With 'The Power Of The Daleks' it's interesting what doesn't change from previous stories with the title sequence and theme arrangement all present and correct. But everyone's much more concerned about whether they can pull off this audacious change of lead actor to worry about the more cosmetic details. There will be time (and the money) to do that sort of stuff in a few months...
Ben is very much in denial (other rivers are available), even though (as far as we can tell from the surviving material) he must have just seen the Doctor change before his very eyes.
Note how a relatively new production team goes back to the early days by recruiting both David Whitaker and Christopher Barry (plus a dash of Dennis Spooner) as they helped establish Hartnell, so hopefully they have some idea of what to do with the new chap. Even Sydney Newman has a few words of advice, mostly involving the phrase 'Cosmic Hobo'.
But how much of this is careful planning and how much is closer to headless chicken time is difficult to determine, unless footage of the readthrough turns up. Which probably ain't gonna happen, if we're being honest.
The draft scripts are a fascinating insight into what might have been, with the strong suggestion that the Doctor has gone through this process at least once before. And that stuff about the 'galactic war' rings a few bells in hindsight.
I remember getting very excited about the telesnaps from Episode One when I tunred the fiinal few pages of 'Doctor Who - The Early Years' and for a few mad moments, I was convinved that someone had found a 16mm film copy.
Sadly, that's never come true, but 'The Power Of The Daleks' keeps on coming around in different versions every now and then with the recent animation helping me get a better feel for the story as a whole.
It's still difficult to imagine what it must have been like to watch on Bonfire Night 1966. Audience Reports are all very well, but how many people were appalled, or indifferent, or wildly excited? Did a whole generation of kids subconsciously associate Patrick Troughton with fireworks? Was there an upswing in interest in playing the recorder at school?
There's so much about 'The Power Of The Daleks' that we don't know. Even if the whole thing turned up tomorrow, we wouldn't really know what it was like to be there at the time.
'Doctor Who' likes to be mysterious in more ways than one.
And actually, I quite like that.
Our video about 'The Power Of The Daleks' can be seen here.
(Written by Andrew Trowbridge)
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