The Armageddon Factor

This thing makes me feel in such a way I'd be very worried if I felt like that that about somebody else feeling like this about that, do you understand?

If you listen to fans about Season 16, you will usually get a debate on whether The Power of Kroll or The Armageddon Factor is the worst story of the season. Given that I rather liked The Power of Kroll, I'm betting this one will win my vote unless it pulls something miraculous out of a hat and The Pirate Planet ends up in last place. I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt especially since it brings in Lalla Ward for the first time.

Plot Summary

The Doctor and Romana follow the Key detector to the planet Atrios which is currently in the midst of a nuclear war with it's neighbor Zeos. The military leader is known as the Marshal and he runs the war while the planet is ruled by Princess Astra. Astra is having a liaison with the chief surgeon Merak and the two are working together to try and contact Zeos about bringing an end to the war. The Marshal is having none of it and aware of their attempts, traps Astra in an abandoned part of the base flooded with radiation.

The Doctor and Romana arrive in the base, having just avoided being vaporized by nuclear missile, just outside the section where Astra has been trapped. They find a dead guard but fearing a trap from the Black Guardian have K-9 cut a small hole in the door. The use of the weapon alerts the Marshal and he and detachment of guards arrest them, shortly after Astra makes a plea for help through the hole. K-9 drops into the shadows and is not seen by the guards.

The Marshal takes advantage and has Merak brought up as well, accusing all three of them of being Zeon spies. The Doctor tricks the Marshal's second-in-command, Shapp, into summoning K-9 with his dog whistle. K-9 enters and shoots the lights, allowing all three to run back into the tunnel towards the TARDIS. Meanwhile, a cloaked figure has materialized into the room and taken Princess Astra out, transmatting them to some other location.

The three fugitives run back to the TARDIS to find it blocked by debris from the last attack. K-9 returns and informs them that the guards ran down the other passage. Merak figures that Astra was behind the door and the Doctor has K-9 cut through the door. They find it empty except for Astra's tiara. With no alternatives, the Doctor and company return to the control room although he tells K-9 to keep watch on the wall of the radioactive room.

When the Doctor, Romana and Merak reenter the control room, they find the Marshal staring into a mirror "meditating". He welcomes them and decides the Doctor is to be the new strategist to fight the Zeons. He activates the viewscreen to see the space battle, although he is forced to recall their forces when they are beaten badly by the Zeon fleet. Realizing the Marshal is probably mad, the Doctor proposes a psychological force field and asks to speak to a Zeon prisoner to create one. The Marshal replies that they have no prisoners.

Back in the room, K-9 follows a signal into a duct where he becomes trapped in a chute heading towards the incinerator. The Doctor requests K-9 to help him and Shapp informs him of K-9's plight. The Doctor goes in after him and the Marshal begins freaking out that the Doctor might die. As he does, he pulls at his collar and Romana notices a chip on his neck. When the Doctor emerges, she tells him of this and they figure he is being controlled by another source.

The Doctor proposes to head to Zeos to capture a prisoner for the shield and the Marshal informs him of a transmat near the radioactive room. Meanwhile, Romana and Merak sneak around and find a hidden room that looks onto the control room through the Marshal's mirror. They see him being controlled through a skull that transmits through the mirror and rush to warn the Doctor. They arrive too late as the Doctor is grabbed by two masked men and transmatted off planet.

The masked men take the Doctor to a room where the leader, called the Shadow, interrogates the Doctor about the five found segments of the Key to Time. He also produces the TARDIS and demands that the Doctor go in and give them to him. The Doctor insists they are in a state of limbo and points out that if he enters the TARDIS, he could escape at will. The Shadow agrees that it is a stand off and is willing to wait him out. He and the men who grabbed him disappear.

Back on Atrios, Romana has K-9 reconfigure the lock to allow access to the transmat. Merak however grabs the key detector and transmats himself first, locking her out again. She once again has K-9 force the door, this time breaking the mechanism which keeps the door open. She and K-9 also transmat over. The open door is seen by Shapp while investigating the alarms and he too is transmatted to Zeos.

Romana catches up with Merak and takes back the detector although not before discovering a bracelet that belongs to Princess Astra. The Doctor runs into Shapp and figuring that Romana and K-9 have also come, summons K-9 with the dog whistle thus uniting the entire party.

K-9 informs the Doctor that he's been in contact with the Zeon commandant who is also a computer. The Doctor has K-9 take him to it and K-9 gets access to the core room where he introduces the war computer Mentalis. While examining the computer, they also learn that the Marshal is personally flying towards the planet with a load of weapons, intending to destroy Zeos for good.

The Doctor sends Shapp and Merak back to the transmat to try and stop the Marshal. Shapp is shot by a minion of the Shadow but falls into the transmat and makes it back to Atrios. He radios the Marshal to stop but the Marshal ignores him. Merak sees a projection of Astra summoning him but falls into one of the Shadow's traps and is knocked out.

The Doctor and Romana try to deactivate Mentalis' shut down state to allow it to defend itself from the Marshal's attack but it destroys the control mechanism to prevent them. They head back to the TARDIS and assemble the five segments of the key to time. When nothing happens, the Doctor crafts a facsimile of the sixth piece which allows him to create a small time loop around the Marshal's ship as it is firing it's missiles. However, as the key is not complete, the time loop begins to degenerate, meaning that the Marshal's missiles will eventually destroy Zeos and Atrios in the blast.

A mind controlled Astra finds Merak and tricks him into believing they need to find the Doctor and Romana. They do and the Doctor tells them to transmat back to Atrios with K-9. As they walk, they are attacked by the Shadow's guards. K-9 drives them off but is tricked into a transmat which sends him to the Shadow's planet. Astra ditches Merak and he is sent back to Atrios.

Astra finds the Doctor and Romana and tells them that she was separated when K-9 drove off the Shadow's guards. With the time loop deteriorating, the Doctor decides to go to the Shadow's planet to stop him. The three take the TARDIS there and Astra and Romana head off to find the Shadow. The Doctor waits and heads in a different direction.

The Shadow captures Romana with the help of the mind controlled Astra and uses a projection of Romana to confuse the Doctor. The Doctor catches on but is caught in a cell shortly afterward. In the cell, he runs into a fellow Time Lord named Drax who was threatened by the Shadow to build Mentalis and help him get the Key to Time. The Doctor convinces Drax to help him and repair some of the equipment from his TARDIS, which is on Zeos.

While Drax is busy, the Doctor investigates a tunnel outside of which he finds a mind controlled K-9. K-9 offers a deal from the Shadow to the Doctor to spare Romana's life but the Doctor grabs K-9 and throws him down the tunnel where Drax removes the mind control chip. The two then work together to repair the equipment.

The Doctor tries to get back to the TARDIS but is captured by the Shadow's guards who take him to Romana. The Shadow also removes Astra's mind control chip to return her to normal and tells the Doctor he is working for the Black Guardian. Knowing that the Doctor would gather the other five segments, he found the sixth and has sat in wait for the Doctor. The Doctor agrees to bring the Key segments out of the TARDIS. He and a guard make their way to the TARDIS but Drax is waiting for them with the repaired equipment. However, he fires at the Doctor, shrinking him. He then turns the gun on himself and shrinks himself as well.

The Doctor runs across the floor and he and Drax hide in a crack in the wall while the guard searches for them. The Shadow, watching from his screen, sees the door of the TARDIS unlocked and leaves to take the Key. The Doctor and Drax then run through the crack and into K-9, whom the Doctor orders to return to the Shaddow, pretending he is still under his control.

On Atrios, Shapp and Merak see the time loop holding the Marshal deteriorating. Merak, suspecting that the sixth segment of the Key to Time is connected with Astra, pulls up her medical file and notes a genetic anomaly that has passed through her family. Suspecting that she is the key, Merak attacks one of the Shadow's guards guarding the transmat entrance and forces him to take him to the third planet. He steals the guard's robes and follows the Shadow back into his lair.

The Shadow retrieves the Key to Time and brings it back to where Astra and Romana are held. Astra, realizing what she is, is drawn to the key and is transformed into the sixth segment when she touches the detector. The Shadow picks it up but before he can remove the fake segment, K-9 bursts through the wall and points out Merak. This distracts the Shadow long enough for the Doctor and Drax to exit K-9 and be returned to normal size. The Doctor grabs both the key and the sixth segment and runs with Romana, Drax and Merak down the tunnels.

Merak, in a state of confusion, wanders to find Astra. Drax also stays behind, promising to transmat himself and Merak while acting as rearguard. With only one second left in the time loop, the Doctor doesn't have enough time to replace the segment so he and Romana take the TARDIS back to Zeos. There, with Drax assisting him, the Doctor fully disables Mentalis, allowing him to put up a gravitational deflection field around Zeos.

As the time loop fails, the missiles from the Marshal's ship deflect away from Zeos and destroy the Dark planet. As it explodes, the Shadow begs forgiveness from the Black Guardian, who vows to finish the job and take the Key for himself.

Drax bids farewell to the Doctor, deciding to go into business with the Marshal to rebuild both Atrios and Zeos. The Doctor then places the sixth segment, completing the Key. As he does so, the Doctor becomes worried about the extreme amount of power that the wielder has and knows that he must get it to the White Guardian as quick as possible. The White Guardian appears on screen and asks for the Key so that he might restore balance to the universe. The Doctor asks him about Astra and the Guardian notes that while regrettable, the Key must remain in his possession.

The Doctor realizes that the Guardian is actually the Black Guardian masquerading as the White. He activates the TARDIS defenses. He also orders Romana to dematerialize the TARDIS as he pulls out the Key detector. Pulling the detector out redisperses the segments through time and space, freeing Princess Astra, who reunites with Merak as he recovers in a hospital bed. The Doctor and Romana decide to continue their travels but with a randomizer that will make it unpredictable to know where they are going and thus keep the Black Guardian on his heels about how to catch up to them.

