The Armageddon Factor
The quest for the sixth and final piece of the Key to Time takes the Doctor, Romana and K9 to the warring twin worlds of Atrios and Zeos. Atrios has been brought to its knees by overwhelming opposition and the fanatical Marshal will stop at nothing to rally his people to fight back from their seemingly doomed position. When the TARDIS crew arrive, the Princess Astra has been kidnapped by what are first assumed to be Zeon agents, but a third party is revealed lurking between both worlds; the sinister Shadow. Where the Doctor has been sent on the quest by the White Guardian, the Shadow is in the employ of the Black Guardian and has been sitting waiting for the Doctor to arrive. The Doctor may have collected the first five segments already, but the Shadow seems to know where the sixth and final piece is, and its secret is somehow linked to Astra, the sixth princess of the sixth royal house of the sixth dynasty of Atrios...
Whereas The Power of Kroll had very little mention of the Key to Time until almost the very end, The Armageddon Factor, the six part season finale, is concerned with nothing but finding the final piece. Almost all of the key players in the tale have something to do with it, and the showdown that everyone knew was coming to posess it starts in earnest in episode three when the Doctor and the Shadow meet face to ... well... skull. With a nylon over the mouth. And how is the Shadow as a foe? He kidnaps and terrorizes Astra. He plunges two worlds into war just to keep a death toll running. The captures and tortures Romana. He captures K9 and places the robot under his control, turning him against the Doctor. Yeah, he's bad.
Jay and I undertook this viewing together, although we didn't have as much to say this time as we have before. I was almost passing out from being up late the night before and Jay was actually engrossed in the adventure, but after a short break for the plight dining of the Gerard Square McDonald's, the commentary track was back in full force. Neither of us was particularly enamoured with Romana's white version of an Elvira dress, although we were amused at how she forced open a door to a transmat relay despite being unable to do so a couple scenes before. And then she overpowered the Atrian surgeon, Merak. K9 was smug as usual, which we will allow him after his traumatic experience of being lured into a recycling furnace by a glowing projection that looked like the Canadian Film Board logo. And we loved the Doctor's manic performance in this one, with him taunting the Shadow, mocking the Marshal, going power mad for a moment with the completed Key to Time before him, and finally telling the Black Guardian where to go.
As with most six part stories we are once again faced with a story within a story, with the war between Atrios and Zeos falling into the background eventually, but there is no definite split as with previous stories where the first four episodes were one plot and the final two were something else; The Armageddon Factor evolves its way along, never feeling slow or draggy, but with the introduction of another rogue Time Lord, Drax, in episode five, things do suffer a bit where pacing is concerned. Some of the sets suffer a bit from lack of funding, probably from the money running out towards the end of the season. Jay and I had to laugh at the tape-drive computers of the Atrian war room, and the circuit boards pulled from Speak N Spells stapled to the walls of the Zeon computer room (which are reminiscent of records hammered into the wall at a dump called The Happy Tap, but that's different, the blandness of the Zeon corridors and even the layer of dust on top of the time rotor in the TARDIS. And on the subject of the TARDIS, the continuity people need to be fired; in the previous episode the police box prop had the white light flashing on the roof when it materialized, but in this one it was the spinning blue lamp again, making me wonder if maybe they had a TARDIS for studio and a different one for location.
Once the whole Key to Time plot is resolved, though, the Doctor and Romana are left facing a greater threat than before: the wrath of the Black Guardian. The Doctor has been threatened before but this time he takes things a bit more seriously and fits the console with a device that will randomly select destination co-ordinates and effectively keep him on the run from the Black Guardian for a while. When the next season would commence, the randomizer would be working its magic and throwing the Doctor and Romana headlong into danger.
But before going there, how's about a piece of fan fiction?
Good.
NEXT EPISODE : IT'S IN THE BLOOD
Whereas The Power of Kroll had very little mention of the Key to Time until almost the very end, The Armageddon Factor, the six part season finale, is concerned with nothing but finding the final piece. Almost all of the key players in the tale have something to do with it, and the showdown that everyone knew was coming to posess it starts in earnest in episode three when the Doctor and the Shadow meet face to ... well... skull. With a nylon over the mouth. And how is the Shadow as a foe? He kidnaps and terrorizes Astra. He plunges two worlds into war just to keep a death toll running. The captures and tortures Romana. He captures K9 and places the robot under his control, turning him against the Doctor. Yeah, he's bad.
Jay and I undertook this viewing together, although we didn't have as much to say this time as we have before. I was almost passing out from being up late the night before and Jay was actually engrossed in the adventure, but after a short break for the plight dining of the Gerard Square McDonald's, the commentary track was back in full force. Neither of us was particularly enamoured with Romana's white version of an Elvira dress, although we were amused at how she forced open a door to a transmat relay despite being unable to do so a couple scenes before. And then she overpowered the Atrian surgeon, Merak. K9 was smug as usual, which we will allow him after his traumatic experience of being lured into a recycling furnace by a glowing projection that looked like the Canadian Film Board logo. And we loved the Doctor's manic performance in this one, with him taunting the Shadow, mocking the Marshal, going power mad for a moment with the completed Key to Time before him, and finally telling the Black Guardian where to go.
As with most six part stories we are once again faced with a story within a story, with the war between Atrios and Zeos falling into the background eventually, but there is no definite split as with previous stories where the first four episodes were one plot and the final two were something else; The Armageddon Factor evolves its way along, never feeling slow or draggy, but with the introduction of another rogue Time Lord, Drax, in episode five, things do suffer a bit where pacing is concerned. Some of the sets suffer a bit from lack of funding, probably from the money running out towards the end of the season. Jay and I had to laugh at the tape-drive computers of the Atrian war room, and the circuit boards pulled from Speak N Spells stapled to the walls of the Zeon computer room (which are reminiscent of records hammered into the wall at a dump called The Happy Tap, but that's different, the blandness of the Zeon corridors and even the layer of dust on top of the time rotor in the TARDIS. And on the subject of the TARDIS, the continuity people need to be fired; in the previous episode the police box prop had the white light flashing on the roof when it materialized, but in this one it was the spinning blue lamp again, making me wonder if maybe they had a TARDIS for studio and a different one for location.
Once the whole Key to Time plot is resolved, though, the Doctor and Romana are left facing a greater threat than before: the wrath of the Black Guardian. The Doctor has been threatened before but this time he takes things a bit more seriously and fits the console with a device that will randomly select destination co-ordinates and effectively keep him on the run from the Black Guardian for a while. When the next season would commence, the randomizer would be working its magic and throwing the Doctor and Romana headlong into danger.
But before going there, how's about a piece of fan fiction?
Good.
NEXT EPISODE : IT'S IN THE BLOOD
Labels: K9, Romana, The 4th Doctor, The Black Guardian, The Key to Time
posted by Sean Hoover @ 9:26 AM
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