makes it feel derivitive and old hat I'm afraid.

However, the idea of the Wetworks facility and the way it's achieved is really rather good and a clever idea. The Library is also a decent idea (and one the new series obviosuly nicked too!) but even with the mentions of Time Lord Defences, Daleks waiting for 1000s of years and all that, it feels very small scale.

Maybe it's the characters that do it? A pompous librarian- well there's a bit a clichefor a start and the Prink character was funny for oh... seconds. You can imagine them chuckling away to themslves over that one in the BF studios.
As for Bev Tarrant. Sigh. What a horrid, unlikeable character she is. A cut price Benny Summerfield, without the charm, wit, warmth and well anything that made Benny a success. I really didn't like the character at all, and i think she's even worse when she comes back in Dust Breeding.

But for all that I enjoyed it when I listened to it. Maybe it was Slyv and Soph who thrown themselves into it and feel their authentic selves or maybe it was like comfort Doctor Who- nothing wrong with it, but nothing special either.

Decidely average I'm afraid.

Si xx

I've got to say that I really enjoyed this one, and it's for all the same reasons that Si gave it an average score!

It's quite simply because this tries so hard to be a dalek story of old that I enjoyed it. We hadn't seen (or heard!) the 7th Doctor in a jungle setting before, so it was a refreshing change. No Davros! And best of all, McCoy and Aldred really threw themselves into this...easily their most enjoyable performances to date.

I'm really not a fan of the 7th Doc, but I was surprised just how much I enjoyed this one. Yes Si, I agree, it does feel like a greatest hits story, derivative and old hat, but the 7th Doctor really didn't get too many stories which simply felt like a traditional DW story because of these things. That's why I enjoyed it so much, because they played it safe rather than trying to be more experimental.

[Jon Masters]

Si has pretty much covered all my major complaints, but for once I was a bit disappointed by Mike Tucker's writing - he's normally so good in novel form, but there were a few odd lines that jumped out, some facts that didn't make sense, and perhaps worst of all a Dalek plan which was fundamentally flawed and , well just a bit crap really. One minute any time sensitive will do, then its got be a Time Lord brain. Daleks have been waiting for hundreds of years but the plan has to be rushed because its vital to some invasion plans. And had they just bought up a shipload of external hard drives everything would have been over in 3 episodes (or even just a huge watertank).

The whole of the first episode seemed to have been written by two people - one who was trying to keep the Daleks a secret, and then a second who kept slotting in scenes where Daleks (a) talked (b) told us what was happening and (c) what was going to happen next

3/5

[Lissa]

For me the Genocide Machine was the first Big Finish story to sound like a movie rather than a radio play. Pretty much all BBC radio stories sound the same whether they're H2G2, Death Comes to Time, 50s Paul Temple or one of the new Poirots. But Batman:Knightfall sounded different. It was huge and epic and sounded like what Dirk Maggs called "A movie in your mind". That's what BF achieved with this - a deeper and grander sound than they'd managed before.

Or at least that was how it felt at the time. The Daleks probably helped - they're noiser than Queen Mary.

[SiHart]

I remember finding the lack of noise of Daleks actually moving really disconcerting to begin with. After years of Daleks trundling around the studio floor on noisy castors it felt really wrong.

Si xx

[Anthony Williams]

I feel that two people in particular here have said two things that I was really thinking about this particular play, so I'll start out by quoting them:

For me the Genocide Machine was the first Big Finish story to sound like a movie rather than a radio play. Pretty much all BBC radio stories sound the same whether they're H2G2, Death Comes to Time, 50s Paul Temple or one of the new Poirots. But Batman:Knightfall sounded different. It was huge and epic and sounded like what Dirk Maggs called "A movie in your mind". That's what BF achieved with this - a deeper and grander sound than they'd managed before.

The aim of this story seems to be to recreate the Dalek stories of old- so it feels like a greatest hits- Jungle! Someone called Tarrant! Duplicates! Special Weapon Dalek! Mad Dalek on the loose! Unfortunately that makes it feel derivitive and old hat I'm afraid.

And these two quotes - one very positive, one negative - absolutely sum up this particular play. It's just such a mixed-bag.

Sonically, it's marvellous. It's really where Big Finish seem to have cottoned onto how to do a vast sounding, theatrical epic on audio. Everything is well captured on audio, from the sounds of the jungle, to the natives of Kar-Charrat, through to the Daleks, in their first Big Finish appearance.

Likewise, there are a LOT of good ideas, such as the Daleks waiting around for centuries for a time-sensitive in their Ziggurat, so that they can force their way into the Library. Heck, the notion of a library that has all knowledge encompassed was so good that Moffat clearl pinched it for Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead!

However, despite it's great ideas and marvellous soundscape, it falls down on SO many levels. Firstly, there's the lacklustre performances from both Sylvester and Sophie. Following fairly soon after the marvellous The Fearmonger, this was very disappointing. Unfortunately, Sylv spends most of this story doing his self-righteous angry shouting routine, which he doesn't do terribly well - his performance is ultimately garbled and unintelligable, with Sylv putting the emphasis on the wrong words. Shame.

Sophie is also a disappointment as Ace. She seems to have phoned in her ridiculously angry performance. It doesn't help that the dialogue that she's given is distinctly poor anyway. But the difference here is that other actors would make this shine with their performance. Here, it just sounds like she's thought "to hell with this!" and yelled her way through the story.

Oh, and like Si, I can't stand Bev Tarrant. Awful, awful character. Totally agree with everything that Si says about her.

One saving grace is the amusing relationship between the librarian and his assistant. Despite being told how he never stops talking, we never hear more than a cough from the assistant. I loved that!

Really, this one wasn't great. It gets a 2/5 from me, but only because it sounds wonderful!

[Nyder]

I liked this one. Yes of course it's derivative, but the bits about the library and the water were good. I liked the fact that Prink never got to say much. In fact, it was a bit of a disappointment when he did say a few words! I did like the idea of Daleks drowning in their own cases.

I am warming to Doctor 7 and Ace ..... a little! I still find it intensely irritating that she calls him "Professor". Urgh. It irked me back on TV in the 80s, and it irks me still Whereas Sylv can do "dark and brooding" dialogue, I still haven't found any evidence that he can play big, dramatic scenes with any gravitas.