Who do you love? 30: The Power of the Daleks
A thing to love about Power of the Daleks: The dead airman hanging from a tree.
The last historical comes up tomorrow, and in this series I've talked about how the historicals provided the writers with the chance to take the setting for granted and work not just on the characters but, crucially, on how they relate to their setting. Marco Polo is about being trapped and knowing it. The Myth Makers is about working yourself into a situation where everything you thought was a virtue just leaves you more stuck. This ability to explore theme has made the historicals, pound for pound, much richer experiences than most of the science fiction stories. Now, David Whitaker comes roaring back from his eighteen months elsewhere to show that the sf stories can be that rich too.
And he borrows something else from the historicals: the ability to be searingly nihilistic, like The Massacre and The Myth Makers and even The Gunfighters. Give people a fresh start and a green field - the planet Vulcan, though not a paradise, is from its name clearly a place where society and relationships are meant to be forged anew - and what happens? People go stir crazy, form tribes, and start killing each other. People who should be taken seriously aren't; everyone is playing for short-term advantage; it's clear that the rebellion has no material or ideological content, and if it succeeds there'll be another, and another, and the colony will gradually whittle itself down to nothing. Bragen will be killed by Valmar, Valmar will be killed by Janley, the mercury will go unmined. A bit of adult supervision might calm things down, but it never arrives. The Examiner is shot dead in the mercury swamps; the dead airman hangs from a tree. Fresh starts are doomed.
Which is maybe an odd thematic choice for the most fresh start-y story that Doctor Who has had to date.
So maybe there's more to it than that. Post-regeneration stories are about discovering who you are, and there are two ways to establish that: finding out what you love, where you feel safe; and finding out what you're not. The adventures of the first Doctor (as we now, suddenly, think of him) have been so diverse that there is nothing familiar he can define himself by, except the TARDIS (contrast UNIT, UNIT, and Adric + the Master for the next regeneration stories). All that's left is to let him define himself by what he isn't. Which is why, within the story, finding the Daleks on Vulcan is perhaps the best thing that could happen to the Doctor: by showing him what he's not, they give him a solid place to stand in the mercury swamp while the colony sinks around him.
Welcome back, David Whitaker. Stick around.
By the way, have you seen this?
Click to viewAlso, since the aim of this post is to be the top result when you google “ “Power of the Daleks” “Lord of the Flies” ”, I should perhaps mention “Lord of the Flies” explicitly, so there it is. (ETA: Mission Accomplished!)