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 

The Androids of Tara (The Key to Time Part 4)

Four Episodes
Aired between 25th November 1978 and 16th December 1978

Written by David Fisher
Produced by Graham Williams
Directed by Michael Hays


Synopsis

The Doctor decides he's fed up of being a pawn in an intergalactic chess match and goes to an Earth-like planet: Tara, to do a spot of fishing, leaving Romana to go off on her own and find the next segment of the Key to Time.

Romana finds the segment relatively easily (it's disguised as a statue), but is captured by Count Grendel, a noble who is seeking to claim the throne of Tara for himself.

He mistakenly believes that Romana is actually a princess on this planet called Strella.  He has both of them locked up when he realises the truth and is going to use an android copy of Romana to try and assassinate the Prince, Reynart as he turns up to lay his claim on the crown.

The Doctor meanwhile is captured by Reynart's men and taken to the Prince.  He is asked to help repair an android copy of the prince that they will use as a diversion for the real Prince to sneak into the throne room and claim the crown.

The Doctor manages to keep Reynart alive, until Grendel storms their hideout and kidnaps the Prince too, injuring him and leaving him to die slowly in his dungeon.

There's lots of back and forth with the Doctor enlisting K9's help to try and rescue Romana and Prince Reynart from Grendel's dungeons, which he ultimately does.

He faces off with Grendel and the two fight with swords until the Doctor bests him.  Count Grendel dives into the moat and swims away into exile, leaving Prince Reynart to claim the kingdom.

The Doctor and Romana recover the segment and go back into the TARDIS with K9.

Trivia

• Let's get the pretty obvious one out of the way.  This story is near enough a remake of the Prisoner of Zenda, just on another planet

• The fishing rod the Doctor used was actually an expensive antique, and it got lost in the water when Tom Baker accidentally dropped it in. The production staff had to go into the lake and get it before anyone knew what had happened to it!

• The ending was supposed to be much grander and have a lot more fighting, but filming was cut short as the location was used as a last minute site for some Middle East peace talks

• The fat guy who delivers a message to the Doctor as a trap, is the same guy who played the original Jabba the Hutt in the scene cut from the original Star Wars movie

• Mary Tamm had ridden horses for thirty years but she refused to do a stunt in this show without a helmet as she didn't know how the horse would react

The Review

Now and again throughout this re-watching of Doctor Who, I come across a story that fills me with dread. I have distantly recalled nightmares of the terrible slog it is to go through the 90+ minutes of pain that are these episodes.  In those instances, I try to be objective and give the story a fair shot as if I were watching it for the first time.  The Androids of Tara was a story I was dreading.

Now that I've watched it and it's fresh in my mind though, it's not as bad as I remember it to be.  It's not in the same league as some of Tom's earlier work, and I can't imagine it getting on many popularity lists, but because this is a remake of a classic, it carries with it some hint of appeal.

The first and most obvious is the humour that Tom Baker has been falling back on more and more as the season progresses.  The line "if you don't stop burning my scarf, you'll have to kill me" is absolute gold, and it's not on it's own.  He does the witty one liners all the way through and this story is fairly camp anyway, so much so that it boarders on farce, so it never feels too out of place.

The plot to assassinate the Prince is a little complex, and it's regrettable that Count Grendel falls back on a Bond-Villain mentality by leaving people alive and in escapable situations for no reason. That's a shame, because as a villain, he is good, charming and charismatic. He has character that we want to see more of, and even has a love interest which is unusual for a Doctor Who  villain.

It wasn't until the back end of episode 3 that things started to get repetitive and dull.  The escape / capture / negotiate schtick all starts around then and drops the intrigue like a lead weight until it ends in a very drawn out swashbuckling sword fight.  Some people like it I guess, but for me Tom Baker isn't Jon Pertwee and it just gets yawn-worthy towards the end.

This story has a few more highlights than the others of this season, but overall I think it's just too long and could do with the ending to episode 4 editing onto the back half of episode 3.

