The Power of the Daleks Episode Three

The one where the Daleks will get their power...

The episode opens with the Dalek barking its repeated refrain from the end of last week - "I am your servant! I am your servant!" - giving the impression that everybody's been standing there listening to it bleat on for an entire seven days! Lesterson and Hensell are astonished that the Dalek can speak, and has some level of intelligence. It's frighteningly typical that the first thing the humans think of is using the Dalek to help and improve humankind - automation and enslavement spring to mind, using the Dalek machines in the mines for instance. It's true for all races - the Dalek is thinking of its own survival, as are the humans.

Troughton shoots a rare misfire in his delivery of the underpowered and rather naff line: "I shall stop you... I will...", but it is the Dalek (and voice artist Peter Hawkins) who steals this scene with its sheer malevolence. The Doctor orders it to immobilise itself, to prove it is a slave to the humans, but as soon as he leaves the room, it reactivates itself, explaining that the Doctor's order was simply wrong, and that it can only serve the humans if it is activated. "I serve you," it tells Lesterson, who is well and truly head over heels captivated by the creature and the potential it harbours.

Robert James continues to give a wonderfully nuanced performance as Lesterson, who is plainly obsessed with making scientific advances which will aid human progress, as well as be made in his name. He wants to be the one to make the discoveries, and when the Dalek later tempts him with knowledge of how to build machines which have 100% accuracy (rather than his own 70% accurate scopes), he is professionally flattered. The Dalek knows exactly what it is doing. It is thinking, plotting, using its developing knowledge of human behaviour against the colonists. Fascinating and terrifying. Such top-flight writing from David Whitaker.

Meanwhile, the colonists are embroiled in their own politicking, quite separate to what's going on in the lab. Bragen manages to convince Governor Hensell that Deputy Quinn sabotaged the communication console and summoned the Earth Examiner in order to undermine Hensell, and ultimately succeed him. But we soon discover that Bragen is working to his own ends, in collusion with Janley, in order to take control of the colony himself. By seemingly exposing Quinn as the traitor, he is quickly appointed Deputy Governor, putting him just one step away from power. The two story strands - the Dalek threat and the human rebellion - stay distinctly separate until the moment Janley pulls out the Dalek gun, and they claim it will "win us the revolution". Again, Whitaker neatly brings the two strands together, one feeding the other seamlessly.

Poor old Anneke Wills really is underused in this story, and with no good reason because Whitaker could quite easily have found Polly a suitable subplot to get involved in. There's a scene in this episode where Polly and Janley - the only female characters in the serial - meet in a corridor, but Whitaker sadly fails the Bechdel Test and has them speak only about the Examiner and Lesterson. I know that attitudes were different back in the 1960s, but looking back from a 21st century perspective, the treatment of female protagonists in this era was often shamefully (and shamelessly) misogynistic. I think it was actually much worse in the 1970s than the 60s, but that's getting way off topic.

Amusingly, the following scene has the Doctor and Ben talking about Polly. Ben is concerned that Polly has gone missing, but the Doctor is less bothered. In fact, the Doctor has a bit of a dig at Ben when he says: "There's a lot to see in the colony. She's interested... I like that." Is that a pointed way of saying Polly is closer to his idea of the ideal companion than Ben, because Polly is a curious explorer type and Ben is far more reticent and stubborn. It's true: Ben seems to be very much a reluctant traveller, which is odd considering he's a sailor. The first thing he wanted to do when they arrived on the beach in The Smugglers was go back home, and he's expressed a wish to return to the TARDIS at least twice in this story already. What a grump.

In the lab, the Dalek continues to impress Lesterson by responding perfectly to his pub quiz questions, although the creature is struggling to suppress its natural instincts, almost slipping up when it barks: "A Dalek is bett- ... is not the same as a human." As soon as Lesterson's back is turned, the Dalek cranks up the power supply to the capsule, and very soon we see that the other two dormant Daleks have been revived - and they're armed! It's here that we get the first utterance of a favourite line of this Doctor's: "When I say run, run like a rabbit!"

But there's one more twist. The Daleks agree to disarm themselves in order to convince the colonists of their benign nature and a wish to help, but the Doctor, quite rightly, is having none of it. However, by the end of this episode the Doctor is probably in his weakest position so far: Hensell is touring the outer perimeter of the colony, leaving Bragen in charge; Lesterson has been given carte blanche with the Daleks; the Daleks have trebled their presence and influence; and Polly has been abducted.

First broadcast: November 19th, 1966

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Whitaker makes the Dalek a scheming manipulator, rescuing the monsters from the clutches of their creator Terry Nation, who had a tendency to send them up or paint them as two-dimensional psychopaths. There's more to these Daleks than just a gun and a catchphrase.
The Bad: The treatment of Polly is unforgivable (and now I'm guessing she'll disappear for a while to allow Anneke Wills to top up her tan). Whitaker has proven that he can write strong female characters (Janley), so why not apply himself to the series regular?
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★☆

NEXT TIME: Episode Four...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode 1; Episode 2; Episode 4; Episode 5; Episode 6

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-power-of-daleks.html

The Power of the Daleks is available on BBC DVD in both animated form and as a telesnap reconstruction. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Power-Daleks-DVD/dp/B01LOC83Y2