The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon: The Armageddon Factor
The Armageddon Factor: Part One (20/01/19)
A very good start with lots going on. The Doctor, Romana and K9 have gone to the planet Atrios in search of the final segment of the Key To Time. The planet is in the middle of a nuclear war with its twin planet Zeos, its ruler - the Marshall - intent on winner no matter the cost. He's opposed by figurehead Princess Astra who is having a covert affair with Surgeon Merak, and colluding with him to try and contact Zeos and come to a peaceful truce.
The Marshall is either insane or is being controlled by something (the Black Guardian?) behind a mirror - or both - and has had one of his guards lock Astra in a high radiation zone (then shot the guard to shut him up). The Doctor, Romana and K9 landed near where Astra was imprisoned and found her by using the Locator (I think the segment is Astra's coronet as it fell off just before her unconscious body was dragged into a transmat by a cloaks figure with a fucked up face) and K9 blasted a small hole in the door to see what was beyond. This alerted the Marshall's aide, Shapp, that someone was trying to access the radioactive zone, so the Marshall went to investigate and arrested the Doctor and Romana. He accused them of killing the guard and had Merak brought in, accusing him of being a traitor and colluding with the Doctor and Romana (who are Zeon spies, obviously). K9 rescued them, but the TARDIS has disappeared.
It looks pretty good; lots of bombed out corridors and rooms, and some nice, subtle lighting. Romana got a good line early on:
Doctor: What happened to your optimism?
Romana: It opted out.
and the set up is pretty cool with good performances from the whole cast so far. I was a bit concerned when I saw Bob Baker and Dave Martin's names at the start as they often seem responsible for some pretty shoddy-looking stories ('The Invisible Enemy', 'Underworld', 'The Claws Of Axos') but this is going well. That said, 'Underworld' had a decent first episode and then went to shit. Oh dear, there goes my optimism too!
The Armageddon Factor: Part Two (27/01/19)
There was a fair bit of padding this week., but it was still entertaining enough. The Marshal had Shapp lure K9 into a conveyor that took him to the recycling furnace, then he enlisted the Doctor to help him win the war with Zeos, and the Doctor needs K9 to help do this so K9 was rescued.
While this was happening, Romana saw a control device attached to the Marshal's neck and heard him (carelessly) say "The Doctor must not die... yet!" when he thought the Doctor had been incinerated. Then Romana and Merak found a room behind the Marshal's black mirror with a jawless skull sat on a plinth, and heard the Marshal refer to the Doctor as a Time Lord in his muttered conversation with the skull (he's obviously the Black Guardian's puppet). He sent the Doctor to Zeos via a transmat - the same one that took Astra - after Astra had appeared on the telescreens begging the Atrians to surrender as the Zeons had kidnapped her. The idea was to meet a Zeon and rescue Astra, but it was obviously a trap and I'm not sure why the Doctor fell for it. It didn't seem like he was being disingenuous, but you often can't tell with Tom these days! He was grabbed by two of the fucked-face monks and transmatted away as Romana and Merak arrived to warn him.
It's interesting, and most of this makes sense, but the weak link is the Doctor. Either he knows what he's doing, realised it was a trap and 'confided' in K9 because he thought he was being watched, or he's just being an idiot. I'm hoping for the former. Not bad, all said, and at least we move on from Atrios next week for one strand of the narrative.
The Armageddon Factor: Part Three (03/02/19)
Finally we get some sort of proper link to the overall theme of the season - the search for the Key To Time - other than the odd reference to the fact they're looking for its segments.
The Doctor has been taken to Zeos by The Shadow, his equal and opposite by all accounts, working for the Black Guardian. He looks vaguely similar to that weird Alien baby from the end of 'Alien: Resurrection' and seems to have been waiting for generations in his space station for the Doctor to turn up with the first five segments. The Doctor refused to hand them over, though (the Shadow has taken the TARDIS), so he abandoned him on Zeos and went off to torture Astra on his space station for a bit.
Romana, K9 and Merak accessed the transmat and beamed over to Zeos, Merak stealing the Locator for a while until Romana found him and took it back, pointing out that they were both looking for Astra and whatever she has that's the segment. K9 found a supercomputer that's running the war against Atrios and it revealed that it plans to totally obliterate everything.
