The Power of the Daleks episode 4 discussion:
P: It’s interesting to see a story end with 3-4 minutes of now dialog from the humans. Seeing that ending really kind of threw me.
H: Apparently it was really effective. We only got a little bit of the sense of it, but from what I’ve read and heard it was supposed to be really really scary and stunning.
A: It was creepy.
P: It sort of reminded me of the ending of 2001.
R: Huh?
P: There was no dialog whatsoever.
H: That is true. That is similar yes.
R: Well in that case it reminds me of an Ingmar Bergman film. Or the ending of Akira. It’s not Daleks they are building – it’s a new Universe!
Sp: I’m still stuck on the static electricity thing.
K: Yeah, and they didn’t need the static in either The Chase or The Dalek Invasion Earth, either.
H: But in Dalek Invasion of Earth they had the dishes on their backs so they could travel. And this was written by David Whitaker who hasn’t been involved since The Dalek Invasion of Earth with Daleks anyway.
Sp: So continuity can just take a flying leap. Assume off camera the Dalek rubbed a balloon or something so it would work.
H: Conti-what-ity?
R: SCIENCE! I got the impression that when they left the lab the Daleks sucked in a bunch of energy and then used it up and then came back to the lab to gasp in another bunch of energy. Of course this does not explain how a growing number of Daleks can continue functioning just fine on a fixed amount of energy which was earlier shown not to be sufficient for just a few of them.
Sp: So Janley is definitely building up a good backlog of comeuppance. Our villain, ladies and gentlemen.
K: Her and the Daleks.
H: And Bragen.
R: A very disappointing selection of humanity there.
H: Just the type that the Daleks can manipulate easily, just like Lesterson and his greed / idealism. One of the things about this story that I love is just watching Lesterson’s decent from absolute cocksure as to what he was doing to just where we saw him this episode, realizing the full horror of what’s going on and realizing that he hasn’t been in control from the beginning.
M: I think the only thing that they added in this episode was that the Daleks were reproducing. They could have combined episode 3 & 4 into one and had more time to play with the conflict. They’re just starting into act 2, and now they’ll have to rush it.
H: That’s kind of the extent of the way that 6-parters tend to go. Act two actually started last week. They way these tend to be structured is the first two episodes are setup, the next two are development and the last two are resolution. I think we’ll see payoff for the development of these last two episodes in the resolution, although I’ve also seen this story before.
K: I agree with M. The pacing seems to slow to me as well. And I did like the conveyor belt of Daleks.
Sp: I liked the belt too, but I’ve seen too many cartoons. I expected the Dalek halves to be filled with vegetables halfway down.
<Discussion of Warner Brother’s cartoons and the Goofy Gophers. Singing of “Power House” song.>
Sp: So, I was expecting that the moment the Doctor tweaked to the cell being sound controlled that he was going to whip out his recorder, play the right note, and escape.
M: See my previous point about slow pacing.
R: No, he wants to hang out and get some prison tats. “I would like a tat like that.”
M: The Doctor had to exposit once again about Bregan being in charge of things and him not being the real Inspector. It felt like they even repeated things that were already explained even in this episode.
Sp: Yes, this is for kids. And it’s a serial. And speaking as someone who didn’t see last week, it helped to have that kind of hint. That kind of looping structure kind of works.
H: Final thoughts?
Cz: I got nothing.
P: I got a few.
K: You always have a few.
P: One, where do they get the Daleks from? The biological ones.
Cz: Sex!
P: And two… that was distracting… and two…
M: Daleks have tentacles.
<laughter>
P: Okay. Two, I can believe that the power that he gave them allowed them to repair the ship argument which allows the ship itself to generate power and make the Dalek assembly line. But I still don’t see where a ship that has been dormant for hundreds of years could still have living Dalek creatures on it.
M: They are like rotifers. They can go dormant for a long time.
H: We have seen previously that the Dalek cases are life support systems.
P: Yes, but they were dormant.
M: It’s just what Daleks do.
R: THEY FREEZE DRY US FOR TRAVEL. IT IS WHY WE ARE SO GRUM-PY.
