What's Wrong With... The Power of the Daleks

 

William Hartnell has now left the TARDIS, so sadly that means we won't be hearing any more of his famous fluffs from this story onwards. Patrick Troughton has arrived, and he doesn't suffer from the same problems Hartnell had. The series is still being made one episode per evening each week, recorded as though it were live. The cast are either taken out of rehearsals to do pre-filming, or have to give up their day off for it. This will pose problems as the Troughton tenure proceeds.

A delay in working out the personality of the new Doctor will also mean that for the rest of this season, there will only be one week between recording and broadcast.

A lot of people give David Whitaker considerable credit for the personality of the Second Doctor, but he hardly had any input. He concentrated only on the Dalek story, writing for a generic Doctor. It was his successor as story editor, Dennis Spooner, who was brought in to personalise Troughton's parts of the script to the actor, after Troughton and Gerry Davis had met to discuss how he would interpret the part. Spooner also carried out rewrites on the main portion of the script.

The first thing we need to talk about is the regeneration. Never referred to by that word until years later, it is here described as a "renewal" - suggesting that the new Doctor is just a younger version of the older one we've been used to. The Doctor claims that it is to do with the TARDIS, as if it triggered and oversaw the process. However, we'll later see that regenerations can take place anywhere, even if there isn't a TARDIS present.

At first glance it looks like the Doctor is wearing the old Doctor's clothing, but this is clearly not the case on closer inspection. The only similarity is a black coat and checked trousers, but there the similarity ends. How can clothes regenerate as well, especially if they are going to end up in a distressed condition?

At the end of The Tenth Planet, it looked like Ben and Polly were in the TARDIS when the Doctor collapsed. Indeed, we saw Polly move the Doctor's scarf away from his face just before it changed.

Why then, do Ben and Polly (especially the former) have such a hard time accepting that this is the still the Doctor? They saw him change. You can understand them asking how he changed, or why he changed, but not questioning who he is.

The Doctor rummages through a chest, which we've never seen before. It has a number of items he has collected on his travels - including a Saracen blade. The Doctor suggests he got it from Saladin (in Whitaker's earlier story The Crusade) - but in that the Doctor never met Saladin.

It is a bit of a stretch that he just happens to pick up a Dalek key, which we've never seen before - just when he's about to encounter the Daleks again and they are using such keys. Quite a coincidence.

Talking of Daleks: according to Ben the Doctor does nothing but talk about Daleks. When was this exactly? There have been no breaks between stories since Ben and Polly came on board the TARDIS, with them going straight to Cornwall, then to the South Pole. The last time the Doctor mentioned Daleks was to Dodo in Fitzroy Square, before he met Ben and Polly.

The Dalek ship is supposed to have been buried in a mercury swamp for 200 years. How can it have spiders' webs inside? And how can the colonists know it's been in the swamp for such a precise length of time? You can't do carbon dating or similar with mercury, and the colony certainly hasn't been in existence that long to know it predates it.

We see the full extent of the spaceship in the confines of Lesterson's lab - yet it can contain a vast production line for new Daleks. Have the Daleks secretly knocked through a wall or two to some abandoned section of the colony? OK, so it may be dimensionally transcendental like their time-space capsules, but you would have thought that someone would have mentioned this if it was.

If Daleks need their casings as life support units, why is one of them running around their ship at night in the nude, as it were?

Either they need static electricity or they don't - the story seems mixed up about this. They go to great lengths to get a static electric circuit set up, despite being able to get by perfectly well without one beforehand - and anyway, they haven't needed static since their very first story.

I'm no physicist, but isn't static electricity generated by two surfaces rubbing against each other? You don't need to lay a power cable ring.

Lesterson seems happy to pump the Daleks full of power, but hasn't thought to open one up and take a look inside?

At one point a Dalek nudges a camera (in one of the very few clips still existing for this story).

A pedantic note to end on, but the Doctor identifies the rebels' secret code - the first letter of each line of writing making up words - as an anagram. It's not - it's an acrostic.