5L2 - The Horns of Nimon 2

Romana does a very, very foolish thing in this episode, but, in a way, I'm very glad that she does. In a fit of pique, she slams down her newly made sonic screwdriver before being led out of the ship's bridge by the co-pilot (who manages to sneak in his fourth retort of "weakling scum!" towards the Anethans before returning to the bridge). Conveniently, Romana's lack of screwdriver prevents her from breaking into the bridge again, and thus she is resorted to sitting and hearing Seth and Teka's tales of woe (No other Anethan dares utter a word, lest the actors portraying them get paid more money in a time when, plainly, the budget would run to cover it).

Good thing that we don't see that sonic screwdriver again, because that would have made the already near invincible Doctor/Romana/K-9 combo even more indomitable. The only threat that they've encountered thus far is a very shouty and over-the-top co-pilot...who actually doesn't stand out much in that regard in a story like this.

Back to the panto - look at Sorak's outfit at the top of this page. There has never been a more way out and operatic costume in Doctor Who. And I use the word "operatic" with precision - it looks like there's a replica of the Sydney Opera House on each of Sorak's arms. His helmet is adorned with what appears to be a cross between daggers and horse blinders. The plumage on top of his helmet (and those of the rest of the Skonnon guards) border on making him look like a peacock.

And then there's the comedy sound effects when the TARDIS console explodes, the crowd that doesn't know when to cheer during Soldeed's speech, and, for the second article in a row, Soldeed...

5L1 - The Horns of Nimon 1

Apart from Episode 7 of The Daleks' Master Plan, The Feast of Steven, which went out on Christmas Day 1965, the first official Christmas special in Doctor Who was 2005's The Christmas Invasion, beginning a yearly custom that has become an annual tradition. We are all forgetting, of course, The Horns of Nimon, which is the closest Doctor Who ever came to full on pantomime in the show's long history.

Everything about this story is high camp. Look at the pilot of the ship taking the tribute from Aneth to Skonnos. He's played by an actor called Bob Hornery, who actually hasn't appeared in much over the years, but is the type of actor who looks like he may have at one time. You almost feel embarrassed for him, wearing his costume with wild shoulder pads and crazy triangular ornaments on his chest and helmet, forced to shout lines like "Blundering fool! You've wrecked it!". If Ian McKellen ever did panto, it would look like this.

And then there's the Anethans themselves, weakling scum that they are, dressed in bright yellow pajamas that make them look like the kids from Peter Pan, flying away on a magical journey to some dark and foreign land. And this is all within the first five minutes! That's not even mentioning the scene where The Doctor gives K-9 mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. That's not even mentioning the costumes worn by the Skonnons (and particularly Sorak). That's not even mentioning Soldeed...

5K4 - Nightmare of Eden 4

Easily the best thing about this episode, and perhaps the story as a whole, is The Doctor's cold dismissal of Trist as the latter is being led away by security guards for drug smuggling. His quiet "Go away." is just brilliant - steely, yet almost hiding a seething anger that it almost seems as if The Doctor wants Trist gone not because of what the zoologist did, but what The Doctor would do to Trist (and how much he would regret it) if he remained in the room with him.

Tom Baker's stellar performance in that scene is tragically countered by one of his less successful attempts at humour just a couple minutes earlier - an overdubbed comedy reaction to getting beaten up by a gaggle of Mandrels ("Ooh! My arms! My legs! My everything!"). It's a bad, jokey sequence that sticks out like a sore thumb in a story that desperately wanted itself to be taken seriously. It's a weak section of a story that also desperately wanted to be good.

And, for the most part, Nightmare of Eden is a good story. Even the oft-repeated tale of the troublesome production of this story doesn't make it onto screen. There's only a couple of directorial slipups on the part of Alan Bromly, who was just one day from retirement when he was working on this story, but they are minor, and don't detract from the story. Above all, Nightmare of Eden is probably the most successful attempt at hard drama in an era where such an approach was not necessarily frowned upon, but certainly not keenly encouraged.

