Anyway, I need a new Blu-ray player, the version up on You Tube has been taken down for copyright violations, and this story is not available on BBC iPlayer. Cursed, I tell you!
Having finally located a copy that can be streamed, it’s not a bad little episode. There’s a certain amount of running very slowly down corridors, running very slowly up corridors and walking down corridors in a stately way because John Arnott is a bit old for much running. But despite the deus ex machina of ‘The Chancellor has a personal force field in his symbol of office? Since when?’ the previously set up ‘search for the Great Key’ has a nice denouement. Though with what we now know about Rassilon, it seems a bit weird that he set things up to prevent a Presidential dictatorship. Possibly it was meant to prevent anyone but him setting up a dictatorship.
The plot is very standard BG Who: somebody gets invaded, the Doctor has to defeat the Invaders. The difference this time is that it’s Gallifrey being invaded – and for once, the Doctor got outplayed. The Sontarans concentrated his attention on the Vardans; the Doctor never considered whether there was anyone behind the Vardan screen. However, this appears to have exhausted the Sontarian subtlety quota for the next several generations – or possibly they’d picked up a couple of human books on strategy when they were failing to invade Earth and were trying some of the tricks.
Both the main women characters get important stuff to do. Leela shows off her knife-throwing skills, later copied by a dying Outsider. Rodan shows she would have been a great companion. Not only does she have the engineering and technical skills to rebuild and reprogram a piece of obsolete equipment and make it bypass the force-field control unit, but she also appears to have taken Advanced Snark at the Academy. Romana seems to have had a considerable amount of Rodan in her DNA. Possibly they’re cousins?
John Arnott is an entirely believable Chancellor – nothing, nothing at all, is going to make him lose his cool. Being horribly murdered by invading aliens might prove somewhat inconvenient, but one must display dignity in all circumstances.
The remaining Outsiders and Andred have very little to do except follow the Doctor and Leela around – signposted in a couple of comic shots where they all look around in order. Fortunately, (well, not for the characters) the Sontarians winnow the chorus line down a bit.
And Milton Johns is displaying his ability to perform characters who are a) oily, b) creeps and c) will betray absolutely anybody or anything for a gumdrop. I always look forward to a story with Milton in it – he’s so much fun. 🙂
Bluesqueakpip 4 years, 5 months ago.
