Nightmare of Eden

Four Episodes
Aired between 24th November 1979 and 15th December 1979

Written by Bob Baker
Produced by Graham Williams
Directed by Alan Bromley and Graham Williams (See the Trivia)


Synopsis

A huge space liner, Empress, manages to "crash" into another, smaller spacecraft, Hecate, melding both together during matter transmission.

As the crews try to sort it out and "detangle" the ships, the Doctor offers his help.

We're introduced to the crew and passengers throughout - Captain Rigg of the Empress has a first officer who's hooked on a particularly addictive drug called  Vraxoin.  Then there's a scientific crew collecting samples of planets and species in a Continuous Event Transmuter (CET) machine. The Hecate is captained by a single pilot called Dymond.

As the Doctor tries to help Rigg and Dymond untangle the ships, they begin finding strange swamp creatures within the liner, and discover that Vraxoin is much more of a problem on the ship than what it initially looked like.

Everything begins pointing back to the CET machine and Tryst, the eccentric German scientist who created it.

The CET machine is unstable and where it normally puts up film of the recreated portions of alien planets, the mangled ships make the process unstable, allowing things from the digital Polaroids to move out into the ship and vice versa.

On the CET data for Eden, the Doctor and Romana find a member of Tryst's crew, called Stott.  He turns out to be a space drug enforcement officer who was trying to get to the bottom of drug running.  He was left on the planet.

As the Doctor and Romana get closer to the truth, the space customs officers turn up and try to bust the Doctor for possession on Vraxoin.

They give them the slip and through all the dodging and hiding, they discover two key things, the Mandrels turn into Vraxoin when they die (and are clearly the source of the drug) and Tryst has sold out, becoming a drug runner to pay for his expeditions.  He seemingly trapped the mandrils in the CET machine to transport them without them being detected, then to convert them to Vraxoin at a later point.

The Doctor ultimately saves the day by leading the Mandrils back into the CET machine using his dog whistle like the pied piper.

Tryst and Dymond detangle the ships and try to make a get away,

but the Doctor turns the machine on them, trapping them in the machine so that the Customs and Excise Police can arrest them.

Trivia

• Bob Baker and Dave Martin wrote a few Doctor Who stories over the years, but Dave Martin said he'd finally had enough of it.  Bob Baker therefore submitted a speculative script on his own and it got picked up

• As it happened, this would be the last Doctor Who story that Bob Baker did 

• Vraxoin was originally called Xyp or "Zip" but Llala Ward petitioned to change the name so taking drugs wasn't as appealing to kids 

• Director Alan Bromley was chosen for this story.  He'd not done one since the Time Warrior, and it was quickly discovered that he didn't gel with the new production team and cast. Bromley was meticulous in how he wanted lines saying, and refused all advice given to him.  Relationships between Tom Baker and him became volatile, and everyone was growing to hate the production.  It got so bad that Graham Williams had to step in - it's unclear on if Bromley quit or if he was sacked, but Williams ended up completing the story 

• The guy who plays Tryst supposedly came up with the stupid German accent during rehearsal in order to relieve some of the tension.

• After the story was done, the crew all had t-shirts printed with the Doctor's line: "I'm relieved the Nightmare is Over"

The Review

Doctor Who has always been good at social commentary, but I doubt if anyone thought it was brave enough to tackle such touchy subject as drug abuse.  This was seven years before Grange Hill even dared to tread in the same area. You could say the Talons of Weng-Chiang did this, but hardly on the same scale.

Refreshingly enough, this story hasn't got all that much humour in it (okay, okay, except the "Oh my Everything" scene).  But really, it's only in there as much as say, the Robots of Death.  I don't mind that at all. 

Nightmare of Eden is a complex story, with multiple things going on - the ship crash, the drugs, the Mandril's and the Stott arcs all to keep track of.  Whilst that sounds great, I think that it does mean that the story is diluted to give attention to each aspect.  It would work great in a novel, because you just make the novel bigger, but in a TV show when you're restricted on time, it means that the story becomes wide and shallow as opposed to narrow and deep. 

Ultimately, that's how I'd describe Nightmare of Eden, wide an shallow.  Good ideas are there, but drown ironically in a lot of corridor chasing and messing around with blurred corridors.  The pacing is slow and by episode 3, I'd got a little bored of it all.  I didn't really care about Stott at all, although again, it's nice to see Doctor Who taking an adult approach by inferring that him and Della were lovers.