Analysis

While not the worst thing in the world, this story had a lot of problems and easily takes the crown of the worst story of Season 16. This is even more unfortunate as it feels bad to end a pretty good season on such a sour note.

This story has a myriad of problems. To begin, it is six parts and you can feel the bloat. In fact, I ran through it in my mind and I think that if you skipped directly from Episode One to Episode Three, you would pick up the plot almost where you left off and missed nearly nothing, the bloat is that bad. Even in the episodes where there is a critical bit of information given out or a key change of scene, so much of what is said and done could be pared down from the full twenty minutes it's given to a span of five to ten; the bloat is just that bad.

There are other problems with the bloat as well in that there are at least a couple of scenes where we've come out of long stretches of people running around or doing other things to kill time and then get a massive info dump. The worst of these is at the start of Episode Four where the Doctor is bringing Merak and Shapp up to speed on everything that has happened. We saw some of those scenes but instead of exploring all of this in those scenes, we're only given little glimpses and then a large expositional piece. It is some of the worst way to convey information, especially since we had been given at least a little insight into what actually happened.

Tone is another problem in this story. The whole thing has an underlying tone of wanting to be serious and a dire situation to get out of. Yet we are flooded with characters who are clearly comedy elements. Shapp is a pratfalling type straight out of Monty Python. I actually thought he even looked like John Cleese. Drax is a British geographical stereotype (Brixton is where I think he was supposed to have picked up the accent) and is an odd left turn after the first four parts of the story. Even the Shadow is played so over the top (as opposed to the Marshal) that he is impossible to be taken too seriously. By the time you get into Episodes Five and Six, you feel as though you're in a pantomime show and nothing is to be taken seriously.

This story also suffers from a lack of compelling characters. I've already noted the comedic ones but both Astra and Merak are just so devoid of personality that they are just boring. When writing up the recap, I had to go back and correct myself because I accidently wrote "Romana" when I meant "Astra", mostly because Lalla Ward is given so little to play with that you only remember her as Lalla Ward i.e. Romana II. If she hadn't become Romana II, I'm not sure anyone would remember her, she has that little personality. You basically get that in Merak as he is also a completely forgettable milquetoast who's only defining feature seems to be his hunt for Astra. It's even worse when you think that there was a set up for some interesting political drama between them and the Marshal but that just fizzled out and we're left with dirty dishwater.

The one character apart from the Time Team that is actually interesting and compelling is the Marshal. He has a very odd personality shift starting in Episode Two but once it's exposed that he is being mind controlled by the Shadow, that makes a bit more sense. But even with the twists, his personality and range of acting is such that you want to wee what happens to him and interact with him. So of course he gets put in the time loop and is essentially removed from the story for the last three episodes.

Another character who is completely underused is Romana. She does almost literally nothing except summon K-9, ask the Doctor what is going on and get captured. She shows almost no initiative except in a couple of scenes while on Atrios and does nothing to help out. I think her lack of action on both Zeos and the Dark planet are especially annoying because there is no reason why she can't be of use. She knows computers just as well as the Doctor and there were no guards around at one point so there was no reason why she and Astra couldn't have made a run for it. It's just a waste of a good character.

The Doctor is enjoyable as always and he at least gets to keep the central focus. He alone of everyone is probably the only one who navigates the waters between drama and comedy but even he goes over the edge here and there. His "evil" moment after they've completed the Key is downright disturbing to look at it and not for anything to do with the portrayal of evil. Still, he is one of the few reasons to get invested in this story.

Perhaps one of the oddest things is that this story seems compelled to make K-9 be the hero. It's like the writers decided that although it was the Doctor who would save the day, K-9 would be the most dutiful sidekick who would get all the proper action scenes and directly solve all the major issues. K-9 rescues the Doctor from the Marshal; he allows Romana to access the transmat; he gives the Doctor access to Mentalis; he smuggles the Doctor and Drax into the central chamber to retrieve the Key from the Shadow; etc. I don't mind K-9 but any story where he is the one providing the solution to all the problems (similar to the sonic screwdriver) and it just becomes boring. It's like Batman going to his utility belt for some magic gadget every time. At some point, I want to see the regular hero actually think his way out of the problem, not produce a "get-out-jail-free" card.

Even the ending is a let down. There might have been some interest in it if the Black Guardian had first shown up on the TARDIS view screen as the audience would have to figure things out as much as the Doctor did. But instead we had that silly overlay with the Shadow talking as he dies and we are given a very clear shot of the Black Guardian. So we know instantly that it's the Black Guardian who is appearing. There is also the unsatisfactory point of the Doctor dispersing the Key nearly instantaneously. We are given no evidence that the White Guardian accomplished what he wanted to do with it so the whole quest ends up having been for naught. It was just such a sloppy end to what seemed to be a good premise.

One of the reasons that I think this story was so tonally off is that Douglas Adams came in as script editor at this time. So you went from the more serious minded Anthony Read to the comedic Adams. My suspicion is that Adams ended up pushing any unresolved threads in the script to the silly side and that's why the tone seems to start in a serious direction and then crater into absurdism.

I will say that I thought the direction was alright. There were a few moments where it was pretty obvious that they were trying to maximize what was a small filming space by taking obvious circular routes around the set but most were fairly well hidden. The lighting also helped give the story a darker mood, although that also contributed to the odd disconnect between what the focus of the story should be.

Overall, this is a pretty bad way to end the story arc. If it were more entertaining, I think it could be redeemed a bit, but it steady goes downhill and it gets boring. Even worse, you don't even get a proper climax at the end as you would think the White Guardian would have come in to give a little coda. The ending was done much better in Enlightenment where at least you had a direct confrontation between the two. Outside of a rewatch of the whole Key to Time season, I can't think of any particular reason to pull this one out and watch it again.

Overall personal score: 1.5 out of 5

Day of the Daleks

Try and use your intelligence even if you are a politician.

Day of the Daleks is one of those stories that gets referenced a lot by fans in context of other stories. I've been meaning to get around to this one but just kept putting it off in favor or other stories. From what I've heard, it is generally regarded as the best of the Third Doctor Dalek stories but given that Planet of the Daleks and Death to the Daleks are average stories, that's not a tremendously high bar to clear.

Plot Summary

In a government country house, Sir Reginald Styles, British representative to the UN, is working late when he notices the wind blowing the drapes. He gets up to close the window but is attacked by a man in guerrilla fatigues. He knocks Styles down and prepares to shoot him but disappears before he can. His yells attract the attention of the staff who come to his aid. One of them calls UNIT to report the incident.

The Doctor and Jo are in the lab with the Doctor playing around with the TARDIS controls again. As he does so, another version of himself and Jo appear in the doorway. The other Doctor reassures him that it's alright but the TARDIS shorts out before he can explain further and they disappear. The Brigadier enters shortly afterward with the report of what happened with Styles. Styles it seems is a critical negotiator in the peace talks with the Chinese so an assassination attempt is taken very seriously.

The group heads to the house but Styles is dismissive of the whole thing, having convinced himself it was a dream. The Doctor is unconvinced as he has found footprints near the window. They search the grounds and find the man unconscious, having been knocked out by a couple of Ogrons shortly after rematerializing on the grounds. UNIT puts him in an ambulance to take him to a hospital. They discover an advanced ray gun and a strange box which they give to the Doctor for examination.

The Doctor takes both objects back to the lab where he verifies that the ray gun is from Earth but must be from the future. He also determines that the box is a crude time travel device. He fiddles with it and it reactivates. As he does so, the man in the ambulance disappears. The power surge overloads the box and it stops working. The use of the box is picked in the future by a group of people in a control room. They try to locate the coordinates of the signal but can't lock on before it fades. This is reported to a Dalek who enters the room.

With the failure of the box, the Doctor and Jo opt to spend the night at the house to see if anything happens. The night passes quietly although a squad of futuristic soldiers do appear on the grounds. As the sun rises, they vaporize two UNIT patrolmen and invade the house. They attack the Doctor just as he is finishing repairs on the time travel box that had malfunctioned earlier.

The soldiers are prepared to execute the Doctor but he points out that he is not Sir Reginald. They hesitate and then take the Doctor and Jo into the cellar to hide from Yates and Benton who are looking for the two missing patrolmen. They tie the Doctor and Jo up and head back upstairs to discuss their plans. They decide to keep the Doctor and Jo as hostages and wait for Sir Reginald to get back.

They pull the Doctor and Jo out of the basement and have the Doctor answer the phone when it rings. It is the Brigadier who had been alerted by Yates of the Doctor's disappearance. The Doctor plays it cool but slips a message in that alerts the Brigadier and he heads down to the house to investigate.

Shortly after the call, Jo manages to slip out of her bonds and grabs the time travel box, threatening to destroy it. The soldiers urge her to put it down but it activates and Jo is pulled forward to the 22nd century and into the control room. The controller convinces Jo that the three soldiers were criminals and he will do what he can to arrest them, rescue the Doctor and return her to her own time. He dismisses her and then passes the coordinate she gave him to the Daleks.

With Jo gone, the soldiers elect to retreat. One heads to the bridge tunnel they arrived at to check on their device and is attacked by an Ogron. He kills it and runs back to the house to warn the others. They tie up the Doctor once more in the cellar and conduct a fighting retreat against the squad of Ogrons that has appeared. The Doctor manages to cut through his bonds against the wine rack and comes up just to disarm an Ogron that has invaded the house.

The Doctor kills an attacking Ogron while several others are killed or driven off by a machine gun fired by the Brigadier. The Doctor thanks him and then runs to the bridge tunnel without explaining things. As the Doctor enters the tunnel, a Dalek appears. He dives to avoid it and runs into the soldiers as they activate their time travel device, pulling him into the future.

In the future, the soldiers head to a quiet spot to wait and potentially try again. The Doctor leaves them to go look for Jo. He heads out into the fields and approaches a complex, avoiding Ogron patrols as he does so. He observes humans working at sifting ore in slave-like conditions but is spotted and captured by the Ogrons.

