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).