Guilt

"Our greatest scientist now in the hands of the enemy."

Writer: Scott Alan Woodard
Format: Audio
Released: December 2006
Series: I, Davros 04

Featuring: Davros

Synopsis

"That is our world out there. A chemical soup for a sky above and a scarred, radioactive wasteland below. It is purgatory. But we must make it paradise!"

The Kaled city is now ravaged, and life has become one of fear, protected by a vast transparent dome that covers what remains of the City.

The Thals undertake a desperate mission to take Davros away from his laboratories, and the Supremo must send a crack squad over enemy lines to retrieve his chief scientist.

Led by the young, enthusiastic and morally-bankrupt Lieutenant Nyder, Davros is successfully rescued.

But he has been changed by the experience, and where once he stood for knowledge, he now espouses the utter extermination of the Thal people. To this end, Davros will stop at nothing and will sacrifice anybody to see his legacy continue.

Here's to the future...

Verdict

Guilt was a superb conclusion to what has been a quite brilliant I, Davros spinoff series! This adventure in particularly was pretty much a prequel to Genesis of the Daleks but I guess that could be said of the entire series. I was delighted to hear Nyder make his chronological debut and seeing how he gained his allegiance and trust with Davros was fantastic. I hadn't read the synopsis prior to listening so that was a lovely treat for me personally. Despite the recognisable jumps in the life of Davros that each of this series stories have gone through, the continuity between them is excellent. Baran finding out that Davros had experimented on his own mother was terrific and I liked his reaction to that. He was quite surprised but also you could tell that it was something he was kind of expectant of. Davros wanting control over the Kaled's newborns and children under five was quite horrifying but he would get his wish. I love his reactions when his loyalty is questioned as he abhorrently and abundantly believes there is nobody more loyal. All of his work, despite what it might mean, is done with the sole consideration of maintaining Kaled life and defeating the Thals. If defeating them means the Kaled's become something more or different then that is the price that has to be paid. The Thals capturing Davros was great and I liked how revered Davros was to the enemy. His experiments had garnered a reputation and they quite obviously feared him. They were still concerned with weaponry and I liked how that was not what Davros was really researching. I really enjoyed hearing the first instance of the 'travel machines' that would house the Kaleds following their genetic manipulation and the fact that a Thal was the first to be cased was just sublime. I liked hearing of Davros reading the ancient Book of Predictions of the Dals and hearing him utter the word 'Dalek' for the first time was a wonderful moment. It's so fascinating to hear him creating the deadliest species the universe would see with such calmness and ruthlessness. He eradicated the Council of Twelve by nanobombs that he injected with radiation tablets that were distributed widely and he assumed command. The similarities, especially with the propaganda, to Nazi Germany was fantastic. The series finishing on the very first Dalek recognising that it was alive and communicating was terrific and led into the Davros's TV debut superbly. Overall, a fantastic end to what has been a really great series!

Rating: 9/10