Serial #30 Part I: The Power of the Daleks

A newly regenerated Doctor, Ben, and Polly land on the planet Vulcan and witness a murder.  Now they must investigate a colony on the verge of Civil War where a scientist has discovered a capsule buried thousands of years with a familiar foe trapped inside....

In Part I, we are examining Episodes 1-3 and focusing primarily on the introduction of the Second Doctor.

Next Time:
Serial #30: The Power of the Daleks, Part II
Closing out the serial with episodes 4-6, we will discuss the Daleks themselves, the incredible cast of characters on the planet Vulcan, and the philosophical implications of this intricate story.
Monday, April 3rd

Special thanks to Cathlyn "Happigal" Driscoll for providing the beautiful artwork for this podcast. You can view her work at https://www.happigal.com/

Do feel free to get in touch to share the love of all things Doctor Who: throughthevortexpodcast@gmail.com

Transcript

Welcome all Whovians! My name is Brianna, and today, I'm going to take you through the vortex on this companion to Doctor Who.

 Did I say when I was reviewing “The Tenth Planet” that the Daleks are not as creepy as the Cybermen? I think I might be eating my words today. 

Today friends we are looking at “The Power of the Daleks,” which is the Second Doctor's first serial and while the serial is entirely missing it has been animated by the BBC and you can access it if you have access to a service that gives you access to Classic Doctor Who like Britbox. It is the only serial that you could actually see from the season without going into reconstructions or audio; it is a special little treat we get to see at least a little bit of this early version of the Second Doctor. 

Power of the Daleks, aside from being the opener to the Second Doctor, is just a really good story in of itself. It has a lot of very memorable characters. I really like what they do with the Daleks throughout this serial. It's the first time in a while that they feel genuinely menacing and like a threat. The Daleks in the First Doctor era start to feel very militaristic and almost mechanized in the background but the serial does for the Daleks what the reintroduction of the Daleks in New Who did for the Daleks: it lets us see the threat that even one Dalek poses, and the way in which a Dalek use its intelligence to manipulate those around them and to ultimately become this huge huge threat. It's really well done. This is a very good serial for the Daleks in addition to being a decent opener for Patrick Troughton’s Second Doctor. 

So what with this being the introduction to the Second Doctor, a Dalek episode, and a really complex interesting philosophical episode in its own right with Illusions to Frankenstein– which if you've been following this podcast you may have picked up on I'm a big fan of– there's just a lot to talk about, and I am going to be splitting this into two parts for this episode. We'll be talking about the first three episodes of “The Power of the Daleks” and primarily discussing the Doctor and his introduction, how the dynamic with Ben and Polly is different, and some things we can chat about for these first three episodes. 

And then next time I'll finish out the serial and we'll primarily be looking at this as a story and the interesting side characters, how the Daleks are used throughout, and some of the implications of what's going on in this story. So that's how I'm going to break this up. I did have a lot to say and yeah, we’re doing a two parter!

“The Power of the Daleks” was written by David Whitaker and with an assist from Dennis Spooner though he's uncredited. It was directed by Christopher Barry and this was produced by Innis Lloyd. It ran from the 5th of November in 1966 to the 10th of December in 1966, making it one of the longer serials of this period, clocking in at 6 episodes.

“The Power of the Daleks” opens where “The Tenth Planet” left off: with Ben and Polly coming into the Tardis only to find the Doctor has a new face. As far as depictions of regeneration goes, this one is kind of unique I really like the fact that we actually are put into the Doctor's head for a good chunk of this opening because we are hearing and seeing things from the Doctor's perspective. 

He's very disoriented. There's noise all around him. The Second Doctor’s first words are to the effect that he needs to concentrate on one thing to stop the mayhem. It's it's a sensory overload experience and we're in the Doctor's head experiencing what it must be like to open up with a new set of eyes. We quickly flip though to Ben and Polly's experience with regeneration and throughout the majority of this episode like them we’re on the fence as to how much of this person is the Doctor, if he isn't the Doctor, if he's a new version of the same character. 

The show actually plays a lot with how much we're supposed to connect the Second Doctor to the First Doctor. So unusually we have the Second Doctor referring to the Doctor in third person. He actually while he responds to the name the Doctor in the episode, he consistently throughout will refer to his past in the third person as if it happened to someone else and in this opening scene we see Ben particularly suspicious trying to fit the Doctor, the First Doctor's ring– his famous ruby ring– on to the Second Doctor's hand, and it falls off. The Doctor tells us well “do you expect a cocoon to fit after the butterfly has flown?” 

He is picking up old objects from the Doctor. We have references back to episodes like “The Crusade” and “Marco Polo,” where we're seeing little bits of the First Doctor's era, and the Second Doctor talking about that as if it happened to someone else. We have a moment where he's looking in the mirror and we see the First Doctor's face, and then it goes back to the new face, Patrick Troughton's face... 