Rating

5 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

5 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

The Reign of Terror

The Crusade

The Massacre 

The Ribos Operation

The Awakening

The Kings Demons

The Stones of Blood (The Key to Time Part 3)

4 Episodes
Aired between 28th October 1978 and 18th November 1978

Written by David Fisher
Produced by Graham Williams
Directed by Darrol Blake

Synopsis

As the Doctor and Romana retrieve the second segment of the Key to Time, the White Guardian issues a reminder to "beware the Black Guardian".  This warning prompts the Doctor to let Romana in on the whole premise, and warns her that the Black Guardian can look and sound like anything or anyone.

They put the ominous threat to one side and find the coordinates for the third segment - it's on Earth. 

Once they arrive, they find themselves in Cornwall, near a section of standing stones known as the nine travellers. 

The stones are of local interest, not only to the archaeologists Professor Amelia Rumford and her colleague, Vivien Fay;

but also to a local sect of druids that seem intent on using the stones to sacrifice animals and worship their deity, a crow god named Cailleach.

Intrigued about the sacrifices, the Doctor investigates the druids and nearly gets himself sacrificed,

whilst Romana is drawn to a cliff edge by someone who looks just like the Doctor.  Once they reunite, they discover that the myth of the moving stones is real after all, and that the stones have moved to Boscombe hall and killed the druids.  It becomes apparent that the stones are actually silicone based life forms that feed on blood and whomever is controlling them, has the third segment of the key. 

As they investigate, Romana stumbles upon the revelation that Vivien Fey is in fact behind the druid sacrifices, but she is transported into hyperspace before she can tell anyone. 

The Doctor too discovers that Vivien Fey is not human, and has been hanging around the area for 4,000 years, protecting the circle of stones.  He finds a way into a mysterious ship in hyperspace via the use of a ray gun he builds and he eventually frees Romana,

along with a set of judicial robots that are very eager to charge him with a crime and kill him.

The Doctor is forced to conduct a trial for his own life, and using his wits, manages to determine that the ship in hyperspace is a prison ship that was sent to find and bring the criminal: Cessair of Diplos to justice. 

The problem is that the justice robots have no way of knowing who Cessair is, but the Doctor helps them by getting them to read Vivien's mind as she is knocked unconscious.

The robots sentence Cessair to an eternity of imprisonment and turn her into a stone,

but not before the Doctor can retrieve the Seal of Diplos (the item she stole to warrant charges against her in the first place). 

The Doctor escapes his own punishment by banishing the robots back into hyperspace and together, he and Romana return to the TARDIS with the third segment.

Trivia

• This is the one hundredth Doctor Who story! To mark the occasion, there was a scene proposed where Romana brings out a cake for the Doctor's 751st birthday, and gets him a present of a brand new scarf, but Graham Williams forbid it, so it was never shot.

• The exterior shots were recorded on Video Tape, just like The Sontaran Experiment, this was purely a Director's choice

• Tom Baker was supposed to lead Romana to the cliff edge at the end of episode 1, but he refused, stating that it would frighten the kids too much

• In the outdoor scenes, the voice for K9 was fed through a two way radio, with John Leeson talking from the confines of a nearby van.  On breaks, Tom would surprise onlookers by doing the Times Crossword as he always did, but in partnership with his trusty robot dog, who's voice remained in character during the process!

• It was around this time that Mary Tamm started to become weary of the role of Romana.  What at the start promised to be an interesting foil for the Doctor had been diluted down to a run-of-the-mill companion who asked questions that should be obvious to her and was frequently locked up, left behind or put into perilous situations (this story being a definite case in point).

The Review

Given that this is Doctor Who's 100th story, it seems fitting that we get a yarn that is in the groove of what made it so popular in the late seventies: gothic horror.  Believe it or not, this is the last almost-gothic story of Doctor Who (at least until 1988 if you count Ghostlight).

The story begins well, setting up some decidedly creepy threads of sacrifice, and dark pagan gods on the moors of England.  Professor Amelia Rumford looks like a good stand in for Mr Scarman from Pyramids of Mars, and all seems to be going well...but... a lot of these story lines are totally abandoned in favour of something far less exciting or interesting.

