The Long Game is set on another dreary space station (for budget reasons – they don’t even try to hide it) and the set design is really dull for the year 100,000. Davies is the man who brought back Who in 2005 and I’m very grateful for that.
DOCTOR WHO SEASON 1 EPISODE 2 SPACE STATION SERIES
The Long Game is the nadir of series 1, it’s lowest point by a mile. Every season of modern-who (excluding the most recent) has at least one sub-par episode. The thing that’s kept Doctor Who going (on and off) for over 50 years is its variety – but unfortunately that means we occasionally get a real stinker of an episode. Without The Power of The Daleks, there literally wouldn't be any Doctor Who today. It, therefore, seems fitting that the first on-screen occurrence of this genre-defining game-changer was in a story showcasing The Doctor's greatest - and most enduring - foes. Rather than a straight-forward actor substitution ( as we still witness in soap operas), the transition was dressed up in sci-fi terms and made a feature ( with it its own complications) of the story. The 3D animation of the daleks is gorgeous, although the 2D human characters are rather rigid in comparison.īut, ultimately, the most important aspect of the story - which has shaped the franchise ever since - was the introduction of the concept of regeneration ( described here as "renewal" and connected, somehow, to The TARDIS). With a runtime of almost two-and-a-half hours ( including all the credits), I'll confess I was slightly wary of sitting down for a 'basic' animation of that length, so I was surprised at how slickly the narrative unfolded. He won't take The Doctor's word, but as he follows this new Doctor's deeds throughout the story he is convinced.
While Polly willingly accepts that he is still The Doctor, Ben has to be won round. Having 'died' at the end of The Tenth Planet, The Doctor is still coming to terms with his 'new face' throughout this story. The Power of The Daleks is a solid dalek story, even back in 1966 emphasising that even a single dalek could wipe out an entire human colony.Īnd the Machiavellian pepper pots are far more interesting antagonists than the petty, feuding colonists, who all fall victim to their own hubris.
The Doctor, of course, knows the daleks are dangerous, but none of the colonists believe him, even before his phoney identity is rumbled. There is much political shenanigans and to-and-froing by the colonists, who don't realise until it's too late that the dalek's offer to build them a supercomputer is actually a cover for the construction of a dalek replication plant. However, the sneaky dalek has other ideas - even allowing itself to be disarmed to lull the stupid humans into believing it isn't a threat - and, anyway, the colony is rife with dissent, the rebel faction eyeing up the daleks as tools to overthrow Governor Hensell (Peter Bathurst). However, the chief scientist, Lesterson (Robert James) manages to revive one, with the aim of using these marvellous machines as 'slave labour' in the mines. The colonists have no idea what these silent, mechanical entities are. The TARDIS - bearing the freshly regenerated Second Doctor, Polly (Anneke Wills), and Ben (Michael Craze) - has materialised outside an Earth colony in the far future, on the planet Vulcan ( no, not Spock's one).Īn inspector summoned from Earth to examine the mining complex has been murdered, and The Doctor takes his place.Ī strange space capsule has been extricated from a mercury lake, and a trio of defunct daleks found inside. As I was born during the original transmission of The Power of The Daleks, I like to believe that this subconsciously explains my life-long admiration for both Patrick Troughton's Doctor and the daleks.Īll the mastertapes, copies, and negatives of the six live-action episodes of this tale, Patrick Troughton's first outing as The Doctor, were erased or junked in the '60s and '70s, and so the story had now been reskinned by overlaying the sound track with modern black-and-white animation.
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