It's very disorienting and we're not quite sure what to make of this Doctor particularly because he is both in his mannerisms and in his persona very different from the First Doctor. This seems to be intentional and this is something the show will of course later play with, and regeneration is often… the new Doctor is meant to contrast pretty sharply with the previous Doctor to make their own markas this new Doctor to show this new version of the character. But I could imagine it being very jarring for audiences at this stage who aren't sure what to make of what has just happened before their eyes. Is this still the Doctor?

Ultimately the Second Doctor acknowledges Ben and Polly. He clearly knows who they are. Tells them they've landed and they should go out. He is dressed ridiculously. He has a recorder that becomes a prop throughout this episode and is used for a lot of comedy. Often we associate the Second Doctor with his recorder, so he doesn't use ot consistently in all the episodes, this first one is very heavy on the recorder. Yeah we have him heading out, he's reading his 500-year diary, as he's heading off to the planet Vulcan, as we discover it is called later. Ben and Polly meanwhile are following, and they're not quite sure what to make of the situation.

I do like that they provide this contrast between Ben and Polly throughout the episode where Ben is pretty thoroughly convinced that this is not the Doctor that this is some other person or that this is someone  like trying to embody the Doctor but isn't actually him. Whereas Polly, in spite of all the counter evidence that the Doctor’s presenting her, believes that this is still the Doctor somehow. So we have this absolutely belief from Polly that doesn't really shake throughout the the episode… throughout the entire serial really and Ben who is constantly questioning and I think that really works very well as a dynamic as we're going into this first regeneration.

I also like how different the Second Doctor is and how he interacts with things how he perceives things he's not as fussy say about where they're landing and checking all of the different environmental factors which Ben and Polly call him out about but then he proves that he actually has done all those things he just didn't read them off. You could see from a show perspective the desire to move beyond a lot of the technical language of the First Doctor's era where we're constantly referring to what's outside the Tardis, we're looking at the view screen… there's all this caution to going to a new world… to kind of placing that as something the Doctor's doing internally without explaining it to us. So from a show perspective it makes sense because it simplifies. But I also think it tells us more about the Doctor.

The Second Doctor is a little bit less expressive. This Doctor can be very secretive in a way that the First Doctor was not. The First Doctor tended to play those cards and let you know what's going on whereas this Doctor can be a little bit more manipulative a little bit less open about what his intentions are which is going to be interesting throughout his era and throughout this particular serial. 

To clarify the point I'm trying to make here is the First Doctor also could pull one over on the companions, but typically we the audience were in on the joke, so to speak. So I'm thinking about the first Dalek serial when the Doctor tricks Ian Barbara and Susan to go down into the Dalek City because he wants to see the city, he's curious about it, and he does this by pretending that the Tardis is missing mercury and they can't take off. We the audience know that the Doctor is fooling his companions, and while he's being a little manipulative, we can see through the manipulation. 

The First Doctor is pretty obvious when he's trying to manipulate and he's trying to pull one over on us; the Second Doctor is comparatively much less transparent to the audience, so a lot of what he's doing in this episode, we're not sure if he knows what he's doing, we're not sure what that means until the Doctor reveals that to us. So in some ways the show is increasingly putting us into the companion position. We are not ahead of the companions in their knowledge. We are with them, so when the Doctor chooses to reveal where he stands to the companions that's when it's revealed to us. 

And this is part of why I think the Second Doctor feels more competent to us because he's always a step ahead of us in this story. And the second Doctor is operating with the degree of mystery around him and we the audience don't always know what's going on in his head until he chooses to reveal that if he chooses to reveal that, and I do think that that is something distinctly different from the First Doctor to the Second Doctor. And at least for me it makes the Second Doctor feel like he's much more in control of how he presents himself to other people and to us as the audience.

 It's really a shame that we've lost the raw footage from the serial given that Patrick Troughton is such a great physical actor, and we do see evidence of that even through the animation in how he interacts with the landscape, how he's playing his recorder, he's wearing this ridiculous outfit. This first regeneration included a clothes change for some reason, which I don't think canonically has ever been explained. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think that we just kind of push this down to a weird fluke. Generally when the Doctor regenerates, he is still wearing the same outfit from before because that makes sense.  But you know not this time for some reason which is just kind of silly.

 But in any case we're on the planet Vulcan no relation to the Star Trek Vulcan. So the Vulcan has a really cool design in terms of how the planet’s set up. It's kind of a shame that we don't have this footage. I'd be curious to see what it looked like on the original set, but even in the animation we can see it's this swampy yet volcanic landscape. There's mercury everywhere that's just in these pools, and there's lots of mist that's rising. We discover that this mist is really not good for us. The Doctor didn't do a very good job checking his readings!

So Ben and Polly and the Doctor kind of get separated in this section of the story briefly. And Polly eventually passes out from the gas, and Ben is going to be knocked on conscious in a minute here as he's trying to get help for her. So the two of them are talking with each other trying to figure out what's going on with the Doctor. The Doctor has wandered ahead, and he.. from the mists another man comes out of the mists and seems very excited to see the Doctor, clearly doesn't know where he is and thinks the Doctor does know where he is, and he's just about to explain what's going on when suddenly we hear a gunshot and this man falls down dead. 