The Doctor is taken to an interrogation chamber and roughed up as the security detail believes him to be a part of the resistance. The security chief is interrupted by the factory manager who asks to speak to the Doctor privately. Once alone, he urges the Doctor to tell him who he is with in the resistance as the manager is also on their side. The Doctor insists he is not part of the resistance and further communication is cut off when the Controller enters and take the Doctor to Jo. The Controller also informs the manager that his quota is to be raised per the orders of the Daleks. The manager signals the resistance about what is going on but is knocked out before completing the message.

The Controller supplies Jo and the Doctor with food and luxury but the Doctor fills Jo in on the conditions in the factories. Once alone, they overpower the guard and try to escape. They manage to get out of the complex but are recaptured by the Ogrons. During the pursuit, the Daleks identify the Doctor and order him brought to them to verify his identity via brainscan. After capture, he is tied to an examination table where the Daleks confirm their suspicions. Before they can kill him, the Controller intervenes, wanting to get information from the Doctor about the guerrillas. The Daleks reluctantly agree.

The guerrillas decide that they can use the Doctor to attack Styles better than they can and execute a raid on the Dalek city. They sneak through an abandoned railway and overwhelm the Ogron guards. They even manage to destroy a Dalek. They burst into the room where the Controller is trying to persuade the Doctor to help him but the Doctor is both unwilling and unable. He does however insist on the guerrillas sparing the Controller's life as they leave.

Back at their base, the Doctor is told that the war began when a bomb went off at the peace conference killing everyone, including Styles. The history books assumed it was a ploy to gain power and Styles was accidentally caught in the blast. The rage over the incident sent the world powers into a frenzy and they launched a nuclear war, leaving the planet devastated and easy pickings for the Daleks, who enslaved the surviving population. The Doctor realizes that one of the guerrillas, Shura, was left behind in the last raid and is probably going to detonate the bomb that actually starts the war.

The guerrillas agree to send the Doctor and Jo back if it means stopping the war. They head back to the bridge tunnel where the Doctor and Jo find the Controller and a squad of Ogrons. The Controller intends to arrest the Doctor but when the Doctor promises to free all of them from the Daleks, the Controller dismisses the Ogrons and allows the Doctor to leave. This is overheard by the human chief of security who informs the Daleks. The Daleks execute the Controller for treason, promote the chief of security to Controller and assemble a squad of Daleks and Ogrons to ensure the conference ends in the death of the delegates.

The Doctor and Jo materialize back as the conference is about to begin and they are taken to the house by Sargent Benton. Once inside, the Doctor insists that the Brigadier evacuate all the delegates from the house. Styles protests but once gunfire is heard between the UNIT soldiers and the Ogrons, the Brigadier steps in and orders everyone out by force.

The Doctor and Jo head to the basement where they find Shura and a bomb of Dalekanium. He thinks it a trick but upon hearing the firing and knowing the Daleks are here to ensure the conference fails, he insists the Daleks be allowed into the house where he will set off the bomb. The Doctor agrees and tells the Brigadier to pull his men back and have the Daleks take the house. They do so and Shura sets off the bomb, destroying the Dalek and Ogron invaders. With the timeline now changed, the Doctor tells the Brigadier that he hopes the conference will go much better now.

Analysis

I think a person's appreciation of this story is going to depend heavily on how much one enjoys the Third Doctor in his James Bond moments. This story is very James Bond with a time travel edge to it. Given that I like James Bond, I found this story rather entertaining. It is not without it's flaws but if you don't pursue those too hard, this is a very enjoyable story.

The Third Doctor is his usual pompous and self-assured self in this one but he doesn't get as much focus as he does in other stories. The story here is heavily split between a number of points of view so the Doctor and Jo find themselves as only one cog in the whole machine. I rather liked that for the Third Doctor as he self assuredness can get a bit grating at times and it puts him on the wrong foot for a good part of the story. We also get to see the Doctor morally outraged with the Controller and it's nice to see him with that level of dander up. As much of a rabble rouser as he can be, the Third Doctor does seem to feel more comfortable with the establishment than other Doctors and it's good to see him in more of an openly defiant role.

Jo is good but only because she's her more competent self here. She actually does almost nothing in the entire story. She's a prisoner of either the guerrillas or the Daleks for pretty much most of the story and plays complete second fiddle to the Doctor in the few moments she is not. About her only strong moment is after she and the Doctor get out of the basement, she is able to work her way out of her bonds while the Doctor does not. Of course, this leads to her being captured by the Daleks so it's not a great moment for her in the grand scheme of things either. But at least it requires cunning by the enemy to capture her rather than her own incompetence.

As for the Daleks, they are rather wasted in this story. You really could have substituted the Daleks with any alien race. Heck, you could have made this story with all humans and just have a Salamander type figure running things and it would have worked just as well. Arguably it might have even worked better because of the shortcomings of the Daleks. It is rather obvious that the producers of the show were going on memory of what the Daleks were like because they talk in a very robotic, halting voice. There are a couple of moments here and there where they seem to pick up in personality and start to speak a little more like they used to, but they stick to the robotic monotone for most of it. This probably wouldn't have bothered anyone at the time, but with all the Dalek stories at our fingertips, it is jarring and out of place to hear them like that. I also have a hard time believing that the Daleks would have listened to the Controller in sparing the Doctor's life. It seems more likely that the Daleks would have ignored him and just killed the Doctor once he was properly identified.

As for the other characters, I thought they were all well played. Some of the guerrillas were a bit wild but Anak was a tempering presence and that helped when they were on screen. I thought the Controller was quite good as a quisling who was openly conflicted, thinking that he was doing what was best for the survival of humanity but also knowing deep down that what the Doctor said about him and the Daleks was true. It was a solid performance and more engaging than might be expected for a middle place villain.

I've already noted the problem with the Daleks. The second issue I had was one that I suspect came from editing. The Doctor and Jo see future versions of themselves appear while the Doctor is working on the TARDIS console. We never see that scene again from the future perspective. I kept expecting them to make a jump to the wrong time and place and that be the future moment. I suspect a scene like that was written and perhaps even filmed but was cut as Episode Four was pretty jammed as it was. It's not a big deal, but it was annoying to never get resolution to that little incident.

On the direction front, it was pretty good. This was a very action oriented story and the director did a decent job on that front. Of course, they screwed up royally when it came to the reprises as the opening to the subsequent episodes included the sting as it lead in to story. It was very jarring and off-putting when trying to get in to each episode. Then on top of that, they realized their mistake in Episode Four and did not include the sting. That made the mistakes of Episodes Two and Three stand out even more. They might as well have stuck with the mistake and claimed it a style choice rather than demonstrate that they made a mistake. So a mixed bag in direction.

The big thing that I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around though is the resolution to the paradox. The guerrillas come from a future where a bomb had been set off killing all the delegates. That bomb ended up being from themselves thus creating the future they tried to prevent. I'm fine with that as events shown would have continued on that path. Where I get hung up though is how the Doctor is able to prevent the time loop from completing this time.

You would think that the Doctor would always be involved in the other iterations of the timeline and thus there in trying to stop the bomb. Of course, if you assume the Doctor wasn't there the first time, the Ogrons would still have come and forced Anak and Boaz to flee with Shura left behind before Styles returned. With no warning, Shura detonates the bomb and creates the future. So you must assume that the Doctor is a wild card that has been inserted into the timeline and thus able to prevent the events from happening. Just how his inclusion was accomplished to break the paradox is a mystery and one that I doubt will ever be clarified outside of better head cannon than mine.

So again, if you don't think too hard, it's a pretty enjoyable story, especially if you like action romps. I think I do agree with fan sentiment that this is the best of the three Third Doctor Dalek stories. The other two are fine and fun in their own right, but this story contains all the things that really draw people to the Third Doctor and then you throw in a bit of time travel and Daleks on top. Maybe not the best to introduce the Third Doctor or the Daleks but certainly a good one for established watchers.

Overall personal score: 4 out of 5

The Eaters of Light

There's a wolf out there and you're living in a house made of sticks.

We have finally arrived at the much anticipated Rona Monroe story. Ms. Monroe rather famously wrote the final classic series story Survival and was one of the most obvious candidates to come back and write for the new series (Ben Aaronovitch being the other). Unlike a lot of fandom, I didn't like Survival and the writing did play a significant factor in that as there was filler and a lot of unexplained stuff. I'll have to hope here that the more compressed time afford a better story than the last outing.

Plot Summary

The Doctor, Bill and Nardole materialize in 2nd Century Scotland to find the 9th Roman Legion which vanished without a trace. Bill heads off in one direction to find a Roman soldier while the Doctor and Nardole head off in another to find signs of settlement. Bill comes across a young woman named Kar who is offering for the dead. She sees Bill and rushes at her with a sword. Bill runs and falls into a pit where she comes across a young Roman soldier.

The Doctor and Nardole walk across to a cairn where across from it they find the remains of the Roman army. They are completely desiccated, having been robbed of all structure and covered in black slime. Fearing for Bill's safety, the Doctor and Nardole turn to leave but are captured by a band of Celts who live nearby. They take them to their meeting house to wait the Watcher.

The Roman soldier tells Bill the a group of them ran away before the battle and the rest are hiding in a nearby cave as he had come to scout the roads. They climb out of the pit after dark but are attacked by a strange glowing creature. The creature consumes the Roman and Bill runs to the cave with the other Romans. She crawls inside where is is grabbed by the soldiers just as the creature attacks her. The Romans cover the entrance with stones and pull her in. She tells them of the attack on their comrade and then passes out, a bit of black slime on her neck beginning to spread.

In the meeting house, the Doctor refutes the Celts just as Kar comes in proclaiming herself as the Watcher and the defeater of the Roman army. The Doctor scoffs at her and then creates a distraction by tossing Nardole's bag of unpopped popcorn into the fire. They run out and into the cairn where the interior door begins to open as the sun hits it. As it does, another dimension is exposed and the Doctor steps over the edge to peer in. He sees hundreds of strange creatures circling about a ball of light. One flies close to him and he leaves, shutting the door. He emerges from the cairn to find Nardole entertaining the Celts with stories, having been told that nearly two and a half days have passed despite the Doctor only being in there a few seconds.

