The Power of the Daleks

The Doctor is gone, and in his place is a new man - shorter, younger, more imp like with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. Although they both saw it happen right before their eyes, Ben and Polly have trouble believing that this is the Doctor, the same man who took them away from London in 1966 and on wild adventures through time and space. The new Doctor does not have time to fully adjust to his new body before they are in the thick of it again, being mistaken for visiting Earth officials on the colony world of Vulcan. The planet is not without its problems with local rebels, but things are about to get worse at the discovery of a Dalek capsule and one man's determination to reactivate the monsters inside.

So the show embarks on a new path which is either going to save it or sink it; given that we are still watching Doctor Who in 2016 it's obvious that the gamble paid off, but there were a lot of nails being bitten back in the day wondering if this was indeed going to be a good idea. The ratings were down, the lead actor was going... it's easy to see why the Daleks were brought in to give the series a bit of a boost with the monsters which put it on the map.

It is often said that the companions embody the audience and never a truer word was spoken in this case; Polly knows this is the Doctor and is ready to accept him and even starts goofing around with him ("Lesterson Lesterson Lesterson Lesterson...") but Ben represents the others who were in shocked disbelief refusing to accept that the Doctor had changed. If a deciding vote was needed though look no further than the Daleks who recognize the Doctor as a threat right away. That part is interesting in itself from a continuity perspective; he has only just met the Daleks in this body for the first time, so somewhere in his future he will again.

And what about the new Doctor? He's not at all as serious minded as the first Doctor - he tootles away on his recorder while in thought, he gets distracted and ambles along in a Chaplin-esque manner... now he's less of a grandfather figure and more of a cool yet slightly bohemian look about him with that mess of Beatles-ish hair. The first Doctor's dress sense was far more dignified, and now he's gotten a bit shabby with an over sized coat and trousers which are way too big. Yes, this is the Cosmic Hobo persona right here.

Power, however, suffers from the same fat as most of the second Doctor's era, being that it is missing from the BBC archives save for clips and the complete off air audio soundtrack. They say that nothing ever replaces the original and they are right; despite the best efforts of the BBC this one is never done justice in the commercial releases in other media. It started with the lacklustre novelization of the story by John Peel, who for some reason was the only scribe allowed to make the last few outstanding Dalek scripts into novels, and so-so ones at that. Every effort was made to make the book look like one of Virgin's Missing Adventures range but even that couldn't save it from the vague narrative within and some flunked attempts at humour. The audio release by BBC Radio Collection was and is far and above the best commercial release; sure there was nothing to actually see but if you have even a shred of imagination it's not hard to listen and enjoy it. The most recent attempt to put it back out there is a fully animated version which was released in theaters ahead of its commercial release on DVD and blu ray. I imagine that with animated episodes to fill gaps on DVD releases of incomplete episodes being the way to go the BBC wanted to see how well a full animated restoration would go. Result? Well it's somewhere between Rocket Robin Hood and Archer for animation style with the character faces being a bit comical and the animation being a bit jerky, and where there is a gap in what was understood to be going on there's not much happening on screen which makes the whole thing drag. At least the Daleks are there, though; there's no getting them wrong and animation allows for their sheer numbers to be inflated beyond what a BBC budget would allow. And the wholesale slaughter that the Daleks visit upon the colonists of Vulcan is just insane - their crashed out capsule is obviously some sort of infiltration device and while they lull the colonists into a false sense of security by pretending to serve them they are secretly mass producing themselves to overrun the place. By the time the Doctor gets a handle on the situation there are bodies everywhere - not the sort of thing encouraged on screen, and not as easily realized in audio.

Whatever medium this is enjoyed in, though, the second Doctor is off to a good start with his greatest enemies ultimately defeated and his two best friends at his side.

