Serial #30 Part II: The Power of the Daleks

The Daleks are mobile and they are getting their power....at any cost.

Enter a scheming would-be dictator, kidnapping, blackmail, false imprisonment, a mad scientist, and some very annoying recorder music. The newly-regenerated Doctor must think quickly to save the people of Vulcan.

In short, David Whittaker (the writer) is a genius. 

DALEK: Why do human beings kill human beings?
BRAGEN: Get on with your work.
DALEK: Yes, master. I obey.
BRAGEN: Yes, obey me! From now on, I'll have complete obedience from everyone!

LESTERSON: Ah, I tried to turn the power off, but they were miles ahead of me. Marvelous creatures. You have to admire them.
BEN: But we've got to stop them!
LESTERSON: Oh, it's too late for that. They're the new species, you see, taking over from homo sapiens. Man's had his day. Finished now....All we can do is marvel at the creatures who are taking our place.

NOTE: There are six episodes in "The Power of the Daleks." Not sure why I continually referred to it as a 4-parter! The general pacing comments still all stand:-)

Upcoming:
"The Highlanders"
Team TARDIS lands in the middle of the Jacobite uprising and quickly befriend a group of Scotsman loyal to "the Young Pretender."  But the Redcoats are ruthless in punishing those who rebel....
4 episodes, all missing:-(
Monday, April 10th

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 am going to take you through the vortex on this companion to Doctor Who.

Today, friends, we are continuing our journey with the “Power of the Daleks.” This is going to be part 2 of the podcast. If you didn't listen to part one, I would probably check that out first. This time we're going to be discussing the last three episodes in the six-episode serial, and our discussion is going to primarily focus on the Daleks themselves, how they're used in this serial, these characters who have really intriguing stories all around, and some of the larger philosophical discussions, questions, ideas that the serial is playing with.

Last time I did talk a little bit more about this as an introduction to the Second Doctor, so if you want my thoughts on that, it may come up here and there, but I am..I did talk about that primarily last time, so we're not going to focus on it too much.

 So we'll just pick up where we left off with the beginning of episode 4. If you remember, last time we had just closed off with a pretty big scene, a turning point in the serial, the first time we see a Dalek up and moving. The Dalek is announcing that it is a servant to the governor of Vulcan as well as the Doctor, Ben, Polly, Bragen, our head of security, and, of course Lesterson, who is the lead scientist who reanimated this Dalek. The Doctor is desperately trying to convince the governor that this is not the case, the Daleks are dangerous, but of course he is not listened to and is ushered away.

To be fair here going into the fourth episode Hensel, the governor, is actually concerned that the Daleks can speak and can clearly understand what they are saying. As he puts it, like, “is this an intelligence that we can control” like can we actually “they seem to be extremely intelligent, do you even know what you're doing Lesterson?” essentially. 

Lesterson, of course is just like “yes, yes we can control them… think about what we could do we could put them into the mines we could quash the Rebellion with this because we have these ready-made machines and workers that are intelligent that can do what we need to to have done it could be a gold mine,” basically. And if the Daleks were controlled you, you can see where Lesterson is coming from here. Like even though he's just motivated.. he just wants to play with the Daleks because he wants to know what they'll do, but he needs to justify that in practical terms, so he's talking about the fact that, like, the Daleks actually could be extremely useful to the colony. And that convinces Hensel to allow him to keep working.

 The Doctor tries to showcase the Daleks duplicity here by cleverly asking the Dalek to immobilize, to power down, essentially. So the Dalek is in this position where it either needs to obey the Doctor or reveal its cards. That it isn't, you know, a servant, that it has an independent mind.

 So the Dalek does disengage, but then the moment that the Doctor leaves with Ben and Polly, the Dalek comes back to life and explains itself to Lesterson by saying, like, “I I did I obey him but you are the person who gave me life and you're the you're my real master and it was wrong for me to be immobilized because I, I could actually help you… that's how I best serve you” So the Dalek kind of talking its way out of a situation in which it could be perceived as dangerous.

I do think for the record this is where the seed of doubt starts to be placed in Lesterson’s mind. It's pretty deeply buried still, but, but this is the first time the Dalek does something that perhaps indicates that there's some threat here. The way that the Doctor manages to ask it to immobilize but it immediately comes back the moment he's out of the room showcasing that it still is in control. I think is a really really good moment here and it is a moment in which Lesterson deep down, at least, I think is starting to get what he's done which we're going to see him steadily break over the course of the next three episodes.

Again, Polly is really convinced that Quinn is not in fact guilty and is trying to convince both Ben and the Doctor to go and break Quinn out, essentially. And well Ben really thinks that Quinn is guilty and that this is pointless. The Doctor is just kind of telling Polly, you know, yeah, it's, it's sad that he's innocent, and, and it's not okay what they're doing to him putting him in prison right now. But we have Daleks. We have Daleks, like, we have bigger priorities right now, and we need to pay attention to the bigger picture. 

This is something that I think the Second Doctor is quite good at, and we're going to see in multiple episodes…It's not that he doesn't care about the little things or like every person in the journey but he he keeps his eye on the bigger picture and will often be the person to pull back and to remind people like yes okay this… there's an injustice here but here is like an existential threat. Let's deal with the existential threat and then we can deal with the injustice.

Quinn tries really hard to defend himself. He keeps suggesting that he had nothing to do with the rebels, and Quinn reveals that he was the one who actually asked the Examiner to come because of the Rebellion, and he was nervous and worried about it. And this doesn't go well for him. Hensel and Bragen are both quite upset. They do send Quinn off to jail and because Quinn, the second-in-command, is no longer in that position Bragen is promoted to be Deputy Governor. 

This is particularly important given the governor has another tour to the outer portion of the colony that he needs to conduct quite shortly, so Bragen is basically going to be in control.

Lesterson– as all of this drama is going on about succession and who's in charge and Rebels and existential questions about Daleks and guilt and innocence–Lesterson’s just playing with the Dalek in his laboratory giving him tests and stuff. And the Dalek is passing every test that he gives with outstanding colors. The Dalek is extremely intelligent. Again Lesterson is deeply under-playing how smart the Dalek is.  It's getting every answer correct. Lesterson still thinks it's just as sophisticated machine.

However, the Doctor shows up and initially is very polite tries to mend bridges. And then attempts to destroy the Dalek. He is not successful. The Dalek doesn't sustain any damage, and the Doctor is forced to leave.

Finally at this point we start to see some of what's actually happening here. Janley and Bragen meet up, and we discover that Janley and Bragen are both very highly positioned within the Rebellion. Bragen was in fact running the Rebellion, which should be no surprise to anyone at this point. It's pretty clear that he has been manipulating people at this point behind the scenes in order to get into his position. He is trying to stir up enough trouble to get rid of Hensil, and then to take over the colony. But he makes it very clear to Janley that after that he intends to crush the Rebellion so that he will be in charge.