Meanwhile, the Marshal, having sent the Doctor to Zeos, was cast aside by the Shadow and told there would be no more Zeon attacks, so he took the last ship in the Atrian fleet and headed off to bomb the fuck out of Zeos.
This story's holding together fairly well, despite being studio-bound. There's plenty for the Doctor, Romana and K9 to do, and they're spending enough time together and apart that it isn't boring. It feels a little like we should be progressing faster, but overall that isn't a problem because it's still engaging and well acted. Hopefully there'll be more about the quest and the dealings with the Black Guardian next week.
The Armageddon Factor: Part Four (01/02/19)
That wasn't the most exciting episode ever, but it's still pretty good. The Shadow is using Astra to try and get hold of the Key To Time since she won't tell him where the Sixth Segment is. Shapp returned to Atrios to try and stop the Marshal but was obviously too late.
K9 was lured to a transmat and beamed to the Shadow's space station while the Doctor and Romana used the Key (with a dummy segment which is deteriorating rapidly) to trap the Marshal's ship and Mentalis the Supercomputer is a slowly growing time loop to stop them blowing up the planets and everyone on them.
Merak had a (very weird) fall and ended up getting transported to the Shadow's space station too, and Astra gained access to the TARDIS with the Doctor and Romana, but the Doctor has seen the control device stuck to her neck, and he and Romana are about to head off in search of the Shadow's space station.
That was pretty much it. The pace is fairly pedestrian, really, strolling along and feeling very much like an interim between the Football Results and 'The Generation Game'. In fact, it reminds me a little of 'Sapphire And Steel', Joanna Lumley being pretty much a blonde Mary Tamm, and David McCallum - well, not remotely like Tom Baker - which I guess shouldn't surprise me that much because that TV series first aired less than 6 months after this season ended and followed two incredibly smart, almost omnipotent aliens (for want of a better word) as they sorted out problems with time. Perhaps I'll start watching that as an interim to Doctor Who - we'll have to see.
The Armageddon Factor: Part Five (17/02/19)
Well, that episode was a bit weird! The Doctor randomly let Romana go off alone with Astra without telling her that Astra was under the Shadow's control, so she ended up getting captured and tortured by him!
Meanwhile, K9 was also put under the Shadow's power and was used to track the Doctor who fell down one of those holes that Merak fell down.
This is where it got really odd. While down there, the Doctor followed a distress signal sent by a strangely attractive bloke with a strong Cockney accent called Drax, who's another Time Lord (an engineer, and responsible for creating Mentalis - under duress, apparently) who studied with the Doctor on Gallifrey, went rogue, and knows him as Theta Sigma! There was a bit of strangeness reminiscent of 'The Claws Of Axos' with lots of hallucinations and doppelgangers as the Doctor wandered through the bowels of the Third Planet (which really looks like a space station). The Doctor twigged that the Shadow had bribed Drax to betray him in order to get the rest of the Key To Time from the TARDIS, and for a bit it looked like the Doctor had persuaded Drax to help him.
K9 had a cool scene handing the Doctor an ultimatum from the Shadow, but only succeeded in getting koshed and freed from the Shadow's control. He helped Drax build a ray gun while the Doctor confronted the Shadow who sent the Doctor to the TARDIS with one of his Mutes in order to fetch the rest of the Key, or he'd kill Romana; at which point Drax turned up and shot the Doctor!
Some odd twists this week, and it's interesting now the story's coming to a head. It was interesting meeting another renegade Time Lord, even if I don't know what to make of him, and I have an inkling as to what the final segment of the Key is. It would have been cool to have had K9 evil for a bit longer but, on the whole, this episode was pretty good. Looking forward to the series finale next week!
The Armageddon Factor: Part Six (24/02/19)
Well, that was an okay conclusion. Princess Astra turned out to be the Sixth Segment (as I thought) and the Shadow turned her into a crystal to complete the Key. The Doctor and Romana legged it with the segments, with Drax's help stopped Mentalis from destroying everything, faced off against the Black Guardian, and now have a randomiser hooked into the TARDIS to stop the Black Guardian from hunting them down to exact revenge on them for disbursing the Key.
