Power of the Daleks
Reconstruction by Richard Develyn, Michael Palmer and Robert Franks
There is probably no greater tragedy in the junking of Doctor Who than the loss of Power of the Daleks. As the first story to feature Patrick Troughton in the title role, it was important for the story to be successful if Doctor Who was going to continue. Unlike The Tenth Planet, this is a story that is worth watching for both historical reasons as well as its own story.
I enjoyed this reconstruction a great deal -- most of the pictures were quite clean, and the audio was superb. The version I saw had full screen pictures; yet unlike the Fury From The Deep reconstruction, the pictures were almost all clear; only occasionally were there blurry or pixelated faces. I never had a problem following the story.
There are also numerous surving clips in this reconstruction, all of which have been expertly inserted into the story. With so much from these eras lost, every second that exists is all the more precious, especially from this story. Included are many scenes of the freshly renewed Doctor, shots of an army of Daleks (some, of course, made of cardboard), and a number of other short clips. Watching these as part of a reconstruction instead of seeing them as individual clips gives them greater context and make them easier to appreciate.
It is rather amazing to watch how influencial it was on later regneration stories; the initial confusion and humor that is always part of a regeneration began here. Despite Hartnell being the original Doctor, it is Patrick Troughton who served as the most definitive one, the one which almost every actor who followed him points back to more than any other.
The basic premise works fairly well -- we know that the Daleks will eventually become trouble, so when they claim to be "your servant" it is quite effective and disturbing. The story drags a little in the second half -- the vacations of Michael Craze and Anneke Wills are rather obvious, and leads to a bit of padding. However, all of the acting -- from the regulars and Lesterson, the scientist experimenting on the Daleks.
The Daleks are a natural to make it clear to the audience that they were still watching the same series that William Hartnell started in. One of the joys of this story is how relatively small in scope the story really is; as opposed to all of the other Dalek stories where you have the full threat of the Dalek Empire pointed at you. While the end of the story had an army of Daleks, the threat presented by even one or two Daleks makes the cacophony of Dalek voices later in the story more impressive. (Even if you can tell -- by camera effects and cardboard cutouts -- that there aren't really that many Daleks.) It is unfortunate that future writers felt that the best way to make the Daleks a threat was to have a huge army of them, and one of the reasons why Power of the Daleks is one of their best -- and most unique -- outings.
This is truly magical stuff. Recommended.
Obviously, since I wrote this review several years ago the era of fan-made telesnap reconstructions has really effictively ended, and it looks like this material is finding more and more official uses, with audio CDs and DVD releases like the Lost in Time collection.