Janley, on the other hand, seems to be actually someone who believes in the rebel cause and is very close to the rebels and feels a little uncomfortable with Bragen's attitude towards the Rebellion as just a tool to get him political power. And this Dynamic is going to play out throughout the rest of this, Bragen also announces us very clearly at this point he got Quinn out of the way. Quinn was as far as he was concerned the biggest danger in the colony but he thinks that the Examiner is an equally potentially dangerous figure, and he wants to get him out of the way.

So to do this he has Janley kidnap Polly! Or to put it more directly he has Janley and the Rebellion kidnap Polly. So Polly is now kidnapped, and she is being held by the rebellion in order to manipulate the Doctor. Though as we'll see this doesn't really go very far beyond the fact that it brings Polly over to the rebel side of the story so we get to see more of what's going on with the rebels.

It also, of course, this is pretty typical, but the Doctor is focused on the big picture here even though Polly has not returned and is missing Ben is worried about Polly whereas the Doctor thinks that she can get herself out of trouble and is not too concerned that she seems to be missing. And that dynamic is going to hold for the rest of the serial and is something we we saw with the first Doctor as well. If you remember the Doctor was very rarely concerned about Polly. I'm thinking particularly in “The War Machines,” where Ben is really really concerned about her safety and the Doctor doesn't really seem to be overly invested in that. And Ben goes and rescues her. In this instance it does feel like a mark of almost a sort of respect from the Doctor that he thinks of Polly can take care of herself, and he's not particularly worried about like having to go save her or to find her right away like he's worried that she's missing and we'll see that like he doesn't… it's not that he doesn't care about her… but she's not the priority right now.

Ben however decides that he is going to report that Polly is missing and is going to make the Doctor care, which again is very reminiscent of “The War Machines” where a similar situation happens.

 Okay so Polly is now missing and the Doctor is determined to investigate the Daleks which he does with Ben. They discover that the Dalek initially are disarmed but then two come who are fully armed. 

We also at this point… there's a really funny scene where the Doctor tells Ben to “run like a rabbit” and they flee. This is a common theme with the Second Doctor. He he is very much a sometimes-we-just-need-to-get-out-of-the-picture-and-run-away Doctor. And very smart about that when to stand and fight and when it's best to make a valiant exit.

Iin any case, the Doctor and Ben try to take this up with the governor who keeps insisting that he has every confidence in Lestterson. Lesterson has been interrogating the Daleks and believes that they can increase the colony’s accuracy with their power outlets with their ability to detect certain storms and certain weather conditions that are preventing the mining from going along as well as it could be… basically the Daleks have really sold Lesterson that they could be very useful to the Colony. And that has sold Hensel.

And, as the Doctor says, it's all about ambition, it's… they're not listening to the potential danger of the Daleks because they are blinded by what they could gain from these very very smart computers as they think they are that they still think that they can control. 

And we're starting to see the Daleks’ play here too because as they are being tested they're gathering more and more power. They're asking Lesterson to set up a power supply for them. They're asking for more materials to work with to build things and it just becomes increasingly obvious that the Daleks are up to something other than what they are being assigned by Lesterson, which, you know, is not something that surprises any of us as the audience, but again the buildup as the Daleks begin to unfold their scheme and what they want out of this situation is really very well done.

Meanwhile, Bragen ends up confronting Ben and the Doctor with the fact that a middle-aged body has been found out in the swamp in the mercury and this is of course the body of the real Examiner. the Doctor tells Bragen that obviously if he knows this then he is the one who tried to murder The Examiner and of course this brings our teams to a bit of a standstill because obviously Bragan can expose that the Doctor is a fake and the Doctor could at least try to expose that Bragen attempted to murder the… murdered the real Examiner. So they basically are going about their merry ways both with blackmail over the other.

And again we're we're racking up the tension here.

Meanwhile Lesterson and the Daleks have this great back and forth where Lesterson goes to see the Daleks, and the Daleks have already disarmed each other. They say they don't need guns and Lesterson is giving them the power that they want and remarks that the Examiner is clearly wrong about them. They aren't evil. They don't want to hurt anyone. They don't need or want their guns.  

But episode 4 ends with the Daleks repeating over and over again “We will get our power! We will get our power! We will get our power!” All of the episodes from like here and out like have this Daleks repeating phrases at the end of the episodes which doesn't really work as well as I think the production thinks it does, but, you know it it is something that we see the Daleks as they're inching forward towards what they need…. 

I should mention at this point that this episode actually returns us to the original “Daleks”--they operate via static electricity. They need static in order to move. In order to power themselves. So what they're trying to build, spoilers, is a mechanism to allow them to have enough power for basically to power themselves to use the static in this this facility so that they can you know take over.

 We also discover shortly that the Daleks are up to something else as well. Lesterson, at the start of this episode does overhear the Daleks being so excited about getting their power, and, in a display of his own power over them, he cuts the power off. And he tells them it's to remind them that he is the one who gave them life and he can also take it away. He is in charge of the power not them. The Daleks very weakly have this “we obey” and Lesterson returns the power to them.

Of course this is kind of a loaded gun. We know that the scene is going to come again and of course the Daleks at some point later in the episodes are going to evolve past the need for Lesterson, but at least right now he still has them quote under control. 

The fact that Lesterson does make this display, though, again, is suggesting that he is at least on some level becoming a little bit more suspicious of the Daleks and what it is that they want. He recognizes that he needs to remain in control.

We also meet with Bragen again in the beginning of this episode. The Doctor and Ben see him again and he has a new uniform which is very reminiscent of the Gestapo which should surprise no one. There are very very heavy Nazi imagery all over the place, and again his guards pretty much from here to the end of the entire episode and how Bragen is trying to gain power is not dissimilar to you how many dictators try to gain power. Being in charge of the military branch of the government, being in charge of security, and basically pushing their way into the leadership role, which is endgame. 

He controls the guns, he controls the government. And he is playing the game very well at this point. Hensel is out again so Bragen is basically in charge, and he is setting himself up to take complete control of the colony. It's pretty obvious that that is what he is doing at this point. 

The Daleks come in again, and a Dalek is actually serving a liquid the way the Daleks speak always makes me laugh.. but.. “do I bring liquid for your visitors” and the Dalek is just like serving him on a tray. Again very reminiscent of the Matt Smith episode where the Daleks are under human control when they are in fact not.

There are a few like fun slip ups here and there. Like, for instance, a little earlier Lesterson tells one of the Daleks that it has an almost human-like curiosity, and the Dalek begins to tell Lesterson that Daleks are better than humans but cuts off and it's like “Daleks are not like humans” but you can hear, like, where that sentence was originally going. So it's kind of fun to see the Daleks clearly hiding their evil intentions but every now and then losing control.

In any case the Daleks are playing a part and there are just like these little cracks. Even how the Dalek delivering the liquid…you can just tell that it doesn't want to be serving and it's just like biding its time. 