There was some fun with the Doctor and Drax, miniaturised by Drax's ray gun and hiding in K9 to infiltrate the Shadow's lair. But I'm wondering what the quest was all about. They constructed the Key out of its segments but disbursed it before anyone could do anything with it! I thought the White Guardian needed it to reset the Universe or something before Bad Things happened? Granted, it was nice that Astra was reconstituted and reunited with Merak, but it seems odd that the ending wasn't clearer.
That said, I'm quite pleased that this Randomiser has been introduced; having no control over the TARDIS should make the stories a bit more exciting. I've quite warmed to Romana now and I'm looking forward to seeing how she develops, since this story didn't see her doing particularly much. She's got a lot of potential, but I do think they need to write for her a little better as Mary is a great actress and shines when she's given something good, but too often has been left standing around.
I think the writers need to put the ante up, too, since there's been precious little jeopardy this series. That, in part, has a lot to do with Tom's lacklustre portrayal but, if the writing was a bit more cohesive and the stories a little better structured, he might have to be more focused on his acting and less on being flippant and goofing around. I think it's time he left, really. Maybe Romana could take over! I guess we'll see how the show develops this Autumn, but currently I hope the next series will be Tom Baker's last. Until then...
A very good start with lots going on. The Doctor, Romana and K9 have gone to the planet Atrios in search of the final segment of the Key To Time. The planet is in the middle of a nuclear war with its twin planet Zeos, its ruler - the Marshall - intent on winner no matter the cost. He's opposed by figurehead Princess Astra who is having a covert affair with Surgeon Merak, and colluding with him to try and contact Zeos and come to a peaceful truce.
The Marshall is either insane or is being controlled by something (the Black Guardian?) behind a mirror - or both - and has had one of his guards lock Astra in a high radiation zone (then shot the guard to shut him up). The Doctor, Romana and K9 landed near where Astra was imprisoned and found her by using the Locator (I think the segment is Astra's coronet as it fell off just before her unconscious body was dragged into a transmat by a cloaks figure with a fucked up face) and K9 blasted a small hole in the door to see what was beyond. This alerted the Marshall's aide, Shapp, that someone was trying to access the radioactive zone, so the Marshall went to investigate and arrested the Doctor and Romana. He accused them of killing the guard and had Merak brought in, accusing him of being a traitor and colluding with the Doctor and Romana (who are Zeon spies, obviously). K9 rescued them, but the TARDIS has disappeared.
It looks pretty good; lots of bombed out corridors and rooms, and some nice, subtle lighting. Romana got a good line early on:
Doctor: What happened to your optimism?
Romana: It opted out.
and the set up is pretty cool with good performances from the whole cast so far. I was a bit concerned when I saw Bob Baker and Dave Martin's names at the start as they often seem responsible for some pretty shoddy-looking stories ('The Invisible Enemy', 'Underworld', 'The Claws Of Axos') but this is going well. That said, 'Underworld' had a decent first episode and then went to shit. Oh dear, there goes my optimism too!
The Armageddon Factor: Part Two (27/01/19)
There was a fair bit of padding this week., but it was still entertaining enough. The Marshal had Shapp lure K9 into a conveyor that took him to the recycling furnace, then he enlisted the Doctor to help him win the war with Zeos, and the Doctor needs K9 to help do this so K9 was rescued.
While this was happening, Romana saw a control device attached to the Marshal's neck and heard him (carelessly) say "The Doctor must not die... yet!" when he thought the Doctor had been incinerated. Then Romana and Merak found a room behind the Marshal's black mirror with a jawless skull sat on a plinth, and heard the Marshal refer to the Doctor as a Time Lord in his muttered conversation with the skull (he's obviously the Black Guardian's puppet). He sent the Doctor to Zeos via a transmat - the same one that took Astra - after Astra had appeared on the telescreens begging the Atrians to surrender as the Zeons had kidnapped her. The idea was to meet a Zeon and rescue Astra, but it was obviously a trap and I'm not sure why the Doctor fell for it. It didn't seem like he was being disingenuous, but you often can't tell with Tom these days! He was grabbed by two of the fucked-face monks and transmatted away as Romana and Merak arrived to warn him.