Bill wakes from her sleep after two days with the Romans destroying the slime with sunlight. She urges their commander, Lucius, to help her go outside the cave and look for the Doctor. Her pleas become more urgent when the shaft of sunlight is blocked and they realize the creature is probing them looking for a way in. They elect to climb out and potentially die fighting rather than die underground waiting. They form up and march towards an alternate exit.

The Doctor, asking a few questions, learns that the tribe of Celts had sent a watcher in to fight every fifty or so years. Because of the difference in time, that meant the watcher would fight and die after a few minutes but would save things for several generations. Kar had instead pulled one of the creatures out to attack the Romans in a fit of rage over the slaughter and enslavement of her people. The Doctor chides her for unleashing a horror that will destroy the world for her petty revenge. He knows that the creature is weak as the sun has gone down but it will gain strength the next day. He proposes to drive it back into the rift.

The creature bursts out at the Romans, killing one of them, as they approach the exit ladder. They climb out and into the Celt meeting house before the creature can leap out after them. The Celts and Romans start shouting at each other but are caught off guard by the fact that they can understand each other via the TARDIS translation circuit. The Doctor brings Bill up to speed and then lectures both the Romans and the Celts that they have a greater danger than their own petty squabbles and must work together.

The group heads to the cairn where the group sets up with special light refactors used by the watchers. They make a lot of noise to summon the creature and it attacks just before dawn. They manage to pin the creature down using the refactors and then drive it back through the gateway as the door opens in the sunlight. The Doctor proposes to head in and fend off the creatures permanently as he has a very long lifespan and will regenerate when killed. Kar objects stating that this her task. The Romans also object, vowing revenge for their comrades and a chance to redeem their lost honor. The group holds the Doctor back and head in to the rift together.

The entrance of so many into rift causes it to destabilize and the cairn collapses with everyone rushing out to avoid the cave in. The Doctor, Bill and Nardole head back to the TARDIS with Bill being able to detect small traces of music from the pipers who entered the rift. Inside the TARDIS, they find Missy who had been watching them. She is being kept in the TARDIS now, isomorphically locked out of the controls and on maintenance duty in exchange for a bit more latitude. Missy continues to appeal to the Doctor, indicating that she has reformed but he holds her at arms length, not wanting to give in to the hope that they can be friends once again just yet.

Analysis

The reception on this story has been decidedly mixed from fans from what I can tell. I frankly enjoyed it. You can tell that Rona Monroe wrote for the classic series as this did have a very classic feel to it both in structure and it's very casual nature with regard to the overall story arc. Much like Mark Gatiss' stories, this could have been put pretty much anywhere after The Pilot and it would have worked. In fact, the fact that it took Bill until Episode Ten to cotton on to the TARDIS telepathic circuit suggests that it was probably written as an earlier in series story.

I noted above that one of my main problems with Survival was it's lack of content and how Episode Two felt like filler. There was no filler here but this story is the shortest of the series by far. It gets even shorter when you figure that the last five minutes are given over to the coda with Missy and I'd lay a decent bet that Rona Monroe did not write much if any of that part. It would seem that Ms. Monroe likes to get to the point of the story and that actually worked here.

Much of the fan problems with this story seem to be in how simple, straightforward and not tied to the overall arc this story was. I saw one commenter on-line compare it to an episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures. Having never bothered with that show, I can't speak to that but this story did remind me of a more classic story. The Doctor and companions arrive, they separate, they each get into trouble, they reunite, the Doctor devises a plan, the plan is achieved with a minor hitch or two, the Doctor leaves. You could apply that formula to almost any of the classic era and it fits and fans love it. Here for some reason, they complain that it makes the story fluff. I thought it worked well and in fact would probably sit down and rewatch this one before I would something like Smile or even Thin Ice.

Another problem that I think that people blew up in their heads was the fact that this story is the last one before the series finale two-parter and it had no tie-in. After Face the Raven last year and with the grand culmination of the end of the Moffat era (including the Twelfth Doctor), I think people were expecting a grand lead in and didn't get it. So it's more of a shattering of expectations than anything else. I didn't really get that myself since the coda of the story did have a lead in, although it could easily be argued that the coda was very out of place so that could have also tied in to some of the fan irritation.

Regardless, how did everyone do? Much as Survival's main focus was on Ace, this story focused heavily on Bill. Bill is much more like the Bill prior to the Monk trilogy in that she is more forceful and brash. She openly defies the Doctor by insisting she knows more about the missing 9th Legion and is much more direct in what she wants. She also has a leadership streak with others and a near worshipful devotion to the Doctor. You can't help but get the feeling that Bill was being given a bit of an Ace injection at times. In fact, if you remove Nardole, you could plug Ace and the Seventh Doctor in this story and not have to change nearly anything in the dialogue. But I thought she worked well and was enjoyable.

The one scene of Bill's that I did find a bit overdone was the discussion with the Romans on sexuality. I get the feeling that in the character draft that was given, Bill's homosexuality was listed as a character trait and that became something of a focus point. Maybe because I've read and watched so much on Rome but I thought the discussion was a bit heavy-handed. Once Lucius found out that Bill was gay, that should have been the end of it given how accepted homosexual behavior was in Rome. I doubt it would have occurred to a real Roman to point out one of his soldiers was gay or that he enjoyed trysts with both. To paraphrase Crassus in Sparticus, "some enjoy both snails and oysters".

The Doctor was enjoyable here although not given as much focus as I would have preferred. He is rather witty with a number of good lines. He has the sharp condescension towards the locals that you would expect from the Twelfth Doctor, but not without compassion as well. I rather enjoyed him slapping the various folks around like ignorant children and it helped that they all looked very young as well. Yet at the same time, like a concerned parent, you could tell that he had their best interests at heart. Just no sugar coating about how if they screwed up, they were going to hear about it.

I thought Nardole was well captured as well. He wasn't given much other than to be comic relief but he had a nice repartee with the Doctor and the comic timing between the two worked very well. The Doctor as written here would not be the type to break the tension by creating his own joke and Nardole interjected these much the same way the Fourth Doctor would undercut his own direness with some offhanded remark. I thought it a good balance even if Nardole didn't contribute much to the overall story.

The guest cast was pretty good as well. Kar and Lucius were the only notable figures as everyone else was mostly background but I thought they did well. Lucius played the boy forced into command fairly well and aside from the expository scene regarding sexuality, I thought his overall personality was very likeable. Kar also was played well as the brash young woman who does something stupid in a fit of rage and is now dealing with the consequences. I liked her interactions where she attempts to be bold but is cut down multiple times by the Doctor and then slapped back into reality when she attempts to wallow in guilt. "Time to grow up" was a nice way to put it and I thought her invoking it at the end was a reasonable balance to her character.

The villains were a bit non-descript in this story. It's actually been quite a while since there has been a story with something as a simple as a monster who is attacking and killing people and just needs to be stopped. Even when you've had that (say Oxygen or Knock, Knock) there's been some other force or backstory behind it. This is just a monster on Earth that has to be sent away and arguably the first time it's been seen since Flatline. I would have liked a little more detail on the monsters. Yes the Doctor did go into exposition mode about being like locusts with light but I still would have liked a bit more info given that if it consumes light, how does it feed on humans? A couple of lines here or there to bring it into focus would have been appreciated.

The setting and direction was quite nice. Not quite as good as we've seen from the last few stories but I would have been very hard pressed to tell you that wasn't Scotland that we were seeing. Likewise, everyone looked period and there was a fairly good use of perspective and orientation in telling the story. It made things a bit more immersive than you might have expected.

I am very curious to see how the Missy stuff works out in the end. Clearly it's being set up that she is being given more and more access. She is out of the vault and now in the TARDIS. Yes she supposedly can't leave but that's better than where she was before trapped in the vault. I liked the Missy stuff as it plays in to the overall story and I liked seeing Missy have that flash of being her normal, slightly mad self before being emotional with the music. But the Missy stuff was its own separate piece, completely unrelated to the rest of the story. The original ending was clearly the shot of the people fighting the Eaters of Light etched on the rocks outside the cairn. I actually wonder if there was more story written and those parts were cut to make room for the coda, even though I think you could have easily had both. Or was Rona Monroe told to keep the episode a certain length in anticipation of the coda being tacked on? I don't know but the last bit was not transitioned well and had a very obvious stapled on feel.

Overall, I enjoyed this story. It was not deep but it was a straightforward bit of fun closer to the old school in style. It would be an easy story to drop someone in on to get a feel for both the Twelfth Doctor and Bill. A casual bit of fun to be enjoyed at any time.

Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5

The Seeds of Death

Your leader will be angry with you if you kill me. I can be of use to you. I'm a genius.

The Seeds of Death is one of those stories that doesn't really get talked about much. I think my only knowledge of it is that the title can sometimes be confused with the Fourth Doctor story, The Seeds of Doom, and a scene of the Second Doctor being attacked by foam is taken from this story. Other than that, I'm coming in pretty much a blank slate, which is good I think since it'll give me a fairly open viewpoint on it.

Plot Summary

In Earth's future, transport of people and equipment is done by a transport system called T-Mat. People who are working for T-Mat arrive at the beginning of their shift and set about to work. On the moonbase, as the shift begins, the base is overrun by an alien race. They kill one worker and threaten the shift commander to engage the system. The commander sabotages it instead and the aliens kill him.

On the T-Mat control station, the shift controller, Gia Kelly, observes the fault and sets the workers to determine it's nature. The overall commander, Radnor, gets after her but she is only able to tell him that the fault has occurred on the moon and they have no way to getting to the moon to help them. Radnor decides to ask the help of an old associate, Professor Eldred.

The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe land in a museum devoted to space travel and begin to explore. They are caught by the museum owner, Professor Eldred. Eldred initially believes them troublemakers but he get swept up in the Doctor's interest in his latest rocket design. The two talk excitedly about it until they are interrupted by Radnor and Kelly.

