Doctor Who:
The Armageddon Factor
By Bob Baker and Dave
Martin
“I shall destroy you for
this! I will disperse every particle of your being to the furthest reaches of
eternity!”
The search for the final
piece of The Key to Time brings The Doctor and Romana to the war torn area of
between the planets Atrios and Zeos.
What they discover is that there is another entity manipulating the
events of the war for his own bidding.
What he really wants is The Doctor and the other segments of the Key to
Time.
Hidden away on a hidden
planet is the Shadow. He is an agent for
the Black Guardian and he has the last piece of the Key to Time but he doesn’t
really know it. It appears that Princess
Astra is the final piece and she is a prisoner of the Shadow. What other problems they have is that The Marshall
is still hell bent on war and winning the day even though the Shadow has
stopped the war and that the Planet he is attacking is run by a battle
computer. The Doctor uses the Key to
Time with a fake piece to stop time with the Marshall’s Ship and the battle
computer while he can confront the Shadow and get the last piece of the Key
before The Black Guardian arrives and takes it from him.
I really do not like The Armageddon
Factor. I find it to be a poor ending to
a good season with The Key to Time theme.
For one it is too long. Being a
six part story it is filled with lots of running through corridors on different
planets. It kind of reminds me of a
Hartnell story where they do a lot of running around but do not accomplish
anything. In fact this happens throughout
most of the story and how many times can the same people get tricked into going
into the transmat shaft.
By watching this story I
can see why John Nathan – Turner got rid of the six part stories when he took
over as producer in little more than a year.
For one a majority of them were not good and were just too long and
boring. Take The Armageddon Factor for
instance. It is muddled with a lot of
filler and it really hampers the story.
By the time of part 4 and the many running around corridors I started to
lose interest and it was getting to the interesting part of the story.
With that said the
conclusion is pretty good. I loved the confrontation with Black Guardian and
how The Doctor outsmarted the Guardians.
By dispersing the Key so no one can use it is brilliant and what you
would expect The Doctor to do instead of letting the Guardians use it. Plus it sort of sets things up for the Twentieth
Anniversary season when The Black Guardian tries to make good on his threat of
killing him.
Sadly this is the last
time Mary Tamm plays Romana on TV. She
does return for the Fourth Doctor Series by Big Finish audios and does a
wonderful job playing Romana again before her passing but alas this would be
her last time in the role. Ironically
she would be replaced by this stories guest star Lalla Ward who played Princess
Astra.
We meet another Time Lord
in this story. Drax the jokester who seems to have gone the Academy with The
Doctor and he specializes in repair and
maintenances. Drax is also the one who
made the Battle computer and when he was finished he was prisoned by the
Shadow. Drax is the one who calls the
Doctor Theta Sigma. Some think that is
his real name or a nickname he had at the academy.
The Armageddon Factor is
not a good story in my opinion as it just keeps going on and on and is loaded with
filler galore. It could have been better
if it was a four part story but being a six part story it is just too long and
very dragged out. If anything it is
worth watching parts five and six as those are the most enjoyable parts of the
story.
Grade C –
No comments:
Post a Comment