
I have dreamed of seeing this story since I was a child, after seeing
Daleks - The Early Years when it first came out. The episodes featured on that release never made much sense on their own when I first saw them, until now - having just seen Loose Cannon's wonderful reconstruction of the story (and the surviving episodes 2, 5 & 10 ripped from the
Lost In Time box set). After seeing Loose Cannon's wondeful reconstruction of
Power of the Daleks, I decided to give this a go...and it delivers! On a grand scale. This is my type of
Doctor Who. It is epic - 12 parts in total. This is to
Doctor Who exactly what
Star Wars is to fantasy cinema. I won't go into too much detail over the plot, or give too much away, but the story oozes atmosphere - Terry Nation and Dennis Spooner at their best!
Many elements in this story also feature in Nation's other Dalek stories, notably
The Chase and
Planet of the Daleks (alien planets, jungles, invisible monsters, Daleks chasing the Doctor through time & space, invasion forces, etc).
Kevin Stoney is brilliant as the Guardian of the Solar System, Mavic Chen - he also later appeared in the Patrick Troughton story
The Invasion as Tobias Vaughn.
William Hartnell is at his best as the Doctor here, he shines in the role - even in the reconstructed episodes. In Episode 7 (
The Feast of Steven) the Doctor breaks the forth wall and wishes all of the viewers at home a very happy Christmas!
Episode 12 (
The Destruction of Time) is the climatic ending of the saga, the tragic ending of Sara Kingdom was unexpected - must have been shocking for all those kids to watch when it was aired!
I must also give praise to the wonderful soundtrack - eerie to say the least, Murray Gold take note!!!
Again, much praise to Loose Cannon for this wonderful reconstruction, I actually feel as though I have seen this story all the way through now, and the existing episodes make sense like they never did before. This is easily one of my favourite
Doctor Who stories now...hopefully in the near future the remaining episodes will be found and given a make-over by the Restoration Team, but until then you can get your copy of the recon from
Loose Cannon's website.