As early as the end of episode 2, we are thrust into a totally new premise of a secret prison ship in hyperspace, and an alien convict. Aside from the ship itself, the effects are pretty awful, enough for you to find it hard to suspend your disbelief.  For example, there's a reason why monsters are humanoid looking (beyond people fitting into the costumes).  It's because we need something to identify.  Even in the works of HP Lovecraft, monsters have identifiable features such as tentacles, eyes and mouths. The reviews I have read for this episode have speculated that even with a million pound budget, and Stanley Kubric directing this story, he would be very hard pressed to make the stones scary at all.  And with the exception of the small cut scene of some campers getting killed, I have to agree.  The stones look cumbersome and there's nothing identifiable as scary about them. They look like the polystyrene they are.  And it doesn't get better with Vivien Fay either. 

Despite the flaws, I want to like this story, but there's too many obstacles to me doing that.  Even if you put the effects aside (which I generally do), the warning from the Guardian is redundant (it could be the Black Guardian that pushed Romana off the cliff, but the story makes it out like it was Vivien Fay instead), and there's no reasoning as to why an escaped convict such as herself would stick around in the area of the stones when she could tootle off anywhere in the world and be scott free.  She's been there for 4,000 years.  She could have shaped nations, ruled empires...but she decides to look after a bunch of stones instead.

This story has much to lament, because the threads it set up could have lead to one of the better gothic stories in the entire run of Doctor Who, but as it is, it feels like two half stories, bungled together, purely as a backdrop for Tom Baker to be larking about shouting at K9 and having Mary Tamm ask all the dumb companion questions.  It could have been great, but instead it's "meh" at best.

Rating

5 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

5 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Daemons 

• Pyramids of Mars

• The Hand of Fear

• The Image of the Fendahl

• Any of the Trial of a Time Lord stories

• The Pandorica Opens (Doctor Who, Series 5)

The Pirate Planet (Key to Time Part 2)

4 Episodes
Aired between 30th September 1978 and 21st October 1978

Written by Douglas Adams
Produced by Graham Williams
Directed by Pennant Roberts

Synopsis

The Doctor and Romana are looking for the second segment of the key to time.  Using their trusty detector, they discover that the segment is on the desolate planet of Calufrax, but when they travel there, they inexplicably find themselves on a different planet.

The TARDIS dematerialises with some difficulty, and the Doctor finds that they're in the city of a planet called Zanak.  This city happens to have incredibly rare or valuable minerals just abandoned on the footpaths, a by-product of the "new golden age of prosperity" that the Captain, the city's leader declares.

The Doctor and Romana begin investigating, and soon discover that the Captain is a cyborg pirate captain that runs the planet from a large control tower known as the "Bridge" .

From this bridge, the Captain can teleport the planet across the universe and swallow other planets, mining their surfaces from within the core of Zanak.  The people are mostly ignorant of this, except for a small bunch of awakened telepaths known as the Mentiads.

The Doctor and Romana try to help these telepaths stop the Captain, and in doing so, learn that the true evil on this planet isn't the Captain, but his trusty nurse, who is a projection of a former evil queen of Zanak known as Xanxia,

 Her real body is trapped in a time bending field that slows down the last seconds of her life, making her effectively immortal.

Finally, the heroes work with the Mentiads to stop Zanak from materialising around Earth, and convince the Captain to try and stop Xanxia.  Whilst he fails and is killed by the evil queen, his sacrifice does allow the group to blow up the bridge and destroy her.

In the end, it turns out that the second segment of the Key to Time is the actual planet of Calufrax.  It is recovered from being shot off into the time vortex when the bridge was destroyed, and the Doctor and Romana can go on their way.

Trivia

• Okay, let's do the most obvious.  Douglas Adams is perhaps best known for Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.  The story began originally as a radio play.  Adams managed to sell the story to the BBC in the middle of writing this story, and worked on both things at the same time.