He has a badge that…that identifies him as an examiner from Earth who has access to everything on this colony where they landed…. He [the Doctor]  doesn't know they landed…on a colony… but the badge specifies he has access to everything.

 Next thing we know we are over with Quinn and Bragen, who I’lll introduce you to later, but the two of them are arguing about the fact that Examiner is here. We don't know why he's here, and, you know, they never land where we tell them to land. These two men have already found Ben and Polly. Ben gets knocked out in the scuffle, and they have taken both Ben and Polly to the Colony. They discover the Doctor unconscious. Someone has hit him from behind, so they know something's wrong, and they gather him up. They assume he's the examiner because he has the examiner’s badge.

 So everyone arrives at the colony, and the Doctor very quickly takes on the role of the Examiner. He does not undeceive the people present nor does he tell the colonists anything about the murder that he witnessed. Now I do think that we have a call back here to “The Romans,” where the Doctor poses as the musician when he finds this musician dead on the road after he's been murdered and he and Vicky go on into Rome. So I think there is a tradition that's being called back to of the Doctor in personifying [impersonating] other characters in order to go on an adventure, to be perceived in a certain way.

Obviously, in New Who we have a lot of this with the psychic paper and the Doctor taking on and playing roles. Well the First Doctor did do this on occasion, typically he was mistaken for someone else, and he just kind of rolled with it. What I think you're going to start seeing particularly with the Second Doctor is he increasingly takes on roles intentionally in order to achieve his ends. So in the Romans the First Doctor is mistaken for the musician and he just runs with it he's like okay fine, you know, it'll work! 

But in this episode the Doctor very deliberately takes on the Examiner's role, and I do think this is another slight difference for the Second Doctor. A lot of the things the Second Doctor does seem random but there's a deliberate-ness to his actions as we'll see.

So everyone ends up in the colony, and we quickly discovered that there's a lot going on on Vulcan. Okay, so the big deal is that no one knows who called The Examiner and obviously the colony doesn't know that the real examiner has been killed, but Ben, Polly, and the Doctor are aware that obviously one person is aware that they aren't who they say they are and that is the person who murdered the real Examiner. So they're trying to figure out what's going on.

 We get hints very early on that there are a lot of reasons someone might call an Examiner from Earths. The first is that this little colony is, shall we say, experiencing some Rebellion. The governor of the colony, Hensell, is very concerned about these increasing demands and strikes from the rebels… It's all kind of murky we don't go too deep in Rebellion. 

He has a lead guard, Bragen, who is a really interesting character throughout this, as we'll see, he's in charge of the the military… the, the bodyguards… the the soldiers, however you want to call them: the people who are in charge of keeping the peace. But he does seem to be creating a group of men who are very loyal to him as opposed to the governor, which is a bit suspicious. And he takes his job as head of security very very seriously.

We also have a suspicious character, Quinn, who is the second in command, so he is not the governor but he is like the Deputy Governor, and of course we're immediately suspicious of him because he has a lot to gain from causing some trouble in the colony or potentially calling in an examiner so….you know even though he seems like Bragen initially pretty loyal to Hensell the governor.

 The other thing that is going on of course is that we have a scientist Lesterson who has found this big metal contraption out underground, a capsule. He is aided by Janley, who is his principal assistant and she is also really tight with the rebels and openly speaks about the rebels, you know, going about things the right way.

 So those are kind of our principal characters, there's some other people who are going to come in, some other assistance of Lesterson and some guards and such but the names that you should know: We have Hensell, our governor; Bragen, who is the head of the security; Quinn, who is the second in command; and of course Lesterson, who's going to be one of the most interesting characters in the serial, our scientist; and his assistant, our lone female Janley.

So while Hensel is concerned about the rebels, he doesn't seem to take this overly seriously as opposed to Quinn and Bragen, and he doesn't understand why the Examiner would be here at all. But is very very polite to the Doctor and Company. 

We quickly have this little scene with the Doctor, Ben, and Polly in which they're discussing, you know, what's going on, and again they agree that there is some danger to this situation given the person who murdered the real Examiner is going to know that they are frauds. The Doctor, however, insists that they're going to go forward. And in this scene he doesn't actually talk to Ben and Polly; he plays the recorder in answer to their questions and how he plays indicates whether it's a yes or no. It's kind of funny but also annoying, which describes the Second Doctor pretty well: kind of funny but also annoying sometimes and sometimes both at once. So the recorder and how it's used throughout this episode definitely do that but it's really interesting. 

Again this feels very different from how the First Doctor would conduct himself in the situation. The Second Doctor feels both more in control in some ways but also is just keeping a lot to his chest. We're not quite sure what he's up to, there's a lot of mystery behind how much he is the same man and what his intentions are going forward. 

