The Tenth Planet/The Power of the Daleks: The Beginning

 Hello!

I'm continuing with the reviews! For the next few weeks, I'm going to be reviewing Doctor Who - specifically, regeneration episodes. The Doctor's ability to regenerate is iconic; along with the TARDIS, the Daleks and the Cybermen, it's probably one of the most iconic aspects of the show. This has proved essential to the show's survival - when an actor leaves, they are replaced by a new actor. As a result, episodes where the Doctor regenerates are generally special occasions - the Tenth Doctor's regeneration episode, for example, was preceded by three specials. The episodes immediately following regeneration episodes are equally as important - they allow the audience to start to learn more about the new Doctor's personality, and how the new Doctor responds to threats. As a result, I will be reviewing them as well. I will be starting at the beginning, with the first regeneration episode, The Tenth Planet, which saw the First Doctor (William Hartnell) leave and the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) arrive. The Power of the Daleks was the first episode to follow on from a regeneration, showcasing the Doctor's new personality and behaviours. I will also have a regeneration count in the random observations, as it can get a bit complicated.

That's one way to recover!

The Tenth Planet

The Tenth Planet is split into four episodes, the last of which is almost entirely missing, sadly.  There is an animated reconstruction of the fourth episode, readily available on the DVD. The Tenth Planet starts with the Doctor and his companions, Ben and Polly, exiting the TARDIS in Antarctica, and promptly getting arrested by people at the nearby rocket base. The Doctor and friends are treated with suspicion, having appeared out of nowhere; this suspicion only increases when a mysterious planet appears, and the base personnel realise that the Doctor predicted its appearance before it had arrived. Said appearance matches Earth - it's Earth's long-lost twin planet, which disappeared long ago. Which makes Earth, Venus and the new planet (Mondas) celestial triplets. As it happens, Mondas is inhabited - the natives fly down in a spaceship and intercept some of the base personnel as they attempt to break into the TARDIS. They then invade the base itself. The natives are cyborgs - humans with technology grafted onto them. Or, to use their other name, Cybermen.

A Mondasian native

Mondas starts draining energy from Earth; the Doctor, being elderly, collapses, spending the third episode out of commission. The Doctor's companions and the people at the base successfully drive off the first wave of Cybermen; the general in charge then spends the third episode preparing to destroy Mondas with a super-nuke, while Ben and Polly try to deactivate the bomb, as it would irradiate half of Earth if detonated. Ben and Polly successfully prevent it from being launched in the fourth episode, and the general in charge of the base decides to execute them for treason. His son's in a spaceship, being drained by Mondas, so his anger is understandable. The Doctor wakes up in time to join his companions in the execution parade, though more Cybermen arrive in time to save them from being executed. The Cybermen take Polly, and later the Doctor, to their ship as prisoners; they then prepare to use the super-nuke to destroy Earth before the energy drain causes Mondas to explode. Apparently, the irradiation of half of Mondas won't be as bothersome to the Cybermen, despite their vulnerability to radiation. Ben and the rest of the people on the base successfully delay the Cybermen for long enough that Mondas explodes, in a sequence which looks cool on the animated version, and must have been breath-taking in the original episode. The Cybermen collapse and disintegrate, with their organic components withering into nothing. The Doctor, having passed out after being taken to the cybership, wakes up again and wanders off. The next the audience sees of him, he walks into his TARDIS, collapses, and begins glowing with light, before changing into a whole new person.

The Power of the Daleks

The Power of the Daleks is comprised of six episodes, all of which, like Episode 4 of The Tenth Planet, are missing; luckily, an animated remake exists. It starts with a recap of the Doctor's regeneration, before cutting to Ben and Polly, who are (unsurprisingly) astonished. Ben's convinced that a stranger somehow snuck into an in-flight TARDIS, killed the Doctor, put his clothes on, and proceeded to impersonate him, without either Ben or Polly noticing. Polly takes the more sensible approach: she believes it's the Doctor, despite the weird glowing, because the new man is lying in the exact position the Doctor was. The Doctor's behaviour does nothing to convince Ben that he is the Doctor; in addition to referring to himself in the third-person, he behaves nothing like the stern, grouchy old man that he was a few hours ago. For one thing, he's completely fine with walking out of the TARDIS without doing environmental checks first - by contrast, the First Doctor insisted on doing checks before exiting the TARDIS.

Also, he looks like this...

...rather than this!

The TARDIS has landed on an alien planet, called Vulcan, with swamps made of mercury. As they are not wearing protective suits, the Doctor and his companions soon succumb to the mercury fumes, passing out before being rescued by passing colonists. Also, before that happens, the Doctor witnesses a murder. When the Doctor and his companions come round, the Doctor's initially content to play a recorder he found, while Ben and Polly continue to argue over whether he is who he says he is. The Doctor impersonates the murder victim (an examiner from Earth), in order to have a look around the colony; he finds his way to the laboratory of a scientist called Lesterson, who is trying to open a mysterious space ship that was discovered in the swamp. The Doctor finds out that the capsule contains Daleks, another iconic Doctor Who villain. He is understandably terrified, especially after Lesterson finds a way to reactivate them, and urges the colonists to destroy the Daleks. Most of the rest of the serial is various factions of colonists fighting for control of the colony, while the Daleks play them for a fiddle. Polly gets kidnapped, and, despite the Doctor and Ben's best efforts, doesn't get rescued until near the end. Eventually, with a new Dalek army rebuilt, the Doctor saves the day by maximising their power feeds and using said power-surge to wipe out the Daleks. It also destroys the colony's power supply; the Doctor and friends leave, rather than doing anything to help.