And it's… again we as the audience know what the Daleks are. So it just creates all this tension because you know that any time this Dalek could just turn around and slaughter all the humans and that is creepy. That is tension. Hitchcock very famously would say that it's one thing to show ..to blow up a bomb, right, but if you put the bomb underneath the table and you show it to the audience and you know that it's ticking that's how you get tension and suspense and this episode so good about that because you know that they're going to…like Bragen doesn't stand a chance against the original Nazis! 

The Dalek put in this position is very funny but also very tense.

 So at this point the Doctor and Ben have received a ransom note for Polly basically saying that she's been kidnapped they are trying to convince Bragen to stop Lesterson in terms of his experiments but obviously he's not touching that. He thinks there's nothing wrong with the Daleks. Of course he does.

They realize as they come out from seeing Bragen there are three Daleks in the hallway but they saw a fourth Dalek [with Bragen]. They know now that there are more Daleks than there were initially. Initially there were only three in the pod. So either they miscounted that or somehow the Daleks have found a way to reproduce.

The Doctor doesn't think Lesterson could be doing that, but he's very suspicious and worried now what is going on. What have the Daleks done?

 Meanwhile Lesterson and Janley are looking at supplies that the Daleks have requested and Lesterson for the first time is starting to question things. He asks why the Daleks want so many of these supplies. It's not necessary for them to have all of these things in order to build what it is that they've said they're building for him. And Lesterson is so unnerved by all this that he notes that he's beginning to believe what the Examiner said. Maybe he is right about the Daleks. “They’re original thinking terrifies me,” he says. “If we can control them, fine, but if not then they shall have to be destroyed.” So Lesterson at this point, again, this is after him pulling that power trick overhearing the Dalek saying “we will have all the power,” he is finally at that tipping point where he thinks it's possible that the Daleks are not up to all good. They're too smart and they could pose a threat.

Janley however turns around and basically blackmails Lesterson telling him that Resno, his original assistant who was killed, was.. is in fact dead. So Lesterson has up to this point believed that Resno has been lying in the hospital and has just been recovering from a shock. And Janely at this point reveals the truth: that he died during that experiment and basically Lesterson is responsible for his death given that he was conducting the experiment and he was being unsafe.

So janely is now trying to blackmail Lesterson into continuing to work with the Daleks. These experiments are so important to her which doesn't make much sense.

 Lestern at this point finally shows some kind of moral courage and at least some nod to like morality and ethics suggesting that the experiments on the Daleks are not more important than human life. So he is finally at this point seeing the fact.. what what this has cost. That Resno is now dead. He wasn't just injured. It finally starts to dawn on him that what he's doing, his pursuit of knowledge does not outweigh the threat to the Daleks are posing. 

But of course Lesterson is now basically under Janley's thumb, and it's just at this moment of course that Ben and the Doctor confront Lesterson about the ransom note they received for Polly he doesn't know what the heck this is about. Tries to dismiss them. He is getting more emotionally, like, out-of-control. Even at this point, and then the Doctor and Ben confront him with the idea that the Daleks are reproducing or ask if he is building more Daleks. He isn't but they insist that there are more Daleks then there used to be. There are at least four of them 

Lesterson is really concerned about that. He's just about in the midst of a complete breakdown, and the Doctor pushes on him that the Daleks are not just machines. They were themselves brilliant engineers and if they were handed the right materials could do virtually anything. Lesterson at this point realizes that he's been played by the Daleks and is just about completely collapsed in horror.

Janley pushes out everybody suggesting The Examiner was messing with Lesterson and he's just been overworked and essentially just gets Lesterson away from the Doctor and Ben. But it's very clear that whatever what's going on now Lesterson finally gets it.  Like he gets it. He understands that he has been a pawn in something and that this is not a good situation.

Janley sedates Lesterson and at this point we're really curious about her motives because why would she be so interested in helping the Daleks? And we quickly discover what's going on with this which is basically Janley is helping the Daleks because the Daleks have offered to help their Rebellion. Specifically to give them guns that they can use to overthrow The Colony.

 So the Daleks are basically playing everybody here. They're playing with the political tensions going on. They're playing with the desire for knowledge, the human pursuit of science. They're just using everybody to get what they want which of course is exactly what the human characters are doing as well. And this episode is really really… like there's so much to talk about! It's really really well constructed the ways in which all of these characters are trying to make power moves and trying to gain control and the Doctor, Ben, and Polly are just kind of dropped in the middle of all this.

The Doctor and Ben figure out the rebels’ code; they they're leaving notes on the message board. They figure out where the rebels are meeting and they hide to overhear the rebels meeting because, you know, they think that the rebels could have taken Polly, which they're they're ultimately correct about that.

At the meeting Janley has brought a Dalek gun and suggests that, you know, we could use this to overthrow the capital. When no one trusts the gun or the Daleks for that matter Janley offers to be basically target practice and tells the Dalek to shoot her because the the rebels are concerned that the Daleks will not be able to distinguish between the rebels and the capital guards. And the Dalek, you know, they're they basically ask the Dalek to shoot Janley.

It doesn't and at this point they decide they're going to trust the Daleks. So the Daleks and the rebels are making an alliance. The rebels are laying down the power cables and chords they need for their power source. And the Daleks have promised to help them in their quest to overthrow the governor and take control of the colony.

Towards the end of the meeting Janley mentions Polly indirectly. Ben is so excited about this that he makes too much noise. The rebels realize there's someone there. And Ben gives himself up to allow the Doctor to save both of them.

 So Ben ends up being taken by the rebels he's knocked out, and the Doctor is found by the leader of the rebels who again at this point we've already guessed is Bragen.

 He is in charge, and the Doctor is not surprised about this. The Doctor does warn Bragen that if he intends to be the leader of the Daleks he's not going to be successful. The Dalek serve under no humans.

At this point Bragen orders for the Doctor to be taken into custody, and this is how we get to this lovely scene in jail where we have Quinn, our wrongly suspected Rebel leader who in fact was just doing his job sending for the Examiner trying to call the rebellion and basically the one good person in this lot of black sheep and the Doctor.

They're in this these jail cells, and, of course… so the jail cells are operated by a particular tune like a particular tone shall we say that opens the door so of course the Doctor is trying to replicate that particular note with his recorder and it's getting increasingly annoying and then the Doctor’s playing with water. You know the way you like swirl your little finger around the top of a glass of water to get like the right tone? And it initially seems like just super-annoying but it slowly becomes clear that Quinn is in on this. And they're trying to escape together.

 As they're going through this Quinn initially tells Doctor that he is a really really bad examiner but the Doctor explains that he isn't in fact the Examiner that the Examiner was murdered by Bragen. And he and his friends were just traveling…travelers. So basically Quinn is just clued in on what's going on and the threats of the Daleks pose. And both he and the Doctor are trying to escape.

 Around this time Lesterson wakes up. He was knocked out earlier by Janley. He overhears the Daleks who are clearly conspiring together and clearly there are more of them quite a few more of them in the capsule. He realizes that they must be reproducing and he goes into the capsule to see the Daleks are making more Daleks like in mass production. Like there are a heck of a lot of Daleks in this! And we're seeing tens and tens of Daleks coming out being constructed. The episode ends with us just seeing all of these new Daleks coming out of this this elaborate construction machine.

