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Genesis of the Daleks, anyone notice the bolt action rifles?

V

voggmo

Commodore
Amongst the advanced hand weapons. Bout midway through a couple baddies shoot at Tom with WW 1 era rifles as he goes through a floor exit. Bit of a Faux pas in the prop department that day. But thats the fun of it sometimes. You wouldn't notice that 1st time through, but I did tonite.

Not a nitpick, just a silly thing I noticed. The navigation lamps on B7 another.
 
I don't think it was a faus pas at all, the Kaleds and the Thals were going downhill technologically speaking and the use of old rifes was one sign of this. The Doctor pointed this out earlier on after he told Harry and Sarah where they were.
 
Yeah, that's what the Doctor meant by the 'war of attrition' spiel in episode one. The Kaleds and the Thals started out with energy weapons, but no longer had the technological base to maintain them, except in small numbers.

They were now using considerably less advanced weaponry, like bolt action rifles, as these were easier to produce. Even then, there were shortages of ammo.

Don't forget the very opening scene has troops in gas masks machine gunned like something from WW1.
 
Wasn't the whole point of that episode that they had regressed to World War One? The gas masks, the trench warfare, etc?
 
^ and probably they'd have gone further, pretty soon they'd have been throwing rocks at each other I imagine!
 
Starkers said:
^ and probably they'd have gone further, pretty soon they'd have been throwing rocks at each other I imagine!
Click to expand...

Exactly: there's a line in episode one, remember, which establishes that prisoners are being hung rather than shot due to lack of ammunition.
 
Starkers said:
^ and probably they'd have gone further, pretty soon they'd have been throwing rocks at each other I imagine!
Click to expand...

Until they ran out of rocks to throw, then it would be hand-to-hand until they ran out of hands!
 
I had those two stories on tape, a big box set, many years ago. If I recall, the first couple of Genesis episodes were on the same tape as The Sontaran Experiment.
 
Yup, The Sontaran Experiment parts 1-2 and Genesis of the Daleks parts 1-2 are on Tape One, and then Genesis of the Daleks parts 3-6 on Tape Two.
 
Yeah, the packaging painting was real cool. Only problem is that it had a silver B & W era Dalek on the package instead of the gunmetal grey Daleks that were a staple of Genesis and the rest the classic color era.
 
By gosh it's true. Now I can watch parts 1 & 2. Interesting that he was intended to be a one time baddie, then ressurrected in 79. I wonder if fan input much to do with that.
 
I think it was Terry Nation's idea to keep using Davros. I think one of his conditions for the Daleks being used in the 80s was to keep including Davros, if I remember the text commentary correctly for Ressurection.


Unfortunately, as he kept being used, he became more and more cartoony, so to speak. The only exceptions IMO are Revelation of the Daleks and the audios.

According to Rememberance, the effect of a Dalek blast is that your insides get scrambled. (Hence why we never see any external damage, although I think censorship might have something to do with that.) So Davros must rely almost totally on his chair for life support.
 
They kept bringing Davros back because he was useful for a dramatic perspective. Daleks are faceless and talk in a near monotone. It's difficult, though not impossible, to give them interesting dialogue.

In essence, Davros does for the Daleks what the Queen later did for the Borg. An individual in a race of conformists. Someone for the hero to talk to.
 
Dinosauricon said:
I think it was Terry Nation's idea to keep using Davros. I think one of his conditions for the Daleks being used in the 80s was to keep including Davros, if I remember the text commentary correctly for Ressurection.
Click to expand...

yep. Having wiped out the Daleks in their first story and had to find an excuse to bring them back, Nation specified in the script for Genesis that there should be a shot of a light blinking on Davros's chair after he was 'killed', just in case. The director ignored it, but ...
 
That's interesting Dianka. I had a similiar thought that they should've had Davros hit a switch or someting on his console as he gets hit with the beam. At least Terry Nation had his thinking cap on.
 
Back to the original point, it's also worth pointing out that the futuristic weapon the Doctor was holding was a re-used prop from an earlier story. They just raided the props house for what they needed.

Mark
 
Now that I've seen parts 1 & 2 eight years after I bought the set, right at the beginning the Doctor holds up a modern rifle & an old one. The futuristic one had a square end. Looked pretty cool. Was that one used before?

& now that we're on this subject, has anyone ever done a catalog job of hand held Who weapons? Trek probably has, but I dunno bout Who.
 
The square barrelled rifles seen in this story were originally used by the Drahvins in the Hartnell story 'Galaxy Four'.
 
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