
It's back to Doctor Who for me. I got a copy of the newly animated version of the 30th serial The Power Of The Daleks from the library. The whole serial is missing except for audio saved by radio listeners. The 6 episodes first aired in November and December 1966. It's written by David Whitaker and uncredited Dennis Spooner. It was directed by Christopher Barrie.

The 30th serial was the third story in the 4th series and it's the first story with the second Doctor. Patrick Troughton fades into focus when William Hartnell collapses to the floor and shimmers into oblivion.

Anneke Wills and Michael Craze play the Doctor's companion Polly and Ben Jackson. Next serial will be The Highlanders which introduces Jamie McCrimmon who was played by Frazer Hines. I liked Jamie better than Ben, who seems to yell a lot and do little.


The story has the Tardis land on Vulcan. The Doctor collapses on the floor and changes into Patrick Troughton. Ben and Polly are stunned and don't understand. The second Doctor isn't much help in quelling their fears. He's confused and in pain for a while but eventually settles down. He still isn't forthcoming on what's happened Ben is suspicious but Polly seems to accept that he's still the Doctor.


The Doctor takes them outside and they meet a man who's killed by an unknown person wielding a gun. The dead man wears a badge that says he's a special examiner from Earth. The Doctor takes that and then pretends to be the dead man when a security teams finds them. They are taken to a city where they meet the people in charge.


A scientist has an alien vehicle that he's been experimenting on. The Doctor is horrified to find that it's a Dalek vehicle and the scientist has revived one of the rolling human exterminators.


The revival sets off a series of events that leads to the death of many. The Doctor and companions wind up in jail for a bit, they escape, get caught again and eventually figure out how to kill the Daleks. Everyone likes a Dalek exploding.


Don't worry, there will be more Dalek action in the future. It was a pretty interesting episode with the Doctor being regenerated for the first time. When I watched the old series a few years ago I got to like the Patrick Troughton Doctor quite a bit. Sadly a big chunk of his work is gone. If only we could go out into space and collect the transmissions of all those lost programs.

I didn't like the animation at first but I got used to it as the episodes played out. The production seems to get better as it goes along. I guess I'm glad that they bring these things back. Sadly it's going to take a long time to get the whole bunch of missing episodes animated. In the mean time you can listen to the audio versions of the missing shows. All of the remaining 97 missing episodes has available audio. Most of them have been released more than once on an audio format.


There's a good commentary that runs over the whole serial. The guest are mix of actors and crew with Toby Hadoke as the moderator. The guests: Anneke Wills, Derek Dodd, Michael E Briant, Edward Kelsey, Nicholas Hawtrey, Alexander Tynan, David Hankinson, Robert Shearman, Nick Briggs, Adrian Salmon, Martin Geraghty and Charles Naughton.

The second disc has a B&W version of the serial and plenty of extras: Animation and Photo Gallery, Animation Test Footage, Original Title Sequence, Servants & Masters - The Making Of The Power Of The Daleks, Surviving Material & Original Trailer, Telesnap Reconstruction, Original Dalek Recordings and PDF materials.