The Daleks

Overall, I think The Tenth Planet is very good. It does a good job of introducing the Cybermen. The costumes are simplistic, but in my opinion that makes the Cybermen even more unnerving - you can tell that there are human elements still present. The sing-song voices add to that as well. The Doctor being out of commission in the third episode (written so that Hartnell could have a break) works well for selling the fact that the Doctor is dying - as does the fact that at one point, a physician at the base checks up on him, and finds a normal pulse. The Doctor has two hearts - the fact that he has a pulse which seems normal to humans indicates that one of his hearts has stopped. Though in fairness, back when they wrote the script, they intended the Doctor to have only one heart. Apparently, Time Lords grow an extra heart during regeneration, but that clashes with the fact that the Doctor's daughter had two hearts from her first incarnation. 

Another thing that works well is the characterisation. There's a scene where Ben successfully kills one of the Cybermen, and he reacts realistically for someone who's just killed for the first time: he's frozen in horror and apologising to the Cyberman's corpse. The general in charge of the base is a secondary antagonist, being rude and aggressive to the Doctor and his companions; however, his panic is justified in the second half of the serial, with his son being on the (metaphorical) front-lines, close to Mondas' energy-draining. The others on the base are visibly conflicted when it comes to the super-nuke - they disagree with the idea of detonating it, but also sympathise with the general's concern for his son. The Doctor himself, despite playing little role in the events of the episode, is particularly interesting. He knows, from the start, what will happen, including Mondas' destruction; he also knows that, in his frail state, staying will probably kill him. He does try to leave, in the first episode, but gives up after one attempt to convince the general to let them go. After that one attempt fails, he stays in place, accepting that staying will mean death. The only thing the First Doctor does in the fourth episode, other than dying, is surrender to the Cybermen, to prevent more people on Earth from being killed. He accepts his death, only taking action to save others; a far cry from the man who, in the first serial of the show, tried to murder somebody because they might slow him down. Overall, I would rate The Tenth Planet as around 8/10.

The Power of the Daleks is also pretty good. It's a bit...sillier than The Tenth Planet; the Doctor repeatedly pulls out his recorder and plays a tune, to Ben's frustration. The Daleks, at one point, start chanting that they will have power...as in, electricity. The ominousness of the chanting in unison is disrupted by what they're chanting. There's a scene where a character, called Quill, is on trial for having rebel sympathies, and the governor of the colony, who is questioning him, Hensell, is a bit thick. Quill complains that nobody else takes the problem of the rebels seriously; he then claims that he's the one who sent for the examiner, so he's not likely to be a rebel. Hensell asks why he felt the need to call an examiner to Vulcan, and Quill exclaims "Because of the rebels!" It also takes the colonists a while to cotton on to the Daleks' lies, and Lesterson only realises that they're evil based on the aforementioned chanting about power. Which, given he doesn't know their history, is a slight over-reaction. At times, the serial can drag on a bit - a lot is taken up with various groups scheming. In fairness, that is par for the course for Doctor Who.

That's not to say that The Power of the Daleks is bad - indeed, for me, the unintentional humour is a plus. The Daleks are certainly effective; the Doctor is visibly terrified when he finds that Lesterson successfully reactivated one. At the end of the penultimate episode, the Daleks start chanting "Daleks conquer and destroy". It's a bone-chilling line, especially in light of later episodes; in the new series episode The Stolen Earth, the Daleks transmit to Earth a message consisting of their catchphrase. That one word, "Exterminate", is enough to induce panic around the world. The "conquer and destroy" here similarly creates an image of an unstoppable enemy, impossible to reason with.

The episode also shows the Doctor's perspective immediately after regenerating: the room is spinning and there's a rhythmic pounding and beeping. It's quite neat, because I feel like it shows the confusion that would come with dying and coming back, There's also a scene where the Doctor looks in a mirror, and for a moment you can see his previous incarnation reflected - it's a good way of underscoring the fact that the Doctor is essentially the same person as he was in The Tenth Planet. Conversely, when Ben places the First Doctor's ring on the Second Doctor's finger, it slides right off - the new Doctor's hand is too small for it. It's an effective demonstration that, while the Doctor is the same person, he has still changed - he hasn't remained static. Overall, I would rate The Power of the Daleks at around 6/10.

Random observations:

-It's fitting that the episode introducing one of the Doctor's most iconic enemies is followed by an episode re-introducing another iconic enemy.

-There's a moment I quite like in the first episode of The Tenth Planet, where the Doctor suddenly adopts a very Troughton expression, despite still being played by Hartnell - though probably coincidental, it does imply he's already close to regeneration.

-At the end of the first episode of The Tenth Planet, you see Cybermen wearing furs - I like that it's left ambiguous whether the Cybermen simply stole the clothes from the base personnel, or whether that is one of the personnel, upgraded into a Cyberman,

-In The Power of the Daleks, multiple characters, including the newly-regenerated Doctor, duck Dalek gunfire - it's amusing to think that what the Twelfth Doctor later described as "the deadliest fire in the universe" can be avoided by dodging.

-The Second Doctor stops referring to himself in the third person by around the half-way point of The Power of the Daleks - I see that as being because his regeneration's finished, like how the Tenth Doctor regrew a hand because he was still within the first 15 hours of his regeneration.

-One of the highlights of The Power of the Daleks is Ben's absurdly exaggerated cynicism regarding the Doctor's regeneration - the Doctor will do or say something that doesn't fit with the First Doctor's behaviour, and Ben goes "Aha! I knew you weren't the Doctor!" It's also funny how the Doctor doesn't even seem to mind - his attitude is pretty much "Well, believe that if you want."

-Regeneration count - first regeneration, brought on by extreme old age (First Doctor to Second Doctor), 11 out of 12 regenerations left.