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Tag: Romana I

Polyphase Avitron Wants a Cracker

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Review of The Pirate Planet (#99)

DVD Release Date: 03 Mar 09
Original Air Date: 03 – 12 Jan 1983
Doctors/Companions: Four, Romana I, K9
Stars: Tom Baker, Mary Tamm, John Leeson
Preceding Story: The Ribos Operation (Four, Romana I, K9)
Succeeding Story: The Stones of Blood (Four, Romana I, K9)

Somewhat unbelievably, with this month’s entry in the Everything Else series, I’ve reached the end of my Classic reviews. Every extant story from Hartnell through McGann (as well as most of the modern era, with major gaps in Tennant’s and some of Smith’s tenures) should now have its own blog entry somewhere. Not a bad showing for twelve-and-a-half years’ work, if I do say so myself.

Given how many positive things I’ve heard over the years about The Pirate Planet, I’m sure some fans will wonder how this particular story ended up being at the bottom of my metaphorical barrel. That’s a valid question, though the answer is not very exciting: it has neither very high nor very low fan rankings, is part of the Fourth Doctor’s run (of which there are the most adventures), and just… never grabbed me.

I know a lot of fans like Pirate Planet (simply?) because it’s written by Douglas Adams, and anything Adams touched has gained near-mythic importance to a certain slice of fandom. There are certainly elements here that exhibit Adams’s style. In particular, it has a thinky and complex ending, which may or may not quite make sense, but certainly takes more intense concentration to parse than I was willing (or able) to give it during this viewing.

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Not the End of the World

Review of The Armageddon Factor (#103)
DVD Release Date: 09 Mar 09
Original Air Date: 20 Jan – 24 Feb 1979
Doctors/Companions: Four, Romana I, K-9
Stars: Tom Baker, Mary Tamm, John Leeson
Preceding Story: The Power of Kroll (Four, Romana I)
Succeeding Story: Destiny of the Daleks (Four, Romana II)

This month marks the fourth of six installments of The Key to Time that has made it onto the Bad Reputation list. The Armageddon Factor is, however, the highest-ranked of those four on io9’s Best-to-Worst list, coming in at #207 of 254, putting it in only the bottom fifth of televised canon.

It had been a good long while since I’d last watched this one, so I’d forgotten a great deal of both the plot and the trappings. For example, it came as a bit of a surprise to discover how much of the story revolved around that last piece of the Key to Time. To be honest, pretty much all I remembered were who the Doctor and Companion were, and that a guest character was wearing a future Companion’s body (or, more correctly, vice versa).

To set the stage for readers who, like me, need either a refresher or an introduction to the adventure, the Doctor and Romana I are in pursuit of the final segment of the Key to Time when they arrive at a pair of twin planets, only one of which is where they expect. Atrios and Zeos are, to our heroes’ surprise, in midst of a nuclear war.

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A Circle of Disappointment

Review of The Stones of Blood (#101)
DVD Release Date: 01 Mar 09
Original Air Date: 28 Oct – 18 Nov 1978
Doctors/Companions: Four, Romana I
Stars: Tom Baker, Mary Tamm
Preceding Story: The Pirate Planet (Four, Romana I, K-9)
Succeeding Story: The Androids of Tara (Four, Romana I)

When I determined that this story was next up in my Bad Reputation series, I must admit I was a bit stumped. Despite its placement at #216 of 254 in io9’s Best-to-Worst ranking—putting it in the bottom 15%—I have always heard nothing but good things about this one.

Well, okay; maybe almost nothing but good things. Or maybe “enough” good things? Suffice to say, most of what I remembered before rewatching was the Ogri, a bad guy posing as a goddess (the Cailleach), and Amelia Rumford.

Going in, then, I was feeling pretty upbeat. The only “bad” part of the story I remembered was the horny campers who died stupidly at the hands of the Ogri (well, by their hands on the Ogri). But as I watched this time with a more critical eye, I found my estimation of the adventure dropping. I’m not sure I’ve ever come out of one of these Bad Reputation viewings with a lower opinion of the story than I went in, but that turned out to be the case this time.

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Do Androids Dream of Tin Dogs?

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Review of The Androids of Tara (#101)
DVD Release Date: 01 Mar 09
Original Air Date: 25 Nov – 16 Dec 1978
Doctors/Companions: Four, Romana I, K-9
Stars: Tom Baker, Mary Tamm, John Leeson
Preceding Story: The Stones of Blood (Four, Romana I)
Succeeding Story: The Power of Kroll (Four, Romana I)

When I decided on the next stories for the Bad Reputation™ series that I posted about last week, the four lowest-ranking Fourth Doctor selections in my spreadsheet surprised me. None of them struck me as particularly “bad,” and a couple I’d even go so far as to say I’m fond of.

Adding to the “hmm” factor, the first three of them were from the same season: The Key to Time (TKtT). So what gives?

