Review of Arc of Infinity (#124)
DVD Release Date: 06 Nov 07
Original Air Date: 03 – 12 Jan 1983
Doctors/Companions: Five, Nyssa of Traken, Tegan Jovanka
Stars: Peter Davison, Sarah Sutton, Janet Fielding
Preceding Story: Time-Flight (Five, Nyssa, Tegan)
Succeeding Story: Snakedance (Five, Nyssa, Tegan)
The entries for this year’s theme of Highs & Lows end with Arc of Infinity, which is one I never know how to rank. It seems not to have left a strong impression on me one way or the other, aside from the slowly decaying “Doctor” at the end. I guess that makes it more of a personal “Meh” than either a High or a Low.
So I kind of went into my re-watch this time with an open mind. Would it be better than I thought? Worse than I thought? Who knew; I would leave myself open to any possibility.
In the end, I think I came out in roughly the same place as Charlie Jane Anders in her rankings on io9 back in 2015, where she placed Arc of Infinity at #205 of 254 entries, or roughly the 20th percentile. It wasn’t so horrific that I would flinch at the idea of watching it again, but neither did it have much to recommend it.
Primarily, I found that the plot—wherein the Doctor is forcibly recalled to Gallifrey because some as-yet-unidentified extra-dimensional entity has tried to cross dimensions by bonding with the Doctor’s physical form, and the High Council wants to prevent the entity from doing so at any cost—relied so heavily on arcane sci fi elements of Time Lord technology that it was difficult to follow.
Admittedly, my attention span these days is not what it used to be, and that may also have played a role in my enjoyment. But the actual details felt not only nigh incomprehensible, but largely unimportant. As long as you’re willing to accept that whatever nonsense the characters spout about what is happening makes sense in-universe, you can appreciate the emotional beats as the story washes over you.
Not that the emotions are necessarily all that intense, either—especially for an audience as used to the high level of manipulation we’ve had in the modern era. But we do have some probably-tense-for-the-time episode cliffhangers, and some vaguely interesting twists. I have to hope that on broadcast, the audience felt more surprised than I did.
A lot of things stand out in my mind as negative points to this story. They include the aforementioned plot, which was simultaneously too complex and uninteresting (to me), as well as the truly awful 80s-era visual effects. I’ve never been overly enamored of the Fifth Doctor and his era of the show, so these are probably nearly automatic marks in the “cons” column for me, too, despite my attempts at neutrality. (Not that I dislike Five or his Companions—I just find him very… beige.)
In the “pros” column, I’d put the first appearance of Colin Baker in Doctor Who (which was not the last time a future lead actor had a guest role on the show), the “unexpected” return of Tegan to the Doctor’s life, and the generous use of location filming in Amsterdam (even if it was mostly just showing off that they’d shelled out for it, not unlike in City of Death).
It seems that going in, I had really only remembered last half of last episode—so much so that when it became clear that the events in those last minutes were only just beginning, I second-guessed myself about whether I’d read the run time of the story correctly and started wondering if there were more than four episodes. That probably says something about the “vanilla” plot line of the rest of the serial. Or it says something about my general reaction to Five…
So it’s not a terrible story. As we say here in my area (damning with faint praise, perhaps), “It could’ve been worse.” If Five (or Nyssa or Tegan) is one of your faves, or if you enjoy techno-speak heavy stories, then maybe Arc of Infinity is better than the bottom fifth. Otherwise, I’d say there are plenty of other stories on which you could better spend your time—even among Fifth Doctor adventures.