The Doctor is of course very interested in Lesterson and the capsule. He goes to that capsule and Lesterson starts to open it up, but does not fully get inside, and the Doctor asks him to hold off opening up the final chamber of the capsule even though it seems to be open [that he can open it].

 Later that night the Doctor sneaks into the capsule. Ben and Polly follow him. So it's clear why he asked for the pause. And they discover in the capsule 2 Daleks that are frozen. They seem to be dormant inside the capsule and this is genuinely creepy just how this is filmed they are just there they're frozen there's cobwebs everywhere and we quickly discover that there is a third Dalek that is missing, until we see– for one of the first times almost entirely– we see the Dalek body outside of its armor.. that like squid-like creature… crawling underneath a door and and we're not quite sure what's going on except we're really creeped out.

 I really really like this scene. I really really love that the Doctor is aware that Ben and Polly have followed him and he calls to them and just kind of acknowledges that they followed him, you know, “Ben and Polly come and meet the Daleks.” And he doesn't freak out; he's very calm. The introduction of Ben and Polly to the Daleks is really great. It also introduces us as the audience. I really like throughout the serial too that Ben and Polly –while they haven't met the Daleks– they're aware of who the Daleks are because the Doctor has talked about them in the past even though we haven't seen that.

 I always love when a show does that, and I love particularly when Doctor Who does that, where we get hints that there's a lot going on that we don't see on the show proper, which would make sense… that there is a lived world that's bigger than what we see behind the camera or within a certain serial. And Doctor Who early on doesn't always do this so well particularly early in Doctor Who there isn't really any space between adventures. We're just going boom boom boom boom boom and that kind of can eliminate this sense that more time is passing and that these characters are becoming closer like through through all those little things that might not appear on a TV show. 

And I do like that they're doing that a bit with Ben and Polly. It's a very small thing, but I think it says a lot that they know about the Daleks. It makes sense that the Doctor would talk about the Daleks, particularly the First Doctor, even if they haven't actually met them.

In any case the Doctor is now of course very very worried, and he, Ben, and Polly are discovered by Lesterson. [Note: Actually they confront Lesterson].  The Doctor asks Lesterson about the third Dalek, and that  Lesterson left out the fact that he clearly knows what was in the capsule. So he already opened this capsule prior to this whole show he put on with the “Examiner” and the governor, and all that.  He's has already has got into the capsule and to these Daleks, and of course we discover very quickly that Lesterson is attempting to revive the Daleks… to reanimate what he thinks are just machines.

Lesterson is a really interesting character throughout the serial which we'll talk about a little bit after we've gone through the wrap up, but in many ways I think he is meant to call back a character like Victor Frankenstein, a scientist who is obsessive about science and is not aware of the ethical implications of what he's doing and is not listening to other people and taking in their input and understanding his work in a larger political context (which is going to come up very quickly). 

Lesterson is a sheer scientist; he wants knowledge for the sake of knowledge. He wants to animate the Daleks because he thinks not so much that this would be something practical but he just wants to understand them, and he wants them to move, and to get more more information from them to understand how… what he thinks again, that he thinks they're computers… how they operate and who built them and all that fun stuff. 

Like he is in it for the sheer knowledge, but, of course, we're going to quickly discover most of the characters around him are interested in putting that knowledge to use. And Lesterson is not very good at considering the implications of the information that he's gathering. Nor is he very good at understanding that sometimes one should take a seat and consider whether it is in fact worth pursuing, if it could be dangerous to others. 

Again that's a very Victor Frankenstein position, even if I think the original Victor Frankenstein was in it for more than the knowledge …I think that how he's been depicted in popular culture often positions him in in this kind of Lesterson-role. I think even their names are meant to invoke each other and this is definitely a Frankenstein-esque story at least in this portion of the serial. Lesterson is literally trying to reanimate the Daleks using electricity, you know, and trying to get them to to come alive, and of course over the course of the story he, like Frankenstein, is going to realize that he has unleashed a monster, and moreover a monster that he cannot control.

 So we have this really great scene between the Doctor, Ben, and Polly where they’re waiting to confront Lesterson about the missing Dalek. And Polly and the Doctor are kind of playing off of each other. There's this whole thing about this tongue-twister: Lesterson listen, Lesterson listen… And Polly’s  just going along with it, and she and the Doctor are just like having a grand old time. And Ben is playing the straight-man and just annoyed by their antics. And I really like this scene because it's starting to show off a new dynamic. I would say the First Doctor in many ways had a stronger relationship with Ben. We see the First Doctor interacting mostly with Ben and far less with Polly. He and Polly are a bit distant from each other. Whereas we're seeing a shift here… Polly… because Polly actually believes this is still the Doctor… in some ways has like that closer connection with the Second Doctor than Ben, who's sort of pushing him away throughout this episode. 

