Four episodes
Aired between 3rd January 1983 and 12th January 1983
Written by Johnny Byrne
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Ron Jones
Synopsis
This is a difficult one. Let's see. There's a traitor on the High Council of Time Lords who's stealing bio-data extracts from the Matrix to find a new body for Omega - the ancient time lord last seen in The Three Doctors. Omega is trapped in an anti-matter universe and has been driven pretty much insane by the inability to interact or feel anything.
Together, the traitor and Omega hatch a plan to steer the Doctor to them and aim to use some kind of natural time-space phenomena called the Arc of Infinity to transfer his body to the Doctor's.
Seeing some of this coming, the High Council summon the Doctor's TARDIS to Gallifrey to try and figure out why the Doctor is being targeted.
As this is going on, two back-packers - Colin and Robin end up sleeping rough in a crypt in Amsterdam.
As they are there, they're confronted by a terrifying chicken like alien that zaps Colin.
Robin escapes and tries to go for help but nobody believes him. With little option, he waits on the arrival of Colin's Cousin who was due to meet them the day after. Colin's Cousin just happens to be Tegan.
When Tegan gets there, they end up investigating the crypt again, and Tegan sees Colin in a zombie-like state and she's captured by the Chicken creature also. It turns out that Amsterdam falls under part of the Arc of Infinity.
Back on Gallifrey, the Doctor is met with a bit of a hostile reception. The guard, Maxil seems to hate him, as does the rest of the High Council, including Lord President Borusa - his old mentor.
Instead of seriously looking into finding out who the traitor on the High Council is, they decide to kill the Doctor as his bio-data is planned to be used and if that happens, and the anti-matter meets matter, then the universe could be destroyed.
They march him to an execution chamber and despite Nyssa's pleas, they atomise him. The Doctor instead of being actually atomised, is sent into the Matrix (I believe as a result of Hedin's sabotage).
Whilst in the Matrix, Omega contacts the Doctor and uses the captured Tegan as bait to force the Doctor to allow Omega to merge with his bio-data and create a body for himself.
Once this is underway, the Doctor's body is recovered by the Castillan and Nyssa. They all rush to the high council chamber as Borusa is suspected of being the traitor, but they reveal that Hedin is really it. Hedin dies as he gives his body energy to Omega to complete the transformation.
The Doctor and Nyssa rush to their TARDIS and head down to Amsterdam, frantically searching and running up and down streets for Omega using a handy little anti-matter detection device. They find the crypt and find a way of overpowering and zapping Omega's chicken monster - referred to as an Ergon (sort of like a Frankenstein's monster).
They find Omega and destroy a device he was using, but it's not good enough, Omega is transformed and looks like the Doctor.
He runs off into Amsterdam. After picking up Tegan and checking on Colin, they all rush off, racing around Amsterdam to find Omega.
The reason being that the devices destruction made Omega's body unstable and he is likely to cause a huge anti-matter explosion when his body degenerates. After a looong chase they find him and the Doctor shoots him with the Ergon's gun and sends him somewhere far away.
A short time afterwards, Tegan meets the Doctor and Nyssa and tells them she got fired from her job, so she's happy to travel with them again. Together, they all set off in the TARDIS.
Trivia
- This is the first of the annual "trips abroad" for the production crew. John Nathan-Turner liked the visit to France for The City of Death, so he made sure that every year, one story would be done somewhere exotic. That is, until the budgets got too tight
- Janette Fielding cut her hair between contracts as the perms she was made to wear had made her hair so brittle that it was snapping off and she was at risk of becoming bald. It was also because John Nathan-Turner wanted her to be raunchier for the Dad's at home and she rebelled
- This story also sees the return of Michael Gough to the Doctor Who universe as Councillor Hedin. Previously, he was the signature part in The Celestial Toymaker
- This one as you might guess also stars Colin Baker as Maxil. He supposedly was reluctant to take the part as he thought it ruled out his chance to be the Doctor in the future. Wait a bit to see what happened with that.
The Review
The main thought I had following this story was one of confusion. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors at work here, pure bewilderment with techno-babble and vague pseudo science. At the core of this, there's very little story here. Some of the elements should work really well - from the political intrigue of the High Council, to the desperate bid of a madman trying to escape purgatory. But it doesn't. In terms of Omega, it should be able to riff heavily on the previous character of Omega, but it doesn't.
There's a lot of this is off because the justification of the story is shaky. Omega is desperate for a new body. He's got a device that will allow him to do that. Based on this story, why the Hell is the Doctor interfering with that. Apart from Hedin rushing in and killing people just to sabotage stuff, there's no overwhelming reason to stop him - Omega's body is unstable BECAUSE the Doctor interferes. So what if he turns out to be a doppleganger? I could understand it more if it's the rest of the High Council stopping him because they don't want to give up the power.
The other big problem with it is that it's trying to do too many things at once. It wants to be a horror - mystery with the crypt sub-plot, it's trying to have political intrigue with the high council, it's trying to be a courtroom drama. Some of these are more successful elements than others, but it just adds to the confusion of it all.
In review, I think there's small bits of this that are interesting as a premise, but taken as a whole, there's just not enough to make this a truly good story.
Rating
4 out of 10
Re-watchability Factor
4 out of 10
Watch this if you liked...
No comments:
Post a Comment