ENERGY OF THE DALEKS

The Daleks’ plan turned out to be slightly different than I surmised, with the energy being used to create an energy cocoon around the Earth to use gravity to throw the moon out of orbit and cause such destruction on Earth that the humans will be made extinct before they have a chance to defeat the Daleks in the future (these Daleks have come back in time to change their past).

The behind-the-scenes explains that this was the first 4th Doctor story they recorded, but positioned 4th to avoid clashing with a Dalek story released in the main range at the same time.  Given that Tom Baker sounds more like the 4th Doctor in this one than he did in the first one, I find that hard to credit, but maybe there was a reason for him sounding older and more tired in the first one?

It was also their aim to (i) address the fact that the 4th Doctor only had two Dalek stories, and neither of them had much to do with Earth (which this one does), and also (ii) do a more traditional Dalek story that didn’t use Davros (presumably why this has a feeling of ‘Day of the Daleks’ about the time travel nature.  ‘Energy of the Daleks’ as a title is more a play on ‘Power of the Daleks’, although there’s precious little to link the two stories together.

A reasonable 4th Doctor vs the Daleks story, and one that would fit in quite well with the current TV series short-episode format, but not up there with the classics.