Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks (1966)

One of the Doctor Who serials which only exists on audio - an especial shame since it was Patrick Troughton's debut in the role and also a major use of the show's most popular recurring villains (presumably an insurance device to help get over the hump of the then-unprecedented regeneration of William Hartnell into a new star). Much of the first part deals with the surprise of the switch, as the Doctor's then-companions, Ben (Michael Craze) and Polly (Anneke Wills), aren't sure whether the puckish newcomer is really the Doctor. There's a sub-sub-plot about this Doctor not doing what the 'real' Doctor would have done and a suggestion that his success at the end has been as a result of blundering luck (he gets himself knocked out at the climax) rather than determined ingenuity. Troughton does a wink that keeps the character mysterious: he's already played a lot with his recorder and used a wineglass hum to get out of a sonically-activated jail cell (after having asked the guard politely for more water so he can get the right note) but hasn't yet developed the mock (or actual) panic that became his signature in the part.

The TARDIS materialises on the planet Vulcan, an Earth colony with mercury swamps that don't seem as deadly as they ought to be, and semi-accidentally replaces a murdered official Examiner from Earth (a device later co-opted for Jon Pertwee on Peladon). The set-up is complex with a complacent but decent governor (Peter Bathurst) troubled by rumblings of a rebellion covertly stirred up by his fuhrer-wannabe security chief (Bernard Archard) while an enthusiastic scientist (Robert James, whose performance goes through several varieties of hysteria) discovers a capsule containing three deactivated Daleks (who soon get a lot more made).

Regular writer David Whitaker, doing the first Dalek story not scripted by Terry Nation, makes a break with the continuing threads of the earlier serials by making the Daleks a forgotten race - suggesting a long time has passed since they invaded Earth or made war on the whole galaxy. However, we get more details about how they are created (on a production line) and the globby mutant placed in the metallic casing. Whitaker's plotting allows for the villains to show more personality: at first, the Daleks pose as useful allies and pretend to be just machines, with voice artist Peter Hawkins giving slightly mocking tones to a new catch-phrase ('I am your ser-vant') and Daleks scurrying around preparing for an orgy of extermination by laying cables around willing humans. There are clever touches about how alien the Dalek mindset is and even a strange moment as a Dalek queries the faction-fighting they are making use of to stage their own coup ('why would a human want to kill another human?').

As often in '60s Who, a despairing tone sets in: the colony seems rotten through and through, which makes them open to the Dalek attack, and the last episode sees most of the cast exterminated along with quite a few extras. The survivors even quibble that the Doctor has wrecked their power system and there should have been a less-damaging way of defeating the villains.
KIM NEWMAN

First published in this form here.

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