It's interesting, and most of this makes sense, but the weak link is the Doctor. Either he knows what he's doing, realised it was a trap and 'confided' in K9 because he thought he was being watched, or he's just being an idiot. I'm hoping for the former. Not bad, all said, and at least we move on from Atrios next week for one strand of the narrative.
The Armageddon Factor: Part Three (03/02/19)
Finally we get some sort of proper link to the overall theme of the season - the search for the Key To Time - other than the odd reference to the fact they're looking for its segments.
The Doctor has been taken to Zeos by The Shadow, his equal and opposite by all accounts, working for the Black Guardian. He looks vaguely similar to that weird Alien baby from the end of 'Alien: Resurrection' and seems to have been waiting for generations in his space station for the Doctor to turn up with the first five segments. The Doctor refused to hand them over, though (the Shadow has taken the TARDIS), so he abandoned him on Zeos and went off to torture Astra on his space station for a bit.
Romana, K9 and Merak accessed the transmat and beamed over to Zeos, Merak stealing the Locator for a while until Romana found him and took it back, pointing out that they were both looking for Astra and whatever she has that's the segment. K9 found a supercomputer that's running the war against Atrios and it revealed that it plans to totally obliterate everything.
Meanwhile, the Marshal, having sent the Doctor to Zeos, was cast aside by the Shadow and told there would be no more Zeon attacks, so he took the last ship in the Atrian fleet and headed off to bomb the fuck out of Zeos.
This story's holding together fairly well, despite being studio-bound. There's plenty for the Doctor, Romana and K9 to do, and they're spending enough time together and apart that it isn't boring. It feels a little like we should be progressing faster, but overall that isn't a problem because it's still engaging and well acted. Hopefully there'll be more about the quest and the dealings with the Black Guardian next week.
The Armageddon Factor: Part Four (01/02/19)
That wasn't the most exciting episode ever, but it's still pretty good. The Shadow is using Astra to try and get hold of the Key To Time since she won't tell him where the Sixth Segment is. Shapp returned to Atrios to try and stop the Marshal but was obviously too late.
K9 was lured to a transmat and beamed to the Shadow's space station while the Doctor and Romana used the Key (with a dummy segment which is deteriorating rapidly) to trap the Marshal's ship and Mentalis the Supercomputer is a slowly growing time loop to stop them blowing up the planets and everyone on them.
Merak had a (very weird) fall and ended up getting transported to the Shadow's space station too, and Astra gained access to the TARDIS with the Doctor and Romana, but the Doctor has seen the control device stuck to her neck, and he and Romana are about to head off in search of the Shadow's space station.
That was pretty much it. The pace is fairly pedestrian, really, strolling along and feeling very much like an interim between the Football Results and 'The Generation Game'. In fact, it reminds me a little of 'Sapphire And Steel', Joanna Lumley being pretty much a blonde Mary Tamm, and David McCallum - well, not remotely like Tom Baker - which I guess shouldn't surprise me that much because that TV series first aired less than 6 months after this season ended and followed two incredibly smart, almost omnipotent aliens (for want of a better word) as they sorted out problems with time. Perhaps I'll start watching that as an interim to Doctor Who - we'll have to see.
The Armageddon Factor: Part Five (17/02/19)
Well, that episode was a bit weird! The Doctor randomly let Romana go off alone with Astra without telling her that Astra was under the Shadow's control, so she ended up getting captured and tortured by him!
Meanwhile, K9 was also put under the Shadow's power and was used to track the Doctor who fell down one of those holes that Merak fell down.
This is where it got really odd. While down there, the Doctor followed a distress signal sent by a strangely attractive bloke with a strong Cockney accent called Drax, who's another Time Lord (an engineer, and responsible for creating Mentalis - under duress, apparently) who studied with the Doctor on Gallifrey, went rogue, and knows him as Theta Sigma! There was a bit of strangeness reminiscent of 'The Claws Of Axos' with lots of hallucinations and doppelgangers as the Doctor wandered through the bowels of the Third Planet (which really looks like a space station). The Doctor twigged that the Shadow had bribed Drax to betray him in order to get the rest of the Key To Time from the TARDIS, and for a bit it looked like the Doctor had persuaded Drax to help him.