And it's a fun shift, and I like seeing the companions within even this these first couple of episodes in this serial, we see Ben and Polly interacting more with the Doctor then we did in the entire time really the First Doctor was with them. Like there's such a more distinct dynamic with this cast they feel a little bit more cohesive as a team as opposed to Ben and Polly as a unit and the Doctor as separate from them. Not saying that the First Doctor didn't care about them… he clearly felt a lot of responsibility for them, and he looked after them, but there is a distinctly different dynamic here. They feel like a team, in that the Doctor feels more on their level in some ways, as opposed to like this distant mentor-figure separate from them.

 Just like we've seen in earlier episodes, though, we do see both Ben and Polly want to return to the to the Tardis and leave, and the Doctor is refusing to do that/ He believes that they need to stay and help this colony because the Daleks are here, so that's a shift that we saw in the Doctor even with the First Doctor starting to feel responsibility for the places where he lands, and it's the companions wanting to leave. Of course a major shift from the beginning of the show where Ian and Barbara were the ones saying that “we have to do something” in the situation.

So we have this confrontation with Lesterson, who again is refusing to accept what the Doctor and companions are telling him about the danger of the Daleks because he's a scientist and he just doesn't believe this. He does adopt the name “Daleks” to call his little machines. This is followed by a really interesting and intense scene with Bragen, who at this point in the serial we’re becoming increasingly suspicious of. The serial is setting us up to be suspicious of both Bragen and Quinn, one of whom is probably going to be the murderer, and let's just say that Bragen's actions are shifting more and more guilt towards him or pushing us in that direction, even if we're not quite sure why. Though, Quinn is still a pretty shifty character throughout this. He holds his cards very close to this chest, and I do like that. I like how they set up the dynamics with these characters and this mystery and we're not sure who we can and cannot trust. 

So in this scene Bragen is telling the Doctor and company that while they have the right to go anywhere going into Lesterson's lab without telling him ahead of time was probably a bad idea. And the they’re demanding to see the governor because they want to get rid of the Daleks, and basically melt down the Daleks that are already there, but we discover that the governor is absent. He has been sent to the outer rim of the colony because of the Rebellion. So Quinn is now technically in charge and Bragen also has a lot more power and authority as head of security. 

In the scene, they're given a bunch of fruit and initially it seems like the Doctor’s being a bit ridiculous playing with his food and such but after Bragen leaves the Doctor shows Ben and Polly that the fruit is literally bugged… that they are trying to listen into their conversations and a lot of what the Doctor is doing throughout the previous couple of episodes or throughout some of the previous scenes makes much more sense now because he is aware that Bragen is listening into their conversations. Hence why he is being a little circumspect in what he is and isn’t answering, and I think that's really well done adds more tension: who is listening to whom when? What is going on? Where should we trust in this, this colony where we're situated right now? And, of course, the tension is racking up because we now have the Daleks, the governor is missing, the Rebellion is heating up… there's a lot of little ticking time bombs just waiting to explode at this point in the serial. That really does keep the tension of the story pushing forward.

 At this point we meet Lesterson's other assistant, Resno. Resno is very supportive of the governor, and he and Janley have a lot of back and forth because she's pro-rebellion so that's part of their dynamic. But Resno also has a lot of concerns about the Daleks. 

We have a really good scene here wherein Resno and Lesterson are exploring the Daleks as they're trying to reanimate them and they're talking about like the different components of the Daleks. What this… what the sucker could be? What this other extra arm could be (which we know to be a gun), and it is very disconcerting. This is part of what I love about this episode. We have all of this dramatic irony because the characters don't know what the Daleks are aside from the Doctor and, because he's telling them: Ben and Polly. Lesterson and his scientist are not aware of what the Daleks are and what they can do. Hence they're trying to piece together what it is that they have found, and we the audience already know so when they're describing and looking at the gun that the Daleks, you know, always have on them, we know how dangerous that is, but… but they don't they don't understand the situation in which they find themselves and how bad things can go if if they're not careful. 

And it just provides, again, so much tension, and it makes the Dalek so much scarier because we're almost building up in our brains the mythos of the Daleks. So we know that all of these things that are being described so innocently are going to be so terrifying later on in this episode when the payoff comes. And we know what's going to come.

In any case, the Dalek seems to be responding to some of the manipulations, and Resno feels as if the Dalek is looking at him, and eventually we're seeing all this through the Dalek’s stalk. you know, like watching it, it looks at Resno and we know that that's what's happening. The Dalek is considering this. They give the Dalek enough power that the gun goes off and it hits Resno and Resno is killed.

But Janley at this point finds Resno dead on the ground, but tells Lesterson that he's just been knocked unconscious and takes him to quote unquote “Sick Bay,” like the hospital essentially. Janely is going to keep up this clear lie with Lesterson for quite some time and we're not quite sure why initially she would lie to Lesterson about the fact that Resno has been killed by the Daleks. And by the fact… well indirectly by Lesterson himself through his experimentation with feeding this, this creature power, and he doesn't fully understand it, and it ends up costing him his assistant. But Janley is keeping that information to herself. We're not sure why initially, and again that adds some more tension because we're not sure where Janley's head is and what she's trying to do, what she wants to accomplish.

