Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks (1966) (audio)
This article about the audio release of Doctor Who: Power of the Daleks was originally posted in September 2021.
Power of the Daleks. I really liked reading the novelisation back in the 90s. I was lukewarm on the cartoonified version from a few years back. I decided to try the audio-only version with Anneke Wills narrating.
I think it works better as an audio play than an animation. But it’s hard to get around the fact that Patrick Troughton’s performances usually can’t be captured well as either audio-only or crude animation.
One thing though that really stood out to me was how the story used the Daleks. After the Doctor’s speech about the misery that the Daleks bring and how only one Dalek is sufficient to wipe out the entire Vulcan colony, one realizes how well this story works at using the Daleks as they were originally intended, as an allegory for the Nazis.
Think of it this way. The colonists haven’t discovered a dead shuttle with three dormant Daleks in it. They’ve unearthed a dusty copy of Mein Kampf (or some other work of Nazi philosophy). In a colony that’s already teetering on the edge of chaos. A colony that seems ignorant of history and naive enough to fall under the Nazi influence.
All that being said, it’s not made exactly clear what the rebels are actually rebelling against. It must be baked into the formula of Doctor Who that if there’s a government, there must also be rebels.
Of course, the Vulcan colony government isn’t presented as being a democracy. It seems more like a European colonial model where a governor sent by Earth/Europe rules over the colony at their discretion. The chain of command seems to rest on whatever Earth or some group on Earth decides instead of from within Vulcan.
There’s no indication there was any native life on Vulcan before it became a human colony. So who are these workers? Slaves from Earth? Prisoners forced to toil in the mines? Indentured servants? They don’t appear to be citizens of anything (even assuming Earth is supposed to be a democracy). Did they come willingly? Why?
Anyway, on to the audio of The Highlanders, a story that my only exposure to is one reading of the novelisation back when I was a kid. I recall almost nothing about the story, so this should be fun.