A horrified Lesterson realizes this, comes out tries to tell Janley what's going on, but Janley of course already knows what's going on. Lesterson tries to again what I told you Chekov gun scene earlier in the serial he controls them by turning off their power and now he goes back trying to do the same thing but of course he can't so he he has this moment where he's like they forget that I control them I gave them life back again now I've taken it away! Finished it! Stopped it!

He realizes that they're evil, but of course the power no longer is necessary. The Daleks can now store power. They'll soon have their own. They don't need Lesterson anymore.

Hence, Lesterson runs as fast as he can, goes to prison to tell the Doctor and Quinn what is going on because again, Lesterson at this point has almost lost his mind with horror knowing that he was involved in this. He is wide-eyed, he is terrified, and he knows that the Examiner thought that these creatures were evil from the beginning. So he's going to the Examiner to try to get someone to stop the Daleks.

And of course is a little little bit too late so when he's looking for the Doctor he realizes he's in prison, runs and meets up with Quinn and the Doctor in prison, telling them about the reproduction of the Daleks, which of course clues Quinn in that the Doctor’s correct about the Daleks as well. 

And shortly after the Doctor and Quinn end up escaping from the prison and are on the same boat, like we need to basically fix the Rebellion, deal with Daleks, try to save the Colony before everyone's killed… so they're all on the same page.

Meanwhile Janley and the Daleks have this nice little conversation. The Daleks explain to Janley that how they operate is through static electricity. Polly who comes in half-way through the scene tries to convince Janely that the Daleks are dangerous. There's a great back and forth when Janley is kind of explaining herself, right, where she says the Daleks are going to help the Rebellion, that's like why we need them whatever they are, even if they're evil, whatever, we need them because they they have the fire power they can help us.

And Polly is like okay, fine, after you've won do you think that the Daleks are just going to go back to being your servants? Like are you completely foolish in attempting to take over to maybe overthrow a regime that might have problems with it. We don't exactly know what the rebels are really against throughout this serial. But Polly kind of gives them the benefit of the doubt here, I think, and suggests like okay even if you have a Cause, the means that you are putting into place to to overcome this power structure… this isn't how Polly puts it… but basically what she's saying like you're using the Daleks to try to overthrow this this thing that you don't like but what are you going to do with the Daleks afterwards? Do you think that they're going to just obey you? 

Like, they are going to be a problem and Janely can't see it, like she's just, “we just need to take over.” Like the rebels need to win and if we… it doesn't matter the means that we used to achieve that victory do not matter. We're going to use the Daleks. We have them we're going to use them. L

Lesterson is brought before Bragen because obviously he went to try to free the Examiner. And Bragen basically gaslights him saying that he is losing it. That he he's been overworked. That he's he's being irrational. They're they're basically suggesting that he's crazy. That he has to be the hospital. That he has to be put away. They suggest that he doesn't remember certain things that he didn't actually do… it's like some masterful gaslighting particularly when Janley comes in as well. Toth of them are just really really pushing Lesterson to think that he's not and to justify their treatment of him of basically putting him under restraint. And no one's going to listen to him anymore.

So Lesterson is now very much in the “we need to melt down the Daleks and Destroy them” camp but no one is listening to him. He is now just the crazy nut who's ranting on the streets.

The guard who's been looking after Polly. I haven't mentioned him because he's not really important to the first bit of the story. But he does become more important going forward. His name is Valmar and the important thing about Valmar for you to remember is that he kind of has this thing for Janley. Like he he's he's soft and Janley as they say in the serial. And he's kinder than the other Rebels to Polly. He clearly has some issues with this whole kidnapping thing so he's very kind to Polly in the scenes that he has with her. Tells the other Rebels to leave her alone. Like it's not her fault that she's here and you know just just like being a good kidnapper.

Basically Polly tries to tell Valmar at this point that the Daleks are in fact evil, that they are capable of doing like really massive harm. And and it seems like Valmar is almost there. Like he is close to believing her, and Polly is just reiterating like “you're underestimating these Daleks and what they could do.”

The other other Rebel who is with them doesn't in any way shape or form believe this and ultimately Polly makes the mistake of suggesting that Janley is very very much just going to betray the rebels when it suits her. And of course because Valmar really likes Janely, he at this point like shuts down. Like he was on Polly’s side but then he shuts down, which is unfortunate.

Into this complete mess–Daleks reproducing getting ready for their attack, the rebels getting ready to take over, Bragen has essentially put martial law into place and has all his gestapo gear on and all his soldiers lined up— who arrives but the governor, who has been out on, you know, a journey around the colony.

So he he shows up and the guards do not recognize him. They don't bow down to him they they don't see him as their leader. It's very clear that they see themselves as Bragen's men.

So they take him before Bragen, and Bragen is very clearly not offering him to respect. And Hensil is trying to regain control, but it becomes very clear very quickly that Bragen has no intention of allowing Hensel to continue as governor. He does suggest a compromise in which he can keep the title of Governor but Bragen would actually be in charge. 

And Hensel's just like, “what the freak, I was just like on a tour out of town and I come back in like the whole freaking colony’s like in disarray, and and you're in charge, and what do you think, what is going on?!  Like what freaking…where is this even coming from?”

From hensel's position, like, he just he does not understand what's happening and it's unfortunate he hasn't been watching this serial or he would have played this a little bit differently.  But he obviously absolutely refuses any of Bragen's offers, and of course Bragen ends up killing Hensel with a Dalek gun.

And there's this wonderful little scene where the Dalek turns, because of course there's a Dalek in the room, turns to Bragen and asks “Why do human beings kill human beings?” and Bragen just dismisses him, like “get back to work” and the Dalek very grudgingly is like “yes, master, I obey.”

And Bragen reveals his complete true colors, like yes so “from now on I'll have complete obedience from everyone!” So Bragon is clearly in it for the power trip and that's about it.

And Hensel's now dead so he is now governor in name as well as in actual power.

So at this point finally Valmar and Janley abandoned Polly. They're going off with the Daleks. It's time for the rebels to take the city.

Polly ends up meeting with the Doctor and Quinn, and, you know, there's a bit of a little fight in Lesterson’s lab here which ends in one of the rebels getting knocked out. The team quickly runs as fast as they can to get away from the Daleks, who at this point are getting ready to attack.

 The Daleks are going to wait until the humans start to fight among themselves so they're waiting for the Rebellion to break out properly and then they intend to just exterminate all the humans. And we end with all these Daleks just screaming “Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!” 

As we would expect, Quinn, the Doctor, and Polly end up discovering Hensel's body, and Quinn is very upset about this. Now we don't see too much of Hensil in this episode, but what we do see of him…like we like him. He seems.. even though he's wrong about the Daleks and maybe trusts the wrong people.. he does seem like a reasonable man. And Quinn's response to him sort of cements that that he, according to Quinn. like ruled based on his personality. That the people liked him. They liked Hensil, and they would follow him.