 Meanwhile, as the scientists are experimenting with the Daleks to deadly effect, we also have a confrontation going on where the Doctor and Quinn are both snooping and they get to a control room… end up finding that all the equipment in this room has been sabotaged. Now the Doctor was heading there specifically because he wants to put an end to the experimentation on the Daleks and given that the governor won't stop this because he's far away, he [the Doctor] was going to radio Earth and get Authority because he's supposed to be the Examiner from Earth. 

Right, so the communication system has been completely cut off, they can't contact Earth, and the body of the radio operator is on the floor. He's not dead, but he is unconscious. And from the shadows out steps Quinn, who is the second in command for the governor, and someone we've been suspicious of so far. But he seems very excited to see the Doctor, telling him that “thank goodness it's you; I've been trying to talk to you since you got here.”

Then Bragen shows up and immediately arrests Quinn after it becomes clear…like he's holding the the wrench that knocked out the the operator so it seems as if he is responsible for knocking him unconscious, for sabotaging the mission, and in addition they know that the Examiner was attacked… The Doctor was attacked by somebody, and Quinn's pin was found with him out in the swampy area so the Doctor reveals that and it's a button that looks like it belonged to Quinn.

So basically either Quinn is our murderer and our saboteur working with the rebels as Bragen says or someone's doing a very good job trying to frame him. We suspect the latter at this point, however, or at least Polly does. Polly is convinced the Quinn has to be innocent. The serial doesn't really give us much reason as to why Polly thinks this. 

We haven't had that much interaction with Quinn, and honestly when I first watched this I assumed Quinn was the bad guy pretty much up to this point, but of course it's too neat of a wrap up too early in the story so at this point you're kind of suspicious of that. But he is kind of a character in the shadows and we're not sure why Polly so vehemently believes in his innocence ,yet she she clearly does and is going to continue to assert this throughout the serial. 

Ben, on the other hand, absolutely believes that Quinn is guilty, that he was doing all this to become the governor to take out Hensell and to take charge, which makes sense it's a motive that does make sense.

So at this point, the governor finally returns. The Doctor confronts the governor alongside Bragen about Quinn's supposed treachery, though the Doctor is also defending Quinn… doesn't think that it actually was him… or at least thinks there's a possibility Quinn could be innocent. And the Doctor, of course, is trying to warn Hensell, the governor, about the Daleks.

 Lo and behold, Lesterson walks in with Janely and with him comes a Dalek! A fully operational Dalek, who claims to be their servant. The Dalek says over and over again: “I am your servant! I am your servant!”

 Very reminiscent, for those of you coming from New Who, the episode that Matt Smith has with the Daleks with Winston Churchill deliberately calls back to this serial. It's a very similar setup, where we have people using the Daleks thinking that they can control them and the Daleks are obviously playing along with that game. 

What's interesting here is that the Dalek does stop and take in the Doctor in particular. And it is at this point that Ben begins to waver in his faith that this is not actually the same man, that this isn't the Doctor. Because it's very clear that the Dalek seems to recognize the Doctor, if only momentarily. 

Just as in New Who we often have this theme… We saw this in, say Peter Capaldi, that the the Dalek recognizes who the Doctor is and this is confirmation that the Doctor is still the Doctor. We see this quite a bit in New Who. We actually saw the reverse in that episode with Matt Smith where the Dalek had to be recognized by the Doctor to come back. So same thing, like recognition of an enemy, especially the Daleks, show us that this is still the Doctor.

 I also like this moment because obviously the Daleks have not as of yet met the Second Doctor, so there's no reason from a show perspective that they would actually recognize him, except of course that because we're in a show that's very timey-whimey with all this time travel going on, they could have, like, a future, you know, this doesn't all happen in order. And I like it when Doctor Who recognizes that. I think it makes the show more realistic, so obviously the Daleks would know who the Doctor is at this point because they have interacted with this version of the Doctor in what is for them the past… even if we have not seen that yet. And that does end up being the case.

 The Doctor is very concerned about the Dalek, tries very hard to convince the people in the room not to go forward with helping out the Dalek. Here he calls them “fools, stupid fools,” but none of the people are listening to him, even when the Dalek starts  to speak. So the “I am your servant” is trying to overwhelm the Doctor attempting to explain what it is that Daleks do.

 There's a great quote here “but the thing it does most efficiently is exterminate human beings. It destroys them without mercy, without conscience. It destroys them utterly completely. It destroys them.” The Doctor is trying to get across how dangerous these Daleks are where the Dalek is basically drowning out what the Doctors saying by shouting: “I am your servant! I am your servant! I am your servant!” which is what closes out the third episode of the serial.

I want to point out like from a story structure perspective how brilliant the story’s put together. Because we've had now half of the whole serial with the first three episodes with the Daleks just moving in the background and first we just kind of see them, you know, in the capsule and they seem to be dead and now they've been fully reanimated but they seem to be under control and it's just like the creeping concern of the Daleks and the danger that they pose just gets greater and greater and greater as the serial goes. But this is the first time we see them speak or move is at the very end of episode 3. But we've had all this build-up to that moment and that's what the real scare is, right? It's not when you see the Monster. It's, it's the wait to see the monster.