• This was his first involvement in the show, and his original plot was far more complicated than what was shown

• As noted in The Ribos Operation, Tom Baker had a very obvious cut on his lip from a dog bite.  The scene where he bangs his lip on the console was put in to explain that.  You wouldn't have known otherwise, would you?

• Something you might not know, is that following Tom Baker's failed side project to get a movie - Doctor Who and Scratchman, he actually worked on another idea with Douglas Adams.  Tom loved Cricket and he was a Team Captain of a local side, and the plans were to bring the sport into the story in a big way (see all of the Fifth Doctor's episodes).  This new story was to be called Doctor Who and the Krikketmen.  Just as well it didn't get made

• Douglas Adams had some eccentric things that he "liked".  One was a love of towels, which made it into Hitchhikers, but another was Parrots, as can be seen by the Polyphase Avitron

The Review
One of the great things about Tom Baker's run on Doctor Who is his sense of humour.  The timing that Tom Baker has is impeccable, and that is an aspect that can be exploited in great ways by a comedy genius such as Douglas Adams.

The Pirate Planet is therefore a conundrum for me, because many fans love this particular story, but when I look at it, one of the only reason I can see to like it is the humour.  I mentioned in the previous story that Tom had been hanging out a bit with Eric Morecambe, and the feel of that style of humour has been taken by Douglas Adams and propelled to stratospheric levels.  There's nothing wrong with that, as some of the jokes and one liners are genuinely very funny, but it comes at the expense of the drama.

The premise of the story is interesting enough, with a mystery of a missing planet being presented in a unique way.  But any question posed is quickly overshadowed by the relationship between the Doctor and Romana, and the obnoxious threats banded about by the Captain.

Everything here is over the top, the squabbles, the jokes, the pirate themed death threats, the robots in the shape of exotic birds.  It's practically melodrama, but done in such a way that we really don't care about anyone in it. Case in point, by episode four, Douglas Adams has to resort to threatening Earth as a last desperate bid to make us feel something.

I think this story is one of the saddest ones to be made, because it has so much potential, but because of the style of the writer, characters and plot are diluted down to obvious, predictable elements that grow tiresome and irritating.  I would hardly be surprised if a few immature fart gags were thrown in for good measure.  Almost everyone laughs and enjoys toilet humour, but it's no good if you go into this looking for a good piece of family drama.

Rating

4 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

3 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Savages

• The Invasion of Time

• The City of Death

• Shada

• State of Decay

• The Mysterious Planet

The Ribos Operation (Key to Time Part 1)

4 Episodes
Aired between 2nd September 1978 and 23rd September 1978

Written by Robert Holmes
Produced by Graham Williams
Directed by George Spenton-Foster

Synopsis

Travelling through space and time with only his trusty dog, K9 MkII, the Doctor is summoned by a powerful entity known as the White Guardian. 

He tells the Doctor that his opposite, the Black Guardian is threatening to overthrow the delicate balance of the universal values of order and chaos.  To restore this balance, the White Guardian tasks the Doctor with seeking and retrieving the six segments of the Key to Time, which are not only scattered across the cosmos, but also disguised as objects familiar to their environment. 

To help the Doctor in his quest, the White Guardian sends word to Gallifrey who assign a freshly graduated Time-Lady: Romanadevoratrelundar.

Romana (as the Doctor likes to call her) is quite aloof and likes to psycho-analyse people.  She thinks she has been assigned to help the doctor by the High Council of Gallifrey and has been given a divining rod to help her locate the segments of the key.  The rod can also be plugged into the TARDIS console to provide co-ordinates for the next segment.

After much arguing, the pair get after the first segment of the key, landing on a primitive planet known as Ribos.  After a lot of searching, they find the segment. 

It's disguised as a precious stone known as Jethryck. 

It turns out the Jethryk has been planted amongst the planets finest treasures by a couple of con-men, Garron and Unstoffe, trying to pose as businessmen to sell the primitive planet off to a warlord known as the Graff Vynda-K.

