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| The newly regenerated Doctor vows to stop the Daleks. |
As the first Troughton serial, and as a very fine story in its own right, it can't help but be disappointing that The Power of the Daleks is among Doctor Who's missing stories. Still, if there absolutely must be a certain number of missing stories, then there are some positives to this being one of them.
The main factor in this story's success is the well-paced and well-structured script. The effectiveness of the writing is not particularly blunted by its missing status, and it remains enthralling in all available forms: as a still reconstruction, as a narrated audio, or - more recently - as a (somewhat limited) animation.
When I initially wrote this review, the BBC were only tentatively creating animated versions of stories with small numbers of missing episodes. I have reviewed a few of these, most recently William Hartnell's final story, and have found that while the animations are for the most part severely limited by low budgets, they nevertheless bring missing stories to life more thoroughly than even the best still reconstructions can manage.
In 2016, BBC Worldwide finally took the plunge and commissioned a full animation of all six episodes. The result is highly enjoyable, and - as was true of past animations - does a far better job of bringing the story to life than still reconstructions or audio releases have done. Still, it must be acknowledged that it's not as good as it could be. Some movements are blocky, and some bits appear to be animated with a priority to filling the seconds cheaply rather than convincingly or dramatically.
A special edition was released sometime after I originally wrote this. As much as I generally dislike double-dipping, I can't fault the decision to give it a touch-up. The Special Edition is more visually dynamic, with better shot selection and less artifical-looking movements. Also, the re-release fixes a few bizarre moments in which it looked as if the animators just didn't know how to fill moments. For example, both the Doctor's examination of Bragen and the action scene in Episode Six play far better than in the initial version.
I should stress that even in its current form, the animation does a fine job of making this story not only accessible, but enjoyable, to a far wider audience than would ever consume a still reconstruction or narrated audio. Regardless of improvements made in the upcoming edition, the animation team deserve nothing but praise for their efforts - nor should it be forgotten that without the genuine success of this release, the now ongoing process of animating missing stories would never have gathered steam in the first place.
THE RECONSTRUCTION AND THE AUDIO
Though the animated release to an extent renders previous reconstructions moot, I will briefly mention the Loose Cannon reconstruction and the narrated audio. The Loose Cannon recon of was one of their early efforts, which means that it's fairly basic: telesnaps, existing footage (whose placement is in some cases guessed... and, in at least one brief instance, appears to have been guessed wrong), and explanatory text scrolls in which grammar was clearly not a priority. Still, this is an "audio-friendly" story, so the lack of visual flourishes do not particularly harm it. More of a problem is that the early reconstruction has an audio track that is best described as "stop-and-start."
The official BBC audio is cleaner, as well as being uninterrupted. Narration by Anneke Wills is well-scripted and well read, and the six episodes pass briskly in thsi form.
Still, the animated version will supplant the previous releases for me. In the end, I simply prefer watching a television story over listening to one.
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