We have the power to do anything we like. Absolute power over every particle in the universe. Everything that has ever existed or ever will exist. As from this moment are you listening to me, Romana?
My will to finish this review waned by the episode, so forgive this lacklustre half-hearted attempt – in some ways appropriate for a set of episodes that struggle painfully to reach episode 6 and the finishing line of ‘The Key to Time’ story. It isn’t the glorious finale that it really should be – more like watching an Olympic long-distance runner reaching the stadium, only to have their legs turn to spaghetti on the home strait.
To my mind, the best thing by far about ‘The Armageddon Factor’ unfortunately happens in the opening 2 minutes. We watch a film of the man leaving his wife to go to war for Atrios – perfectly stiff upper lip in a Noel Coward World War II propaganda film – ‘In Which We Serve’. All speeches and ‘I have to leave my dear’ against blue skies. This then switches – after a detour to a very tatty looking TARDIS console room that manages to look smaller on the inside – to a black and white screen of the film being played in a grimy, insanitary hospital wing being bombed. The propaganda fantasy and reality of war side by side. Which is then picked up later as the true parlous state of the Atrian war effort and home front becomes all too apparent.
It’s all downhill from here though. The money has run out, the script isn’t special enough to complete the ‘Key to Time’ season with the big bang it needs and well everyone seems to have run out of steam. The episode one cliffhanger is an exciting close up of some breeze block, which pretty much tells us the territory we are in at this point. Everyone seems a bit bored and there is nowhere near enough story to go around. Part the way through episode two, I thought how on earth are they going to pad this out to six episodes. And in truth, they don’t. The introduction of Drax is a blatant attempt to liven things up and drag the whole thing out a bit longer – it doesn’t work. The story also suffers from ‘Underworld’ syndrome where everything (deliberately) looks dreary, drab and a bit knackered, but there is nothing there to lift the thing. The change of location doesn’t help kick the story on – as there isn’t much to choose between Atrios, Zeos and the Shadow’s domain – they all look quite similar – a bit brown and grim and in my slightly bored daze around episode 3, I lost track where everyone was anyway.
To be fair, there are some interesting ideas about war, especially war by proxy and machine and mutually assured destruction – but really, I’m clutching at straws. The twin twists of Zeos being run by a computer and Astra as the final segment and the ensuing moral dilemma are nice ideas – although Kroll was a living thing and I don’t remember too many doubts about converting him to a chunk of quartz – just because he was green and massive and liked eating people doesn’t mean he was necessarily a bad squid. It is shame that this is the last hurrah for Bob baker and Dave Martin together – although without the steadying hand of Dicks or Holmes, it ends up full of their mad old nonsense ideas that hit the production office script bin in the glory days of the 70’s.
Whilst the script isn’t great, it is the production that really struggles to deliver. Kudos to the ‘Doctor Who’ production team for picking out Lalla Ward as potential companion material, as there is nothing much in her performance here to suggest that she would be suitable – she’s nice enough, but I suspect that she wouldn’t have entered the pantheon of ‘nearly companions’ we all feel the show missed out on. Even the usually splendid Mary Tamm looks like she’s already booked her holiday, picked out her summer reading list, packed her bags and is mentally on the beach already. I can’t say I blame her. John Woodvine is decent – he always is – but his weary performance as the Marshall adds to the lethargy and maybe an insane, over the top performance from an old ham like Crowden might have lifted things – I actually can’t believe I’m writing this as I tap away at the keyboard. Stop. Read it back. Yes, I actually did say that.
I had no idea what the actor playing The Shadow was trying to do, so I looked up who it was – and was surprised that it was William Squire – Hunter from the excellent ‘Callan’. He had a very respectable career – although I’m really not sure about what he does in this. He also married Juliet Harmer – the lovely Georgina Jones from ‘Adam Adamant Lives’ – so he did alright for himself. But here, skull mask and black tights over his head, well he isn’t quite the villain that the story needs. I did wonder if it might have been better to bring back Peter Pratt’s Master to give this whole thing a kick, as The Shadow really is third-rate fare. Finally, on the cast, I spent most of the story distracted, marvelling at the performance of Davyd Harries as Shapp, trying to remember what he reminded me of – and then it clicked – Terry Scott – he looks like he’s accidentally wandered of the set of ‘Terry and June’ and walked straight into the number 2 job in the Atrios war effort – no wonder they were ¤¤¤¤ed! The scene where he is shot in the transmat booth and falls on his back, legs in the air, gun erect is straight out of a low rent 70’s ITV sitcom. It really is piss poor.
And, so to the ending. Well Valentine Dyall turns up (sadly without a crow on his head) and booms a bit in negative, Tom goes a bit mad (well madder) and they split the segments up again – the cosmic rebalancing apparently done and Astra back in the arms of the earnestly dull Surgeon Marek. Although we don’t realise it, we say farewell to Mary Tamm, which is sad – especially in retrospect, but will at least pay off in the next season when Tom and Lalla hit it off. Rather like Caroline John, as a one season companion on TV, it was nice that Mary did another series for Big Finish with Tom and rather good she was too.
And so ‘The Key to Time’ ends – I really don’t care – I was never that interested or engaged with it as an arc. I suppose it was an attempt to do something different but as ever Bob Holmes was right. Overall, I’m left with the thought – is that it? Week after week of this stuff and that is it? Two themed seasons 16 and 23, united in failing to deliver on their original premise, no wonder such themed arcs were in short supply in the original run of the series. My take would be that it was difficult enough to deliver workable stories from 1963-1989 without trying to tie up some long-running overarching theme and that the production teams that tried to deliver both of these were probably some of the least equipped to do so. Dicks/Letts or Hinchcliffe/Holmes after 3 seasons under their belt might have made the concept of a linked season work, but perhaps they were too experienced not to realise what an albatross around the neck of the team they are.
Season 16 is a nice enough season, with some lovely ideas and a sometimes pleasing tonal shift to the fairy tale and more feminine, but it will never be amongst the top echelon for me. It suffers from some of the production issues that afflict seasons 15 and 17 (Shrivenzale, Taran Wood beast, cheap sets, the Kroll split screen effect etc.), although to my mind it looks better than those surrounding it. I know the budget was gone along with the stability of the British economy, but even given that, the Williams era often throws light on the production miracles that the Letts/Hinchcliffe eras managed to produce. What I will remember it for is the variation in story-telling and well the ambition it showed, often against all sense.
A Journal of Impossible Things 