 And Quinn at least believes that he could have quelled the Rebellion just with him being in charge. Like if he'd ask the people to stop fighting they would have done so because he was well-liked. And he's not so sure, Quinn, that he has that same standing. Even as the Doctor is trying to assure him that he can do just as good a job putting the colony back together.

Bragen, of course, comes in. He's he is flanked by all his gestapo guards and he explains that Hensel was killed because he wanted to destroy the Daleks. And he says that one of the Daleks killed him. That is not true of course Bragen killed him. And he [Bragen] officially declares martial law. 

The Doctor tries one last time to warn Bragen that he can't control the Daleks, but Bragen thinks he can and yeah yeah that doesn't seem to be the case because the Daleks have finally decided we're we're done playing nice we're done being your servants it's time for us to do what we always do. We're going to be conquering and destroying and we are ready to kill all the human beings.

This takes us into the very final episode which is basically a massive fight/shootout. The Daleks are taking aim. It becomes clear very quickly that they do not care who they kill. They're going to kill the rebels and the guards alike. Our team is making their way through and in the midst of all of this insanity just trying to survive. 

Janely and Bragen think that they have won the day. They're celebrating. They think the Rebellion has won. But then Bragen, of course, explains to Janely what we probably should have expected by now: that he has no intention of allowing the rebels to live. That he is going to kill them. He was in charge of the Rebellion. He was their leader, but he now he's going to turn the Daleks on them and he intends to kill every member of the Rebellion to cement his authority as the leader because otherwise the Rebellion would just be a fuss and he could be taken out.

Janley clearly is uncomfortable about this but doesn't disobey. She seems to agree that this is what is necessary. 

And Valmar, who if you remember is the kinder Rebel that was kind to Vicky [Polly] and is soft for Janley, overhears this conversation. And he runs back meets up with Ben who he was keeping prisoner. We end up meeting the Doctor and Polly and Quinn at this point and Valmar explains what Janley and Bragen intend to do and he Valmar is done. He's like they're going to betray us and Bragen is worse than than anything we were rebelling against.

The Doctor through all this is kind of running around trying to figure something out. We're not entirely sure what he's up to though. So he's kind of moving through the kefuffle and trying to find a way to presumably save everyone, but it's literally like this last episode is genuinely like the end of an action film. There is just everywhere like there there's just bad things happening. 

The Daleks are out and about. The the soldiers, like our gestapo soldiers who belong to Bragen so like the city police people, are fighting against the rebels who are all like dressed in white and the Daleks are just slaughtering everybody indiscriminately.

Janley and Valmar meet up, and Valmar doesn't trust Janley, but Janely tries to explain that she was lying; she doesn't intend to betray the Rebellion, which makes sense. Like she seemed to genuinely believe in the cause of the Rebellion, which is never really explained to us and does not matter, but she believed in it.  She's not cool with what Bragen is doing, so she tries to take the Daleks that are still posing as friends of the Rebellion to go and kill off the guards and to save all of the rebels because she hasn't been to the real fight and doesn't realize that the Daleks have basically just turned against everyone at this point.

 Unfortunately she realizes this pretty soon because, well, when Janley turns the Daleks loose they start to fight and kill all of the humans regardless of whether they're Rebels or not.

 The Doctor, Ben, and Polly are trying desperately to find a way out of this. They run into Lesterson who has basically gone to the next stage of his evolution as a character. At this point he believes that the Daleks are unstoppable and they are the next stage of evolution. And the human should just accept that their time has ended and now it is time for the Daleks. They're the new species. They're taking over. Man has had his day Man is finished.

 And he is just completely accepted this as a scientist. We're going to talk about Lesterson, but he has such a journey from this single-minded devotion to science to the realization of the cost of his scientific endeavor to trying to prevent the catastrophe that he in some ways directly caused to recognizing that he can't do anything and now he's just full on bigger picture humans “we're just we're just a small part of the big universe and and they're Superior they're going to win; I can't stop it so that's just how things are going to be.” And it's it's just great seeing this this is one of my favorite characters like ever he is fascinating. 

Valmar and Janley are trying to escape they run into Quinn who saves Valmar, but Janley, who tries to go out with some heroism, ends up getting shot and killed by a Dalek. This breaks Valmar who had a thing for Janley. He is crying over her body, and Quinn has to pull him away from her. And Valmar is suggesting that she isn't as bad as you think. Like she… because obviously in the end Janley at least believed in the cause she was trying to do what was right and he's trying to set that record straight but you know they need to get the freak out of there!

 And the Doctor and Quinn basically manage to save Valmar from facing the same fate as Janely

 At this point, even Bragen is starting to realize that he may have made a mistake because none of his guards are reporting. 

And we have the shot—one of the most haunting scenes in classic Doctor Who— we’re just panning across all of the bodies that the Daleks have killed. Like the Daleks are just sort of moving through this graveyard of bodies and even in the Reconstruction just seeing the still images of all these people dead on the floor including Janley, who we have this connection to, like she's a complicated character but you do care about her, and even like just seeing her body broken on the ground and all these other bodies broken on the ground, and it doesn't matter what uniform they were wearing…some of them are civilians, some of them look like they weren't on either side they just got caught in the crossfire…

And it's it's haunting to see the devastation that this Dalek has wrought. It's it's similar in New Who we have a similar scene when the Dalek destroys the waterpipes and we see the various people that it electrocutes in New Who in the first Dalek episode.  But this one is even more horrific I think.

Because it… the episode takes its time with this long pan and that's usually something we don't see in Doctor Who.

 Quinn at this point does meet up with Bragen and demands that Bragen send his guards to fight the Daleks even though his guards stand no chance. So basically we just need something to keep the Daleks busy as we try to find a way to stop them. The Doctor has a plan at this point that he hasn't really revealed but he has a plan. And he has asked that Bragen just keeps the Daleks busy with his guards. And Bragen initially does not want to sacrifice his guards. 

Now knowing him this is probably more a, well this would completely put him out of power. What gives him power is, you know, his men that are loyal to him. But regardless it's a nice thing for him to not want people to die. Even he understands though that if he doesn't do this the entire Colony will be destroyed. Like the Daleks are now completely out of control. So he does send his guards to fight the Daleks.

The Doctor is at the capsule he's playing around with a lot of cables, and what he essentially does which ultimately manages to defeat the Daleks is he overloads the power supply. He gives them too much power, and this is going to essentially like destroy them, like they just kind of explode from the inside.

 Before that happens or before what the Doctor does can take effect, the Daleks have a last encounter with Lesterson.

Lesterson tells the Daleks he wants to help them and then imitates a Dalek saying “I am your servant.” The Dalek tells Lesterson that “we don't need humans anymore.” Lesterson pleads with the Dalek saying like I gave you life. I gave you life. And the Dalek responds, “yes you gave us life” and then immediately kills him.

Lesterson's Final Act is basically to distract the Daleks long enough for the Doctor to blow them all up through the power overload. And he goes out in the story in some ways full circle pretending to be a servant and trying to be subservient to the Daleks just as the Daleks tried to be subservient to him. There's a complete role reversal. He gave the Dalek's life;they take his life away from him.

