The Armageddon Factor

Shapp and the Marshall.

‘The Armageddon Factor’, or ‘How not to resolve 25 episodes of build up’, is a pretty disappointing end to the Key to Time. I’m not sure where to start really. It’s just a very poor, slow story. It has some good ideas, written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin, but the breadth of scale of the story – two planets at war with a third between them playing them off against each other – was too much for the production team to realise effectively.

Romana and the Doctor with the awful Merack.

Hence we get three planets which look a lot like each other, full of endless boring corridors underground. Worse than that, it’s all done as a sort of pantomime. So I put a lot of blame on the director, Michael Hayes, rather than the writers. With such a limited lot of sets allowed, it was hard for them to write a lot of action and remember that it was a six-parter, a lot of episodes to fill. It’s completely studio-bound, which suggests money-saving, and maybe it could have done with location shooting. It’s just rather dull and boring. The design does effectively convey a sense of claustrophobia, especially on Atrios, but by the time we hit Zeos and it’s just slightly differently coloured corridors, it’s getting very old.

The Doctor and the Zeon master-computer.

I like elements, of course. K-9 has a good gig in this one as he communicates with the Zeon master computer. There’s the character of Drax, a cockney-accented Time Lord who builds things. The Marshall (John Woodvine) is an interesting take on your megalomaniac, but after the first two or three episodes he’s stuck in a time loop. We are introduced to the wonderful Lalla Ward, playing the Princess Astra but soon to play Romana, and the besotted and annoying Merack (Ian Saynor) who quite frankly I couldn’t stand.

Then there’s Shapp – played by David Harries, the Marshall’s right hand man. He doesn’t appear to take it seriously and spends most of his time hamming it up.

Tom Baker and Mary Tamm eye of the completed Key to Time.

Valentine Dyall.

Normally it would anger me but to be honest the story is so dull I rather appreciated his attempts at levity. The only other character of note (yes, it’s not a lot for a six-part story) is ‘the Shadow’ (William Squire). Dear god. Talk about one-dimensional villains that look stupid and pretty much useless. One of the worst villains in Doctor Who. He is working for the Black Guardian, played by the supreme Valentine Dyall, an amazing voice actor who featured in the occasional episode of ‘The Goons’.

Lalla Ward as Astra.

On the positive side, the idea of Astra being the sixth segment is a good one, and the Key to Time serves a purpose (creating the time loop) in this story. Tom Baker is great at some points, but then in episode six he goes a bit off the boil pretending to be crazy. With less than ten minutes to go the Black Guardian turns up, the Doctor reveals him, and so destroys the tracer splitting the segments up again and returning Astra to Atrios. 26 episodes and he just says ‘you know what, don’t really want this thing’.

The lamest villain of them all - The Shadow.

And thus ends the Key to Time. Four excellent, top-notch stories, followed by a clunker and finally a rather dull and unsatisfying ending. Perhaps Anthony Read needed to work closer with Baker and Martin. Resolve the search for the sixth segment in four episodes, then a separate 2 to wrap the season up. ‘The Armageddon Factor’ would have been a far better story told in four parts, they could have still used the sets or shot outside for the conclusion. Seemed strange not to involve the White Guardian in the end too.

I felt a bit confused too, it was not always clear which planet the Doctor was on. It wasn’t clear what had happened on Zeos – was everyone there dead and only the computer was left to fight the war. Or was life on Zeos going on fine on the surface and they had little to no knowledge of the war?

It was an ending of sorts. Disappointing though, very disappointing.

3.5/10

Underworld

CSO instead of sets.

‘Underworld’ I am told is regarded as something of a complete turkey in Doctor Who circles I believe. Well, do I concur? It’s fair to say that, in keeping with some of the earlier 15^th season stories, it seems like this is a story which went into production before it was ready to. Firstly, the script needed another going over or two. There was some good ideas, the premise itself – a story based on the story of Jason and the Argonauts was a top idea from writers Bob Baker and Dave Martin, but after episode one it becomes a very confusing story which doesn’t fully explain itself.

The Doctor and Leela with the crew of the R1C.

Should a Doctor Who story explain every little thing? Probably not. But perhaps there were things that needed to be explained in this story and just weren’t. The slaves are mining rocks... I think, to provide energy for the Oracle. What is this Oracle? I think it’s the P7E, the spaceship that the Minyans are chasing as it has their race bank. If I understand the story correctly, it’s become basically a mad computer and a God to those serving it. Some of whom have evolved into robotic type servants.

