Category: Complete Review
Doctor Who episode 544: Warriors’ Gate – Part Three (17/1/1981)
‘They’re only people.’ The reveal of the Tharils’ true nature – after we’ve already been encouraged to sympathise with their plight through Rorvik’s treatment of Biroc and Lazlo, the imagery of Tharils packed below decks like slaves, and offhand references to ‘Tharil hunts’ – is a brilliant, rug-pulling moment. Biroc sits in his great hall declaring, ‘we are kings’ as the Doctor grimly guesses that they are the enslavers the Gundan Robots were built to defeat. Two time zones – the fall of the Tharil Empire and its ancient ruins – converge, the blade of a Gundan axe slices into the same axe embedded into a cobwebbed table. The show hasn’t bettered the poetry and visual storytelling in this sequence. It’s astonishing.
Doctor Who episode 543: Warriors’ Gate – Part Two (10/1/1981)
‘There are three physical gateways and the three are one.’ After the mystery of the first episode, this is much more down to earth. It provides some answers which, of course, only prompt more questions, but the overall sense is progress in unpicking the plot. The Gundan Robots are revealed to be the creations of a slave rebellion against an empire that once ruled all of known space, whose masters ‘descended out of the air riding the winds and took men as their prize, growing powerful on their stolen labours and their looted skills.’ There’s poetry in the script, which, combined with the fairytale setting of a long-abandoned feast, makes for a striking and compelling episode.
Doctor Who episode 542: Warriors’ Gate – Part One (3/1/1981)
For the most part, Doctor Who isn’t the kind of cerebral, “grown up” SF that the BBC occasionally dabbled in during the Sixties and Seventies – earlier Out of the Unknown, A for Andromeda, occasional Play for Todays kind of thing. But it can be. Warriors’ Gate is the convergence of Bidmead’s push to get “proper” high concept SF scripts and JNT’s push to bring in new production talent. Apparently it was a nightmare to make, but the result is a long way from the unsatisfactory clash of styles in The Leisure Hive.
Doctor Who episode 541: State of Decay – Part Four (13/12/1980)
‘What goes up must come down’ could almost be the tagline for the season. This model script ends with the perfectly-seeded idea of a makeshift bowship dispatching the Great Vampire, as the Doctor has learned the truth about the enemy, and worked out how to improvise the solution from the materials to hand. Something very similar happens in Horror of Fang Rock with Palmerdale’s diamonds. The final result is a story that unfolds steadily, layering its revelations effectively, giving all the regulars something memorable to do, and takes the audience with it rather than baffling them with undercooked surprises (I’m look at you, The Leisure Hive).
Doctor Who episode 540: State of Decay – Part Three (6/12/1980)
It’s possibly a mark of Terrance Dicks’ feelings on the matter that the Doctor doesn’t even know he’s got a new companion until more than halfway through the serial, and Adric spends pretty much the whole episode in a deep sleep. Instead, the focus is on the Doctor and Romana’s ongoing investigations, which, in true Dicks style, now include a chunk of Time Lord myth.
Doctor Who episode 539: State of Decay – Part Two (29/11/1980)
There’s a very creditable attempt to create a creepy atmosphere, as the Doctor and Romana spend most of the episode exploring the E-Space equivalent of Castle Dracula, discovering that it’s a spaceship (the kind of reveal that would have been the punchline in most series), that its storage bays are filled with drained corpses, the fuel tanks are being used to store blood, and that underneath, something vast waits for the Time of Arising.
Doctor Who episode 538: State of Decay – Part One (22/11/1980)
‘Night must fall, Romana.’ The biggest tell that this was originally intended for the 1977 series is that the Doctor and Romana are involved in the main story by halfway through the first episode, rather than hovering uneasily outside the action. Unsurprisingly, this is much more traditional than Full Circle, and a much less awkward fit for the new house style than The Leisure Hive. As you’d expect from a Terrance Dicks script, the setting is established with economy, and the script pithily establishes the Lords in their castle and the peasants in their village. The Doctor implies that the Lords are leeches feeding off the efforts of the peasants, but we’ve already been clued into their darker purpose: ‘flesh and blood has its place.’
Doctor Who episode 537: Full Circle – Part Four (15/11/1980)
‘We’re all basically primeval slime with ideas above its station.’ A parable of evolution where the Deciders have been frozen in indecision for four thousand generations, repeating the same futile pre-launch procedures without ever pressing the button. Their refusal to adapt to change is finally overturned at this crisis point, as the rest of the Alzarian ecosystem rises up to cast them out. If this were made now, there would be an overt Green commentary, with the human race being expelled from the planet that birthed it, and which it has abused. I suspect there’s something of this theme lingering round the edges (it would certainly chime with executive producer Barry Letts’ instincts).
Doctor Who episode 536: Full Circle – Part Three (8/11/1980)
Tom Baker’s confrontation with the Deciders is brilliant. Mere minutes after they pardoned their own children, with great solemnity and pomp, their authority crumbles before the Doctor’s coldly furious verbal assault, as he accuses them of the responsibility for deceiving the community and permitting the slaughter of another child. In a season that already contains his brilliant performance as Meglos, this is Baker at his electrifying best. Cancel the resignation: he can wipe the floor with these people.
Doctor Who episode 535: Full Circle – Part Two (1/11/1980)
Some meddling kids steal the TARDIS and leave Romana at the mercy of a spider. In between, K9 gets decapitated (which is almost too horrible, except Romana immediately says he can be repaired) and the Doctor meets the Deciders (including new member George Baker) as if they’re the judges in a TV talent show.
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