 And the serial does a good job with that. Often times Doctor Who will reveal its cards a little too early. A lot of TV shows do that.. honestly a lot of films do that too. Whereas what's really really scary is not, again, when you see the Monster… it's the monster in the shadows when you can't see it.  And I think the serial really does have that down. 

The tension is building to a breaking point and even now the Dalek seems to be under control. It still hasn't revealed its threat to everyone else. Even if we know that it's a threat.

Okay let's talk.

 So we'll start with the obvious that this is the first episode for the Second Doctor I think it's a decent debut for Patrick Troughton's version of the Doctor though strangely he is not the star of the show. I think a lot that's going on with the secondary characters and the Daleks are what makes this serial memorable. But I do want to talk a little bit about his introduction before we get into the story as as a story.

 I do like how they very quickly present this Doctor as considerably different from the first Doctor his mannerisms are different how he goes about dealing with things are different how he goes through this episode and how he acts are very different. The second Doctor is in many ways a lot more sneaky than the first Doctor. He holds his cards closer to the chest. He is a little less forthcoming about his plans and his intentions. It's not that the first Doctor couldn't do that, but the first Doctor had a little less control, let's say, and would typically let you know what it is that he intended, what he was up to, in a way that this Doctor doesn't always let you in on. 

He's very silly but in a very different way from the first Doctor. The first Doctor could be a little ridiculous in his his tempers and his whims. This Doctor, while we'll see like in later serials the second Doctor can get very huffy and irritated in a way similar to the first Doctor, it's a little bit rarer he seems a little bit more controlled in his moods and his expression of, shall we say, annoyance. 

Instead what makes this Doctor silly is his little antics and his physical humor. He plays around with the recorder throughout this entire thing. He pretends he's not paying attention to other characters or to the situation and there's this lovely little facade that he, he plays the fool, but he actually is paying very close attention to what's going on and in fact is always scheming and thinking and considering the next move even as he comes across as a very foolish person to the people around him.

And he's a fool and a different way I think than the first Doctor was, or at least he plays that role in a different way in a more like classic fool tradition, where he's putting on the Joker's gear… he's intentionally making himself ridiculous in order to use that to mask his real intentions/ I think the first Doctor just could be ridiculous. I think with the second Doctor it feels much more like a deliberate calculated act. And I think that's just… the thing for me about the second Doctor versus the first: everything the second Doctor does feels much more intentional, that this is a persona he's putting on for a reason in order to get a very particular result.

 The first Doctor never felt that in control to me. It felt like he just actually was kind of silly and emotional and stuff and as he grew into his his role as hero, he recognized that certain things about him could cause people to underestimate him and stuff. And we're seeing that brought to fruition with the second Doctor where he knows how to manipulate a little bit better. And I don't mean that in a negative way necessarily but he's just more aware of how people perceive him than the first Doctor was and he's better at using that and at the same time, again, I think Patrick Troughton is really really funny.

His dynamic with both Ben and Polly is great I love the way in which this Doctor feels like he's on level with the companions in a way the first Doctor a lot of times didn't. He kind of felt like this mentor, this grandfather-figure, the patriarch… whereas the second Doctor he still feels like he's the one in charge but he feels a lot closer to the companions even in this first episode where he's not separated from them in the same way that the first Doctor was perhaps because he's not quite as old or perhaps because he is a little bit more comfortable in a more equal role.

I think overall it's it's a good debut for this Doctor. It is unusual having this introduction with him so firmly separating himself from the Doctor at least initially with the whole third person thing and him not acknowledging the first Doctor entirely as a person, like the person he used to be but rather like this almost like this other person. But then gradually over the course of the serial he cements himself as the Doctor, and we see that from Ben and Polly and how they treat him and how they ultimately accept him. Even Ben who is the skeptic over the course of the serial gets to the point where he's there, and I think that using the Daleks as a means of showcasing that this is still the Doctor works pretty well here as well. Because they recognize him as the enemy, and again the Daleks recognizing the Doctor as the Doctor cements that we should see him as a Doctor as well.

 Okay so Ben and Polly they don't have too much to do in this serial aside from reacting to the new Doctor and establishing that dynamic. I don't think that the serial really belongs to either of them and honestly I don't think it even really belongs to the second Doctor.

 This serial for me is all about our side cast. Like our cast of characters…the  human characters that we meet on Vulcan and of course the Daleks themselves so before we close out this first part the other thing I will note about this beginning of this episode is something I pointed out through this commentary which is this serial is really really good at building suspense and this complex web of interest and power. 

I really appreciate the way in which the Daleks are introduced in this serial and how they're built up slowly, how the threat of them grows like episode by episode, and that we the audience… that dramatic irony is so well used…that we know that there's a problem here but these other characters don't they're, they're waiting for the disaster to explode in their faces, or we're waiting for that to happen but they're not aware of that and I think that does a lot to both make the Daleks a lot creepier and scarier.  It increases their Menace.