In the aftermath of the Dalek destruction, Quinn and Bragen don't know what's going on but Quinn quickly overcomes Bragen, and he's now going to be in charge of the colony. Quinn alongside Valmar are going to try to rebuild in the rubble.

They make a point to note that the Doctor caused a lot of property damage in doing what he did to destroy the Daleks. And the Doctor takes that as his queue to leave. He, Ben, and Polly head back to the Tardis. And there is some joking about whether or not the Doctor actually had a plan at all or if he just sort of didn't really know what he was doing and it just sort of all worked out.

And they disappear. On their way into the Tardis, they pass a Dalek that is frozen and seemingly dead but shortly after the Tardis disappears, The Dalek raises its eye stock suggesting that maybe the threat for Vulcan is not yet over and perhaps our team Tardis did not in fact win the day and all these people are going to die.

 It's actually a really bleak ending when you examine it too closely. Yeah not not a pure victory in this case for the Doctor and companions. 

Okay let's talk.

“The Power of the Daleks” had to be a fantastic serial. If you're thinking about when this came out, what was going on, the fact that we were changing our lead actor, we had a new person playing the Doctor… if this serial didn't work the show may not have continued. So it had to be great. But it's a little impressive how great it is, because this was just really really good guys!

 And part of what I love about this serial is this is one of those stories that only Classic Who could do. You actually need those six episodes to really get across this complicated story, to allow for the build-up of the tension, to create all these interesting side characters, to showcase the complications of the system on Vulcan and all the different sides to this conflict. You could actually imagine this one being longer. I would love a little breakout series about Vulcan and the people who live there and actually getting a lot of the behind-the-scenes of what we see in this serial. 

But the thing is, we don't really need that, and I want to kind of talk about why.

 In some ways, this is not a extremely well-built up world. Like we don't see very much of the colony itself. We see the exterior Vulcan, and we see rooms inside. We don't know what the rebels are rebelling against, we don't know the political situation on Vulcan, we aren't too sure like what the civilian area even looks like…. Is this a nice colony? Is it not? We have hints that this is a mining Colony, but we don't know too much about what the Colony does, and it's relationship to Earth.

But I think that that's all to the serial’s advantage because all of that doesn't work [matter]. We still build a really full world through the exclusion of a lot of this information because in a real way it doesn't matter. 

It doesn't matter what Hensel's policies are and how he treats his citizens. It doesn't matter what the colony is trying to do or what it or how well it does in relation to Earth. It doesn't matter what the rebels cause is and whether or not that cause is worthy. What the serial wants to focus on is not the specifics of this little situation that we are examining here but rather bigger questions about power and control and the way in which humans can use each other and use progress in order to get what they want. 

So what I really love about the serial that I was mentioning in the recap is how it creates tension through that dramatic irony. Our awareness that the Daleks are dangerous but the characters refusal to see that or to acknowledge that. And I love also all the moving pieces in terms of how different characters are trying to use each other in order to get what they want. 

So all these different people have very different goals in the story.

Hensel wants to be Governor. he clearly likes being governor and he wants to be liked by the people. He's probably the least developed character, but we get a sense that he cares about his duty. He's very upset that that the Earth Examiner is here because it threatens his ability to kind of pull things back together, but his goal seems to be ultimately to do his job and do it well. And he is being completely destabilized by the goals of other characters. 

So Quinn is our upright hero for the story. He is the one who is trying to get to the bottom of things with what's going on with the Rebellion, who ultimately of course ends up becoming our new governor. His motive seemed the most pure of the group, that he genuinely wants the Colony to run well. And he doesn't sympathize necessarily with the rebels’ cause.

 Then we have of course our Bragen who just wants power. He just wants to be in charge. He's very similar to the Second Elder from “The Sensorites.” The Second Elder was on my list of some of the best villains of the first Doctor era. Even though he, you know, is unnamed and all that stuff I think he's genuinely a good villain. And Bragen reminds me a lot of him. The setup is very similar. The Second Elder was kind of like third in command and was using the, I'm sorry, he was initially the City Planner or like the City Administrator and he becomes the Second Elder, so like third in command. And again very similar thing where he pushes the Second Elder out to take that role in the same way that Bragen pushes Quinn out and frames Quinn for the things that he is in fact doing. 

But I think that he's even more advanced than say the City Administrator who becomes the Second Elder from “The Sensorites” because Bragen also is in charge of the Rebellion. So he basically stoked the rebellion in order to cause unrest so that he can position himself to become the governor of the colony. He's very determined to take that leadership role. The obvious Nazi imagery around him and his guards suggest, you know, that fascist dictator history. A lot of leaders come to power this way. They're in charge of the the military or they're in charge of something like that and then they kind of rise to power from there so we're seeing that with him and his journey in in this story and I love the fact that he is very willing to… he doesn't care about the Rebellion or the people that he's using to get where he needs to get once he's used them he's willing to kill them all off to keep his power to cement it.

 You have people like Janley who genuinely believes in the Rebellion cause but is willing to basically do anything to further that cause. So I think it's interesting that we never hear what the rebels grievances are or why it is that they're rebelling because within the context of the story that doesn't really matter. Likewise we don't really know what the governor's policies are or what the Rebellion wants because that’s not what the story’s about. 

It's not Star Wars where we can see like what the Empire is doing and why it is the people would form a rebellion. The important thing is not what these people are fighting for but the lengths they're willing to go to get what they want. So this is a do the means justify the end situation.

Bragen is willing to betray everyone to get to that power. He's willing to use any means at his disposal to get to that power but so too to a degree is Janely. Even though she does believe in her cause and does care about something beyond just power, like she she seems to have a cause that might be worthy of fighting for, we don't know, but in any case she believes in it. She cares about the rebels, but she too is willing to use the Daleks, to use a weapon that she can't control and she doesn't fully understand, to get what she wants and is not thinking about the long-term consequences.

Enter into this we have Lesterson who just wants knowledge for knowledge’s sake. 

And again his goals, his desire to to continue to learn and to grow.. he he's pretty smart and how he goes about trying to justify those things because I do think that he just ultimately wants to know and to understand but in order to get his funding …to get the the government to agree with what he's doing …he has to give practical usage.

But ultimately we see him radically change over the course of the episode from somebody who thinks that knowledge is all that matters to recognizing the cost that that knowledge can bring if he's not paying attention to the larger picture and ultimately to someone who is swept away by that horror and in the end become self-sacrificial in order to try to atone for his past mistakes. He again feels to me very much like a version of Victor Frankenstein. Albeit, perhaps a more self-aware version of Victor Frankenstein. Someone who actually does to a degree understand that this is his fault and tries to atone for it and and of course can't…

Because I think it's really interesting to… say with Lesterson. Okay, he's so horrified by his assistant’s death but as he's going through his experiments he never goes to check on this assistant, he never goes to make sure that he's doing all right in the hospital where he believes he is, he completely forgets about him for days on end…so there's a lot of indication that, okay, ultimately Lesterson recognizes the Daleks for what they are but how he operates in some ways is no better than all the other characters in that he he just wants what he wants he just wants to learn and he's not thinking about other people and the cost of ….because even if if Resno hadn't died, he was injured and it doesn't seem to register with him that that is a problem at that point in the serial. 