The best I can figure is that when left to my own devices, I’ve already picked out both some of the very best and some of the very worst stories to talk about, leaving most of the “mid-range” adventures still in the queue. Even so, I don’t think I’d have predicted that The Androids of Tara, the fourth segment of TKtT, would fall in the bottom 15%. Yet in io9’s Best-to-Worst rankings, it came in at #217 of 254.

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Powerful Failure

Review of The Power of Kroll (#102)
DVD Release Date: 03 Mar 09
Original Air Date: 23 Dec 1978 – 13 Jan 1979
Doctors/Companions: Four, Romana I
Stars: Tom Baker, Mary Tamm
Preceding Story: The Androids of Tara (Four, Romana I)
Succeeding Story: The Armageddon Factor (Four, Romana I)

It’s been my impression that The Key to Time as a whole is generally considered by fandom to be pretty good stuff. However, The Power of Kroll, the penultimate installment, frequently gets brought up in “worst of” conversations (and truth be told, its immediate successor The Armageddon Factor is often not far behind).

So what makes this story so dodgy? It had been long enough since I’d last seen it that my memory was pretty sparse. Vague impressions of a city-sized plant-monster and the religious fanatics who worshipped it were enough to give me pause, but I girded my metaphorical loins and pressed “Play.”

Within minutes, it was clear that I’d forgotten a great deal indeed. To begin, there was John Leeson in the flesh. (As his metallic canine persona was marooned in the swamp, I can’t help but wonder if his contract required him to appear in a certain number of episodes, and this is how that got fulfilled.) More importantly, there was a “Swampie” butle-ing for the colonizers in the refinery. Oh, and Kroll is meant to be some sort of giant squid, not a plant-monster (I was clearly confusing the creature itself with the vines that would contract during the ritual by which the Doctor, Romana, and gun-runner Rohm-Dutt were to be executed by stretching them on a rack).

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Operation Brain Candy

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Review of The Ribos Operation (#98)
DVD Release Date: 03 Mar 09
Original Air Date: 02 – 23 Sep 1978
Doctor/Companion: Four, Romana I
Stars: Tom Baker, Mary Tamm
Preceding Story: The Invasion of Time (Four, Leela)
Succeeding Story: The Pirate Planet (Four, Romana I)

Of all of Tom Baker’s season openers, I think The Ribos Operation has to be my favorite (though Terror of the Zygons is strong, too). There are any number of details that contribute to my affection for this particular story, and I’ll try to outline some of them below, but it probably doesn’t hurt that it’s the first installment of a series-long arc—the first ever.

Having cut my Whovian teeth on the modern era, a full series story arc seemed natural to me in my early fandom days. I knew when I started watching pre-Hiatus/Classic Who that the traditional style was serialized one-offs, so it’s not that I found that format unusual or off-putting. However, when I got to Season 16 (also collectively known as The Key to Time), the familiarity of a longer arc felt comfortable and made it easy for me to settle in for the long haul.

The early minutes of the first episode are thus necessarily spent setting up the whole season. We are introduced to the White Guardian, who takes the Doctor and his TARDIS out of time and charges him with recovering the six segments of the Key to Time in order to restore order to the universe. We also meet the new “assistant” with whom said Guardian has saddled the Doctor: Romanadvoratrelundar. This young (though mature, at “nearly 140”) Time Lady is quickly established as the intellectual equal (if not superior) of the Doctor, having graduated with a “triple first” from the Time Lord Academy (and looking down her nose at the Doctor for “scraping through with 51% at the second attempt”).

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Retro-View #10: The Lure of an Arc

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The Ribos Operation (Story #98, 1978)
Viewed 12 Mar 2013

Doctor/Companion: Four, Romana I
Stars: Tom Baker, Mary Tamm
Preceding Story: The Invasion of Time (Four, Romana I)
Succeeding Story: The Pirate Planet (Four, Romana I)

Now I’ve done it. I should’ve known better than to start G on a story arc. She has a hard enough time with episodic cliffhangers that I suppose I should’ve expected her to tell me to pop in the next story of The Key to Time once we’d finished the first, but somehow I didn’t.

In the opening moments, I realize G hasn’t met K-9 yet. We pause while I explain the general concept. Then the White Guardian (who G understandably thinks looks like Colonel Sanders; “he’s even drinking a mint julep!”) begins his little chat with the Doctor. No sooner has this dialog begun, though, when I have to pause again to explain about the dog bite (see the Story Notes). It’s so much better than the herpes G had been assuming was the issue…

Once we get to Ribos, G thinks Garron and Unstoffe look like Tibetans or Mongolians (and that Romana looks like the Good Witch of the North). We get tied up enough in the story that there are barely any more comments until Romana blindly walks into the shrivenzale’s chamber. “Well look down, sweetie. Good god.” Sometimes even the most willingly suspended disbelief gets stretched too far.

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