5K3 - Nightmare of Eden 3

The concept of the CET machine is actually rather fascinating. Trist's device doesn't just capture pictures or samples of the planets he's visited - it takes sections of the actual planets and traps them in a machine that, because of faulty design, one can enter and exit the projections of these planets freely. But where does everything go when the machine is switched off? Or when a different planet is selected on the viewing screen? What has Stotz been doing on that small section of planet for all this time?

Also, the fact that the dimensions of the projections have exit points elsewhere on the Empress is a notion that might have needed more explanation. However, imaginative ideas that aren't explained as much as I'd like are much more fascinating that dull concepts that have far too much time devoted to them. The CET projections are just another little unique quirk that has made this story so enjoyable.

Another unique quirk? The Mandrels. Yes, they do look like Muppets with large clam shells for faces, but they didn't half impress me as a 10-year-old. The disintegration effect of one of the poor creatures turning into Vraxoin in this episode is quite impressive, which counters a less than effective sequence of Mandrels rampaging through a seating section on the Empress. The comedy faces on some of the passengers who are apparently being mauled just make you want to laugh at the entire scene along with the (drugged out) Rigg.

5K2 - Nightmare of Eden 2

What sets Nightmare of Eden apart from other stories of the era is the total adult nature of the plot and what lies at the heart of it: narcotic drug abuse and trafficking. Still a kid's show at heart, no one is ever seen taking the drug of choice in this story, Vraxoin (although Rigg's drink is spiked by someone surreptitiously dumping a small amount of the powder in). And how could you? Any such action would be instantly imitated by the kids on Monday morning.

Still, the effects of the drug are shown. Secker begins the story in the full throes of the drug, and is apathetic to anything and everything around him, only becoming agitated when his high starts to dissipate. Rigg goes completely off the deep end once his spiked drink kicks in, appearing as drunk as a production assistant in the BBC canteen at about 9:30 on a Friday night. Even someone being drunk and/or stoned on a Doctor Who episode is pushing the mark a bit, and it's to Nightmare of Eden's credit that the production chose to be this daring.

Another good episode. I must admit - it feels good to have the memories of one's youth validated!

5K1 - Nightmare of Eden 1

There is something magical about the Doctor Who stories that you remember from your childhood, no matter how they're looked upon in retrospect. Nightmare of Eden is one of those stories that I remember from my youth as fondly as I remember Star Wars, although, heading into viewing this story, I was worried that my memory would collide with reality just as the Hecate collided with the Empress.

Nightmare of Eden is what Doctor Who was all about in my 10-year-old - space ships, captains, bridges, aliens. Eden was a cornucopia that fed my imagination so much that most of the LEGO space cruisers that I built as a kid were based on what I saw in Nightmare of Eden. And looking at it now, the story hasn't actually aged that badly.

Tom Baker shows a return to earlier form in Episode One, bringing a certain gravitas to the proceedings that hasn't been seen in some time. Whether or not it was Baker's legendary feud with director Alan Bromly that brought a more focused performance out of him, Baker is as good as he's ever been in this. I don't even mind the Mandrel's first appearance at the cliffhanger, although I am watching this immediately after The Creature From The Pit...

5G4 - The Creature From The Pit 4

If the cliffhanger to Episode Three wasn't odd enough (Lady Adrasta is threatened by the monster. Will the evil villainess escape? Or will The Doctor win yet again?), the main villain of the piece, Adrasta, is killed seven minutes into the episode, removing any sort of conflict for the duration of the story (as well as killing off just about the sexiest tyrant the series has ever seen).

Adrasta's death not only removes any conflict (Karela's meek alliance with the ineffectual throng of bandits was never going to go anywhere, especially with Torvin as the bandits' leader), but it also sucks any possible drama out of the last few minutes, leaving The Doctor to perform some pseudoscience solution to the suddenly new problem of a neutron star coming to destroy Chloris.