It’s all there, but it hasn’t been well-developed. The characters in board the R1C are reasonably well defined, Jackson and his crew, although more could have been done with them, the slave

characters though are just caricatures with only two characters of note. Some of their acting is a little off what it needed to be to convince an audience as well, regrettably.

Then we come to the use of CSO, and the special effects. The design budget had very little in it, a lot was being held over for the final story of the season and they discovered they basically had no money to build the cave sets. Clearly they mustn’t have had enough to go down to Wookie Hole either where they shot ‘Revenge of the Cybermen’, which would have been perfect for this story. So they made a model and CSOed into the background for nearly 30 minutes of this story. Which over four episodes underran by ten minutes incidentally, which they could have used for story-extrapolation.

Only the bridge and the humans are real, rest is CSO,
This shot worked OK IMO.

Then again, the CSO took a lot of time to shoot and I suspect that a number of scenes had to be cut because they ran out of time to shoot them. Episode two is probably the worst episode. There’s a lot of walking around the caves, a long long LONG sequence involving gassing but generally it’s a very dull episode with a bit of over acting and a lot of walking about. The CSO to be honest, considering how hard it was to do, and the fact that cameras have to be locked off, is not too bad. It just doesn’t convince and perhaps it never could. K-9 moves merrily along rocks and dirt which you’d think would be hard for him, and hair and feet fade in and out. Then there’s that glow around most characters. The camera angles are

Just what the strange gold-headed guys are....
I'm not sure!

very static because the camera had to be locked most of the time to match with the CSOed background.

Good on them for giving it a go. They were considering abandoning the thing due to cost cutting, which may have pleased a few fans in retrospect. But robbed Who-history of four episodes.
As it stands it’s a story that doesn’t quite work, although I think episode one is in fact really strong. They chose a direction in Canadian Norman Stewart who understood the CSO technology well, but was a first time director and because of the technical issues couldn’t spend time on the actors and so forth.

I know it gets panned badly from Who-fandom, but I didn’t hate it, and I think it needs to be viewed with an understanding of the situation behind the production.

4/10

The Hand of Fear

Starting with bang. 

It’s always a bit sad when a companion leaves, but this is the story where Sarah Jane leaves is just that little bit sadder. Bob Baker and Dave Martin deliver a script to Elizabeth Sladen that does good service to a character that had spent over three years in the role, seen a regeneration, Daleks, Cybermen, Harry Sullivan come and go, the withdrawal of UNIT as series regulars, a change in production team and move to more ‘alien’ settings with weird and wonderful planets shown such as Zeta Minor and indeed, in this story, Kastria.

Sarah is possessed!

It’s hard to know what to make of the ending, it’s a little bit ‘oh you’ve got to go now’, and thusly out of the blue. The scene itself is very well

written, touching, and movingly played by Tom Baker and Liz Sladen, but it must be heartbreaking for the character Sarah Jane to be told she can’t stick around because the Doctor has to go to Gallifrey. Then there is the presumption and indeed inference that the Doctor aint coming back for her.

A blurry Houston

Of course, in the previous season and one story  Sarah has been blinded, hypnotised (left right and centre!), tied up a LOT, thought the Doctor was dead who knows how many times, knocked out, trapped in an air lock, attacked by two fake Harrys, the list goes on. She chucks a wobbly and says she wants to go home, whilst the Doctor is too engrossed in the issues of the TARDIS to listen to her. It might just have been the perfect time for her to leave.

Indeed it really was. Three and a half years is a long time for a companion, and she’s racked up the longest stint thus far for a companion if not the most episodes – that goes to Frazer Hines as Jamie. Personally I don’t travel with companions as often as the Doctor does. I’ve had many, but sometimes solo travel allows a bit of freedom. I feel like it’s okay to be more obnoxious which is always nice when I am on my own.

It's a handy hand!

Back to the story, watching the extra features I see that a deliberate choice was made to views the story as four separate chapters, and that comes

across when you watch the four episodes. It’s thusly different and interesting narratively. Characters come and go, with no actor apart from the two leads being around for more than two episodes. There are not a lot of principal characters, meaning that the Doctor and particularly Sarah really carry a good bulk of the plot – even more than normal. We don’t see a lot of scenes featuring other characters having conversations.

Eldrad mark one.