K9 had a cool scene handing the Doctor an ultimatum from the Shadow, but only succeeded in getting koshed and freed from the Shadow's control. He helped Drax build a ray gun while the Doctor confronted the Shadow who sent the Doctor to the TARDIS with one of his Mutes in order to fetch the rest of the Key, or he'd kill Romana; at which point Drax turned up and shot the Doctor!
Some odd twists this week, and it's interesting now the story's coming to a head. It was interesting meeting another renegade Time Lord, even if I don't know what to make of him, and I have an inkling as to what the final segment of the Key is. It would have been cool to have had K9 evil for a bit longer but, on the whole, this episode was pretty good. Looking forward to the series finale next week!
The Armageddon Factor: Part Six (24/02/19)
Well, that was an okay conclusion. Princess Astra turned out to be the Sixth Segment (as I thought) and the Shadow turned her into a crystal to complete the Key. The Doctor and Romana legged it with the segments, with Drax's help stopped Mentalis from destroying everything, faced off against the Black Guardian, and now have a randomiser hooked into the TARDIS to stop the Black Guardian from hunting them down to exact revenge on them for disbursing the Key.
There was some fun with the Doctor and Drax, miniaturised by Drax's ray gun and hiding in K9 to infiltrate the Shadow's lair. But I'm wondering what the quest was all about. They constructed the Key out of its segments but disbursed it before anyone could do anything with it! I thought the White Guardian needed it to reset the Universe or something before Bad Things happened? Granted, it was nice that Astra was reconstituted and reunited with Merak, but it seems odd that the ending wasn't clearer.
That said, I'm quite pleased that this Randomiser has been introduced; having no control over the TARDIS should make the stories a bit more exciting. I've quite warmed to Romana now and I'm looking forward to seeing how she develops, since this story didn't see her doing particularly much. She's got a lot of potential, but I do think they need to write for her a little better as Mary is a great actress and shines when she's given something good, but too often has been left standing around.
I think the writers need to put the ante up, too, since there's been precious little jeopardy this series. That, in part, has a lot to do with Tom's lacklustre portrayal but, if the writing was a bit more cohesive and the stories a little better structured, he might have to be more focused on his acting and less on being flippant and goofing around. I think it's time he left, really. Maybe Romana could take over! I guess we'll see how the show develops this Autumn, but currently I hope the next series will be Tom Baker's last. Until then...
It's Season Fifteen all over again, with the money having run out and the 'big finale' in this case entirely confined to studio, but without even the vaguely exciting twists and turns of its immediate predecessor to prop it up. Sure, there are some nice ideas, and the performances are generally okay, but the story itself is just dull, the pacing is glacial in parts and - again - it looks even cheaper than normal. I'm surprised your response to it was so positive, to be honest.
ReplyDeleteTo be perfectly frank, so am I! I can only assume that watching the episodes once a week worked in the story's favour somehow as it vies with 'The Ribos Operation' as worst story of the season! It's a pretty lame series overall, to be honest. In my head, it's listed as:
DeleteThe Ribos Operation: Dull as fuck
The Pirate Planet: Should have been better
The Stones Of Blood: Much better
The Androids Of Tara: Looks pretty
The Power Of Kroll: Much, much better
The Armageddon Factor: Cheap-looking, padded and bland
Another explanation might be that I'd become so inured by the show, and Tom's performance in particular (I think I bitch about him more this season than any other), that ennui had set in and I was judging it comparatively. On the other hand, I've always kept in my mind what popular culture was like when each story aired, particularly in the 70s, and I'm a big fan of the Punk era and the grunginess of some TV shows and films from the late 70s (viewed in this way, Season 17 is comparative to Season 7 in its grittiness, but I'm getting ahead of myself) so it may be that I saw the sets and effects less as cheap and more fitting for a story set during a nuclear war.
Or maybe it's my optimism forcing its way through. Maybe it didn't opt out after all!