The con men's plan backfires and Garron is captured, with the Doctor and Romana getting mistaken as being part of it.  Unstoffe manages to get away and is forced to hide with the Jethryk / key.

With the help of the city's oracle, the Graff and his soldiers manage to track down Unstoffe to the catacombs. 

The oracle predicts that all but one dies in there, and the Graff does his utmost to ensure it's him that survives.  In the end, his men are killed by a cave in and he is blown up by a bomb that's planted on him.

The Doctor and Romana leave Garron and Unstoffe on the planet and the Doctor manages to use slight of hand to get the Jethryk off Garron before they take off.

Once inside the TARDIS, Romana touches the stone and it turns into the first segment of the key before they set off for the next segment.

Trivia

• Before the filming of this series, Tom Baker was attacked by a dog that jumped up and bit him, catching his lip.  The wound is far more visible in the next story, but there's occasions in this when it's there

• The Key to Time was Producer, Graham Williams' idea.  He'd wanted to do it since he started, and now was the perfect time.  He asked Liz Sladen if she wanted to come back, but she was still hesitant so he decided to go for something totally different and worked up a concept for Romana.  

• This was Stuart Fell's last outing in a Doctor Who monster costume.  He played the Schrivenzale that is kept in the treasury.

• Between filming this, Tom was hanging out a lot with Eric Morecambe.  Read "The Review" for why this is significant.

The Review

The Ribos Operation was the start of something big. The Jon Pertwee era saw the show re-designed and re-invigorated for a new audience.  The provision of an epic story arc was to be an attempt to do something similar. 

The whole premise is built around powerful beings assigning the Doctor a quest, but forgive me if I find the White Guardian somewhat lacklustre.  There's nothing there to help me believe this creature has god-like powers.  He interrupts the TARDIS in flight. So what?  Lots of things have done that in recent stories.  My guess is that this scene was filmed after the bulk of stuff on Ribos, so the budget was exhausted, but even so, I think that had the White Guardian appeared to any of the Doctor's before him, we'd have at least got some glam-rock style colour effects, or something like it.

The inclusion of Romana is quite a good thing however, it's been a long while since the days of Liz Shaw, with the Doctor having an intellectual equal, and the way that the Producer has made her very smart but very naive is a great trick, because she can know a lot of stuff when she needs to, but still ask questions to help give the audience a point of reference without it looking daft.  Romana's relationship with the Doctor is enjoyable to watch, and brings an element of light humour to the show which is pleasing for a while, although I personally feel that Tom Baker does try to put in too many laughs per minute in the first couple of episodes, until it ends up feeling like he's regenerated into Eric Morecambe.  Thankfully, he settles down from episode 3 and starts selling the plot to us as a serious situation.

The story as a whole is great.  As with all the best Doctor Who stories, the Ribos Operation has a rich setting, and is developed brilliantly.  The planet isn't just a cardboard cut out with one environmental condition (alright we only see it snowing in the story, but it does explain that the planet goes through half a year of snow, then half a year of sunshine).  Ribos has a culture, MULTIPLE cities,  history and religion.  This is an epic fantasy neatly packaged and never feeling like we're force fed massive info dumps.

The Graff is a superb character also.  Yes, he's a villain wanting conquest, but Paul Seed who played him, helps to really bring the character to life, assisted by a good backstory that almost shows him more as a victim.

One of the jewels in the crown of this story is the interaction between Unstoffe and Binro the heretic.  This is a lovely little arc that isn't needed for the story, but it provides a great bit of pathos, and a path of redemption for the kind heart'ed crook, Unstoffe.

Overall, the Ribos Operation is a great little story with a fantastic world built into it, an unusual plot, good characters and in places very funny.  The only thing that lets it down is that it fails to sell the threats to us.  I wasn't convinced that the Graff would really hurt you, more bore you to death with tales of how hard his life has been and the many wars he's been in; and as for the rubber-footed Shrivenzale....

Rating

8 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

7 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Keys of Marinus

• The Curse of Peladon

• The Monster of Peladon

• The Masque of Mandragora