I'm trying to rattle through these "800 Day Project" posts for the next couple of weeks, as I'm conscious that I am quite a long way behind compared to the episodes I am currently watching. The next update will probably cover all of season 17 in one go. The problem is that as the seasons get shorter - with no more six parters on the horizon - I am watching almost two stories a week, but only updating the blog once a week. I might have to do something about that, perhaps by switching to only capsule reviews or finding a way to sleep less so I can update twice a week. We'll see. For now it's back to the final two stories of the search for the Key To Time - and things are not going well...
The Power Of Kroll
Bow down and chant "Kroll" a hundred and fifty times in a row - it's the biggest monster Doctor Who has every seen. Plus it's the first story this season where the segment of the Key is intrinsic to the plot. Indeed it's the segment that caused the whole mess in the first place. It's a terrible disappointment then when the usually excellent Robert Holmes turns in a script this derivative and tedious.
Basically it's a base under siege story, packed full of all the clichés one would expect. The arrogant expedition leader who is going slowly insane and sees the indigenous life forms as nothing more than obstacles in the way of profit that need to be wiped out. The Doctor immediately being suspected of being the problem. The junior officer who makes a stand and gets shot for daring to speak out. An unimportant crewmember who gets killed by the monster of the week. A nail-biting countdown that can only be solved by the Doctor. Then you have the Holmes creative tics. The morally dubious gun-runner. The local natives worshipping something they don't understand. Some surprisingly grisly deaths at the hands of the giant cephalopod and the Swampies. It just never all comes together into a cohesive whole. You just don't care about any of the characters to shed a tear if they live or die. There are no witty double acts either and although I'll happily give Holmes kudos for trying something outside his more gothic horror comfort zone, in this case there is just not enough to make up the difference.
Add in some flat pedestrian direction and a few less that special effects (It's beyond me how Graham Williams ever thought he could make a three-hundred foot high squid look remotely convincing, but you have to admire his ambition) and you have a story that is not spoken of in hushed tones of reverence but often in mocking tones of derision. I wouldn't go that far - but it's certainly well below par. It's just...dull.
It's also a criminal (under) use of some fine actors. I hardly recognised the great John Abineri under the fright wig and green makeup (although maybe he would prefer it that way). He's okay as high priest Ranquin, yelling his religious doctrine at the lesser Swampies, but it's a bit of a nothing role for one of Doctor Who's best guest actors. Ditto for the normally riveting Philip Madoc. Just imagine him in the role of the psychotic Thawn - that delicious Welsh voice and steely gaze brimming with menace. Instead he's given the humdrum part of Fener. I suspect that permanent scowl he wears throughout the story required very little acting on Madoc's part. I would've been teed off too. Neil McCarthy does bring a certain amount of gruff intensity to the part, but he's not the best actor in the world and I do think it would have worked better if the roles had been reversed. Oh and let's not even mention Glyn Owen sleepwalking his way through the part of Rohm Dut. His death scene is a merciful release.
I'm a big fan of the gigantic monster movies like King Kong or Godzilla. This story isn't up there with those classics by any stretch of the imagination, but viewed as a Saturday tea-time "creature-feature" it has a certain charm. Kroll attacking the refinery is no worse an effect than some seen in movies of that genre (although admittedly TV has always lagged many years behind Hollywood in what it can accomplish - at least until recently) The monster isn't the problem here - it's the plot. It could have been so much better with a little more effort.
The Armageddon Factor
Oh dear. This is the point where instead of a thrilling conclusion to the season, the whole crumbling edifice of the arc plot collapses under the weight of its own expectations. We've had twenty episodes to build up to this, so you would expect a story of epic proportions that puts the Doctor in mortal danger in a battle between good and evil. What we get is a serial that would be considered passable in many other seasons but as a capstone to the whole quest it just doesn't work for me.
It's a story driven by its ideas, not its characters - who are, in the main, forgettable. Mind you, the lack of good well developed roles shouldn't really be a surprise - this is a Bob Baker and Dave Martin script after all. They were always ideas men first and foremost. I still think their best script is "Hand of Fear" - but this is a long way off that. It's not all their fault though. Douglas Adams and Anthony Read need to shoulder some of the blame too as they tinkered about with things a fair bit.The end result of four writers input is no better though. It's all over the place. Yes, the main driver is the search for the final segment and keeping the completed cube out of the clutches of the Black Guardian, and yes the core concept of two planets tricked into war (presumably as a test run of the Black Guardian's plan to engender chaos by setting the two halves of the universe against each other) is an intriguing one, and finally yes, it could be seen as a not-so-subtle comment on the Cold War. But there is so much pointless "noise" around this that there is no sense of urgency or scale or and it just doesn't deliver the goods.
