Arc of Infinity

It'll be the biggest explosion this part of the galaxy has ever seen.

John Nathan Turner took advantage of the precedent set by City of Death and finagled several trip stories with foreign shooting under the guise of cost savings. Arc of Infinity is probably the second most famous foreign shoot after City of Death, although the use of Amsterdam is entirely superfluous. This story could have been shot in London and it wouldn't have made any difference. But if it gave us some nice shots and JNT got a paid trip to Amsterdam out of it, who are we to complain?

Plot Summary

The story opens with a member of the High Council passing bio-information from the Matrix to mysterious figure. The transmission is detected and reported. As such, the transmission is not fully complete and the High Council member shoots the worker who reported the transmission.

On the TARDIS, the Doctor and Nyssa are seeing about minor repairs, including the scanner. Upon finishing, they detect a strange anomaly approaching them. It is strong and out of phase with regular space. It emerges in the TARDIS and attempts to take over the Doctor. He is knocked out.

Meanwhile in Amsterdam, two young men, Colin and Robin, are backpacking around the city. Looking for a cheap place to stay, Robin suggests an underground crypt he knows about. Colin is reluctant upon learning what it is, but Robin convinces him and the two men settle in their sleeping bags. Colin is later woken by a sound reminiscent of the TARDIS and goes to investigate. He sees a slab that wasn't there before. The slab opens and a strange creature, called an Ergon, emerges who shoots Colin.

The Doctor wakes and appears no worse. The entity was unable to take him over. While rousing, the TARDIS receives a recall notice from Gallifrey, issued by Commander Maxil of the Citadel guard. The Doctor suspects the two incidents are related and sets to follow the recall signal.

Robin wakes to find Colin gone. He too enters the room to see the slab and again the Ergon emerges. Robin runs before it can shoot him. He hides in another room and sneaks back into the room he was sleeping in to get his shoes. He sees Colin enter but when he tries to speak to him, Colin turns and appears hypnotized. Robin runs off to tell the police but they dismiss his story. Frustrated, he travels to a hostel where he and Colin were to stay. The clerk informs him that Colin's cousin had left a message saying that she would be flying in the next day.

Upon landing on Gallifrey, the Doctor finds himself in a locked room. He attempts to break out but before he can, an operator opens the door for him remotely. Running into guards, the Doctor and Nyssa try to run for it but the Doctor is stunned by Commander Maxil. They take him back to the TARDIS to recover. Maxil also removes the time circuit from the TARDIS to prevent it from leaving.

In Amsterdam, Robin meets Colin's cousin, Tegan who was recently laid off from her job. Robin explains what happened and Tegan is reminded of things with the Doctor. They go to the police but they wave it off as a tourist having gotten lost. Tegan then asks Robin to take her to the crypt where the two spent the night.

On Gallifrey, the Doctor is brought before the High Council where they opt to sentence him to death as the only means of stopping the incursion of the antimatter creature. This is observed by a friend of the Doctor's named Damon. Damon slips a record of the bio-data extract into the Doctor's hand as he is led back to the TARDIS to await execution. Damon and Nyssa arrange with Council Hedin (the lone decenter in the execution decision) to visit the Doctor.

The Doctor asks Damon to fit the TARDIS with a new time circuit, without a recall circuit if possible. Nyssa goes with him but when the order for the Doctor's execution is issued, she takes a gun and goes to rescue the Doctor. She shoots her way in but the Doctor convinces her to put the gun down and let the sentence be carried out. As the Doctor disappears, an imprint of the antimatter creature is seen before it too disappears.

The Doctor's body is hidden by a field and his mind is transported to the Matrix. The antimatter creature appears to convince the Doctor to give up but he continues to fight him. The execution did not go as expected to the Castellan so he dispatches Commander Maxil to the Matrix control room to figure out what happened. Maxil discovers the transport of the Doctor's mind. He also verifies that the Doctor's biometric data was sent out. They ask Damon about it and he verifies what they found out about the transmission, including how he felt he could not tell the Castellan as being on the High Council, was a suspect. Nyssa is simply pleased that the Doctor is alive.

Tegan and Robin sneak into the crypt. They meander their way to where Robin and Colin had slept but find the door to the room of the attack locked. They manage to get in another way where they see the Ergon. It shoots both of them and the disappear. They wake in a TARDIS-like room with the Ergon and the antimatter creature enters the room. He scans Tegan and learns that she is a friend of the Doctor.

The Castellan assembles the High Council and distributes the information Maxil discovered. The Castellan is convinced that the Doctor is working with President Borusa to bring the creature in. However, the actual traitor is Councilor Hedin. He alerts the creature to what is happening and they decide to release the Doctor to allow the creature to transfer his essence to the Matrix. The creature threatens the Doctor that he will not interfere or he will kill Tegan. The Doctor agrees and is released.

The Doctor unlocks Damon and Nyssa from the Matrix control room. He has Damon check a part on the TARDIS while he and Nyssa run to President Borusa's office. Councilor Hedin has come into Borusa's office and forced him to deactivate the Matrix protocols. The Doctor and Nyssa enter Borusa's office but are spotted by the guards. Hedin reveals that the antimatter creature is in fact Omega, exiled Time Lord founder, last seen in The Three Doctors. Hedin believes Omega will reform Gallifrey and was wrongly exiled. The Castellan enters and tries to shoot the Doctor but Hedin leaps in front of the blast, killing him. Borusa chides the Castellan revealing that Hedin, not the Doctor, was behind the plot. They turn to see that Omega has now fully taken control of the Matrix.

