Writer: David Whitaker
Director: Christopher Barry
Script Editor: Gerry Davis
Producer: Innes Lloyd
Ben and Polly are aghast when the man they have known as the Doctor collapses and appears to change into an entirely different man. Suspicious of the new character they follow him outside the TARDIS where they find themselves on the planet of Vulcan amid bubbling mercury pools.
Further ahead of his companions the ‘new’ Doctor is approached by a man, but a shot rings out and the man falls dead. The Doctor examines the body and finds a badge marked ‘Earth Examiner.’ Before he can do more he is struck a blow to the head.
Ben and Polly are overcome by mercury fumes but the three time travellers are saved by a search party from a nearby colony led by Quinn and Bragen who have come to greet the examiner. The Doctor is mistakenly assumed to be the examiner and they are all taken back to the colony.
In a laboratory a scientist named Lesterson is deeply immersed in the mysteries of a strange capsule that was discovered in the mercury swamp. The capsule dominates the lab and is sealed. Lesterson’s assistant, a woman called Janley, is involved with the colony’s rebels who are aiming to overthrow the governor Hensell.
When the Doctor/Examiner is shown the capsule he allows attempts to be made to open it. An entry bay is revealed but no further progress can be made. The scientists retire for the evening and late that night the Doctor returns to the scene, suspicious of what lays inside the capsule. Ben and Polly join him as he makes his way into an inner compartment where they discover two dormant cobwebbed Daleks. But it is clear another Dalek has been removed.
When Lesterson arrives he denies having already discovered the Daleks but secretly he has hidden one away and plans to reactivate it, believing it to be an amazing robot.
Lesterson and his ‘robot’
The Doctor decides to contact Earth to stop any further experimentation with the inert Dalek, but he finds that communications have been cut. Bragen accuses Deputy Leader Quinn of disabling the communications system and he is made to stand before an enquiry.
Meanwhile Lesterson continues to experiment and manages to power up the Dalek. One of his Lab assistants is wary of it as it shows signs of life. But Lesterson is blind to his warnings. The Dalek gun fires and the Lab assistant falls to the floor dead. Janley assures a distraught Lesterson that the man is only stunned as Lesterson goes for help. Janley removes the body, she has her own reasons to see that reactivation of the Dalek is not halted. The Dalek gun is subsequently removed and they continue to experiment, eventually interrupting Quinn’s enquiry with a display of the fully functioning Dalek. The Dalek then surprises everyone by talking and announcing that it is a servant of the colony.
Governor Hensell is hugely impressed by the labour saving opportunities that this new ‘machine’ can bring to the colony. To the Doctor’s dismay he allows Lesterson to step up his experiments and activate all three Daleks. Hensell then goes on a tour of the colony perimeter, leaving the ambitious Bragen in charge and Quinn languishing in a jail.
The Doctor’s attempts to sabotage Lesterson’s work fail and he is brought before Bragen. Bragen is planning to overthrow the Governor and take control of the colony for himself. He sees the Daleks as a useful tool in this and reveals that he knows the Doctor is not the real examiner. The Doctor now knows that Bragen murdered the examiner.
The activated Dalek inspires Lesterson with its claims that it can create devices for the colony with 100% efficiency. Lesterson is seduced into supplying materials and power so that the Dalek can go to work. Soon the three Daleks are all working. Lesterson begins to have his first doubts about them when their manic call for more power stirs a deep seated fear within him.
Janley is in league with Bragen, and in an attempt to stop the Doctor’s interference Polly is kidnapped. The Doctor discovers a secret meeting of the rebels is to take place and he and Ben decide to hide away in the room in the hope they might learn where Polly is being held. Whilst in a corridor they are shocked to see four Daleks and return to Lesterson’s lab to ask him if he has been building more Daleks.
Ben and the ‘Examiner’ realise that the Daleks are massing
Janley is in league with Bragen, and in an attempt to stop the Doctor’s interference Polly is kidnapped. The Doctor discovers a secret meeting of the rebels is to take place and he and Ben decide to hide away in the room in the hope they might learn where Polly is being held. Whilst in a corridor they are shocked to see four Daleks and return to Lesterson’s lab to ask him if he has been building more Daleks.
The rebels still believe they have control over the Daleks and a pitched battle ensues between the guards and the rebels with their ‘servant’ Daleks. When Bragen learns that the rebels are winning as he had planned he tells Janley that the final stage is to destroy the rebels too. The Daleks own plans override all others and they sweep through the colony killing all before them. As the battle descends into the mayhem of Dalek against human Janley is exterminated.
The Doctor, Ben and Polly make it back to the laboratory where they meet up with Lesterson, whose mind has snapped. But the Doctor manages to discover how the Daleks are getting their power. Bragen learns that all his guards are dead and that the Daleks have overrun the colony. Lesterson is repaid for resurrecting the Daleks with extermination.