NEXT EPISODE: THE MURDER GAME

The Tenth Planet

The TARDIS arrives at a high security space tracking station in the Antarctic in 1986. The visit by the Doctor, Polly and Ben comes at the same time as a new planet appears in the solar system, putting a manned space flight in orbit over Earth in danger. As the planet approaches an energy drain begins to affect Earth, and the Doctor surmises that the new planet is pulling power away to replenish itself. But the new planet is not uninhabited and its inhabitants soon come to Earth as well to secure the planet for their plunder; they were once humans but as their bodies began to fail in the harsh conditions on their planet, Mondas, they began to replace their organs and limbs with mechanical substitutes to the point where there is nothing human left, not even emotions. The Cybermen have arrived.

Visually the Cybermen did not have the best start in the series; they looked tremendously top heavy and ungainly with the headset lamp they wore and the massive amount of tech planted on their chests, and their faces were not concealed by the same metal helmet as today but rather a fabric stocking pulled tight. The whole effect, though, is not ineffective; these are the earliest Cybermen ever made and they were created with all the resource the failing planet had left. The fact that their hands are still visible as well makes for some macabre imagery as if the hands were cut off and then reattached to the metal body, or the flesh and bones between the hands and shoulders all scraped away and replaced with hydraulics. And those faces... the eyes of the actors still stare out from behind mesh but I don't think I ever saw one of them blink, and when they speak that dreadful canny voice issuing from a mouth that opens in a parody of speech but does not actually form words... these have to be some of the most horrific things ever made in Doctor Who.

The brilliance of the creation of the Cybermen demands a proper intro story and The Tenth Planet is exactly that. This one stands out for its attention to detail on so many levels starting with the effective set design of the Snowcap Tracking Station with its multi leveled setup and the sheer amount of prop technology packed into it. The series is long criticized for the sets looking wobbly like cardboard but the tracking room set has none of that fabled flimsiness about it at all. This one also has an international feel to the casting, with nationalities of all kinds included in the base personnel, the staff of the UN headquarters in Geneva and even the doomed orbiting Zeus 4 capsule. (And note how the space suit worn by one of the astronauts there is the same one as worn by Bossk in The Empire Strikes Back). It's a sad counterpoint to this progressive casting that William Hartnell has been accused of having been very old school conservative in his views of other nationalities and on this, his last serial as the starring character, he would be quite vocal about it. Anneke Wills, who played Polly, is on record as saying she and her co star Michael Craze (Ben Jackson) were ashamed for Hartnell's behaviour around this subject, considering that the character he played was so far from being that kind of a person.

And while The Tenth Planet introduces what will become one of the most famous monsters in the series, it also has to introduce the concept which will keep the series going into the future: the concept of regeneration. The Doctor's body has been failing ever since his experience in The Savages - even if this is not directly mentioned in the series it is certainly the most physically traumatic thing to happen to him and his manner has become far more erratic ever since, something which has been picked up on by the contributing authors of the novel and audio series which have been placed between that adventure and this one. By the end of the story, with the Cybermen defeated, the Doctor is in a daze and nearly locks Ben and Polly out of the TARDIS, but as they get inside he collapses on the floor and as his companions watch, his face changes into someone completely new. It was a tremendous gamble to do this to keep the series going, and it had been toyed with before as a means to remove William Hartnell from the series when it became obvious his own health was not going to improve. Audiences watching the episode for the first time would have to wait a week to see what all this was going
to mean for the show, and I can only imagine what kind of conversations fans were having the morning after seeing this. And all without an internet forum!

The famous first regeneration clip is pretty much all that still exists of episode 4 of this adventure; episodes 1 through 3 did not see commercial release for the longest time as BBC Video wasn't sure if an incomplete story would sell and when they did finally put it on VHS the last episode was cobbled together with stills and the original episode soundtrack, and clips where they could be added in. When the DVD was released it was done with an animated version of episode 4 so finally the whole thing could be watched properly, much akin to the DVD release of The Reign of Terror and several others which lay ahead.

Having survived the invasion by the Cybermen, though, Ben and Polly are now left to cope with the Doctor's sudden change. Who will he be now?

NEXT EPISODE: THE POWER OF THE DALEKS