So, when you add it up - ludicrous characters, ridiculous monster, bizarre plot resolution - this should be one of the worst stories ever made. And yet, The Creature From The Pit seems to succeed despite the massive number of negative aspects working against it simply because, like much of Season 17, this story is a great deal of fun to watch. The Creature From The Pit is bad, but it is no means unwatchable. It probably comes across better when viewed in quick succession, though. I can't imagine Creature being one of only six (later five) stories offered during a particular season of Doctor Who, but it works perfectly fine as a nice romp in the midst of...well, slightly less rompy stories (and I do mean slightly. Stay tuned.).

5G3 - The Creature From The Pit 3

Picking up where the last episode left off in the ludicrous factor, The Doctor attempts to communicate with the giant beast with gobsmacking results. How on Earth was Tom Baker allowed to perform fellatio upon this thing and get away with it? Mary Whitehouse was mortified when it looked as if The Doctor had drowned in The Deadly Assassin (hint, Mary: it's called a "freeze frame"), but she didn't seem to bat an eye at this inter species oral sex.

But this isn't the most troubling aspect of The Creature From The Pit for me. No, it's the fact that The Doctor and Romana, becoming increasingly invincible, are, in effect, armed in this story. Romana is almost always carrying K-9, and K-9 almost always is shooting down guards with his nose laser. At first just a cute, know-it-all computer, now the robot dog has become the universe's bulkiest stun gun - yet another easy fix for The Doctor to go along with his glib tongue to get him out of sticky situations.

And another thing (and although it really does seem like I'm cutting this poor story to shreds, I hope to be more positive in the next write-up), another big beef I have is not with this story, essentially, but with John Nathan-Turner in four years' time after this story aired. I'll delve into more when the time comes, but Geoffrey Bayldon is such an almost perfect match, both physically and vocally, to the late William Hartnell that every time I watch this story (and, to an even greater extent, when I watch Bayldon in an episode of the 1987 series Star Cops), I can't help that, with all due respect to Richard Hurndall, Bayldon should have been the automatic choice to play the First Doctor in The Five Doctors in 1983. Good thing the producers of Doctor Who Unbound at Big Finish thought the same thing.

5G2 - The Creature From The Pit 2

After five minutes of this episode, you begin to notice that there's no videotape sequences at all during this time. It's all on film, including some superb looking shots of The Doctor in the pit - first hanging from the tiniest tendrils of his scarf, then later as he's exploring the cavern by the light of a single match. You can almost be led to believe that The Creature From The Pit is a fantastic looking story, perhaps even the best looking story to date.

Then a giant, green garbage bag comes around the corner in BBC Studio 7 waving what looks to be its semi-flaccid reproductive organ, intent on either devouring or defiling The Doctor, and all hope for this serial is lost. The notion of a giant blob creature really should have been rejected from the very outset, if only for reasons of budget. But the creature is merely a testament to one of the great failings of the Graham Williams era - the inverse ratio between the size of the budget and the size of the imagination.

I'm not going to call the Philip Hinchcliffe era unimaginative, but it's scope was certainly more provincial, and certainly much less fantastical, than the era that succeeded it. However, the money stretched a lot further in the mid Seventies than it did in the later part of the decade. If life was fair, the two eras would have flip flopped, and Williams would have had ample money to bring his giant creatures and alien planets to life, while Hinchcliffe, whose better quality stories thrived on minimalism and could have probably made do with a slightly smaller budget.

But it wasn't to be, and after the unquestionable triumph of City of Death, the jewel of the Graham Williams era, each successive story for the remainder of Season 17 had problems with it, some of them larger than others. Figuratively and literally, the monster from Creature was the biggest of them all.

5G1 - The Creature From The Pit 1

Let's mention the awful bits of The Creature From The Pit and get them out of the way, shall we? Surprisingly, most of what I don't like about Creature only occurs during the opening TARDIS scene. Lalla Ward's hair and dress do not flatter her slim figure at all (it's interesting to note that Ward and the costume designer had a falling out over the costume, and the result of that spat led to Ward having more say about her costumes in future. The next story in production was, of course, City of Death, which, as noted before, features the best Romana costume of them all).