The acting is tolerable at the best of times but atrocious elsewhere. Only John Woodvine as the Marshal comes out of this with any kind of dignity - and they shuffle him off into a timeloop to shout "Fire!" ad infinitum all too soon. Based on her performance here as the wet Princess Astra, I'm amazed that Lalla Ward got the role as the regenerated Romana. It's startling how different her subsequent performances are. Mary Tamm definitely wins the battle of the Timeladies on screen here. It's such a shame that her last performance as the character is in such a lacklustre story. I would have loved to see her get another season's worth of adventures under her belt. Perhaps I should check out the Big Finish Fourth Doctor audio plays to get my Romana I fix...
As poor as Lalla Ward is in her first Doctor Who appearance, her characters beleaguered boyfriend Merak is infinitely worse. The only lines he seems to get are a constant whimpering "Astra!!" at every opportunity. He's yet more filler, and certainly doesn't seem to be there for much else beyond being a supposed love interest and bumping up the character count. He's not even a worthwhile hero trying to rescue his princess.
The Shadow is a stereotypical pantomime villain. He's the Hooded Claw from "The Perils of Penelope Pitstop" but without the marvellous voice of Paul Lynde (although that fifty-a-day rasp is not bad). Oh and he loves a good laugh does our bad guy. He's "MWA-HAAAA-HAAAA-HAAAA!"-ing at everything and anything. Putting on his underpants. Having beans on toast. Throwing the Doctor down a pit. Watching 'Countdown'. Seizing the Key To Time. It's all maniacal guffaws a-plenty. It gets a bit tiring to be honest. Actually, I do think that something / someone like the Shadow should have been introduced much earlier in the season, to demonstrate that the Black Guardian was a tangible presence behind the scenes (we only got a couple of throwaway lines across the previous four stories). Imagine if Mr Fibuli from "The Pirate Planet" had actually been the Shadow in disguise! He does say that he has been watching the Doctor for some time. Maybe I'm trying to assign modern scripting techniques and our current fascination with arc plots seeding throughout a season too much to something made in 1979. I just think it would have spiced things up a bit and also made the Shadow's reveal in this story more of a big deal. Thinking back to when I first watched this though, I do remember being scared witless by the Shadow and his skull mask and deep voice, so maybe it was pitched at the right level for children after all.
In the litany of acting awfulness how could I forget Davyd Harries as the hapless Schapp. A man so inept that he can't even fall over properly. He starts off as a dull but reasonably efficient aide to the Mashall, and there are some nice facial expressions as you can see he is a bit bemused by his leader's increasingly erratic behaviour. But all of that gets lost because Shapp transforms into a bumbling imbecile by around episode three. There is a long proud tradition of the male as a fool in British situation comedy, but - newsflash - this *isn't* a comedy (well not intentionally). That cry of “MERRAA-AAAA-AAA-KKKK!” as he stumbles into the lift - <<Shudder>>. His partner in the crime of mediocrity is Del-Boy Timelord Drax. Barry Jackson does his best, bless him, but sadly, he fails to make Drax anywhere near believable. Again it's this dichotomy of the writers trying to lighten the mood amongst all the supposed drama (the story isn't as serious and grim as it likes to think it is) but instead they give us cliché after terrible cliché. Like Merak, Drax seems only to be there to pad out things so they can fill the six episode slot. Cut out all that fooling around and shrinking and stuff and it wouldn't make a jot of difference to the real plot. Tom Baker tries to salvage things with his own brand of humour but it's a thankless task. He is as watchable as ever though and gets his slice of "ham" just the right side of the line including that eyelash-fluttering, look-at-me-I'm-bonkers scene in the TARDIS. That was probably the toned down take knowing Tom.
The biggest disappointment of course is that fact that after spending twenty-six episodes finding the Key to Time, nothing is really resolved. What was the great disaster that was causing things to be "out of balance"? How do we fix it? You "stop time" and then what? Basically all that happens is that the Doctor gets all the segments, has a bit of a chat with the Black Guardian (not even in person and doing a very poor impression of the White Guardian) and then...scatters them through time and space again. (At least we get to enjoy the sonorous tones of Valentine Dyall, so that's some small consolation. I could listen to that man read the back of a cereal packet). The viewer is left thinking "what was all the fuss about?". It's a shame because many of the rest of the stories from this season are very good, but the "The Armageddon Factor" diminishes them slightly when watched in sequence. That's not something I will be repeating any time soon.
All in all, I would consider the Key To Time season a noble failure. It was the first time Doctor Who had tried this kind of arc plot and although the end result didn't work, it did pave the way for things to come (with their own varying levels of success). If nothing else, amongst all the clunkers (and I realise that I have perhaps been quite harsh on a couple of them) this season did contain some of my favourite Tom Baker stories. Of course despite all its faults, the Graham Williams era is about to produce a stone-cold classic. Yes, The Horns of Nimon is almost upon us...
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