Carnival of Monsters which is a similar problem is much more dynamic because it thrusts the Doctor and Jo into the machine, forcing them to confront and deal with the monsters. This story doesn't do that and so you don't get the buy in as much from the audience.  Yes, the Mandrills slaughter a load of passengers, but as Rigg says, they're only economy class.  To us, they don't even have names, so why should we care?

This was a decent attempt at a serious issue, but the slow pacing and limited budget on the Mandrils just bring this down a little and make it somewhat of a chore to watch.  There have been similar stories that have gone before, and they were better told.  Big shame.

Rating

6 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

4 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• Carnival of Monsters

• The Robots of Death

• Terror of the Vervoids (Trial of a Time lord Part 3)

The Creature From the Pit

Four Episodes
Aired between 27th October 1979 and 17th November 1979

Written by David Fisher
Produced by Graham Williams
Directed by Christopher Barry

Synopsis

The Doctor and Romana intercept a distress signal that leads them to a jungle planet.

Once there, they find the remains of a strange stone egg that seems to be the source of the signal. Before they can investigate it fully, they're taken prisoner and hoisted back to the local's ruler: Adrastra.  They say that no one is allowed in that region on pain of death.

On their way to Adrastra, the column is attacked and Romana is kidnapped by bandits who are after metal.  She quickly gets the better of them with the help of K9 and goes off to find the Doctor.

The Doctor meanwhile meets Adrastra and tells her some of the things he's found out about the egg. Adrastra decides to spare the Doctors life, but takes him to "The Pit" where she throws one of her engineers down for being incompetent.

Romana mounts a rescue attempt but K9 is disabled by Wolf Weeds and the Doctor throws himself down the pit.

Whilst in the darkness, the Doctor finds an old astronomer called Organon, and also finds out there's a great whacking green blob down there too.

Most people (including Adrastra) think that the creature is trying to kill people, but it doesn't kill the Doctor.

Adrastra takes Romana to interrogate her about the secrets of the egg, and comes to realise that she can use her and K9 to destroy the creature.  She heads off into the tunnels of the pit to find it and kill it.

The bandits meanwhile find out that Adrastra will be gone and they break into her palace to steal her metal.  They end up finding a strange plate that takes over their minds and they go into the tunnels with it.  It turns out that the disk is a communications device that the creature (really called Erato) needs to talk.

It isn't hostile, it came to the planet to offer a trade agreement vegetation in return for metal.  Unfortunately, it met Adrastra who wanted to keep her monopoly of metal and so she stole its communicator and kept it prisoner in the pit for years.

Adrastra is killed as the truth comes out, and the people intend to trade with Erato for metal, but he tells them that the egg was his ship and it was sending out a signal to his people and he expects mass destruction to be close at hand.

Erato and the Doctor soon discover that Erato's people have sent a neutron star to crash into the jungle planet.  They come up with a plan to encapsulate the star in a shield and neutralise the threat which they do.

Organon is made ruler and a trade agreement between them and Erato is drawn up.

Trivia

• This was actually the first story produced with Llala Ward taking the role as Romana.  You can see that her dress was more akin to Mary Tamm's version of the Character and to a degree, some of her lines too.  It didn't take long for Llala to put her stamp on things though

• This was Christopher Barry's final Doctor Who, and in part it was because he found both Tom Baker and Llala Ward difficult to work with (arguing about their lines etc.)  

• In 1979, it was an incredibly bold decision to try and do a protoplasm monster and get it right. They'd tried something like it before with the Ogron Eater (see Frontier in Space) with disastrous results, but for some reason it was decided not to use actual slime and CSO, they wanted a practical effect.  The creature was made and came on set to roars of laughter as it looked more like a giant *cough* thingy, than Alpha Centauri ever did!  The effects team were forced to work into the night to change its appearance and add some more tentacles on before filming resumed

• John Leeson, the immortal voice of K9 who spent his rehersal days scurrying about on all fours, was unavailable for this series.  David Brierley stepped into the slot and gave K9 a more human approach to things, like it or not.