The Doctor is being read a nursery rhyme by K-9, which is just silly without being entertaining or funny. Speaking of K-9, K-9 is speaking differently these days, thanks to John Leeson leaving and David Brierly arriving as the new voice of the robot dog. No disrespect to Brierly's performance, but it's just not K-9. It's like when Barney Rubble was voiced by Daws Butler in place of Mel Blanc for a while, or when Coy and Vance replaced Bo and Luke Duke in The Dukes of Hazzard.

And then, in another in a line of Graham Williams's obsessive explanations for the TARDIS landing on a new planet, Romana discovers a distress beacon that has never been used on the TARDIS before (and, no doubt, never will again) which brings the TARDIS to Chloris, a planet inhabited by stern women and grubby bandits, the latter of who are not at all funny, despite their best efforts.

Okay, so I guess that was actually a lot that I'm not in favour of in this story thus far. One thing that genuinely shines, though? The scenes set outdoors on Chloris as shot at Ealing Film Studios, which rivals some of the material shot at those same studios for Planet of Evil.

5H4 - City of Death 4

The Discontinuity Guide really did put it best when one or all of its three authors said this about City of Death: "Just when you think it can't get any better, John bloody Cleese appears." Cleese, who was busy making the second series of the greatest comedy programme ever created, Fawlty Towers, at the time, probably provides the straightest performance of them all in this story, oddly. A cameo from Cleese would appear so jarring in any other story in any other programme, but this is City of Death - a story which is so comfortable in writing its own rules in the process of shattering others that its brilliance is in its audacity as much as it is in its more corporeal elements.

The basic plot of this story actually bears a resemblance with that other effortless piece of perfection of the Tom Baker era, The Talons of Weng-Chiang. In both stories, a creature from another time/place is stranded on Earth and has to resort to scavenging the local surroundings for treasures (Magnus Greel needed the raw energy of young women, Scaroth needed the funds from stolen artwork) to try and recover a way to leave the planet, most likely destroying Earth in the process. Both stories are also the culmination of all that was great about their respective eras. Talons closed of the Philip Hinchcliffe/Robert Holmes era in fine style, while City of Death is the zenith of the brief time in the slightly more erratic epoch of Graham Williams and Douglas Adams that represented the best of all things Who. Never before or since had humour and drama mixed so well that it is unperceivable if you were watching the funniest comedy or the most dire drama.

City of Death, plain and simple, represents four episodes of the best Doctor Who ever made. It also wraps up in much the same way that it started, with a hint of whimsy and romance, and a scene that has most likely been reenacted by countless Doctor Who fans to the point of cliche. But I don't care. That last scene is so charming, just like the story as a whole, that, one day, when I go to Paris, I will make it a point to stand at the base of the Eiffel Tower, look up, and yell "Bye bye, Duggan!" at the top of my lungs. And it will take the assembled hordes of Genghis Khan to stop me from doing it.

5H3 - City of Death 3

The highlight for this episode, as great as is it is overall, might just be Count Scarlioni's housecoat. Such a luxurious garment almost succeeds in making Julian Glover look like a poor man's Hugh Hefner (although I would posit that Hef is doing a pastiche of Scarlioni, given how suave Glover is in this story).

The housecoat is just one of many little, seemingly inconsequential things about City of Death that make it so enjoyable to watch, beyond the remarkably tightly plotted story that binds the four episodes together. I love how The Doctor figures out Scaroth's plan in the space of a sentence, which would seem like lazy writing in any other story, but because Tom Baker pulls off the explanation with characteristic panache, and because it forces Glover's Scaroth (aka Captain Tencredi in 1505) to realize the cleverness of The Doctor and raise his game to match, The Doctor's quick thinking works brilliantly.

I love the following exchange between Duggan and Romana. "Do you know what I don't understand?" "I expect so". I love how not a boom shadow is in shot during a scene featuring Scaroth and The Doctor, but the entire microphone and boom itself, and nobody noticed for thirty years because we were far too into enjoying the story to be bothered with such trivialities. I love Romana's outfit, the best one she ever wore, and I love how I have no idea how she keeps that hat firmly glued to her head at such a jaunty angle. Most of all, I just love how much fun City of Death is to watch - one of the few times during this Chronic Hysteresis that I've been grinning from ear to ear for pretty much the entire duration of a story.

