power-dvdThe newly regenerated version of the story featuring the newly regenerated Doctor…

The Power of the Daleks is one of those stories that has gained a great deal of weight for Doctor Who fans over the years. Of course it was a critical one for the programme – the first to feature a new actor as the Doctor – but because of contractual difficulties, it was also one of the last to be novelised as part of the Target range so its details weren’t as well known as some. However, in short succession in the 1990s we got Peel’s novelisation, a “script book” – which was basically a transcript – and the DWB photonovel using the telesnaps, as well as the Eric Saward-scripted audio release of the soundtrack with Tom Baker booming away as narrator… What we didn’t have was more than a few minutes’ footage from the six episodes.

Now we do, and while the animated version that’s been released on BBC Store this week, and coming to iTunes, DVD and later Blu-ray isn’t perfect, before anything else, it must be said that it’s terrific that we now have a visual version, and kudos to director Charles Norton and his team for the many hundreds of hours of hard work that have gone into this.

Thanks to Graham Strong, we have the soundtrack of the story; thanks to Mark Ayres, we have a version that can be used as the soundtrack for this release. Norton and his team have also used the camera scripts for the episodes as the basis of their work, alongside John Cura’s telesnaps, so much of it is likely to be accurate to what was seen fifty years ago – albeit now in widescreen, a sensible choice even if it means shots have to be reframed pretty much from start to finish. The film segments aren’t as well documented which means that scenes such as the exterminations in the final episode have had to be extrapolated, and these work well. Some of Troughton’s comic business is guessed at, and none of it feels wrong – likewise the sets in portions for which there is no visual record. There are a few places (notably in the first and last episodes) where there’s silence on the soundtrack and we see a couple of characters exchange glances – which doesn’t always work as well in animation as live action!

In the BBC Store notes, Norton mentions Lou Scheimer, the man behind Filmation – the people who gave us the animated Star Trek among many other shows. There’s very much that feel to the animation – the characters’ mouths move (very accurately – much more so than in the Filmation shows!) but movement isn’t as fluid as it might be in a bigger budgeted rendition. Luckily of course, this features Daleks who glide everywhere! The characters are clearly recognisable – even if Ben sometimes looks rather more like Class’s Greg Austin than Mike Craze – and by the later episodes, we get scenes told purely with the visuals that are convincing. The animation may not be as smooth as we’ve had on some of the single episode creations, but there’s considerably more material here!

The extras for the BBC Store version include a 15 minute documentary on the making of the original serial, with contributions from the director Christopher Barry, as well as a compilation of the surviving material (which makes interesting watching straight after each relevant episode). The DVD, out on November 21st, also has the photonovel version from the telesnaps as well as commentaries…. And then later in the year we’ll get the colorized version.

Verdict: The first of what we can only hope is a series of reconstructions of completely missing stories honours the original and brings the story back to life admirably. 8/10

Paul Simpson

The Power of the Daleks is available now on the BBC Store; it plays in cinemas in America on November 14; it starts on BBC America on November 19; and is released on DVD in the UK on November 21.