Production Code: EE
First Transmitted
1 - 05/11/1966 17:50
2 - 12/11/1966 17:50
3 - 19/11/1966 17:50
4 - 26/11/1966 17:50
5 - 03/12/1966 17:50
6 - 10/12/1966 17:50
Plot
The TARDIS brings the new Doctor, Polly and Ben to the Earth colony planet Vulcan. The Doctor witnesses a murder and, investigating the body, discovers a pass badge allowing him unrestricted access to the colony.
The dead man was an Earth Examiner who had been secretly summoned by Deputy Governor Quinn to investigate the activities of a group of rebels - a problem regarded as insignificant by Governor Hensell.
A scientist, Lesterson, has meanwhile discovered a crashed space capsule containing inert Daleks, which he is now in the process of reactivating. The Doctor's warnings are ignored when the Daleks claim to be the colonists' servants.
As the rebels grow in strength, their operations covertly led by Head of Security Bragen, the Daleks take advantage of the colonists' naive trust to establish a reproduction plant - on a conveyor belt system - with which to increase their numbers. The Doctor eventually destroys the Daleks by turning the colony's power source against them.
The defeat of the Daleks, to whom Bragen and the rebels had allied themselves, gives Quinn an opportunity to re-establish control, Hensell having previously been killed. The Doctor and his friends slip back to the TARDIS.
Episode Endings
The Doctor, Ben and Polly have found two seemingly dormant Daleks inside the crashed capsule. Examining the floor, the Doctor realises that there was once a third. He fails to notice as a tentacled creature begins to emerge from a hole at the base of the wall behind him...
To the astonishment of the Doctor and the colonists, the reactivated Dalek grates 'I am your servant!' The Doctor tries to warn that the Daleks destroy human beings without mercy or conscience, but his voice is almost drowned out by the Dalek loudly repeating its phrase.
The three reactivated Daleks chant 'We will get our power!' as Lesterson looks on with growing concern...
As a horrified Lesterson looks on, a line of newly created Daleks roll off the conveyor belt on their ship...
The Daleks stream out of their capsule chanting 'Daleks conquer and destroy! Daleks conquer and destroy!'
The TARDIS dematerialises from Vulcan. The lingering notes of a tune on the Doctor's recorder are heard as the eye-stalk of one of the apparently destroyed Daleks slowly rises up as if to watch the ship depart.
Roots
Rouben Mamoulian's 1931 version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (the Doctor's transformation).
Gogol's The Government Inspector.
Dialogue Triumphs
Ben : [Picking up the old Doctor's ring.] "The Doctor always wore this. If you are him it should fit." [He tries the ring on the Doctor's finger, but it is too big.] "That settles it."
The Doctor : "I'd like to see a butterfly fit into a chrysalis case after it spreads its wings."
Polly : "Then you did change."
The Doctor : "Life depends on change, and renewal."
Ben : "Oh, that's it, you've been renewed, have you?"
The Doctor : "Renewed? Have I? That's it, I've been renewed. It's part of the TARDIS. Without it I couldn't survive."
The Doctor : [Speaking of the reactivated Dalek] "It knew who I am, Ben."
Ben : "Well, if a Dalek takes you for the proper Doctor, then I suppose I can."
Lesterson : [To the other colonists present.] "This creation is called, I understand, a Dalek. Look at it. I have simply given it electrical power, and do you know what? It is capable of storing it! Furthermore, it responds to orders." [To the Dalek] "Turn around. Move that chair. Stop." [The Dalek obeys each command.] "You see! Imagine what it is going to do to our mining programme; to our processing; our packaging. Dozens of labour jobs, Governor. It may even be the answer to this colony's problems."
The Doctor : "Yes, it will end the colony's problems - because it will end the colony!"
The Doctor : [On the Daleks] "It can do many things, Lesterson. But the thing it does most efficiently is exterminate human beings."
Dialogue Disasters
Dalek : "Daleks conquer and destroy." [(Repeat indefinitely)]
Continuity
The new Doctor's first words are 'Slower... Concentrate on one thing.' (His clothes have regenerated as well.) He refers to his previous incarnation in the third person ('The Doctor was a great collector, wasn't he?') and sees his previous reflection, briefly, in a mirror [an hallucination].
He is unable to wear the Doctor's ring which Ben thinks proves he isn't the Doctor ('I'd like to see a butterfly fit into a chrysalis case after it's spread its wings'). The regeneration is (enigmatically) explained thus: 'I've been renewed... It's part of the TARDIS. Without it I couldn't survive.' [A reference to either the zero room (see Castrovalva) or a property of the TARDIS itself (see Mawdryn Undead).
The Daleks recognise the Doctor [from The Evil of the Daleks: they can't have remembered the second Doctor's face from their mind analysis machine in 'The Day of the Daleks' as history was successfully changed in that story]. They know what the first law of Thermodynamics is and also the chemical formulae for sulphuric acid and sodium ethoxide. Whereas they die without static in The Daleks, in this story they just become dormant. Vulcan (no relation) has 'Oxygen density 172, radiation nil, temperature 86, strong suggestion of mercury deposits'.
Ben lived opposite a brewery as a child and had a headmaster who was once 'nicked for not paying his fares'.
QV
The First History of the Daleks
Location
Vulcan, [pre 2164].
Links
The Doctor finds Saladin's dagger (The Crusade) and a key to a Dalek door made of dalekanium in the TARDIS chest.
There's also a brief mention of Marco Polo ('China, I went there once').
Trivia
The Doctor's clothes transform along with his appearance.
We have the first clear sight in the series' history of fully-evolved Dalek creatures; tentacled blobs placed into the casings of the new Daleks created in their capsule. (Those seen in The Daleks' Master Plan were implied to have been regressed to a primordial form by the time destructor.)
Polly is absent from Episode Four and Ben from Episode Five as Anneke Wills and Michael Craze were on holiday during the respective weeks in which they were recorded.
Myth
Doctor Who's planet Vulcan predated Star Trek's. (Star Trek made its on-air debut in the US on 8 September 1966, predating transmission of The Power of the Daleks by almost two months; and although Spock's home planet was referred to initially as 'Vulcanis' it became 'Vulcan' just a few episodes later.)
David Whitaker's scripts included a lengthy scene involving the TARDIS food machine, which Dennis Spooner removed when he rewrote them. (Although Dennis Spooner made this claim in a number of later interviews, there was in fact no such scene in Whitaker's scripts; Spooner appears to have been misremembering a lengthy scene involving a diagnostic machine in the colony's medical centre, which he did indeed remove in rewriting.)
The Tristram Cary incidental music used in this story was taken entirely from the first Dalek story, The Mutants. (Some of it was taken from season three's The Daleks' Master Plan).
Goofs
In one of the existing clips a Dalek has trouble getting through an archway.
There is obvious usage of Dalek photo blow ups.
In surviving footage, a Dalek crashes into the camera.
Cast & Crew
Cast
The Doctor - Patrick Troughton
Ben Jackson - Michael Craze
Polly - Anneke Wills
Bragen - Bernard Archard
Dalek - Gerald Taylor
Dalek - Kevin Manser
Dalek - Robert Jewell
Dalek - John Scott Martin
Dalek Voices - Peter Hawkins
Guard - Peter Forbes-Robertson
Guard - Robert Russell
Guard - Robert Luckham
Hensell - Peter Bathurst
Janley - Pamela Ann Davy
Kebble - Steven Scott
Lesterson - Robert James
Quinn - Nicholas Hawtrey
Resno - Edward Kelsey
The Examiner - Martin King
Valmar - Richard Kane
Crew
Director - Christopher Barry
The Power of the Daleks