doctor_who_the_power_of_the_daleksBy John Peel

Virgin, out of print

How IMC’s Vulcan holdings were nearly decimated by a squad of Daleks…

Over the years, it’s sometimes been quite interesting to compare the Target novelizations of the stories with their originals, particularly when elements of the latter have been recreated in animated form. Gerry Davis’ The Tenth Planet and Brian Hayles’ The Ice Warriors deviated in places from the original scripts they wrote, but John Peel’s two Dalek stories took things to a new level, retroactively applying continuity from across the whole series to the two Troughton tales.

With one episode of The Power of the Daleks released per day, I’ve reread Peel’s version of that instalment to see exactly where the much vaunted extra material fitted in that he talks about in his afterword – he was given access to some of David Whitaker’s earlier drafts. There’s not that much, in reality – some scenes featuring the Colony’s doctor seem to be the main part, and there’s a brief (and not at all successful) attempt to make Janley some sort of femme fatale, building, one assumes, on the comments made about Valmar’s attraction to her. (Lesterson and Janley? No thanks.) At least Peel doesn’t try to add other sexual elements, as he did with some of his other Virgin and BBC books…

The early episodes get far more space than the later ones – the final episode gets 32 pages out of a 245 page book – and there are certain differences in the way that Peel and Animated Power director Charles Norton interpret scenes that were shot on film and for which only the soundtrack survives (was Bragen’s gun in his waistband in the final episode, or did he reach for it from a drawer?). He also completes lines that don’t necessarily need it (the Dalek’s retort to Lesterson’s last words for example) and jumps the point of view around in a scene far more than you’d expect.

Even given the extended word count for a Who adaptation of the period, there’s not that much characterisation added beyond what Whitaker and Dennis Spooner provided – but it’s still worth having, if only for Alister Pearson’s brilliant cover.

Verdict: A less than powerful alternate version. 6/10

Paul Simpson