So I think it's really interesting seeing him and his evolution as a character over the course of this time. And again very similar to Frankenstein, in that he, like Victor for that matterm does have this little breakdown and tries to confront his “Creature” only to discover that the Creature has its own story and it's own agenda because of course we also have the Daleks in the story.

 And they play all of these humans ultimately against each other and then of course they just take over. And they get everything they want over the course of the episode, and, depending on how you read the end, they may still end up winning the day on Vulcan.

But what I do really like about the serial is that most serials, especially in the first Doctor era, the Daleks and their evil are pitted against the goodness of humanity or the goodness of another race. So in the original Dalek’s serial, you have the Thal and they are the good guys they embody the best of human characteristics even though they're not human. In “The Dalek Invasion of Earth,” there are like good and bad human characters, but we're rooting for the humans to rid themselves of these evil Dalek overlords.

And then as we're kind of moving forward as we get into “The Dalek Master Plan.” And we get into this serial, I think those lines become a lot more blurry because obviously in “The Dalek’s Masterplan” you have a Mavic Chen and these Outer Colonies who the Daleks are using to get what they want, but these humans and these other aliens are willing to ally with the with the Daleks for the power it gives them. To get what they want but these humans and these other aliens are willing to Ally with the with the Daleks for the power it gives them as well and even though we're ultimately rooting against the Daleks entirely, and we think that Mavic Chen is just kind of a bad human, like he is our only representation of humanity really in that serial, so that that leads you to think…[Note: There are some very good humans in Dalek’s Masterplan–Sara Kingdom and Brett come to mind. Should have expanded here:-)]

And I think that this serial goes a step further because some of the most horrific things that are done in the serial are not done by the Daleks but by the humans. When Bragen kills Hensel like “why do humans kill humans?” I think basically this is the first Dalek serial that really really pushes the idea that humans can do things just as horrific as the Daleks and in the right scenario there really is no difference between what humans do to each other and what the Daleks do to them.

It's it's like the best of zombie movies where the zombies are the threat but what ends up destroying everyone are the other human characters. “The Dalek’s Master Plan” suggests that some particularly heinous humans like Mavic Chen can become like Daleks.

But I think that this serial, “The Power of the Daleks” suggests that all humans have the potential to become like Daleks.

So this is the first Dalek serial that had really no involvement from Terry Nation who created the Daleks and who was the writer or one of the writers on all previous Dalek serials. This contribution was from David Whitaker as is the other Dalek episode in this season of the show. And both are doing some very different things with the Daleks that I think are just notable. Now Terry Nation is going to come back; he does episodes going forward on and off so we will talk about him and his contributions as as we kind of get further into his work, but we do have for the first time someone else taking on the Daleks and I think it's interesting what Whitaker does with the Daleks.

I did note, Daleks are I would say much creepier in this episode than they usually are. They are.. we have a lot of fear directed at the Daleks. They're not in the open through most of this episode. They're treated like a monster rather than our usual military villain. So if you're thinking about previous Dalek episodes, with the exception of the first Dalek episode the Daleks already have power. They already have a lot of control, and they don't have to be in the shadows. They might be using people to get what they want but, in “The Invasion of Earth,” for instance the Dalek's already have complete control of Earth. We are trying to get back Earth from the Daleks and they're just kind of at the top doing what they want to do using their human slaves. In “The Chase,” the Daleks have time travel, and they're chasing after the Doctor to get him out of the way. They already have power. They're already known as this very..this very dangerous entity. Same thing for “The Dalek Master Plan.” Everyone knows that the Daleks are really really dangerous. There is a way in that serial where the Daleks have been away for a while and they're coming back, but the legend of the Daleks is well known to the people on Earth. Everyone remembers invasion of Earth, though it happened a long long time ago for the people on Earth, so there is this sense that the Daleks are this Mythic force that we're already scared of 

But in this serial, we take a step back, and we're with a group of people who have never met the Daleks, don't know anything about the Daleks, and are discovering these monsters for the first time. So how the serial uses them… we're with the people on Vulcan, and we kind of step-by-step are being led towards the inevitable conclusion of the Daleks massacring everybody.

And again the dramatic irony is great because we already know the Daleks are dangerous but it's really fascinating seeing all these characters assume that the Daleks are something that they're not and the Daleks playing with that and masquerading as something useful and something that that can be beneficial to the Colony. They can offer their services, and what I like about what Whittaker is doing here… something we're going to see in his other Dalek serial as well in the season… is if the Daleks are meant to represent fascism and originally their inspiration was from the Nazis and if they're meant to represent, you know, that extreme hatred of the other and the desire to to make everyone like us and that fear of the outsider that fear of anything foreign to our experience and all of that jazz, right…. If that's what the Daleks are then this approach to me feels much more “realistic” from a symbolic perspective because these characters are kind of lulled by the Daleks.

Bragen is okay with using the Daleks because he has goals and he wants this power and he in some ways you could say sees the Daleks for what they are but also it doesn't matter to him because he just he wants control.

But someone like Janley or Lesterson… they fail to see the danger of the Daleks. They fail to see the danger of using these things as a means to an end, right? Hensel, even Quinn fails to see that danger and I think that's just a very realistic depiction of how something like fascism gets going in a society. 

Because you can understand from the rebel perspective, for instance, if they're fighting against this superior force with Hensel and his and Bragen and his soldiers… from their perspective how can they overcome this? Well, here they're handed a weapon. They're handed something, oh, well, we could go down this road. What if we did this, and, you know, we might have to deal with the Daleks, these monsters that we’re making later on… but we can get what we want. We can use them to get what we want.

 And and how many times in history do humans do that, right? Where we we use something that we know to be dangerous... that we know we might not be able to control… because it will get you to the ends that you desire and you don't think about well afterwards now you have these Daleks and they have all this power and all this control over you and you can't do anything about them.

So there there is this like brilliance and genius to the serial and how they present the Daleks. Because I do think you understand why these characters would embrace the Daleks and would see them as a means to an end. Something similar is done in that Matt Smith episode that deliberately calls back to this episode with Winston Churchill and Company where they see the Daleks as a means of defeating Germany and defeating Nazi Germany during World War II. And so when the Doctor is warning them this is dangerous, you don't understand these creatures will destroy you, to a degree they're lulled by the promise of defeating this this other enemy that's very in front of them and they need to get rid of… you know, they need to defeat Hitler. And here's a means to do it.

 So the Doctor’s warning falls on deaf ears, at least initially.

 And I think that there's something very similar happening here. 

All of these characters are told that the Daleks ultimately will destroy them. And none of them want to hear that. None of them want to listen and and by the time they really understand what they've done… it's it's too late.