Radnor tells Eldred of the trouble they have with the moon and appeals to him to help them with his latest rocket design. Eldred refuses but the argument between the two is interrupted by a signal from the moon. One of the technicians has repaired the video link and sends a signal for help. But before he can complete the message, the transmission is cut off. The link is damaged by the alien commander, revealed to be an Ice Warrior, who then has the technician killed.

The other technician, Phipps, manages to run for it and hides out in a spare parts room. He manages to hide from the searching Ice Warrior and then begins to build a transmitter and an energy device to act as a booby trap. Meanwhile, the Ice Warrior commander, Slaar, forces the remaining officer, Fewsham, to repair the back-up T-Mat but only to receive.

Back on Earth, Radnor implores Eldred to finish his rocket and fly it to the Moon. Eldred refuses due to his age and the lack of time. The Doctor steps in and offers to help with the repairs and also offers to fly it to the Moon with Jamie and Zoe. Eldred reluctantly agrees and they begin work. Kelly appeals to Radnor to go in place of Jamie, but Radnor refuses as she is the only one qualified to get the T-Mat working again.

The rocket successfully launches with the Doctor and his two companions on board. However, their communications with Earth short out shortly after lift-off leaving Radnor and his team in the dark.

Fewsham finishes the repair and sends a signal received by Radnor. This time he agrees to Kelly's request and she is sent with two technicians to the Moon. The Ice Warriors hide and Fewsham claims that it was damaged by the base commander after suffering a bout of space madness. Kelly is suspicious but sets about repairing the T-Mat anyway.

Phipps finishes his radio and begins to broadcast for help just as the Doctor's rocket enters Moon orbit. They lock onto a radio guide beam to lead them down. However, Phipps is forced to switch over the power to his booby trap when an Ice Warrior enters the room. Phipps device kills the Ice Warrior but it also knocks out the homing beam. Zoe pulls the rocket back into orbit and as they do they pick up Phipps renewed signal. From him they learn of the Ice Warrior invasion and after returning from the dark side of the moon, follow the signal from his radio down to the surface.

The Doctor leaves to find Phipps and has Zoe prepare the rocket for a return flight to Earth. Zoe however discovers the engine was damaged in the landing and unfit for take off. The Doctor finds Phipps and radios back to Jamie that he intends to destroy the T-Mat and then use the rocket to return to Earth. He cuts off before Zoe can tell him of the damage and they leave the rocket to find him.

Kelly finishes the repairs and the Ice Warriors emerge to take them prisoner. The two technicians try to run and are gunned down. Fewsham finishes bringing all the cities back on-line and Slaar prepares a cargo for T-Mat. He orders Kelly taken away and kept under guard. She however manages to escape just as the Doctor and Philips enter the same corridor. The group breaks up and Ice Warriors pursue them. They corner the Doctor who convinces them to keep him alive and take him to their commander.

Jamie and Zoe meet up with Kelly and Phipps and the group decide to try and get into the station core and raise the overall heat to disable the Ice Warriors. Jame and Phipps begin to work a grate to allow them to go through the access ducts and avoid patrols. However, an Ice Warrior enters and they are forced to kill that one with the same booby trap device as before.

Back in the control room, the Doctor uses Fewsham to investigate the cargo that the Ice Warriors are preparing to T-Mat. Slaar sees the Doctor and forces him to examine the cargo. He picks up a pod within and it expands at his touch, bursts and then knocks him out with the vapor inside. Slaar then T-Mats pods to various stations, including where Radnor is preparing a technical crew to head to the Moon and assist Kelly. They are surprised when the pods arrive and it expands at their touch. The pod explodes, killing the technician and choking the others. They vent the smoke into the outside to clear the air.

Jamie and Phipps crawl through the access ducts and see the pods being loaded into the T-Mat. They also see the Doctor passed out. Slaar orders Fewsham to drag the Doctor into the T-Mat and transport him into space. Fewsham objects but cowers into agreement. He resets the controls to do so and as he does, Jamie and Phipps drag the Doctor into the vents. Jamie takes him back to the supply room while Phipps tries to get to the temperature controls, but can't as he is too large to fit through the access duct.

Slaar sends one of his warriors through the T-Mat to Earth to monitor the progress of the pods, which have released fungus spores that are now germinating outside. The warrior kills the guards and ignores Radnor as he tries to attack before heading outside.

Zoe convinces Phipps to take her back through the ducts as she is small enough to pass through. They are slowed by Phipps having an attack of claustrophobia and the delay causes Jamie to start worrying about their safety. Zoe pushes Phipps on and passes through the duct exit. Fewsham sees Zoe and distracts the guard while she increases the temperature. The guard however does see Phipps and shoots him before spying Zoe as well. Fewsham jumps on the warrior and distracts him before he passes out from the heat.

Another Ice Warrior enters the supply room. Jamie and Kelly try to kill it with the booby trap but find the power has failed. It hears the Doctor waking up and tries to grab him but both Jamie and Kelly attack him. The Ice Warrior is stronger than both of them but he too passes out from the heat as the Doctor come fully to.

Zoe returns to the supply room and the group heads to the control room where Fewsham has brought T-Mat back on-line. He offers to transport the group back and then follow using a time delay. Kelly is skeptical as she was under the impression that the time delay was broken. Fewsham claims to have repaired it. He ends up sending back the four of them but does not bother to try himself and Kelly confirms back on Earth that the time delay is still broken.

On Earth, the Ice Warrior who had been sent down enters a weather control station. He kills the technician on duty and then locks and destroys the controls to ensure that rain cannot be artificially produced.

The Doctor brings Radnor, Eldred and Radnor's superior, Sir James Gregson, up to speed. He collects a sample of the fungus to examine it. It absorbs oxygen, leading the Doctor to figure that the fungus will reduce the oxygen content on Earth, killing all humans and leaving it more like Mars, perfect for Ice Warrior colonization. During his experiments, he also discovers that the fungus is vulnerable to water.

The Doctor relays this information to Zoe and to have her tell Radnor. However Radnor is in a meeting so she and Jamie head over to the weather control center to tell them about needing rain as they are not answering their communicators. They discover the dead technician and the damaged controls and are forced to hide from the patrolling Ice Warrior.

Slaar manages to get to the control room and reduce the temperature of the base before he passes out. Fewsham pretends to have been knocked out and offers to continue to help the Ice Warriors. Slaar has Fewsham connect a homing signal to T-Mat while he communicates with the fleet commander. After doing so, Fewsham turns on the video link, allowing the Doctor, Radnor and Kelly to overhear the Ice Warrior plans. Slaar discovers this too late and kills Fewsham.

The Doctor has Radnor stop a satellite launch they had planned to redirect control of T-Mat to reconfigure it so they can misdirect the Ice Warrior fleet and have them crash into the sun. The Doctor also discovers that Zoe never gave Radnor the information about the rain and assumes that she and Jamie went to the weather station themselves. He heads over but cannot get in as Zoe had locked the door. He is nearly overcome by the encroaching fungus and bangs on the door. This attracts the attention of the Ice Warrior, Zoe and Jamie. Jamie runs in front of the Ice Warrior, distracting him and allowing Zoe to open the door before the Doctor is overcome.

They reunite with Jamie and barricade themselves in a power room. Inside, the Doctor builds a portable version of the solar trap used on the Moon base. The Ice Warrior is distracted by a group of guards sent by Radnor, but they are beaten back. Instead the Doctor emerges and kills the Ice Warrior with his weapon. He then hot wires the weather controls to allow the formation of rain clouds.

The trio heads back to the T-Mat station just as the rocket carrying the satellite with the mimicking homing signal is launched. Once in orbit, the Doctor is sent to the Moon base to kill the signal on the Moon. Upon arriving at the Moon, the Doctor kills one guard and cuts the power to the signaler so that it only broadcasts to the base. With the signal gone, the satellite signal is activated.

Slaar enters and captures the Doctor. He is tricked by the fact that he can see the machine still sending the signal and orders the Doctor to operate the T-Mat for invasion once the fleet has arrived. However, the Grand Marshall soon signals that they are off course and are being destroyed by the sun's heat.

On Earth, Jamie, concerned that the Doctor hasn't returned, has Zoe T-Mat him to the Moon. He arrives just as Slaar, in a fit of rage, orders the Doctor killed. Jamie's arrival distracts the guard just enough for the Doctor to grab his arm and aim the gun at Slaar who is killed. Jamie then attacks the guard allowing the Doctor to grab his portable solar device and kill that guard as well.

The two return to Earth and with Zoe sneak back to the TARDIS just as Radnor and Eldred begin to argue over whether a backup fleet of rockets should be built.

Analysis

I think overall this story gets a middling rating. At it's core, it has an interesting idea. It is reasonably well acted, the settings are interesting and most of the characters, especially the villain are at least somewhat engaging. But it also is very heavily padded and the drawing out of the story slows the action down badly. Worse, the padding points are almost painfully obvious with Phipps' random attack of claustrophobia being the most painfully obvious. They don't kill the story, but there are moments where you can find yourself distracted by something else, look up and realize that while several minutes have passed, the story has gone nowhere and you've missed nothing.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a Second Doctor story where I didn't like him so I again will say that I liked the Doctor, even though he is clearly on hiatus in Episode Four. One of the more enjoyable things about the Second Doctor is how much joy he takes in little things, such as getting into the rockets with Professor Eldred (who must live). It makes his disappointed reaction to the lack of flash with the T-Mat process rather comical. I also appreciate how he doesn't apologize for the necessity of using violence. Fans get up in arms about the idea of the Doctor using a gun or killing randomly, but here, the Doctor kills Ice Warriors with very little compunction. He doesn't even both with the idea of negotiating with Slaar and instead simply sets about destroying the fleet and killing the base invaders. Granted, Slaar had made all the aggressive moves by this point, but it's still nice to see a Doctor recognize that both negotiation and remorse are pointless and simply get on with it. In fact, the Doctor is arguably at his coldest when he delivers a point by point summation as to how Slaar has been defeated at the end, almost taking pleasure in dashing his hope as Slaar grasps at each individual straw.

