The Power of the Daleks

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Story Code: EE / Season 4 UK Airdate: 5 Nov to 10 Dec 1966 Doctor: Patrick Troughton
First airings by location UK Repeats / Foreign Cable and Satellite Previous Story / Next Story

This story aired in the following three countries. They are listed in chronological order according to airdate. (Refer also to Selling Doctor Who for expanded airdates.)

Australia Jul 67 b/w
New Zealand Aug 69 b/w
Singapore May 72 b/w
  • The story was offered to Australia in March 1967, a matter of only weeks before it was completely withdrawn from sale by agreement with Terry Nation. Curiously, the offer was made to the ABC after serials FF and GG.
  • It is thought that the BBC also withdrew The Tenth Planet from sale at the same time, as it might have felt that it couldn't offer Hartnell's final story without Troughton's first to follow-on.
  • A brief clip from the cliffhanger to part five featured on an edition of Blue Peter broadcast on 27 November 1967.
  • The same sequence, but running for slightly longer, featured on the 28 January 1968 edition of BBC 2's "Whicker's World".
  • In early 1968, the serial was released again for sale overseas, and the first country to acquire it was New Zealand, who censored it in February 1969.
"Power..." in Ghana hoax; DWB107
  • Both Singapore and Hong Kong had already begun airing Troughton stories by this time, and thus were too late to acquire his introductory six-parter.
  • For reasons unknown, Zambia did not acquire the serial to air ahead of The Highlanders in early 1970. (Was the story available only to countries in Australasia because of the original sale to Australia, and not elsewhere, such as Africa? Or was the sale to Zambia already "signed-off" and it was too late to add a further serial to the package that was on offer?)
  • The 29 January 1971 edition of "Ask Aspel" apparently featured a clip from part 2 (and also a segment from the recently-screened Terror of the Autons).
  • New Zealand sent its film prints of this serial to Singapore on 10 January 1972. The sale to Singapore was actually "back-catalogue", as they had already started screening Jon Pertwee stories by this time. (Indeed, Singapore aired The Power of the Daleks at the end of a run that had started with The Evil of the Daleks!)
  • This sale to Singapore satisfied the "Commonwealth quota" on the serial; it was removed from offer, which is why Gibraltar could not acquire it (nor any other serial from season four) after 1973.
  • On 29 May 1974 "Perspective - C for Computer" aired in Australia; the episode featured clips from parts 4 and 5, extracted from the prints still held by the ABC.
  • The ABC in Australia returned its prints to the BBC on 4 June 1975.
  • In issue #105 of DWB (September 1992) it was reported that the six parter may have been shown in Ghana "six years ago..." (i.e. in 1986). Two issues later (#107, November 1992), they reported that the Ghana television film library had been completely destroyed by fire in 1989. Although the screening of that story turned out to be a hoax (the perpetrators had chosen Ghana as it was the most obscure place they could think of), the fire was an actual event, and TV news footage of the 23 May 1989 disaster can be seen HERE.
  • See also the Troughton Junkings page.


Reconstruction

  • The missing story was animated in full in black and white only; it could be purchased on an episode-by-episode basis from the BBC Store streaming site, with each episode released weekly on the 50th anniversary of its UK transmission, 5 November to 10 December 2016.
  • The full b/w reconstruction was also released on DVD and Blu-ray, and also screened as an edited omnibus in a number of chain cinemas in various countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States.
  • It was later available on BritBox UK from December 2019.
  • BBC America later created and released in the USA a colourised version of the animation.
  • A fully updated and revised animation edition was released on DVD and Blu-ray in late 2020.


Links