The Review

Looking on the Creature from the Pit for the first time, I can see a glimmer of something magical inside it, trying to get out.  If you look at the film sequences of the TARDIS landing in the Jungle and Tom Baker, covered in sweat as he moves through the tropical jungle (or under very hot studio lights), or when he falls down the pit and is looking around with only a lit match, there's a very creepy air to it. The scene's promise much in the way that the dark streets of Victorian London did for Talons of Weng-Chiang.

Indeed, there's more than just a bit of good lighting and some jungle scenery.  We get the added bonus of the story trying to flip the script and show us a good guy that's made out to be a bad guy.  It's been done before but not really enough to say it's cliche. In many ways this story is a serious drama, especially judging by Karela's bid to take the metal for herself at the end, as well as the body count and Adrastra's effective on screen "execution".

The thing that lets the side down is that because it's in the era of Graham Williams and Douglas Adams (and to an extent, in the middle of Tom Baker's disillusionment with the series), it can't fulfil the things it's trying to be.  For a lot of it, we get cheap jokes and one liners, which do work at times, but...here's the thing....

For many stories, this unceasing wisecracking has been somewhat of a detraction from the drama and The Creature From the Pit is no exception, but at least this story replaces that lost drama with something.  Instead of serious horror, we get quirky characters which is Douglas Adams' forte.  I mean, if you remove the Doctor, Romana and K9, this could easily have been written by Terry Pratchett.  The characters of Organon the wittering astrologer, or the bumbling primitive's who come up with hair brained plans to raid Adrastra's palace and can easily be talked out of killing Romana are all spectacular in their own way, but they're not in the least bit adding to the drama.

It's not without it's own appeal, but even with the presence of interesting characters, I find myself mourning this story for what it could have been if it had been done in the new series, with actual CGI effects for the creature and a little less silliness.

Rating

7 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

6 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Ambassadors of Death 

• Planet of the Daleks

• Planet of Evil 

• The Androids of TARA

• State of Decay

City of Death

Four Episodes
Aired between 29th September 1979 and 20th October 1979

Written by David Agnew
Produced by Graham Williams
Directed by Michael Hayes

Synopsis

The Doctor and Romana are on holiday in present day France.  As they take in the sites,

they are oblivious to clandestine experiments going on in the basement of Count Carlos Scarlioni.

The count is working with a scientist on a futuristic machine, but the scientist, Professor Kerensky, is unhappy because of the sheer amount of money it will take to develop the work that the Count has laid out for him.  Scarlioni says it won't be a problem at all and hands him three million franks.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Romana visit the louvre and experience strange time distortions that cause the Doctor to faint. As he comes to, he notices an alien bracelet on a woman that was suspiciously hanging around the Mona Lisa and with some slight of hand, he takes the bracelet.

He and Romana leave and go to a cafe to examine the bracelet, but are followed, first by a detective called Duggan, then by thugs who take all three of them at gunpoint to Scarlioni's mansion. The woman with the bracelet was Scarlioni's wife.

Through investigation, the Doctor, Romana and Duggan find out that Scarlioni somehow has six Mona Lisa's in his Chateau and is about to steal a seventh. 

The Doctor goes back in time to 1505 to visit Leonardo Da Vinci, but he's not home. 

He does get captured by a guard however and the guard's captain turns out to be Carlos Scarlioni! 

The Doctor figures out that Scarlioni is an alien and convinced Leonardo to paint multiple Mona Lisa's.  In the future, he will then steal the Mona Lisa and use its absence as a way to sell the copies and make a fortune.

The Doctor manages to escape and writes on the blank canvas' "this is a fake".

Meanwhile, back in 1979, Romana and Duggan try to stop the Countess from stealing the Mona Lisa but fail and get captured.  Scarlioni forces Romana to complete his experiment to transport himself back through time.  He explains that he is really an alien called Scaroth of a race called the Jaggeroth, and says that there are many copies of him scattered throughout time.

He's actually one alien, that split when his ship (that landed on pre-historic earth) exploded as he entered the time vortex.  He's been forced to guide humanity in its development throughout history until it was advanced enough to get to the level of tech capable of building the machine.

He goes back in time to warn himself not to start the ships engine, but the Doctor, Romana and Duggan travel back to pre-historic earth and stop him long enough for the ship to detonate.