Jamie and Zoe were okay in the story but they weren't used particularly well. I thought they were nearly pointless and given rather poor dialogue at the end. Zoe especially got better as she was actually utilized in the later episodes, although she had a really bad moment with the Episode Four cliffhanger. The Ice Warrior is distracted by Fewsham and still she just stands there and holds position as though frozen in place. She should have been directed to run a little further and least look like she was trying to hide from him. I also think she would have been well within her right to slap Phipps across the face to get him to snap out of his fear after having already been in the ducts once with Jamie. But it was an obvious time-killing moment so I tried to let it go as best I could.

Jamie was close to useless in this story. He had a couple of moments of lunging bravery where he would attack an Ice Warrior long enough for someone else to finish it off, but his overall performance was very limited other than expressing concern for the Doctor and Zoe. Probably his deepest moments were his scenes of exposition with Zoe where he brought her up to speed on the Ice Warriors, but even there he had to share explanation time with the Doctor. With as many characters as there were, it's not surprising that someone was going to get the short end of the stick and Jamie clearly drew that one here.

The supporting human cast was alright but not much to write home about. Both Radnor and Eldred started as though they might be a bit more developed in the later action, but their involvement died off to not much more than commentary after Episode Two so they didn't really register much. Kelly was a bit better, at least being used through the whole of the story, but she could have done with a bit more personality. She was strangely robotic through most of the story, even when people were dying around her, she had this detached quality that just made her seem out of place. Her closest moment of real emotion seemed to come when she was modifying the satellite to recreate the homing signal for the Ice Warrior fleet. That was when she actually seemed to show concern and strain at trying to beat the Ice Warriors.

The one human who did stand out was Fewsham but even his arc was a bit oddly done. In the first two episodes, he is shown to be someone not quite qualified for his job and then someone who values his life more than anything else. That's not a bad thing since many a quisling have done so out of fear of death or torture so to see that is more realistic. I wish he didn't whine quite so much and I'm a little surprised the Ice Warriors didn't kill him out of annoyance at one point. But by the middle episodes, Fewsham changes so that while he is still afraid, he seems to become more accepting of the possibility of death. To the point that he opts to sacrifice himself by not leaving the Moonbase when the others do because he knows the Ice Warriors have something else prepared that Earth needs to be warned about. That's a very sharp contrast from the Fewsham that starts the story and I think this change should have been a bit more developed. As it was, I didn't really buy his sacrifice. I bought his fear of death and going along to stay alive. I didn't see enough in the course of the story that made me think that he wouldn't be the first one to jump into the T-Mat when they prepare to evacuate the base, even if it meant spending decades in prison.

I did like the Ice Warriors in this story. Slaar especially made for a good villain. He was ruthless and actually seemed to have a fairly well developed plan for getting his objectives accomplished. I also liked that he actually had legitimate reasons for keeping certain humans alive, rather than just the standard "I'll kill you later" motivation that comes so often with entertainment villains. There were shortcomings though as I didn't really understand why Slaar didn't stay in the control room the whole time. I'm assuming he went back to the Ice Warrior ship when he wasn't in the control room, but you would think that he would want to stay at the nerve center most of the time to ensure things got done. I also don't understand why he didn't seen more warriors down to Earth to guard the weather controls. If a single warrior was strong enough to hold off the human forces, why not invade conventionally since they are so outmatched? But if they knew that the fungus must avoid rain, then why not send three or four warriors down? Multiple warriors would make the bunker unassailable and ensure plenty of time for the fungus to expand to the point of human suffocation.

Something also must be said for the peripheral vision of the Ice Warriors. Obviously this is a kids show filmed in tight sets so a certain amount of disbelief has to be suspended when it comes to hiding spots. But you help that out with good direction to make it look like the hiding spot is a bit more obscure. This story did not do that and there was more than one occasion where the Ice Warrior was practically looking at someone and yet had to pretend they didn't see them. Of all the little problems that cropped up here and there, I think it was those moments that took me out of the story the most. I will say that other than that, I thought the direction seemed pretty good for the most part. There were a couple of other scenes that did look bad (the Doctor running to the weather station was particularly janky) and there were also a couple of points where he should have reigned in the performances as they started going over-the-top, but these were more exceptions and by-products of someone trying to get more than the story was able to deliver on the surface.

But the thing that must be noted is just how slow this story can be. I learned after watching it that although Brian Hayles is credited with the story, Terrance Dicks had to do major rewrites from Episode Three onward. Given that Terrance was also desperately trying to finish The War Games with Malcolm Hulke and looking for anything to fill the episode shortfall they were experiencing, it's not surprising that this story was a drawn out as it was. It didn't help that Patrick Troughton had a vacation in Episode Four. Any time the Doctor goes on holiday, the action always stops and the wheels spin and that didn't help matters either. I think in an ideal world, this story could have been cut to four episodes with a lot tighter action. It possibly could have been stretched to five, but I think each episode would have needed to be trimmed down to closer to twenty minutes to keep the same decent pacing. But that obviously wasn't going to happen.

In the end, I think this is a decent story but it's flaws do drag it down a bit. Those flaws aren't killers but this story can easily slip away from you if not fully invested. When I was watching it, I had to take a couple of days off in the middle due to other obligations and I recall not being overly bothered. The story was entertaining but not grabbing me in a way that made me want to pop the next episode in right away to see how it progressed. Not every story can be like that, but you always wish it could be. This one is a decent exposure to the Second Doctor and a story to have in the background, but it's nowhere near the best offerings of the Second Doctor era, though it is a step up for the Ice Warriors in general.

Overall personal score: 3 out of 5

Empress of Mars

Rise my warriors! Sleep no more!

Empress of Mars is this season's contribution by Mark Gatiss. Gatiss has a hit or miss track record as far as most fans are concerned. He does horror well and he is very good at the fan service. But he also can be frothy and his stories will show a lack of depth often so if there isn't a strong hook, they will fall off quickly. He wrote the last Ice Warriors story, Cold War, so I'm actually looking forward to see what he can do in a more expanded setting.

Plot Summary

The Doctor, Bill and Nardole show up at NASA as a probe lands on Mars and prepares to take pictures from under the ice cap. All are shocked to find piles of stones spelling out "God Save the Queen" in English.

The trio heads to Mars in the late 19th century to try and solve the mystery. They are further surprised when the land in an underground cavern to discover oxygen and a camp fire. Bill, exploring a bit further, has the floor collapse beneath her and falls into another section of the cave. The Doctor sends Nardole back to the TARDIS for rope but upon entering, something triggers in the TARDIS and it flies back to Earth, locking Nardole out of the controls.

In her tunnel, Bill meets Captain Catchlove while the Doctor is confronted by an Ice Warrior and Colonel Godsacre. They are both taken back to camp where they learn that the Ice Warrior, nicknamed Friday, crashed on Earth and was encountered by a squad of British soldiers. They helped the Ice Warrior repair his ship and came back with him in exchange for a promise of mineral wealth. The Ice Warrior converted one of the weapons on his ship into a drill that the rest of the soldiers have been using, though no mineral wealth has been found yet.

Shortly after this, the soldiers drill into a cavern where an Ice Queen seems to be laying in state. Captain Catchlove and most of the men want to start plundering but the Doctor strongly insists on examining, fearing that this might be a hibernation chamber. Colonel Godsacre agrees and pulls back, posting a guard instead.

One of the guards, Jackdaw, drugs his superior and starts to take gems off the side of the bier. His actions trigger the reanimation process and the Queen rises and kills him. The yells attract the attention of the soldiers and another fires at her. She kills him as well before the whole group can enter, including Friday. Friday returns to her side and the Doctor pleads for mercy as the soldiers were ignorant of what they were doing. Friday also advocates for the humans, informing her of the decayed state of Mars and how they have been in hibernation longer than anticipated.

The queen listens but another soldier's weapon misfires, striking the queen's helmet. She then orders the death of all soldiers and begins to awake the soldiers. The humans retreat and collapse the entrance using the mining drill. Catchlove then reveals that Godsacre was nearly executed for desertion years ago but survived the noose. He takes command from him and has Godsacre, the Doctor and Bill locked in the brig. He sets up pickets and prepares to fight if attacked.

Three Ice Warriors tunnel under and emerge behind the soldiers where they attack them from the rear. Catchlove, seeing his men falter, runs away to get his exterior suit and head back to the ship. Friday meanwhile, also tunnels under but emerges in the brig and frees the prisoners, insisting that they help negotiate for peace. They distract the queen and her warriors while the Doctor aims the drill at the surface, threatening to cave in the whole system, killing them all. In the confusion, Godsacre also runs away.

The queen prepares to listen given the standoff but Catchlove grabs her from the rear and holds a knife to her throat. He backs towards the elevator, threatening to kill her if anyone moves. The doors open but Godsacre is there, having come back down. He kills Catchlove and then offers his life to the queen in exchange for the lives of his men. The queen, impressed by this act of honor, spares his life and inducts him into her service, ordering her men to let the others live.

The Doctor repairs the communicator and sends out a signal asking for help for the Ice Warriors as they cannot reanimate themselves and live on Mars in it's current state. Their message is received by Alpha Centauri who offers aid. To help Alpha Centauri find the landing location, the Doctor, Bill and Godsacre spell out the message in rocks that were seen by the satellite under the ice.

Shortly after, the TARDIS reappears and Nardole shows them that in order to rescue them, he had to unlock Missy and get her to fly it. The Doctor tells her that she'll have to go back in the vault and she agrees, though she does ask the Doctor if he is feeling alright.

Analysis

I rather enjoyed this story. It has a few flaws but overall it's pretty enjoyable. The one caveat to throw in though is whether my expectations are a bit lowered because it's a Mark Gatiss story. Not that I think he's bad (unlike some fans) but it is a near guarantee that he will write a pretty shallow story that has almost no bearing on the overall arc of the series. That does set the mind in a different way because you put aside higher expectations and just try to appreciate the story as is.