 And it also just keeps our interest in the serial. This is six episodes long, but it feels like a regular four-part serial. It just moves very quickly, and a lot of that is because the tension keeps racketing up and up and up there are all these little time bombs that are just waiting to explode which even at the halfway point none of them have really gone off. We don't quite know what's going to happen with the Rebellion, we don't know when the Daleks are going to turn, we’re not sure who the murderer is yet who killed the original Examiner….

Like all these Mysteries, all these problems are up in the air, and you just know things are going to get worse very quickly. Which which they will going forward.

 I really like how this serial is working with that tension.

 I think David Whitaker is very good at this in all the episodes he penned and when he was the script editor in season one.  I think this is something that he he could bring to the stories. Something else that I think he's very good at as a writer is crafting very memorable characters. 

You will remember Bragen and Lesterson and even Quinn and Janely, like these these side characters they all feel very distinct and they all have very distinct conflicts. So something that we talk a lot about as creative writers, and my background is partially in creative writing, is there's a difference between a problem and a conflict. You can make problem after problem after problem but a conflict requires a character to want something. And I think what's really cool about this serial is almost all of our major players have a very clear goal whether we know what that is or not that they're pursuing and all these things are in the way so they all have their own like little individual conflicts that they're overcoming across the serial. 

They're all pursuing something distinct whether it's Lesterson, who just wants to be left alone by the government to learn as much as he possibly can. Or Bragen who seems to be in it for the sheer power… at this point his motivations are still a bit of a mystery at this point in the serial but you get the sense that he he likes his power he likes all these men around him who are kotowing to him. And you have someone like Janely who believes really strongly in the cause of the rebels even though we don't know what is…

 It just feels like all these characters have very lived lives outside of the story this world feels fully realized and sketched even if we don't have all the details of say the Rebellion or the inner workings of the colony we don't need that because we have all these characters who are pursuing very distinct things and that makes the serial come alive and in some ways it's interesting because this is our introduction to the second Doctor but I do think in some ways he and Ben and Polly are a bit upstaged by the characters that we meet on Vulcan and the Daleks themselves as the serial goes by.

 Though in some ways that's that… that kind of makes sense for the second Doctor because we'll talk about this as we keep going but I do think the second Doctor is …he he can play in the shadows a lot… you don't realize how much he's doing without being front and center many of the Doctors are the lead players all the time and they're like the focus, focus, focus but I do think the second Doctor is one of those Doctors that he can be that he can be Hamlet on Center Stage, but he can also be the stage manager in the back that you don't quite notice until it's his moment and he's kind of orchestrating everything from behind the curtains and that's something I find really intriguing about the second Doctor so in some ways this makes sense as his introduction.

 It’s a great episode, like Patrick Troughton is great throughout this entire serial, and I think you fall for him very hard and fast I just think he feels so competent he feels so in control, he's, he makes you laugh, he cares about his companions and therefore you feel like the sense of of welcome from him, and he's a lot less prickly than the first Doctor which…

I think that William Hartnell sometimes can be a grower as a Doctor. It takes a while for you to get past his prickly exterior. The second Doctor has kind of this wall but it's more amiable like he can be… he, he's never…he can be a little annoying to people sometimes when he's when he's irritated but he can be very polite to you and and put up the walls that way and he's he doesn't let you in on what he's thinking all the time or or like what his plan is or where what he intends but you do feel very safe with him like he does feel very strangely competent and at least for me it's very easy to accept this is a Doctor that I just feel almost immediately oh yeah this is the Doctor. And within the serial, it just by the end, you just are very very cemented with him and his interpretation throughout this, but I do… I am saying very honestly I don't think this is really his serial which is interesting as an introduction. I think that the story itself is just so good that it almost doesn't matter which Doctor we have here so that's kind of interesting as a first episode.

In any case, if you have not yet watched “The Power of the Daleks,” again it's available in animation, please go see it it is even though it's six episodes I'm really serious it's a very quick watch it's it is genuinely a great serial fantastic all around. Next week we are going to return for part two and I'll be talking about the last three episodes and then some things more specific to both the Daleks in the serial and the overall story. Some of these characters who I can't fully discuss because we haven't gotten to the back end of the serial and where where they go there's a lot of really cool things that are going to happen going forward so we'll do that next time.

 And then we're just going to start plowing through the second Doctor era with “The Highlanders.” I'm so excited! I I forgot how much I love Patrick Troughton until I started to rewatch his Seasons…. I really really I love I love the first Doctor… I love the second Doctor and I'm just excited to be moving forward and getting to re-experience the second Doctor. It's been a really long time since I watched these serials almost 5 years, and I’ve just really enjoyed to return to them.

 So very much looking forward to it. In any case, I will see you all next time for part two. Thank you all so very much for listening. This has been Through the Vortex, a companion to Doctor Who.