Scaroth returns to the chateau in 1979 but his own henchman butler sees his true form and panics, destroying the equipment and therefore killing him.  The chateau sets afire and the threat is ended, leaving the Doctor, Romana and Duggan to enjoy the rest of the sights of Paris like the Eiffel Tower.

Trivia

• This was the first Doctor Who story to be filmed outside of the UK

• David Fisher, the man who was supposed to write a story for this slot, was going through a divorce at the time, and couldn't find the time to get the work done.  Time was very tight and the popular story goes that Graham Williams locked Douglas Adams in a hotel room for a weekend with a typewriter and a bottle of gin and wouldn't let him leave until came up with the scripts.  Because of this, the story is credited to David Agnew (a pseudonym because it wasn't allowed for the script editor to commission his own work)

• The original script called for the Countess to use the bracelet to rig the roulette wheels at casinos to pay for Scarlioni's experiments, but Williams thought it gave a bad impression to kids

• Douglas Adams pilfered his own story and used parts of it in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

• Due to opposing TV channel - ITV going on strike, this story received huge ratings and was the highest of Doctor Who's run at 16.1 million people tuning in for episode 4.

• During this story's run, Doctor Who weekly was first published by Marvel Comics.  It continues to this day as Doctor Who magazine and has been a stalwart of the show, even in the dark times during the series' cancellation

• Douglas Adams' novel of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was also published during this story's run

• John Cleese agreed to appear in the show as returning a favour to Tom Baker

The Review

Despite the rave fan reviews that this story gets, and despite the clever and witty things it does, I was preparing to sit down and give City of Death a pretty scathing review. 

Those of you who have been reading the reviews in order so far will see that from the start of the previous season (see The Ribos Operation), the show had been developing more and more of its comedy routines.  As fantastic a writer as he was, with the appointment of Douglas Adams as Script Editor, this started to grate on me, as more and more cheap gags found their way into the stories.  Now, I'm not a killjoy or a dementor, I love the jokes, but they're either A) in stories that have a serious tone and therefore stand out like a sore thumb, or B) the funny story is placed within a serious dramatic plot line and therefore detracts from the bigger plot and makes the characters look like morons.  It was getting to the point where it just didn't feel like the same show (then again, perhaps that was what they were going for).

In that context, City of Death is one to absolutely dread because it's something Douglas Adams has been fully unleashed upon, and so you just know that there's going to be laugh a minute gags and farces galore.  And that's what it is...except...

Douglas Adams is a genius when it comes to comedy writing.  Unlike the rest of the stories where he shoehorned his humour into someone else's story, I found that City of Death's complex plot is very complimentary to the humour it displays.  It feels right.  It feels like a Douglas Adams story, where the humor is a payoff because the characters are shown to be capable of handling the complexities of it all.  Well, except Duggan, but it's an hilarious twist to see his thuggish ways being the thing that saves the universe.

It sound hypocritical, but when you lift City of Death out of the Doctor Who continuum and watch it without a regard to what is coming before or after, then it is an absolutely fantastic story, worthy of all the praise.  It's mind boggling to think that it was put together and scripted within a weekend, because it's stood the test of time. It could be remade today with modern effects and still be one of the best stories produced.  It is a high ranking story, without doubt, and a must for anyone new to Doctor Who, but be warned that when you put it beside the other non-Douglas Adams stories, you're in for quite a shock.

Rating

10 out of 10!

Rewatchability Factor

8 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Reign of Terror

• The Massacre 

• Vincent and the Doctor (Doctor Who, Series 5)

Destiny of the Daleks

Four episodes
Aired between 1st September 1979 and 29th September 1979

Written by Terry Nation
Produced by Graham Williams
Directed by Ken Grieve

Synopsis

As the Doctor treats K9 for Laryngitis (*shrug*), Romana decides that she wants to regenerate.  She "tries" multiple faces on before deciding to become the spitting image of Princess Astra (See The Armageddon Factor).

They land on Skaro and soon discover that the Daleks have returned to the site of the long-abandoned Kaled bunker and are using slaves to dig underground in order to find their creator, Davros.

An enemy race called the Movellans arrive, trying to work out the Daleks plans and stop them.

