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 | Reviews for The Genocide Machine |
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There are 6 reviews so far. To add a review of your own for this item, visit the voting page.
| By: | Clive Wright, Jersey |
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| Date: | Saturday 20 December 2003 |
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| Rating: |   8 |
It didn't take long but here they are. The Daleks deliver everything that you expect and its nice to step back to the Daleks of Patrick's time.
The plot is strong and although you now the Daleks are coming because there is a big one on the cover, their introduction is excellent.
I never liked Ace on TV and was waiting to shrink into my seat as I heard the cry "Ace" put gladly Sophie delivers a stronger more rounded charter. Sylester is good as ever.
Long live the Empire.
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| Antoher Strong Dalek Story |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Saturday 2 December 2006 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
The Daleks come across as much more menacing in audio than in video. Mike Tucker has written a taught story in the Saward Dalek story mould. The Daleks have a cunning plan, and execute it to near perfection. The secondary elements are well thought out, too. The library protected by a time projection, the living water, and the wetworks computer are interesting ideas tied together quite well. The relationship between Elgin and Prink is a bit twee for my tastes, though. Perhaps Tucker felt a need to lighten what is otherwise a heavy story.
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| Good story, but not great. |
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| By: | C G Harwood, Dunedin, NZ, New Zealand |
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| Date: | Sunday 30 September 2007 |
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| Rating: | 6 |
Dont get me wrong, I liked this story, but i wouldn't listen to it again. The proformances by McCoy and Aldred were as strong as they always are. The Dalek voices were great especialy the Empire Dalek, and i loved the sound of the Specials Weapons Dalek when it started fireing.
There were two charecters that amoyed me, and for the same reason. Prink and Beverly, these two just were not neaded for the story.
The one thing in this story i realy liked was the living rain. And when they drown the daleks in the shells that was the best bit. That would have looked so cool on TV.
The Daleks stories are always a Home-Run but this time i think this story is more of a base hit.
Mike Tucker always writes well for Dr who and this was no exception, He had a great idea but fell short a bit this time. I just wish he would try to do another Dr, he always does the 7th.
But my main throught threw this story was that it was good. It wasn't great but it wasn't bad eather.
| By: | Matthew David Rabjohns, Bridgend, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Wednesday 12 March 2008 |
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| Rating: | 10 |
The return of the daleks.
Nasty as ever.
Sylv and Sophie are on fine form.
The emporer dalek has a brilliantly horrible voice..
Bev tarrant is a great invention.
Living rain is a cool and fresh idea again.
Will the big finish tem forever be brilliantr at finding great writers to write actually decent stories for the daleks?!
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| A Worthy Addition To Dalek Cannon? |
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Cast your mind back to April 2000 when The Genocide Machine made its debut. The story holds an interesting place as it was the very first Dalek story produced by Big Finish. Thanks to a post on one of the message boards I’m a member of I listened to this story again for the first time in over year. As I did I asked myself the same question that had gotten me to listen to this audio again: is The Genocide Machine a worthy addition to Dalek cannon?
To answer that let’s start by looking at the performances from the lead actors. Both Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred give good performances as they reprise the seventh Doctor and Ace respectively. Considering this was only their second Big Finish outing together (with only The Fearmonger coming before this story) there is a very strong feeling that this is the same duo that walked off into the proverbial sunset way back in Survival. While they give good performances there isn’t exactly a whole lot of range to be found in them. That fact is more to the script then the actors but more on that a little later.
The supporting cast is a bit of a mixed batch though. While Louise Faulkner gives an admirable performance as smuggler Bev Tarrant and has some wonderful chemistry with the character of Ace in particular the same can not be said of her other co-star. Bruce Montague gives a constantly annoying if not whiny performance as Chief Librarian Elgin which, given juts how much this character appears in the story, brings down the story considerably. On the plus side there is Daniel Gabriele in a couple of different roles plus of course the Daleks. Nicholas Briggs and laisatair Lock cover the whole range of Dalek voices admirably right through and up to the Dalek Emperor himself. Yet the real problem of the supporting cast is the fact that it is noticeably small. While all the audios have a small cast this is the one occasion I can recall where it became noticeable to the point of annoyance (like the character of Prink who keeps getting referred to but only gets a couple of line sat the very end).
And of course there is the script. Special effects man and novelist mike Tucker was given the task of bringing the Daleks to audio with this story. In doing so Tucker created the audio equivalent of the Pertwee era story Planet Of The Daleks which means (to borrow from Nicholas Briggs for a moment) that this is effectively “the Daleks greatest hits”. The story contains the Dalek Supreme, Dalek duplicates (Resurrection Of The Daleks), Hoverbouts from the comic strips plus the Emperor amongst many, many other Dalek elements. The result is that story is probably second only to the novel War Of The Daleks (which I’m reading now) for just how many Dalek references can be put into a single story weather needed or not. For the most part it seems a little unnecessary to cram so much into the story and it certainly isn’t to the stories benefit in my opinion. Beyond the elements of Dalek continuity there is little original to the story outside of the setting of the Library of Kar-Charrat (one wonders if Steven Moffat drew some inspiration from this story when he wrote Silence In The Library / The Forest Of The Dead for the new series) which si a shame because there’s so much more that could have been done in this story.
So how worthy is The Genocide Machine to Dalek cannon? While It has some good performances the story is marred down by its script. While this is perhaps a good adventure (if unexceptional) when comparing this story with later Big Finish Dalek stories like The Mutant Phase or Jubilee this story way too lightweight by comparison. Or, to put it another way, good but still found wanting.
| By: | Andrew Shaw, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Wednesday 14 July 2010 |
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| Rating: | 9 |
I enjoyed this story I thought it was well wrote and it kept me listening I didnt want to turn it off, the good thing about the Dalek stories on Big Finish is you get to find out how evil they really are and they dont have to be toned down so it gives you a proper picture of how the Dalkes should be.