Rex Robinson is back for his third Doctor Who adventure, after ‘The Three Doctors’ and ‘The Monster of Peladon’. It’s no surprise to see him as Lennie Mayne, director of the previous mentioned stories, is also director on ‘The Hand of Fear’. Rex gets episodes one and two, Glyn Houston is the principal support for episode two and features in episode three as the man in charge of a nuclear power station. The protagonist, Eldrad, appears as a character in episode three played by the striking and powerful Judith Paris. When Eldrad is returned to Kastria in episode four, he regenerates into Stephen Thorne, known for Omega and Azal in the Pertwee years. And his voice still hasn’t softened!

Stephen Thorne as Eldrad.

‘The Hand of Fear’ was inspired by an old B-grade horror film where a hand came to life. It certainly is very creepy and a great place to start writing, and the script is possibly Baker and Martin’s best. It’s got a different feel to it, and is very pacey. With characters dying or the story moving past them quickly, the external characters other than Eldrad don’t quite have the chance to develop, however Glyn Houston’s Professor Watson has some lovely moments, especially when he calls his wife to say he won’t be home on time from work.

Also, they actually shot this thing IN a NUCLEAR POWER PLANT. This, today, would be unthinkable. Apparently the company was more than happy for them to use it and there’s even a fall from great heights and an exploding cabinet, all done at the plant. It really adds to the authenticity of this story. The final episode on Kastria is a pretty decent warp-up of events, although Eldrad’s death as he plummets into a chasm is sadly handled rather poorly – possibly a rushed job.

'Hey you, he blew it!'

All in all though, ‘The Hand of Fear’ maintains the excellent standard of ‘Who’ under Hinchcliffe.

9/10

The Sontaran Experiment

Tom Baker fixes the transmat.

‘The Sontaran Experiment’, to be fair, is a largely forgettable 2-part filler between two great stories. Interesting that for the first time in its history, the Doctor is separated from the TARDIS. It follows on straight from ‘The Ark in Space’, and so it’s interesting because they were talking about going to Earth and starting anew, and then we get to see what awaits them down on Earth. Question though, presumably the beacon/ark was nowhere near Earth – I mean solar flares and the like.

Sarah and Harry decide to have a look around.

Why they did a two-parter, I’m not sure, I guess they had two episodes to fill. Like ‘Robot’, all location shooting was done on video, and in this case that’s the whole show. Not a single studio scene. Small cast, little in the way of props too, it comes across as a money-saver. Season 12 is odd because it’s only 20 episodes, after 26 had been the norm for the last 3 Pertwee years. I am unaware of any strikes or action which might have seen six episodes disappear, and indeed I believe season 13 is back to 26 episodes.

Sontaran Space Ship.

The story is about a Sontaran, again played by Kevin Lindsay who was Linx in ‘The Time Warrior’, experimenting on some humans, from colony planets, who he lured to Earth to do the experiments. It’s a bit of a stretch. Then he is wasting time seeing how long they can hold a heavy metal bar, or how they deal with hallucinations.

Bob Baker and Dave Martin got the writing job, presumably with the Sontaran brief and the location brief too. It was a hard task I think and the viewers can’t expect a brilliant show. The Sontaran mask doesn’t seem quite so good, and the monitor link with the Sontaran fleet looks very much like something from the 70s.

Vural lies under a piece of metal getting heavier as his mates try to hold it.

We have a guest cast all with South African accents. Ok, it’s all uniform but an interesting choice with no relevance to the story at all. In all we have 10 character including the three regulars. Kevin Lindsay actually plays two Sontarans, and has a video call with himself! Donald Douglas plays the leader of the humans, Vural, who has in fact betrayed them to the Sontarans.

It really comes across as filler. It’s not bad per se, but just pointless. They had an opportunity to explore and create an Earth after fire, and it could have been really interesting. Somethings might have survived here and there. Underground passages, metro systems, bomb shelters etc. New types of animal life might have evolved, sadly we didn’t get any of that. They had two episodes to fill and this is what they did.

Kevin Lindsay returned as not one but two Sontarans.

The regulars are all good value as always, wonderful bits between Ian Marter and Liz Sladen especially. The Doctor doesn’t get a heck of a lot to do, we have Terry Walsh the stuntman filling in wherever possible as Tom Baker broke his collarbone during the filming. The effect of using video instead of film is a bit disappointing, a bit plain to be fair. With a full two episodes though on location, I guess the editing time couldn’t be spare. Still, they did it for ‘Spearhead from Space’.

5/10