The Doctor and Romana team up with them and soon discover that the Movellans and Daleks are locked in an inter-stellar battle that's being going on for years.  Their battle computers are so finely tuned that they anticipate each others moves and are now at a stalemate.  The Daleks hope that by resurrecting Davros, he will be able to give them the edge in the war.

Whilst the Doctor works with the Movellans, he discovers that they are a race of robots and they too have ideas of galactic conquest.

In a pre-emptive strike, Davros sends suicide Daleks with bombs strapped to them so they can blow up the Movellan ship.

The Doctor foils this plan by blowing them up early.

The slaves rebel and storm the Movellan ship, shutting down all the robots except their leader, who is stopped from detonating a bomb at the last second by Romana.

Davros is imprisoned by the slaves on board the Movellan ship which they will use to get back to civilisation.

The Doctor and Romana will simply return to the TARDIS and have more adventures.

Trivia

• Douglas Adams came on-board officially as Script editor.  He wanted new and fresh writers, but as he asked around, it became obvious that a lot of people didn't know how to write well for Doctor Who.  He reluctantly began to ask around old writers, and Terry Nation was one of them.

• This was the last story Terry Nation would write for Doctor Who and it's speculated that Douglas Adams had to do a lot of work to get it ready for broadcast. 

• At the end of The Armageddon Factor, Mary Tamm jokingly said why not ask Lala Ward to step in.  Graham Williams did and she slipped into Romana's shoes.  Mary Tamm said later that she would have happily done a regeneration scene, but she was never asked.

• One of the costumes Romana changes into is Zilda from Robots of Death

• Romana's costume was designed to be identical to the Doctor's but in different colours.

• The actor who played Tyssan was partially deaf, but could lip read quite well

• This story was the first time ever that "Steady cam" rig was used in the BBC.

Review

My feelings on The Destiny of the Daleks can be summed up in one short phrase: "....but the Dalek's aren't robots".

If you believe some of the guides I've read, then Douglas Adams' original ideas revolved around a planet of the dead (where the conversations about "Zombies" come in), but as you can see, he got Terry Nation and so he got to do a Dalek story.  After the success of Genesis of the Daleks, this is no bad thing, but by this time even Terry Nation isn't clear on what's happening with the Daleks anymore and decides to throw all of his continuity out of the window by suggesting that the Daleks are robots.

"But, they don't say that, they even mention it's the battle computer that's the logical thinker"

Yes, but the Doctor and even Davros himself use the line, ANOTHER race of robots when referring to the Movellans.  Davros talks about re-programming (could be genetic, but come on).

"Is it so bad?" 

Yes, yes it is, because it undermines all the good work that's gone before.  At the bottom line, any writer can introduce ANY concept they want to in a story, without even justifying it, but to do so pulls the viewer out of the rich world you've created and cheapens the integrity of the story.  In other words it undermines all the sacrifices characters have made and the angst they went through.

There's no finer example of just that in Romana's regeneration.  Why can she regenerate at will?  If we accept that she can, then why are we even worried about the Doctor succeeding or losing at all.  Don't worry, he can just will a regeneration up and he'll be fine.  And they only get 13, so Romana's lost almost a quarter of her life, trying to find a face that suits her.

As a fan, you can't wish it away or pretend it didn't happen, you just have to endure it, much like this story....but....as an abstract concept, two armies locked in an impasse vying for an edge is good.  The Doctor visiting a world of "Zombies" is good.  It's just all the continuity that gets in the way.

Rating

4 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

4 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Dominators
• Genesis of the Daleks
• Resurrection of the Daleks

The Armageddon Factor (The Key to Time Part 6)

Six episodes
Aired between 20th January 1979 and 24th February 1979

Written by Bob Baker and David Martin
Produced by Graham Williams
Directed by Michael Hayes

Synopsis
The Doctor and Romana follow the tracer to the last segment of the key to time, which lands them in the middle of a war between two planets - Atrios and Zeos.  They are curiously led to the location of Atrios' princess - Astra, who has been trapped.  The Marshall of Atrios believes they trapped her and intend to kill her.

This leads to a lot of cat and mouse antics until the Doctor ferrets out evidence of a shadowy figure manipulating the war from behind the scenes.