A: I liked it. I especially like the end part. It was part creepy and part Mutual of Omaha.
H: “And now my assistant will approach the Dalek. Uh oh! Now I’ll need a new assistant!”
Sp: Where the heck is Eye-Candy?
M: He was in the whole episode.
H: So, to explain, since you missed last week, she was lured into the Radio Room and kidnapped by the rebels.
K: We know where she was, but why wasn’t she in this episode?
H: Because Anneke (the actress) needed a week off.
Sp: Once again to M’s point, they could have cut out Daleks 9-11, and showed us Polly playing solitare in her cell or something.
H: But that would have required a film insert, and those are expensive.
A: It also does not reassure us that she’s just fine.
Sp: Pop-Eye’s really dense isn’t he? Oh, it’s a secret code… I can’t do crosswords!
M: He’s compact, not dense.
Sp: But I mean seriously, read all the capital letters? Gee.
M: Which is NOT an anagram, by the way.
K: Yeah, and anagram would have been hard.
Sp: It’s also got arrows and pictures of all the super secret club members.
P: But to that, for once, we’re not being spoon fed the plot here. So M should be happy.
Sp: Oh, I doubt that.
M: What? When did I ever say about being spoon fed plot?
P: But the plot is moving without repeating.
K: But we said earlier it repeated.
P: But not in that specific scene.
M: But it kind of did, given how many times they showed the message board. But that was perfectly fair – they set it up and then later the Doctor discovered it.
R: I was very amused, and some of this is probably the recon, by the cuts back and forth between the Dalek assembly line and Lesterson, with his fist in his mouth, and a look on his face that said “I screwed it up! I screwed it up!”
M: “I’ve killed us all.”
R: It was just a great look on his face.
Sp: Kudos to the recon team for the disappearing guard. <reference to a picture where a guard disappears from the picture after being dismissed in dialog.>
H: Hum, I wonder if that picture was a composite? I guess it was!
M: Which means that the guard can cast… what fifth level spells?
<nerd humor>
R: I did think the episode was a little bit slow, but it has some really good funny bits. To wit “HAVE YOU FINISHED YOUR LIQUID?”
Sp: Dalek butlers are pretty darn creepy, actually.
H: Exactly!
R: The Dalek obviously didn’t understand the purpose of the glass of water, and it managed to sound really kind of nauseated and the biologicality of the whole thing.
Sp: And that reminds me, I don’t know if I am reading too much into it…
R: Yes.
Sp: Or putting in things that are not there…
H: Yes.
Sp: But it seems like the Dalek voice acting was really nuanced today.
Cz: I agree.
Sp: A couple of times there was a pause between “I” and “obey” that seemed really forced.
A: Maybe he’s inside trying to cross his tentacles.
R: I almost burst out with the phrase “Dalek Kiff” during the scene with the glass of water. <Futurama reference.>
K: Lots of long recon moments when NOTHING happened. I clock watched at one point and 45 seconds went by when there was minimal sound effects, no caption, and nothing was happening. Other than that, it was okay. I am enjoying the story, but the recon is not helpful.
H: It’s a pretty old recon, from everything I understand. This is definitely one of the episodes that would have benefited from watching it. You could tell that Troughton had lots of little bits of business that would have been fun to watch. The quiet lead up to the conveyor belt, in previous episodes that exist that we have seen those quiet moments really tend to lend to the suspense. But here, unless you were really into it, it was a lot harder. I wish we could find some episodes of this story.
P: Did you check behind your couch?
H: I have.
P: Wouldn’t the missing episodes be a good reason for future time travelers to go back in time to find them for us? But then that’s a paradox if they do.
H: We know that time travel doesn’t exist because we haven’t met any time travelers.
Sp: Yet!
M: Or they invented time travel and restraint at the same time. “Maybe we shouldn’t go into the past. Damn it, I stepped on that butterfly again!”
Sp: The primary mission of time travelers is to go back in time and remove all evidence of time travel.
<discussion of becoming your own grandfather, etc.>
R: I need an adult!
—
