The Keeper of Traken Part Four

The one where the Master gets a new body at last...

It's a real rollercoaster ride trying to work out whether the Doctor knows Melkur is the Master or not. As a viewer, we were given a strong hint at the end of part 3 when the man inside Melkur turned to camera and looked pretty much like the Master the last time we saw him (The Deadly Assassin). But that was not definite, and seeing as The Deadly Assassin was over four years previous, lay viewers could be forgiven for not getting the connection.

As early as part 2, the Doctor says: "So you're the cause of all this" when he hears Melkur's voice (he knows!) but it transpires he was just referring to Melkur (he doesn't know!). In part 3 Tom Baker puts some heavy emphasis on "master plans" in reference to the Source Manipulator blueprints (he knows!), but it was just a coincidence it seems (he doesn't know!). And at the start of part 4, the Doctor warns Luvic that he should do what Melkur tells him to or "he'll make you" (he knows!), but then states that his only ambition "is to stop you, Melkur!" (he doesn't know!).

The Keeper of Traken Part Three

The one where Melkur seizes control of the Source...

Looking at it a second time, the reprise is a bit of a shambles. First of all you've got one of those awful instances where someone (usually a companion) says "Doctor, look!" and points before there's anything there to look at, ie Adric points out that the TARDIS has returned before the TARDIS returns. Then you've got Anthony Ainley's rather confused performance as he waits on tenterhooks for the right moment to embrace Sheila Ruskin (Shall I? Shan't I? Shall I? Shan't I?), and then when he does seize her, he stares into Kassia's clearly painted-on eyes before they zap him. I wouldn't normally be bothered by painted-on eyes (I was fine with it in Image of the Fendahl), but when seen as part of this series of mini-missteps, it just seems a bit primary school.

This third episode definitely suffers from Part Three Syndrome, in that there's an awful lot of running about achieving very little. It's that bit of narrative between halfway and finale that gets in the way for a writer who hasn't paced his script properly. Basically, you don't need part 3 of The Keeper of Traken, except for the cliffhanger which moves the plot towards the end game.

The Keeper of Traken Part Two

The one where Adric detects the wave loop patterns of another TARDIS...

It's an open and shut case, to be frank. The Keeper asks for the strangers to be brought forward, the Doctor asks that he tell the Consuls who he is, and the Keeper replies, rather vociferously: "Evil! Eeeee-vil! Infinite evil!" While the viewer knows that the Keeper is actually referring to Melkur peeking round the door, nobody else knows that, and so by rights, the Doctor and Adric really ought to be executed, by the apparent law of Traken.

But instead they are given a reprieve simply because the Doctor claims he is actually innocent, and that it's obvious the Keeper was under attack, perhaps from some high energy beam. The Doctor has absolutely no evidence of this at all, but still manages to persuade the Consuls to not have him killed. In actual fact, the Keeper was under no kind of attack at all, he was just rattled by the appearance of Melkur at the front door. A bit of a muddle, but at least it saves our heroes' necks.

The Keeper of Traken Part One

The one where infinite evil begins to infect a sanctum of goodness...

I firmly believe that Tom Baker and Matthew Waterhouse worked well together. I realise this overlooks the fact that Baker was a bit of a sod towards Waterhouse on set, but it does recognise that, when it comes to what ends up on screen (which is all that matters in the end), the Fourth Doctor and Adric make for a pretty good team. I'd even go so far as to say they're sweet together.

Just look at how physically close the two actors are in the early TARDIS scenes, with Tom draping his arm round Matthew's shoulder, and Matthew looking up at his mentor adoringly. Baker occasionally stands behind Waterhouse, gripping both shoulders, and the proximity between them is so close at times that you'd think they'd been working together for years.

Warriors' Gate Part Four

The one where the back-blast bounces back and destroys everything...

It takes a solid five minutes of screen time for the Doctor to make the point that they're all in danger, and that they're all in this together. A somewhat panicked K-9 reveals that time and space are both contracting around them, and the dimensions of the Gateway are being affected by a huge mass disturbing its stability. It turns out that the huge mass is Rorvik's spaceship, the hull of which is made of the extremely dense dwarf star alloy.

Nothing really happens in this closing episode until Adric rocks up almost eight minutes in and threatens Rorvik and his pals with the MZ. The whole MZ routine plays out really strangely, because at no point do you see Rorvik and his men in the same shot/ context as the MZ. The camera shots and moves try to sell the fact that the Doctor is aiming the MZ at Rorvik's men as they all edge closer to the exit, but you don't see that happening, you just see the two shots edited together. Were they even in the same studio on the same day when it was shot? It's indicative of how haphazard the editing of Warriors' Gate feels.

Warriors' Gate Part Three

The one where the Doctor feasts with the Tharils...

It's interesting that you get a fleeting shot of the injured Tharil's scarred face in the reprise, something left out of the part 2 cliffhanger because it may have been deemed too unpleasant an image to leave kiddies with for a whole week. This Tharil, Lazlo, was played by the terribly handsome vicar from Keeping Up Appearances (Jeremy Gittins). Lazlo is not trying to harm Romana as first thought, but free her, but before they can escape together, they are disturbed by the return of Aldo and Royce.

Aldo and Royce are two characters in search of a point. Fans who analyse this sort of thing far too much have suggested they are some kind of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern device, referring to two characters in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are often seen and treated as if the two men are one character, always seen together, often finishing one another's sentences. This is also an accurate summation of Aldo and Royce, but the only difference is that in Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are commonly thought to be two minor characters of major importance. In Warriors' Gate, as far as I can work out, they are two minor characters of zero importance.

Warriors' Gate Part Two

The one where Romana is used as a time sensitive navigator...

The axemen cometh! The Gundan robots (for that is what they are) are a great design, and the movement by Robert Vowles is suitably robotic, but not in a disco way. The Gundan is genuinely threatening, especially with its armoured appearance and half-obscured silvery skeletal face. Peter Howell's lumbering theme for the Gundans is great too. What's not so great is the fact it takes an entire eight minutes of this episode before the Doctor manages to actually escape the Gundan attack. Not because it takes him eight minutes to outwit them, but because the episode is paced and edited quite eccentrically, spending more time with Romana and Rorvik's men before resolving the cliffhanger from last week.

The Doctor spends the entire episode inside the banqueting hall finding things out. There's a lot of info-dumping in his scenes, and the Doctor has virtually nothing active to do, while elsewhere Romana gets to go on an adventure.

Warriors' Gate Part One

The one where the TARDIS lands at the intersection of two universes...

The story with the most troublesome apostrophe in Doctor Who history opens with the most amazing tracking shot which does everything right that Lovett Bickford did wrong at the start of The Leisure Hive. Director Paul Joyce* conjures so much atmosphere and anticipation by panning across an interesting set (rather than a bunch of beach huts), lit in beautiful midnight blue by John Dixon, and which progresses steadily as POV, as if the viewer is really there. Doctor Who does virtual reality! It's a shame the overall sequence is pieced together using separate cross-faded shots, but overall it's a highly effective and intriguing opening to the story.

It builds an interest in what's going on in this strange world of scaffold and sleeping lion men. The voiceover countdown raises expectations too, and it's cheekily playful to have the camera pass a couple of loafers playing cards who appear to have little of interest going on. The fact they are there, doing that, is like a little window on the real world, whatever this world is (and however real it may be!). There's lots of graffiti too, attributed to Kilroy (played uncredited by regular Doctor Who supporting artist Mike Mungarvan).