This shadowy figure kidnaps the Princess and Romana ends up teaming up with Astra's love interest, Merak to try and find her.  They eventually find their way to a hidden transmat which goes to the base of this shadow figure (who's coincidentally called "the Shadow").

The Shadow tries to make the Doctor hand over the segments as he works for the Black Guardian, but the Doctor bluffs his way into the TARDIS and gets away.

The group eventually end up on Zeos and discover that everyone on the planet is dead, but a great supercomputer is running everything.  As the Doctor tries to dismantle it, he gets word that the Marshall is on his way in a warship to blow Zeos up.

 The computer goes into self destruct mode and the Doctor is forced to jury-rig a fake sixth segment and use the key to place Zeos and the Marshall in a time loop so the solar system isn't destroyed.

Once the threat is stalled, they all go back to the Shadow's base to find the sixth segment.  K9 gets separated and is brainwashed, and Romana is captured.  The Doctor looks around and finds another Time Lord, Drax, who was forced to install the Zeon computer.  He agrees to help the Doctor and constructs a shrinking machine.

The evil K9 is sent to capture the Doctor, and the Shadow finally gains access to the key to time.  He prepares to use it for evil purposes, but the Doctor (having escaped again) and Drax, manage to interfere and steal back to the key.  They discover in the process that Princess Astra herself is the real sixth segment of the key, and they use her to restore order.

The Doctor disarms the Zeon self destruct mechanism in time and the Marshall's weapons are deflected to the Shadows ship, blowing it up.

Drax is taken back to Atrios and K9, Romana and the Doctor all go away.  All that's left is the full key.  The Black Guardian turns up, disguised as the White Guardian and asks for the key, but the Doctor realises the ruse as he has no regard for Astra being trapped in it, therefore, the Doctor snaps the tracer and scatters the key away.

Astra re-appears on Atrios and is reunited with Merak, and the Doctor and Romana escape in the TARDIS thanks to the Doctor's installation of a randomiser switch.

Trivia

• During the filming of this serial, Tom Baker became more and more vocal about his anger towards the production of the show, and the fact that his ideas weren't being taken seriously. This may have been a contributing factor to Graham Williams beginning to decide that he'd had enough.  Nevertheless, he met with Tom to hear out his opinions but they were outlandish and impractical so he had very little impetus to help Tom out.

• The Randomiser wasn't a random decision at all.  Graham Williams realised that a lot of the tension of the show and the mystery would be cut out if the Doctor could travel anywhere and anywhen.  To get around this, he put in the randomiser to make sure that the mystery remained

• This was Mary Tamm's last Doctor Who story.  As mentioned before, her decision to leave was due to the fact that she felt the character had become quite generic and the format required her to dumb down Romana to help the audience understand what was happening which wasn't the character she had been sold.  

The Review

The Armageddon Factor shares a significant point of a lot of successful Doctor Who stories; it begins with a setup of a mystery.  The war torn world in civil war with a trapped woman behind an immovable obstacle is just as successful as being dropped onto a sand hopper, locating a local village that has strange people, or finding a deserted London that's actually infested with Daleks.

Indeed, the setup, whilst quite camp in places, is a distinct reminder of the Kaled / Thaal war from Genesis of the Daleks and promises a good analogy about the horrors of nuclear war.

Further from that, the second episode begins to develop an interesting plot twist by indicating that the Marshall is being dominated by an evil force.  This is as insidious as the War Games, and offer much promise.  From here though, alas, things begin to go downhill rapidly.  There's a strong strain of farce that runs through the story including the first two episodes in places, and the middle very quickly sags into a "run around corridors" block of filler.

The Shadow is a wonderful acolyte to a primal evil force at first, but quickly proves to be just another inept bond villain and he's got stiff competition for the most annoying character with Cockney Drax and Shapp (and the less said about his portrayal of getting shot, the better!).  At least John Woodvine is competent, but the set and script aren't great.

And the ending, the ending just doesn't make sense.  The Doctor determines that the White Guardian isn't the White Guardian because he doesn't care about Astra, but have you ever thought about the greater good?  And he breaks the tracker and scatters thew key, but there's no indication that the actual White Guardian has used it.

The Armageddon Factor has much potential but I'm sorry to say that it never really gets used and provides a boring slog of six drawn out episodes until it collapses exhausted at the end of the series, not giving anyone much satisfaction.

