Time Lord Victorious: Genetics of the Daleks Review

This was one of the stories in this arc I was most looking forward to, so you have an idea of what my expectations were before going in.

Tom Baker is still one of my favourite Doctors so to hear him in a story linked to the Time Lord Victorious arc is already exciting, but I can’t lie that after Mutually Assured Destruction I wasn’t too sure where this story could go next.

The answer is a weird one. It’s an epilogue but not really.

We know how all three Doctors escaped the Dark Times and Mutually Assured Destruction told us how the Time Squad Daleks blew up. So what’s this really about then? What’s left to tell?

That’s where my confusion and disappointment comes in because it turns out this entire story exists thanks to the escape room made involving a lone Dalek that survived some terrible event.

So this exists to tell us that a single Dalek survives when it could’ve been inserted in the previous story in a single line of dialogue.

Tom Baker is amazing. I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat it as many times as I need to. He is magnifying with his performance and it’s a shame that this audio drama took a bit to introduce him. With that being said he’s here for the bulk of this tale and is the best part about it.

There are some unfortunates within this story and one of them is the idea of being the concepts from the Chibnall New Year’s Special Resolution. Concepts I didn’t like.

Daleks being deadly out of their shells feels stupid and redundant. The idea of them “hiding”, a quote used many times by various Doctors to describe why they hide in their death machines, bring so many layers of depth to the Daleks. Bringing back the idea that they can control people by leaping onto their backs is something I didn’t want, especially when they used many alternative methods before. Luckily it’s not long until the Dalek is back in his casing but nevertheless I wasn’t a fan of this.

Nevertheless this is still a fun tale when Baker is in the room. It feels kinda fun to have it be a 1v1, much like the Ninth Doctor and the Dalek in Dalek. A Fourth Doctor variant of this is a cool idea and it works for the most part.

With all of that being said, it is a matter of putting up with the modern references to a version of the show I’m not to fond of and just enjoying Tom Baker battling a Dalek once again. It helps that the story is a fun time as well. Yeah, it’s worth it.

8/10