"The Power of the Daleks" Episode 4

Doctor Who
Airdate: November 26, 1966
Patrick Troughton, Michael Craze
Written by David Whitaker
Produced by Innes Lloyd
Directed by Christopher Barry

Lesterson is shocked at how quickly the Daleks are using up the materials he's provided them with, and begins to think that perhaps the Doctor was right, but Janley blackmails him into keeping quiet. Janley sedates Lesterson and gets Valmar to run power cables throughout the colony on the Daleks' behalf. The Doctor and Ben visit Bragen to try to get him to help find Polly, but he isn't helpful. While searching for her, the Doctor discovers the secret code the rebels use to schedule their meetings on the public notice board. Ben and the Doctor attend the meeting, where they observe Janley and Valmar re-arming a Dalek. The meeting reveals that the rebels captured Polly, and are being led by Bragen, but the Doctor and Ben are discovered and detained. Later, when Lesterson awakens, he creeps into the Dalek capsule to find a Dalek mass-production line in full operation...

Once again, this episode advances each of the main stories, but only by a small amount. It's clear that the Daleks are nearly ready to dispense with their deception, and every time they repeat their catchphrase "We are your servants," they sound more and more menacing. At the same time, Bragen has effective control of the colony in Governor Hensell's absence, and the rebels are nearly ready to launch their attack. In other words, there isn't a whole lot that happens in this particular episode.

It's all about slowly increasing the tension. And once again, we're confronted with the inherent limitations of listening to these lost stories on audio. On the one hand, not having to wait a week between episodes, as the original viewers did, means that we get a clear and uninterrupted arc, stretching from the end of Episode 1 to the climax of Episode 6. On the other hand, condensing the story like this inevitably makes it feel smaller. But most of all, we're robbed of whatever impact the visuals might have had. The end of this episode, for instance, is a fairly long scene with very little dialogue showing the Dalek mass-production line. Even with the narration (read by Anneke Wills, which is her only contribution to this episode), this scene almost certainly loses a lot of its impact. On the other hand, given what we know about this era of "Doctor Who", and its tendency to aim high and misfire badly, perhaps it's better that we can't see it.