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...
- Any of the Trial of a Time Lord stories
- The Pandorica Opens (Doctor Who, Series 5)