5H2 - City of Death 2

The centerpiece of Episode Two is obviously the first meeting between The Doctor, Romana, and Duggan and the Count and Countess Scarlioni. Has there ever been a better scripted scene in Doctor Who? So many lines and passages from this scene have continued to live on in Doctor Who lore, quoted ad infinitum by fans far and wide.

"What a wonderful butler! He's so violent!"

"You're a beautiful woman, probably."

"I don't think he's as stupid as he seems." "My dear, nobody could be as stupid as he seems."

And so on, and so on. I outlined earlier how invincible The Doctor and Romana had become to the point that the Daleks were no longer considered formidable. What was needed for Doctor Who to become interesting again was an enemy that could match, or even top, our heroes, and, in Julian Glover's Scaroth, we have it. Glover is magnificent in this, playing the ultimate James Bond villain (a couple years before he became a Bond villain) without ever going over the top. In a story where there are so many entertaining and fascinating characters vying for, and receiving, adequate screen time, it is possibly Glover who is the most watchable.

I've spoken in the past about how Episode Three is often the most difficult installment to maintain momentum in a four-part story. But the cliffhanger to Episode Two, with the twist revelation of Scaroth in Florence in 1505, ensures that Episode Three will be an entirely new beast in a story that has already been enthralling to watch.

5H1 - City of Death 1

In order to fully sum up what City of Death is all about, the easiest thing to do is simply misquote some dialogue from the first scene between The Doctor and Romana: "What City of Death has, - it has an ethos, a life, it has a spirit all of its own. Like a wine, it has a bouquet."

City of Death is one of the all time monumental moments in Doctor Who history, and this is evident after watching only the opening scenes of Episode One. Blissful and romantic, these opening scenes are as adult as the series has ever been, because only adults can look at those opening scenes of Tom Baker and Lalla Ward, clearly falling in love, dodging Parisian traffic to the strains of Dudley Simpson's most wonderful score ever, and fully understand what a fantastic achievement this story is. Only Doctor Who could cut from an exploding spaceship piloted by a spaghetti-headed monster 400 million years in the past to two Time Lords riding a subway in Paris, 1979, and get away with it.

Parts of this episode may look like they were commissioned by the Paris tourist bureau, but the effort to take Doctor Who overseas for the first is 100% justified by how gorgeous it all looks. The scenery, the acting, the most fantastic script from Douglas Adams (to quote a few more of the tremendous lines from this episode would only do a disservice to the equally brilliant lines that weren't quoted) all add up to 25 of the most enjoyable minutes of Doctor Who I've ever seen.

And we're only at Episode One.

5J4 - Destiny of the Daleks 4

There is so much wrong with Destiny of the Daleks, but it never seems as bad as it should be. The Movellans are interesting enough, if remarkably flawed. Why are their power packs, so vital to their survival, fitted on their belt where any Dickensian child pickpocket could dismantle an entire squadron with a quick flourish? And why do they all look like they're in Eddy Grant's backup band?

A long line of extremely helpful natives (including Westar and Sevrin) continues with Tyssan, who I actually feel very proud of when The Doctor almost looks like he's going to award him a medal after the raid of the Movellan ship is successful. Also, the first and only use in the classic of the then relatively new Steadicam works well, but could have been better utilized.

But the measure of success for this story still hinges on how invincible it's villains appear, or rather how invincible it's heroes are. Destiny of the Daleks is the beginning of perhaps the most smug era in Doctor Who's history. An omnipotent Doctor, his genius Time Lady protege, and an indomitable robot dog who would have probably been so powerful in this story that he had to be confined to the TARDIS lest he dismantle the legend of the Daleks even more. In the rare instances that The Doctor and/or Romana were in threatening situations, why would we even believe they were in danger? As Romana displayed early in Destiny, regeneration is as casual a process to a Time Lord as changing shirts is for a human.

