As the first recasting of The Doctor, "The Power of the Daleks" has considerable work to do. In later years, a regeneration story has become something of an event - it's certainly accepted now that a new Doctor will stagger around babbling and dropping arcane references for the first 75% of their debut story. In 1966, this was new and risky business - the show could very conceivably have been cancelled within a month or so of the change, be half-remembered as a briefly successful sixties bit of kitsch that was pretty good until they changed the lead actor.

Reviewing the story is made that little bit more difficult by the BBC's enlightened decision to wipe all known copies of such a minor story, so this review is based on Loose Cannon's excellent reconstruction of the story. Thankfully, for a story with no extant episodes, Power does have a fair amount of material available - clean, complete audio recordings, a full set of telesnaps and even a handful of clips, most shot on handheld cine cameras off air. This leads to a technically sound reconstruction, the next best thing to having the episodes. The BBC have issued a CD-Rom version of a different reconstruction, but I haven't seen it, so can't comment on which is better… The BBC version does, however, omit the surviving clips on the grounds that once your brain gets used to still images, a motion sequence will jolt it back out and you'll then have to get back used to still images again. That's a load of nonsense, especially as many of the clips from Power work so well. While conspiracy theories that Auntie Beeb is just using the CD-Rom as a cut-price way of validating interest in reconstructions with a view to DVD releases is a bit mad, it's certainly not a well thought-out option.

The reconstruction format does rob the actor's performances of their nuances. However, Troughton comes across nicely. Early on he seems to be doing everything possible to simply freak out Ben and Polly, but this settles down a bit. Within a couple of episodes the character is fairly stable, and by then the plot's really kicked in. Once you've seen Michael Craze as Ben, it's pretty easy to imagine his driven body language, and the right amount of cynicism is transmitted, though Ben eventually accepts the Doctor, and then displays a considerable amount of loyalty. Anneke Wills is somewhat overshadowed as Polly, who gets to be the steady one until she's kidnapped.

It probably helps the reconstruction that lots of the existing sixties material doesn't really move that much anyway, Troughton and Craze aside. You can imagine a lot of the direction was box-on-the-wall stuff anyway, and most of the characters, bar Lesterton, would have been stationary for the most part.

Thankfully, the clearly defined characters still shine through. Bernard Archard leads the guest cast as Bragen, the selfish, ambitious man playing the rebels against the government troops on a colony on Vulcan. His arrogance and lack of scruples come across beautifully. Pamela Ann Davy is similarly impressive as Janley, initially a cohort of Bragen until she's ambushed by his sheer mania. Peter Bathurst excels as the bureaucratic Governor Hensell, who believes his authority will be enough to keep things in control and is similarly blindsided by the lengths Bragen will go to in order to realise his ambitions. Robert James is believable as Lesterton, the naïve scientist whose interest in the Daleks is used by Bragen and Janley. His performance in the second half of the story, when his sanity has snapped, is so intense in audio-and-stills only that the filmed version must have been terrific. Nicholas Hawtrey is rather stoic as the closest thing to a sane human at the Vulcan colony, Deputy Governor Quinn, who has the thankless job of being normal, and thus rather broadly written.

All the intrigue is interesting in a way, if a little plodding. David Whittaker's skill at creating an environment with depth and well-rounded characters serves him well, but it's the incredibly clever use of the Daleks that wins through for this one. There's no real question that they are, as the Doctor warns, going to run rampage as soon as they're ready. Even on the original transmission, few would have been fooled into thinking that the Daleks could just be used as servants. No, the smart bit is to effectively use them as a political football for much of the early narrative. There's so much going on within the colony that it's quite easy to forget they aren't just objects, which means when they finally do make their move, brushing aside Bragen's thugs with tremendous ease, it's actually a very powerful sequence as the realisation that the Daleks don't care whether the colony's elected government, the rebels or the pretender Bragen are in control, they want to kill them all.

Of course, the downside to this being Whittaker is there's the usual crass science on display. We're told the Daleks "have mastered static", and this isn't questioned. Whittaker works rather slavishly to Terry Nation's work, particularly "The Daleks", so the denouement is quite disappointing - The Doctor basically reprises the idea of taking out their power supply, as in their debut story.

For a 1960s six-parter, the pace really isn't too bad, thanks to three distinct storylines (the new Doctor; the power struggle within the colony's hierarchy; the Daleks) of considerable interest. Considering the massive work the story had to do it's an impressive piece of work, and stands up as a fine story even now, regardless of the disappointing conclusion.

Review written: 08/05/06
"The Power of the Daleks" Photonovel @ bbc.co.uk
"The Power of the Daleks Reconstructed" MP3 CD @ Amazon.co.uk
Reconstruction @ Loose Cannon