One other thing about Mark Gatiss is that he is a fan and puts a lot of fan service in his stories. This one had it in spades but it was not so overt as to distract from the story. But putting those in also means that he will adapt the story style to something other than his normal mode of writing. I heard one reviewer point out that you could have ripped off Gatiss' name and slapped on Malcolm Hulke's name and you would have bought it easily. I can see that and it certainly affected how the characters behaved.

The Doctor was quite enjoyable in this but he also was a bit different than the normal Twelfth Doctor. Here he was very much in line with the Third Doctor, constantly pleading with the two parties to not fight, admitting that the humans would be wiped out easily. His only real action comes in creating a brief détente by threatening to create a cave in. From there the humans resolve things without him. It's probably one of the most passive roles the Twelfth Doctor has ever taken outside of Kill the Moon.

Bill also suffers from the adoption of the Hulke style. She is still fine, but nearly all traces of her proactive nature are lost. She becomes a "sit back and wait" style of companion. It is only when asked, first by the Empress and then by the Doctor, that she even truly engages with the Ice Warriors, despite her privileged female status. Not that any of this is bad, but it's a passiveness that we've not really seen before in Bill and it does stand out a bit.

Nardole is effectively written out which makes me think that this story was written prior to it being announced that he would be in for the whole series. I don't mind him being absent, but I would have liked something resembling an explanation as to why the TARDIS bugged out and then refused to let him take control again. One would guess that it had something to do with Missy but from this story's stand alone perspective, that's one of those little plot conveniences.

I liked the Ice Warriors in this, especially Friday. He reminded me a lot of Izlyr from The Curse of Peladon, where he is thoughtful and articulate. It's the more interesting side of the Ice Warriors than the typical villain. The Empress had these moments too, although she did get swept up in the shout-y leader. I saw some people compare her to the Empress Racnoss and her tone of voice was similar, but I thought she had a bit more depth than that. Between her and General Skaldak in Cold War, I feel like the Ice Warriors have taken a more Japanese turn, similar to the Klingons in Star Trek. Not that I have a problem with that as it adds layers not previously seen in the old serials.

The humans were ok, although a bit bland. In many ways, they were typical UNIT soldiers, just there to be cannon fodder with only the faintest hint at a personality for a couple. Most of the time was given to Colonel Godsacre and Captain Catchlove. Godsacre was alright, though again, not much depth until the hasty botched execution backstory. But it was Catchlove that annoyed me.

If there is a flaw in a lot of Third Doctor stories it is that there is often a person in the military or ministry who is just a jerk for the convenience of the plot. Catchlove is this character. It turns him into the overall villain but it still feels a bit empty. He's a smarmy prick just because. Why do the men follow him? Why is he so pompous to think that they can take down the Ice Warriors despite seeing the Queen be shot at point blank range with no effect? Gatiss then goes a step further by making him both a coward and a betrayer of his own men. It's just too one dimensional for me to enjoy properly. He's a cutout villain that you could swap with just about any other.

The direction in this story was excellent. There were a number of sweeping shots that heavily added to the atmosphere while also not forcing excessive amounts of CGI that would have overblown the budget and probably looked less good. The direction added a great deal of atmosphere to this story and gave it an extra edge that added something beyond what the regular writing did.

The one thing that bugs me slightly about this story beyond little acting or storyline nits is how this plays in overall Ice Warrior continuity. Most of the other Ice Warrior stories can be fit in with this but you can tell that it was the Peladon stories that were foremost in Mark Gatiss' mind. I think the one that I have the most curiosity about is The Seeds of Death. That is the one story where you don't have a rogue group trapped on Earth and acting in a reactionary way. Instead, it's an active invasion force and set a number of years in the future. I suppose you could tie it to the rise of a more militaristic leader who chooses to go to war rather than be a more passive race as shown in The Curse of Peladon but that is a bit of a mystery.

I'd also like to know why hibernation technology is so difficult. Here the Ice Warriors oversleep for 5,000 years much like the Silurians and the Sea Devils so in those stories. Oversleeping seems to be an easy plot device to get creatures of advanced technology involved without giving too in depth of a backstory. I can understand it, but I think I would have liked something with a touch more originality.

Overall, it was a good watch. It's simple and as long as you don't expect too much from it, it will entertain you. Certainly the minor nits are just that, minor and easily ignorable.

Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5

The Lie of the Land

Bad news for your plus one

The conclusion to the loose Monk trilogy, although I'm not sure why they keep referring to it as a loose trilogy. None of the stories are going to make full sense without watching all three and I don't see how you can get away with calling that anything but a trilogy.
Plot Summary

Six months after the Monks took over, a police state has arisen with the Monks pushing the idea that they have always been there and the Doctor transmitting PSA's to homes all over the world. Bill continues to work, waiting for the Doctor to emerge. To combat the suggestion of rewritten history, she imagines her mother via the Doctor's photos of her and has daily conversations with her in her head.

While having a conversation, Nardole enters Bill's apartment and tells her that he's found the Doctor. He is being held on a ship moored out in the ocean off the coast of Britain. They manage to get on a supply ship with a sympathetic captain and dock with the prison ship.

On the ship, they find the Doctor's room but he refuses to come with her. He says that he has joined the Monks as the only way to preserve humanity. Bill is stunned and even tries to act as though there is a code. When the Doctor appears to alert the Monks of her presence, she grabs a soldier's gun and shoots him. The Doctor releases a quick burst of regeneration energy before stopping and congratulating Bill on passing the test. He had to be sure she hadn't been taken over by the Monks. The Doctor had already deprogramed all the guards on the ship and then sent Nardole to bring her before they escaped.

After bringing the ship back to Britain, the Doctor and Bill head back to the university and enter Missy's vault. She tells them that in her previous dealings with the Monks their central weakness is that the person who made the deal is the linchpin. If that person's mind is eliminated, it will destroy the Monk's grip on the reality they are presenting, making them vulnerable to uprising. The Doctor, unwilling to sacrifice Bill, opts for a different plan.

The Doctor, Bill, Nardole and the squad of soldiers decide to attack the central pyramid from where the broadcast signal is coming from and being sent out via the statues placed all over the world. The Doctor gives the soldiers recordings of Bill's voice repeating the truth to drown out the stronger influence of the Monk's signal. They enter in the pyramid and overcome the small number of Monk's guarding inside.

The Doctor, Bill and Nardole enter the central chamber where the Doctor attempts to interface with the mind sending the signals. It overpowers his mind and he is thrown backwards, knocking him out. When he comes to, Bill has tied his hands and informs him that she is going to interface with the broadcasting Monk. He implores her to stop but she does it anyway.

The Doctor manages to get loose as Bill interfaces. The Monk's broadcast starts to overwrite her mind but the Doctor notices that it doesn't touch the image of her mother and the imaginary relationship Bill created. The Doctor implores her to focus all her mind on that relationship as it is not historical and untouchable by the Monks. This sends the image of Bill's mother all over the world and disrupts the Monk's signal of truth. With the signal disrupted, the people rise up and overpower the Monks. The remaining Monks flee to the central ship and abandon Earth.
Afterwards the Doctor points out that the Monks were able to erase their six-month interlude from the minds of collective humanity, removing any lesson humanity might have learned. He then heads to Missy's vault where she notes the guilt she is feeling over all the people she has killed over the years.

Analysis

I was a little nervous going into this story since I'd seen some references to Martha's quest from Last of the Time Lords and I didn't care for that too much. However, I was pleasantly surprised as I found this one fairly engaging and interesting. It wasn't perfect but it was fun and I found the use of "love overcoming" a much more palatable solution in this case than had been done previously.

Jumping straight to the climax, I think the reason that the memory of Bill's mother being untouchable by the Monks worked for me is that it had some basis in reality rather than just a whim of the screenwriter. In many situations, people in isolation have invented fictional friends or personalities to keep themselves sane (see Wilson in Cast Away as an example). Bill did much the same thing. She had never met her mother but the Doctor gave her enough for her to invent that relationship and it was these conversations that helped her overcome the brainwashing from the statues. But since it was a memory built on a figment, it was untouchable and I liked that.

The Doctor was enjoyable here. I really enjoyed the first third of the story where it seems as though he's working for the Monks, although I'm not sure that that had much of a point other than to give the grand fake out to the audience. The Doctor and Nardole should have been able to tell in a less dramatic fashion if Bill had been taken over by the Monks and certainly the Doctor had no need to make it look like he was regenerating. That was a trailer moment and nothing more. But it was fun and very tense at the time. But it was also very reassuring when he returned to his normal state, complete with standard arrogance and disdain for others.

Bill was the central character in this story, but she didn't grab focus as much as you might expect. I think that worked out very well for both her and the story. She did end up solving the problem but she didn't go through this great journey to become stronger to do it. She was simply surviving, waiting for others stronger than her. Her defeat of the Monks came about because she cared about the Doctor and because she had an ace that she didn't know about. It worked and she saved things, but not in the true "hero's journey" way and I think that made Bill a more enjoyable character as a result.

Nardole didn't offer much in this story other than a few jokes here and there. Given how much the story needed to focus on Bill and the Doctor, I completely understand. Nardole didn't over-insert himself either and I think that worked given the limitations of the story for him.

I liked Missy in this story. She was a touch subdued from her normal self but there was still that edge of sadism to her. The idea of killing Bill to stop them seemed the most natural solution and one that she would easily have pushed. Missy might be suggesting that she's reformed, but that dark edge is still there and it is always fun to see.

I am curious to see where they are going with her though. At the end of the story, she seemed to be feeling actual remorse over the deaths and pain she caused. There's also the fact that we're supposed to be seeing the John Simm Master at some point before the end of the series so there is definitely a plan for Missy and I can't quite see what it is yet.