The TARDIS team was at their most powerful at around this time, and, thus, at their most predictable. They are the Harlem Globetrotters to the Daleks/Movellans/(insert weekly alien threat here)'s Washington Generals. The game always seems close, The Doctor and Romana perform a series of tricks that entertain the children, and the Globetrotters end up winning in the end. It all depends, I suppose, how much of these antics you enjoy, as Season 17 was rife with them. Destiny of the Daleks succeeds in only being mildly diverting - probably a 12-point victory by the Globetrotters.

5J3 - Destiny of the Daleks 3

Poor David Gooderson never stood a chance. Michael Wisher, whose dynamic performance created the character of Davros in Genesis of the Daleks, was unavailable to reprise his role as the Daleks' creator in this story, so the production team was left with no other option but recast the role. Gooderson was chosen to play Davros, and he gives a fine performance on it's own. However, Wisher's performance casts a long shadow, and one can't help but think of Wisher's Davros when watching Gooderson. To further hamper Gooderson, he's forced to wear the ill-fitting mask originally created for Wisher in Genesis.

It's the fact that Davros has even returned in this story that signals the end of competent Daleks for the foreseeable future. No longer capable of functioning on their own, the Daleks' sole mission in this story is to find their creator to help give them an edge in their role with a race of robots, the Movellans. It's even heavily implied that the Daleks are now robots themselves. When did this happen? Plot developments in the post-Genesis era have all been retrofitted (by fans, mostly) to tie in with what The Doctor did to change history on behalf of the Time Lords in Genesis of the Daleks. Convenient, that, but at the time, this jarred alarmingly. Robotic Daleks are the exact opposite of what the original Daleks stand for - pure hate. Robots don't hate. They're cold and logical. Daleks have never been logical, which is what made them so frightening. Logical Daleks are never frightening because we know exactly what they're going to do.

What I didn't expect to see, though, was a remarkably cold and callous streak from The Doctor. Whilst holding Davros hostage, the Daleks bring in some prisoners to exterminate until The Doctor gives himself up. Surely The Doctor knows the Daleks well enough that they're not going to bluff, but he plays along with them and watches the Daleks shoot down two prisoners and are an instant away from gunning down prisoner number three before The Doctor finally asks them to stop. So two was acceptable, but three was the line? You could almost hear The Doctor yelling, "This has gone on just long enough!" (you know, after he told the Daleks to "spack off").

Later, The Doctor continues his bloodlust by actually detonating a grenade that was affixed to Davros's chair before two Daleks managed to pry it off. What's more shocking is how casually he detonates the remote control when he's operating his sonic screwdriver. And then when he hurls a Kaled mutant against a rock late in the episode, he adds cruelty to defenceless species to his list of crimes in this episode.

5J2 - Destiny of the Daleks 2

How many times do you need to tell someone to not move when that person wasn't even moving in the first place? Once? Probably. Twice would hammer the point home, to be sure. Three times? That would be pushing it. Four would be overkill.

Well, how about seven? That's how many times the Daleks, after crashing through some plasti...er...glass for no real reason to take Romana prisoner, shout at the petrified Time Lady to get her to stay still, which is just what she happened to be doing in the first place. You can tell Lalla Ward is doing her best to look as terrified of the Daleks as she possibly can in an unintentional homage to Jacqueline Hill, but it just doesn't come off. And how can it? If the story that's being told doesn't even take it's main villains seriously, then how can the heroes?

To hammer that point home, late in the episode, The Doctor, perched safely at the top of a shaft, famously taunts the Daleks, "If you're supposed to be the superior race of the universe, why don't you try climbing after us?". In truth, Baker was just saying what we were all thinking for years. But it's the fact that he did say it which is troubling. We, as viewers, knew that the various monsters that The Doctor met each week were obviously fake, but that was part of the fantasy. Doctor Who was built on its monsters, but now that the programme was no longer taking its monsters seriously, it was no longer taking itself seriously.

5J1 - Destiny of the Daleks 1

The Douglas Adams era as script editor officially begins with one of the more controversial scenes ever seen in Doctor Who, or simply one of the most frivolous, depending on your point of view. I'm in the camp of the latter approach when it comes to not only this scene, but pretty much anything to do with Season 17 of Doctor Who.