The Doctor overloads the power supply, the Daleks lose control and they all blow up.
The destruction of the Daleks
In the office Quinn has a final showdown with Bragen but Valmar arrives and, in revenge for Janley’s death, shoots Bragen dead.
The Doctor and his companions return to the TARDIS, leaving the few survivors of the colony to pick up the pieces. A crushed Dalek shows faint signs of life as the TARDIS departs.
Initially Troughton went through a range of bizarre costume tests that included blacking up and wearing a turban, and wearing a Harpo Marx style curly wig. Doctor Who series co-creator Sidney Newman vetoed all these and asked for a chaplinesque cosmic hobo. Troughton’s eventual costume was similar to Hartnell’s but baggier and bolder and the running joke that the Doctor looked a little tramp-like begin in this first story when Governor Hensell suggests the travellers should be given proper clothes.
In a scene excised from the final script the Doctor is seen to be gazing out of a window at the glowing night landscape of Vulcan and Polly asks him if his home planet was destroyed by the Daleks. When you combine this with the initial character outline of the second Doctor as a man haunted by past horrors and painful memories of a galactic war, there are clear parallels with the underlying thread of the new series of Doctor Who (2005 onwards).
It must have been very difficult to launch a new lead into what was already an iconic programme in 1966. It’s no coincidence that chosen to help establish the new Doctor were the Daleks: his oldest adversaries. Whereas a number of Hartnell’s Dalek encounters could be seen as exploiting their sudden popularity, Power of the Daleks is a really tightly scripted, well devised plot with a lot a character complexities and wonderfully manipulative Daleks.
In a way this story set a mould that was to become very popular during the rest of Troughton’s tenure – that of the base under siege. It signifies a new direction in Doctor Who and a move towards monsters, science fiction and a strong element of moody atmosphere. Whereas historicals had been a regular mainstay of the Hartnell era, the story that followed Power of the Daleks;The Highlanders was the last purely historical story for 16 years.
The strength of Power of the Daleks lies not only in the immediate assurance with which Troughton gets to grips with his role (playing a mysterious man you who often puts up a front of innocence or foolishness), but also in the other characters that populate the story. All the roles are played with utter conviction by a tremendous cast. Standing out amongst them are Robert James as Lesterson and Bernard Archard as the self serving Bragen. (More famous in Doctor Who as Marcus Scarman, the possessed cadaver in the classic fourth Doctor Story Pyramids of Mars – 1975). But even minor characters have motivations of their own. Valmar for instance is enamoured of Janley, so her gentle manipulation of him is all the more convincing, as is the fate of Bragen at his hands.
It’s a story full of opportunist characters. Lesterson wants scientific glory; Janley and Bragen want control, Valmar wants Janley and Hensell wants the colony to be seen to succeed. Pivotal in all of their desires is what the Daleks can offer them and only the Doctor sees how foolish they are being. For the first time the Doctor often seems genuinely terrified of the Daleks, even when there is only one he is very clear that unless it is deactivated the colony will be destroyed.
As for the Daleks themselves they are seen to be playing the long game here, using the humans own greed and ambition for their own ends – and being very canny about it. This is what Daleks should be, intelligent; frightening; deadly. Though they instinctively want to destroy they hold their passion for destruction in check until they have seduced the humans into supplying them the means to reproduce. Once they have achieved that they are merciless.
Christopher Barry’s direction makes the story both compelling and moody. Given the limited budget it’s hard to imagine how any of the scenes could have been bettered. The tele-snaps, our only visual reference for his work, make it clear just what a tragedy it is that the tapes were destroyed as many of the set pieces are classics of the series
The atmosphere of menace throughout the tale is helped hugely by the design. Derek Dodd’s sets are superb, providing a real sense of art deco character to the colony and a dark forbidding menace within the capsule.
Be in no doubt, Power of the Daleks is one of the strongest stories in Doctor Who’s history, and essential ‘listening’ for fans of the Daleks.
The two Dalek stories of the Troughton era were amongst the last to be novelised. John Peel’s adaptation of Power of the Daleks takes cues from the teleplay and the original script. Most Target novelisations ran to about 120 pages, this novelisation is one of the longest at 251 pages. It was also issued as a script by Titan Books. Both had covers by renowned Doctor Who artist Alister Pearson.
Novelisation and script book
Audio tape and CD
The story also had a number of audio releases. The first version narrated by fourth Doctor actor Tom Baker, in character and reminiscing about the adventure, was released in 1993. In 2003 the Dalek tin was released featuring CDs with further sound restoration by Mark Ayers of the stories; Power of the Daleks; Evil of the Daleks and a documentary entitled My Life as a Dalek. This version of Power, which had new narration by Anneke Wills – who played Polly in the story, was released separately in 2004.
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