Friday 18 October 2024

The Art of... The Power of the Daleks


As one of the last of the original run of novelisations, John Peel's Doctor Who - The Power of the Daleks never underwent any reprints, and so we only have the above artwork by Alister Pearson. 
The book was published in July 1993.
Pearson created a special landscape format version of this work for a 2016 convention, taking the same basic image but adding a whole line of identical Daleks stretching off to the left.
Peel used lines of dialogue for his chapter headings, and added an afterward explaining how he had used Whitaker's original scripts for his adaptation. Amongst his changes is a mention of UNIT.
Based in the USA and active in fandom there, Peel had become friends with Terry Nation - hence the decision to allow him to write the book, along with that for the subsequent Whitaker / Dalek story.
The Troughton portrait derives from a publicity shot taken during the making of The Underwater Menace. That distinctive rock arch on the Vulcan surface makes its first background appearance.


The story was one of a handful to have its script published by Titan Books. It preceded the novelisation by only a few months. The artist once again is Alister Pearson. Interestingly, no attention-grabbing Daleks on the cover - no doubt to avoid paying Mr Nation. The Troughton image is based on a photo taken on the TARDIS set during the making of the opening episode, whilst those of Ben and Polly hail from The War Machines publicity. 


There have been a number of audio releases for the story, and the first of these was in cassette form. Unsurprisingly, this also hails from 1993, being a tie-in for the 30th Anniversary. A photomontage cover actually features images from the proper story for a change. The linking narration was by Tom Baker, in character as the Doctor. You can listen to this as an extra on the Special Edition DVD.


The soundtrack was then released on CD in August 2004, this time with the narration provided by Anneke Wills. The same Troughton photo as used by Pearson for the novel is employed - and you can see why he shaped the Doctor's face so oddly there. The Polly image comes from The Moonbase
The rock arch takes centre stage, and we also see Bragen and Lesterson along with a few Daleks (from The Chase by the looks of them). Compared to some of these covers it's not too garish or cluttered.


This was rereleased in MP3-CD format - the soundtrack coupled with the telesnaps for use on a PC - in June 2005. A few of the telesnaps are simply plastered over the original soundtrack cover, though Ben and Polly are moved to where they can just about be seen, and we lose the Vulcan colony pair.


The existing fragments of the story were issued on the second disc of the Lost in Time set in November 2004.
The story may have only generated a single edition in book form, but it has been released in animated form on DVD in a number of ways. The first release was in 2016. There was a monochrome only version, and a B&W / colour options version. Region 2 above...


The Region 1 release with both versions...

And the steelbook...

A Special Edition followed in 2020. This was packed with extras, but also took the opportunity to make some improvements to the animation - mainly in the opening TARDIS scenes and Lesterson's discovery of the Dalek production line. This offered a monochrome version only.


Peel's novelisation was released as an audiobook in 2022, with narration provided by Dalek voiceman Nicholas Briggs. Alister Pearson provides new cover art, though based on his original work. We still have the Doctor and Dalek, but the TARDIS is brought forward to be more prominent on the right, we now have the space capsule to the left, and we've ditched the orange background colour scheme.


Finally, we have the photomontage cover from the moviedb site.

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