If anything, Adams's addenda to Terry Nation's first Doctor Who scripts in four years at least provide something different from the bog standard Nation approach to Doctor Who: Doctor and companion land on planet, explore, get separated, and the opening episode ends with a "shock" appearance of the Daleks. Little touches like Oolon Colluphid's Origins of the Universe are just something to laugh about along the way. Hitchhiker's Guide and Doctor Who crossover fanfic writers need to not worry and just sit back and enjoy the ride.

The realization of the Movellan spaceship, both in the model sequences and as a full size model built on location, is actually quite impressive, but, in general, like all Nation Dalek episodes, nothing much happens in Episode One, and we're just waiting around for the expected "surprises" to unfold.

5F6 - The Armageddon Factor 6

At last, The Armageddon Factor limps to the finish line, thus closing the Key to Time season. I've actually enjoyed this last story of the season, as well as the whole concept of the Key to Time season, in general. In fact, as this season was my first prolonged exposure to Doctor Who as a young 'un, I was under the general impression that The Doctor was always searching for something specifically, so the notion of a grand story arc such as this didn't seem as jarring to me as it may have to long term viewers at the time.

The lack of scale really hampers the end of this story, though, as well as the lack of scale to the final scene. Whereas The Doctor's first meeting with a Guardian occurred in a strange, mystical world that the White Guardian dragged him to, the climactic meeting with the Black Guardian occurs within the safety and familiarity of The Doctor's TARDIS. It's a shame that this scene couldn't have been set in some a place that offered some sort of danger, but it wasn't. And look at the scene - even though The Doctor is supposedly being threatened by one of the most powerful beings he has ever come into contact with, he is 100% in control. Zero threat, zero danger, zero drama.

And then the giant reset button gets hit when The Doctor scatters the segments, enabling Astra to return to life and rejoin Merak in romantic bliss. Does this then mean that all the other segments were returned to where they were originally found? Is there a necklace hanging around one of the stones in the Nine Travellers? Did Garron finally get back his lump of jethrik? Is there now a shrunken Calufrax creating a black hole somewhere in space?

Whatever the case, the reset was both inevitable, in hindsight, and unavoidable. If the balance of good or evil was reset, as the White Guardian intended, then there wouldn't be much of an entertaining program to watch anymore if there was no evil for The Doctor to stamp out. It all seems, as the last scene would indicate, a season-long explanation as to why The Doctor installs a Randomizer in the TARDIS, thus giving the series a raison d'etre for appearing willy nilly in various places. It also gives Graham Williams the satisfaction that he's justified a reason for The Doctor's travels, as the moral ambiguity of the apparent randomness of his exploits was always something that bugged the producer.

On the whole, The Key To Time season was rather entertaining, and nice way for me, personally, to relive some happy childhood memories.

5F5 - The Armageddon Factor 5

The action for the last two episodes switches to the Shadow planet for the last two episodes, which is a welcome relief if only because it limits the involvement of Merak (and Shapp, too, who has been painted in broad, comic strokes, but has been entertaining, none the less).

There's a quite chilling scene, actually, when The Doctor is communicating with the Shadow and explicitly mentions his task of finding the Key to Time on behalf of the White Guardian. The Doctor has been quite keen on keeping his quest secret (including, at times, to Romana), so to see him mention it here raises the stakes a bit, and again flirts with creating some good, solid drama in a story that has been frantically searching for it.

But then The Doctor, unconvincingly, gets sucked down a hole (apparently, anyway. The effect portraying this is ambiguous, at best) and meets up with Drax. Drax is on the used car salesman end of the Time Lord spectrum, apparently knows The Doctor from the Academy days on Gallifrey, and is another comic relief character intent on diminishing the drama. Drax is also another nail in the coffin that is the mystery of The Doctor and Gallifrey - he's just your average Time Lord who's trying to make a living. Plus, we know the year (well, at least the last two digits) of when The Doctor went to the Academy. The image of a young First Doctor rushing off to class after getting rip roaring drunk at a kegger the night before is now prominently affixed in my brain.