Again this brings us back to Lesterson. He’s just such a fascinating character and his journey through through this… so the original Victor Frankenstein is read a lot of different ways if we go back to Mary Shelley. A lot of people read him as someone who is terrified of death. He loses his mother when he's quite young, and there's like this quest to overcome death in some ways. Other people just see him as this genius who wants to to do like these really really elaborate things for his own vanity… and other like a myriad of interpretations that are put on Victor and his motivations. 

What I think is interesting about the original Victor Frankenstein is to a degree I don't think he knows what is pushing him to create this Creature and that is what's kind of scary about him. Because he hasn't really thought that through. So of course in in Frankenstein, the original novel anyway not necessarily the Hollywood depictions, what Victor fails to do is he comes up with this great idea, he creates this this life, but he doesn't think about nurturing or caring for that life after it is birthed. He abandons it. He refuses to be a parent. He neglects the responsibility that is given to him by birthing this life.

 And with Lesterson we see sort of a similar thing going on here in that he is trying to revitalize the Daleks, but unlike Victor, I would argue he actually tries to be the quote unquote parent. At least initially.

 You know, he tries to take away their power remind them that they're working for a particular end, that they serve him, that he is in control, but again like Victor, this is taking on the position of almost a God-like figure.

Lesterson initially operates under this delusion that he is smarter than the Daleks because he gave them life. He is ultimately above them in some way and therefore of course he can control them, of course he can pull them back, of course he can use them. He doesn't see them as people, as as creatures that can think and grow and process information for themselves… that have wants of their own.

And the Daleks… they they completely feed into this, right? So the original Monster just kind of wants to be loved, is abandoned, and then kind of hates Victor Frankenstein for that in the original Frankenstein. But in this story, the Daleks, they don't care what Lesterson thinks about them. They are completely indifferent to him. What they do care about is getting what they need from Lesterson. So they feel no gratitude towards the fact that he has reanimated them, given them their lives back, all they care about is how they can use him, and Lesterson fails to see that they have minds of their own that they're more than just computers and that they are ultimately using him for their own ends.

Like he can't even conceive of that and by the time he does realize this it's too late, and we could see a similar idea here, right, if we're going to again take this into a symbolic arena.

Someone who is creating crafting say a political candidate or a political philosophy with the intent of of creating something new and interesting and different, and they don't really realize that that can take on a life of its own. And that it can grow and change and morph into something that they don't really want it to be.

 So, I I just think that the serial takes all of these ideas that are in the background of of all the Dalek episodes and are certainly very heavily emphasized in the original Daleks and in in the episodes we see in the first Doctor era…. this connection between the Daleks and Nazis and between the Daleks and fascism more generally…. and it takes these ideas and it makes them more personal in a strange way because now we're suddenly in the midst of understanding how it is that a society could Embrace these types of ideas. And at least this serial seems to suggest it's because we see it as a means to an end and we're not considering the fact that those means might become outside of our control and might cost us more than we intend.

And I just think that's really brilliant on Whittaker’s part in putting the serial together. It's a very different way of thinking about the Daleks because the problems that we see in this serial are almost uniformly caused by the human characters and the Daleks are just that natural disaster that they unleash, right? Like obviously the Daleks are really smart; they are playing all the human characters; they're trying to get what they want… but the Daleks could be like a virus in this episode. The fact that they're Daleks is not the most important bit it's the fact that these humans are trying to use them for a certain end. 

We see in this serial something that we saw in the previous serial with “The Tenth Planet.” So in “The Tenth Planet,” the Cybermen suggest that humans don't really care about the lives of most other humans and points out that there are people dying all over the world and no one seems to care about that. And in this episode we have a similar moment with the Daleks turning to Bragen and asking why humans kill other humans.

This is a really interesting theming that's actually going to hold together a lot of this early era for the Second Doctor and I would kind of the entirety of the Second Doctors run to a degree has this theme going in the background because this is…

We're in now what's known as “The Monster Era” of Doctor Who. We're going to have monsters almost every week… not next time, next time we get a really fun historical… but typically we're doing lots and lots of different monsters. And what makes monsters interesting are not necessarily the monsters themselves but what they reveal about the human characters that interact with them. What the monsters actually mean ….what kind …what our fears tell us about ourselves. And I think that that's something that this era of the show is just really interested in examining. 

We're over here trying to say, oh the Cybermen are villains because they can't seem to see that humans have value, that every individual human life has a value… but do we actually think that? If we did would we live our lives differently? There are human suffering all over the world and we're not doing anything. 

And I think the serial is offering a very similar thing with the Daleks, right? With. okay we think the Daleks are these monstrous horrible things, but yet it is Bragen who kills Hensel, not the Daleks, and he's willing to do that to get what he wants. So what does that tell us about ourselves and about humans as a whole?

So all around “Power of the Daleks” is just a powerhouse of an opener for the Second Doctor. I think that the story itself is really intriguing, very well done. It is one of those serials that only Classic Who could do. It needed all that space to build this complicated web of characters, to play with our expectations and build this tension step by step. I really really love when we have a Serial like that where I couldn't see New Who doing it in quite the same way. And it's a good introduction to our Second Doctor, giving him a meaty problem to start off his run 

If you have not seen this one, I really would recommend it. Even as an animation, it it holds up. It's a quick one to watch, and it's a really good story with some very very memorable characters. Patrick Troughton is fantastic as the Doctor throughout, and you do fall in love with him over the course of this serial. He just really very quickly owns this character. You very much believe that he's the Doctor, and this first transition from William Hartnell to Patrick Troughton is really carried out quite well.

I think that the show knew it had to to do this well; it knew it couldn't fumble this one, and it really really works.

 So I'll close my thoughts out on “The Power of the Daleks” for now. We may return to this one when we talk about David Whitaker's other Dalek episode this season which comes a little later and obviously it's just it's a it's a great episode to review. I could see myself doing a whole little thing on Lesterson and Frankenstein-inspired characters in Classic Who….so, you know, we might reopen this this can of worms at some point, but for now we'll close off my thoughts. 

Next time, we are going to be looking at “The Highlanders,” which is the introduction to Jamie, even though Jamie doesn't really play a very big role in this one. He's kind of just a side character, but Jamie's coming, and I love Jamie so much!!!! And it's also our last pure historical without any sci-fi elements other than the cast until the Fifth Doctor…and the Fifth Doctor historical is the only other one in Classic Who, so this is in essence our last pure historical of Classic Who. Which, you know, is a bit sad. I wouldn't say it's the best of the pure historicals, but it is a fun little episode, and it is investigating a period of history that I at least didn't know all that much about as an American. So always fun to learn new things! I very much look forward to talking about that next time. Y'all should go watch “Power for the Daleks,” if you haven't done so already and while “The Highlanders” is entirely missing it is kind of fun to listen to you on audio and there are some decent reconstructions out there so you're welcome to check that out!

Thank you all so very much for listening. This has been Through the Vortex, a companion to Doctor Who.