The revised animation of Patrick Troughton’s debut.

As I said in my review of the original release of this, 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.

That original animation from 2016 forms the basis of this new edition, but many of the criticisms in contemporary reviews (including mine), have been addressed. A lot of the issues came about because of the time pressure Charles Norton and his team were under, with a firm deadline that they had to meet to mark 50 years of the serial’s original presentation. Since then of course they’ve also worked on two further Troughton stories – as well as the animated inserts for Shada – and all that expertise is brought to bear.

There are two areas where the animation’s upgrade are most apparent – the opening episode, and the character of Lesterson. Pretty much everything is new in the former – and yes, I did watch it alongside the original, albeit the colourised version on BritBox – with considerably more detail than we had before. Those who’ve had the original soundtracks tattooed onto their brains will notice a couple of edits, and controversial as it may be to say, these definitely improve the overall experience rather than having characters basically standing still waiting to react in silences. (Although it wasn’t on the previews, I suspect that Derek Handley’s new reconstruction will include the entire soundtrack, as happened with the “deleted” scene in The Macra Terror.)

Lesterson appears much more nuanced than previously – the discovery of tiny snippets of footage featuring him from later episodes has given the animators more to work with, and it feels much nearer the performance we’d have had were we to be watching the original.

The extras from the original release are present and correct, but there’s plenty of new material as well, including all the extant footage, and a fun item featuring Mike Tucker and the Model Unit recreating the Dalek production line. The original used adapted easily available Dalek toys, which, as Tucker notes, ironically are incredibly rare nowadays! The attention to detail is as close as you’d expect, and I’m hoping the footage is incorporated somewhere else on the discs.

Is it worth the upgrade? I’d say yes, without a doubt. Most fans had the BBC Video release of the individual stories from Season 12; they upgraded to DVD when those came out (and probably bought the special edition of The Ark in Space); and then they upgraded to the recent Blu-ray set. Each represented a jump in quality; while not in any way wishing to knock the tremendous hard work that went into the production of the 2016 version, this new edition is the same sort of jump.

Verdict: A superior version of one of the most important Doctor Who stories that is worth its place on your shelves. 9/10

Paul Simpson

Click here to order from Amazon.co.uk – released on July 27