The Doctor reenters the Matrix and Tegan is able to give some hints as to where she is. The High Council sets up a distraction which allows the Doctor and Nyssa to leave Gallifrey undetected. The Doctor and Nyssa land in Amsterdam and using Tegan's clues, the first locate the hostel the group was staying at and then the crypt where Omega's TARDIS is.

In the crypt, Omega has begun to convert himself into being of regular matter. The Doctor and Nyssa find the equipment Colin had set up and the Doctor disables it. While he is doing so, the Ergon emerges and shoots at the Doctor but misses. The Doctor disarms him and Nyssa picks up the gun and shoots the Ergon. The then enter Omega's TARDIS.

Omega has nearly converted himself, but the Doctor's sabotage has prevented Omega from finalizing the process. The TARDIS equipment explodes but Omega survives. He removes his mask to show that he has taken on the form of the Doctor. Still weak, he leaves the Doctor in the crypt. The Doctor digs the gun out of the wreckage and he, Nyssa and Tegan pursue Omega.

Omega wanders through Amsterdam when he notices the transfer process failing. He realizes the Doctor is pursuing and runs away, only to be finally cornered on a pier. Dying and unable to escape, Omega begins to will his body to explode, forcing the Doctor to shoot him, dematerializing his body.

Tegan has Colin checked into a hospital where they keep him for a couple of days with plans to send him back to Australia once recovered. Tegan then reveals that she was laid off and is invited to rejoin the TARDIS crew.

Analysis

I don't think it'll be much of a surprise to anyone to say that there are some decent story ideas in the Fifth Doctor era, but much of the time, it is let down by execution. Arc of Infinity is like that in that there is an interesting story idea with a neat little twist in that the villain is revealed to be Omega near the end of Episode Three, but the execution is not particularly great, especially in the costume and lighting departments.

This was one of the first Fifth Doctor stories that did not bring in some third party to act as an extra companion and that was nice. While I have enjoyed these extra temporary companions, they all have put the regular companions to shame. While Nyssa's acting did not improve over past performances, the lack of an interesting character actor next to her made her more tolerable by comparison. Likewise, Tegan actually being concerned for someone else and not her own desire to leave made her more enjoyable as well. Colin and Robin were not particularly good, but they also disappeared from the plot fairly early in the story so there's no particular harm there.

The thing that I enjoyed probably most was the ambiguous nature of Omega as the villain. He never killed Colin, Robin or Tegan and his goal the entire time was simply to return to Gallifrey. He did not pepper his speeches with talk of making the Time Lord's suffer or exacting revenge. It was simply about getting home. Most of the villainy was predicated on remembering the insanity of Omega in The Three Doctors as well as the actions of Councilor Hedin at the beginning of Episode One. Even after Omega escaped and killed the grounds worker for his uniform, Omega could have gone on the murderous rampage that we would expect a villain to get up to. Instead, he blends into the crowd, stopping to enjoy the simple pleasure of listening to music and interacting with other people. An argument could be made that there is a bit of prejudice on the Doctor's part and that the Doctor should have made a better effort to see if there was a better way of giving Omega the peace he desired without allowing the past megalomaniacal tendencies to spring forth.

Continuing on with that theme, it is interesting to note that the more ruthless side was actually the Gallifreian High Council. They condemn the Doctor to death simply because Omega has chosen the Doctor's form. Even on studying the evidence, the Castellan simply jumps to the conclusion that the Doctor is the traitor and Hedin actually sacrifices himself to save the Doctor, something you would not normally expect the villain's associate to do, especially as Omega didn't really need the Doctor himself at that point. It creates additional contrast in which side is really the more evil.

On the flip side, the costuming and lighting was dreadful. While I'm sure the crew didn't want to make it obvious that the villain was Omega in the beginning, it would have been nice if his costume was closer to the original one seen in The Three Doctors. Instead, his costume and the Ergon look painfully obvious as rubber suits with almost no contrast to give them additional definition. Omega's costume wasn't that bad when shown as a holoprojection in Hedin's office. There you had an almost blacklight contract that gave it depth. The mask was still odd, but the overall effect gave it a regal and slightly menacing feel. In person though, it was well lit and just looked terrible. The same for the Ergon. There was already a problem when you are trying to make something looking like a giant chicken look menacing, but to then fully light it just makes it look even worse.

Pacing was also an issue. Throughout this story there was a lot of technobabble and much of it was in an abstract, offhand manner which did not help carry the plot along. Trying to remember these techno-points from episode to episode made fully understanding the plan a bit difficult at times and I say this as one who enjoys Star Trek and all it's technobabble goodness.

Contrasting the rushed technobabble scenes, there were periods where it just felt like the story was killing time. Worst was the chase at the end of Episode Four. I understood that the crew wanted to take full advantage of the location and shoot as much of Amsterdam as they could, but it just dragged on and on. For someone who's body is breaking down, Omega kept putting a lot of distance between himself and the Doctor. The outside scenes work in City of Death because they are simple jaunty bits in the light-hearted beginning or little cuts near the end to show some distance. The extended chase in Episode Four just felt like padding because there was no break in it and it went on for nearly ten minutes. Also because there was so much padding in the chase, the final resolution felt a bit cheap. The Doctor simply shoots Omega with a dematerialization gun and that's the end. No clever plan, just good old fashioned run 'em down and shoot 'em. I would have liked a bit better against a foe like Omega.

Weighing it all together, I'd say this story is decidedly middling. There is a good plot idea and some decent acting, especially from the villains. But there is poor production and pacing. Plus even without a contrast, the acting of Nyssa and a few of the other secondary characters is a bit below par. I think I would have weight it slightly in the negative column overall but I think I could be talked into watching it again to see if it improved any on second viewing.

Overall personal score: 2 out of 5