The Monks didn't do themselves much better in this episode than they did the last in terms of making themselves formidable. They had some fight in them but even with the lightning and spider web shields, the interior guard was somewhat easily overrun by the Doctor's soldiers. I'm trying to reconcile that with the near limitless power they otherwise seem to have in manipulating the environment and giving the Doctor his sight back. They have great power but are limited in actual combat and they also are fairly few in number. You would think that if they have performed this trick on other worlds, their numbers would be greater given the time for replication. In a way, I can't help but think of Treehouse of Horror II where Kang and Kodos, despite having superior technology, are driven off by Moe running after them with a board with a nail in it. There is an incongruity here that just doesn't feel right.

I thought the direction quite nice and some very nice scenery choices. I thought it also interesting in treating it like the viewer was fully enmeshed in this 1984 style world. The random cuts of the Monks and their symbols in the screen reminded me a bit of Sleep No More in their immersivness of the watcher in the world. In fact, until Nardole showed up, the parallels beteween this and 1984 were quite strong, to the point that I could easily see scenes having been directly lifted from the story.

Overall, I'd say it was a good conclusion. If the trilogy as a whole has a weakness, I'd say it's that the quality of the villain does not match the time devoted to them. Each story has good parts and less than good parts, but they still more or less work as individuals. I think this story, with a lack of reference to the past two stories, almost works better in that regard, though you would probably be a bit lost if you hadn't seen the prior two episodes. But, that aside, it's still and enjoyable watch. There are little things that don't work and they might drag it down a touch on repeat viewings, but overall it's a solid conclusion and an enjoyable story.

Overall personal score: 4 out of 5

The Pyramid at the End of the World

Doctor: What are the essentials?
Nardole: Air, Water, food, beer.

Vacations are pleasant things, but it's also nice to get back to the standard run of TV watching. At least the vacation allows me to watch the second and third parts of the loose "monk trilogy" in close succession. I think my biggest curiosity is how the second episode of the trilogy will fall. Are we looking at something good on it's own like The Empire Strikes Back or The Two Towers or are we looking at something less pleasant like Terminus.

Plot Summary

Encouraged by the Doctor, Bill goes out on a date with Penny, whom she amuses with the story of their date in the simulation. As they are sitting down to tea, soldiers enter Bill's apartment and are followed shortly their after by the Secretary-General of the UN. The Secretary-General is invoking the Doctor's term as President of Earth and wishes to know where to find him.

Resistant to taking up the office again, the Doctor holes up in the TARDIS, unaware until later that it was taken out of his office and placed on a plane. They travel to a desert region in Asia at the crossroads where the Chinese, Russian and American militaries are all on high alert. In this region, a 5,000 year old pyramid has appeared.

The Doctor approaches the pyramid where he is confronted by one of the Monks. The Monks inform him that they will take over Earth and they will be invited to do so. They then shut the door in the Doctor's face and all phones on Earth instantly switch to 11:57 PM, reflecting the Monk's version of the Doomsday Clock. Uneasy, the Doctor allows the three armies to coordinate an attack on the pyramid.

Meanwhile in Yorkshire, two scientists are settling down for work in a biochemical lab. One, Erica, has to have her co-worker, Douglas, input the figures for today as her husband accidentally broke her reading glasses that morning. Douglas, suffering from a bad hangover, inputs the numbers but mistakenly inputs the decimal point in the wrong location, causing too much of a certain chemical to be injected into the system.

The Monks take over the offensive capabilities of the three armies, rendering them useless. They then invite the power players into the pyramid. Inside, they tell the three commanders, the Secretary-General and the Doctor, Nardole and Bill how the planet will be dead in a year. They will save them in exchange for being invited to take over. They allow the party to see into their modeling and see the dead planet.

The Doctor scoffs at their offer but the Secretary-General decides to accept it. He offers to let the Monks take control. The Monks examine him but the offer must be made from a point of love and sincerity. The Secretary-General, motivated by fear, does not qualify and he collapses into dust.

The remaining party withdraws out of the pyramid and the leaders of the three armies agree to not follow any orders that would cause them to enter into war. Despite this agreement, the clock clicks forward to 11:59. The Doctor realizes that the potential war is not the cause of humanity's destruction. They brainstorm and settle on the likelihood of a plague and the Doctor sets them to search for possibilities after declassifying the government contracts.

At the lab in Yorkshire, the chemicals complete their mixing and inject themselves into the plant cultures. The plants then wither and die in moments. Erica and Douglas run out to seal the lab but Douglas leaves the main lab door open. He had also previously taken off his sterile helmet and collapses a moment later, withering into a slime. Erica seals the lab and initiates venting procedures.

Nardole narrows down the search field to about four hundred labs but the three commanders balk at this as it will take too much time to search. They head back to the pyramid to negotiate. The Doctor sends Bill to keep tabs on them while he and Nardole head back to the TARDIS. The Doctor has Narodle hack into the system and shut down the security cameras off all four hundred plus labs that are on the their list. The Monks then move to reactivate the cameras of the one lab they are watching and the Doctor heads there in the TARDIS.

As he arrives, the commanders attempt to surrender Earth to the Monks. The Monks determine they are surrendering out of strategy and not love and the three commanders are turned to dust as well. They turn to Bill as the Doctor's representative but she declines and backs off.

In the lab, the Doctor assesses the situation and figures that the venting will send the bacteria into the atmosphere and kill everything. He sends Nardole back into the TARDIS and moves it out of the lab. As he does so, Nardole collapses in the TARDIS as his lungs are attacked by the bacteria. The Doctor and Erica rig a small bomb that will ignite the ethanol being given off by the bacteria.

The Doctor sets the timer for two minutes and then heads towards the exit. As he does so, the doomsday timer trips backwards away from midnight and the Monks head back to their console to examine the problem. Erica is already outside the lab and tells the Doctor he'll have to manually enter the code to unlock the door. However, the Doctor cannot see the numbers on the dials to manipulate them. He tries to contact Nardole but he is unconscious.

Bill, listening in, realizes there is a problem. The Doctor finally confesses to her that he is blind and cannot escape. Bill then heads back to the Monks and offers to surrender if they give the Doctor his sight back. As her offer is made through love for the Doctor's well being, it is accepted. The Doctor's sight is restored and he exits the lab a few seconds before the bomb incinerates the bacteria.

Analysis

This story was not bad, but it wasn't overly engaging earlier. It did have a lot to overcome in the fact that it is the bridging episode between the first and last parts. Some of those stories hang well on their own but this seemed a little too wheel spinning to enjoy for it's own sake. Extremis introduces the Monks and their simulation systems while The Lie of the Land is going to cover how their takeover is overthrown. This story is them taking over and it's not particularly interesting in that.

What was interesting was the lab stuff. I found Erica and Douglas far more engaging than anyone in the high command of the various armies. I also really appreciated the fact that the role of Erica was written and no changes were made because they cast a little person. She is just a role and her height is irrelevant to the story. That was refreshing. Then you have the fact that she and Douglas have that casual workplace friendship that is just enjoyable to watch. There's no unrequited romance or weird politics. It's just two people who work together and get along. I almost wish the bacteria hadn't interrupted as I would have liked to have heard Erica's story about throwing up in her helmet.

I did like all the principles in this story. The Doctor seemed very wrong-footed and unsure of himself for a lot of the story. In fact, he seemed more unsure of himself than he did in Extremis but I thought it worked fairly well. But he also got his big brash moments in making the bomb and destroying the bacteria. I found his interaction with Erica to be very amusing. I also liked that fact that Erica didn't have a clue who the Doctor was. There's been a lot of stories where the Doctor seemed a bit too familiar so having someone have no clue who he was felt good.

This is the third story in a row where Nardole was given a good bit to do and he worked well. Someone on-line compared him to K-9 and I think that is a very apt description, even down to the sarcasm. People have also speculated that Nardole was originally conceived as arriving in the flashback sequence in Extremis and they enjoyed him so much they wrote him back into the earlier stories. That would make sense since his first real story was Oxygen, the story just prior to this and his lines could easily have been given to Bill or some other character in that story.

Bill was good too. It was rather obvious that something was going to happen and she was going to end up trading Earth for the Doctor's life. I didn't see it being his sight restored but I'm not sorry to see the blindness go. But I like that Bill is just an ordinary person who travels with the Doctor. She's smart but not so much that she will supersede the Doctor. She's much more like the companions that the Third or Fourth Doctor would travel with in that they brought their own skills but were, for the most part, ordinary people. I did find it highly amusing that Bill is relating the story of the pope in the simulation only to have nearly the same thing happen but with the Secretary-General instead. I also appreciated that scene because it was a variation on a theme within the original simulation, suggesting that the Monks had things plotted out pretty correctly.

I'm a bit mixed on the Monks as villains. They clearly are extremely powerful and could easily take over the world anytime they want. I don't buy the ruling through love angle since the love that was acted on was Bill's for the Doctor. They are just agents at that point. In many ways, they are like a rehash of the Silence but with broader power rather than the elusiveness that made the Silence interesting. There are more questions involved with them that I hope are at least partially addressed in the next episode.

I was also a little disappointed that after teasing her in the first part, Missy did not make an appearance in this story. It would have been nice to see her offering snide bits of commentary while chained up or contained back within a cell in the TARDIS, speaking over a video relay in the Doctor's sunglasses. That would have been highly amusing, like an in frame commentary. But she does seem to be making an appearance in the conclusion so hopefully she's good there.

The cinematography and direction was pretty good in this. I was having small issues with the feed on my TV so I couldn't get it as nice as it should have looked, but I thought it looked well done with some nice direction. It certainly had a much more intimate feel that I might have otherwise expected given how sterile it could have easily been done. But it looked very nice and I thought it well done.

Overall, I think is this in the slightly above average category. It'll be watched more as a context piece with the other two rather than as a story in it's own right. In fact, I probably could have tied this one and The Lie of the Land in a single review but it had been long enough that I just wanted to jump in. So, I highly doubt anyone will single this episode out as one to watch, but I don't think it's a major falloff from Extremis either in the overall arc.

Overall personal score: 3 out of 5