Rating

3 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

2 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Myth Makers
• The War Games
• Frontier in Space
• Genesis of the Daleks
• Warriors of the Deep
• Battlefield

The Power of Kroll (The Key to Time Part 5)

Four episodes
Aired between 23rd December 1978 and 13th January 1979

Written by Robert Holmes
Produced by Graham Williams (actually it was John Nathan-Turner but he's unaccredited)
Directed by Norman Stewart

Synopsis

The Doctor and Romana arrive on the third moon of Delta Magna, a swamp planet.

They are once again split up as The Doctor is captured by a bunch of humans that are refining chemicals from the planet.

Romana is captured by a bunch of green skinned natives referred to by the humans as "Swampies".

The Doctor is told by the humans that their refinery is in danger as the Swampies attack it, and are helped by the notorious arms dealer - Rohm Dutt to try and drive off the humans from the moon.

The Doctor escapes the refinery and manages to rescue Romana, just as the Swampies try to sacrifice her to their god, Kroll.

They are captured again and throughout their captivity, they discover that Kroll is a giant squid that has swallowed the Swmapies holy symbol and grown enormous.  Now, it wakes up every few hundred years and feeds.

The high priest believes that Kroll is punishing them for consorting with Rohm Dutt and does what he can to repent, by tying them up to a bed with vines that shrink in the sunlight, thereby making it like a rack.

The Doctor frees them all by using an ultra high pitched scream to shatter the window above them and let rain wet the vines, allowing them to escape.

Meanwhile, the refinery staff squabble amongst themselves until their leader lets his racism get the better of him, kills one of his crew and intends to blow up the swampies once and for all.

The Doctor, Romana and Rohm Dutt race to stop the Swampies as they go to storm the refinery but Kroll turns up and kills Rohm Dutt and some of the natives.

They all get to the refinery, just as Kroll returns to attack it.

Many die including the deluded high priest and the refinery leader, before the Doctor touches Kroll with the tracking device for the Key to Time and turns him into the fifth segment!  It turns out that the holy symbol he swallowed was the true segment, and Kroll has reverted back to a tiny squid.

The Doctor and Romana make their way back to the TARDIS and console K9 whom they had to leave behind.

Trivia

• The story was given to Robert Holmes, but with orders to keep it serious and for the monster to be huge. He didn't like it, but that's what he did.

• There were many mess up's on the casting front, as Philip Madoc (the man who played great characters in the Brain of Morbius and the War Games) was due to play the refinery commander, but ended up as a subordinate, and John Leeson, the voice behind K9, was pulled in as one of the crew too.

• Graham Williams was taking a break when this was filmed, and then Production  Unit Manager, John-Nathan Turner, stepped in to fill his shoes, with Barry Letts being asked to keep an eye on them from a distance. 

• It was around this time that Script Editor, Antony Read decided that he'd had enough of the low budgets and Tom Baker's bullying, and so he gave notice.

• The green makeup for the Swampies had to be waterproof, as there were several scenes in the swamps and during rainfall.  After the scenes were shot, the unfortunate actors had to go to a nearby RAF base and get it off with swarfega in the chemical showers; a process that could have been avoided had the necessary solvent that removes the paint been ordered at the same time!

The Review

This would be one of the stories that if it was lost and only existed in stills, would be a true classic.  Just look at the pictures above and you can see that your imagination makes it feel terrifying, just like the 1950's B movie - you can see what they were getting at.

Alas, we do have this story, and the reality is somewhat deflated.  You expect a story about a giant squid to have lots of action, but this just doesn't.  It's boring.

There's a good kind of analogy around man's hubris, drawing parallels with the refinery leader and the high priest stubbornly clinging to their beliefs that ultimately cause their downfall, but we have 90 minutes of it.  Kroll shows up now and again, and we're left to fill the remainder with funny men painted green dancing around, and other men with terrible accents looking to fill the void.

This story tries too hard to be something it's not.  The selling point is the giant squid, but all we get is capture and escapable death trap after capture and escapable death trap.

This could have been so good, and from Robert Holmes, I expected better.

Rating

4 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

5 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• An Unearthly Child
• The Ark
• Fury From the Deep
• Colony in Space
• The Mutants
• The Face of Evil
• The Caves of Androzani