Doctor Who: The Armageddon Factor (Story 103) (The Key to Time Series, Part 6)
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DVD details
Actor: Ian Liston, John Leeson, Mary Tamm, Susan Skipper, Tom BakerDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 148 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-10-01
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: BBC Video / Warner Bros.
DVD Reviews of Doctor Who: The Armageddon Factor (Story 103) (The Key to Time Series, Part 6)
DVD Review: "I have watched you and your jackdaw meanderings."
Summary: 4 Stars
"The Armageddon Factor" begins with great promise. Science fiction is often at its best when it uses future times and other planets to obliquely comment on the tensions and issues of our contemporary Earth, and anyone who grew up during the Cold War will instantly recognize the whole mood of that era in this 1979 storyline. Here instead of two super-powers we have two planets, Atrios and Zeos, both engaged in a long, drawn-out and mutually-destructive thermonuclear war--and both (or so it seems at first) with their own array of militarists and pacifists. And of course it wouldn't be "Doctor Who" if the Doctor and friends didn't come stumbling right into the middle of this mess.
The initial opening of the first episode has to be one of the most experimental things I've ever seen on "Doctor Who"--you see a man and a woman exchanging cliched, cheesy dialogue about him going off to war and such, and then the camera pans back slowly and you realize you've been watching TV within TV--a propaganda program playing in a dilapidated medical ward somewhere on Atrios. And as the Doctor and Romana arrive searching for the sixth and final segment of the Key to Time, the nature of this war of attrition is gradually revealed in a rather convincing manner, one that nicely suggests the brutality and absurdity of war, especially one in which you can't even see your opponents. Finally, the Marshall in charge of the war effort makes for an absolutely excellent three-dimensional villain for the very reason that in his own mind he's a hero.
And then slowly things start unraveling. The Marshall is replaced as principal baddie by the Shadow. There's a lot of potential here. This finally brings the focus on the Key to Time, it's interesting to have a competing counterpart to the Doctor working to reassemble the Key for the forces of darkness, and the Shadow's appetite for death and destruction for its own sake is disturbing (and reminiscent of such classic villains as Sutekh from 'Pyramids of Mars")--but much of this potential is squandered by his portrayal as a rather two-dimensional villain cracking his knuckles and cackling that hokey bad guy laugh ("The Key to Time is mine! Whoo-hah-hah!"). There are still some saving graces at this stage: the Doctor buys everyone some time (literally) by rigging what they have of the Key to create a time loop, which is good old sci-fi at its weirdest, and the revelation that the war effort by Zeos is completely planned and operated by a computer is inventive (and so "Cold War"--I'm reminded of the 1983 movie "WarGames"). It's strangely fun in a twisted way to see an evil K9 for a while, too. But overall the plot just starts meandering like crazy around and around, new supporting characters are introduced haphazardly, and old supporting characters are suddenly and inexplicably knowledgeable about time loops, Keys to Time, and Tardises.
But wait, it gets worse, with the two-dimensional villain being replaced by a one-dimensional villain at the last moment: The Black Guardian himself. We were in no way really prepared for his appearance scriptwise, but okay, this at least could've been cool in an epic manner, but all he can do is skulk at the Doctor and verbally badger him through the Tardis viewscreen. Considering the fact that he's supposed to be the balancing force for the immensely powerful White Guardian we saw at the beginning of "The Ribos Operation" he cuts a rather anemic figure indeed. Speaking of which, where is the White Guardian, anyway? A major anticlimax to a season-long adventure, and full of so many loose ends the whole thing just seems kind of lackluster, ending not with a bang but a whimper.
Oh well, so "The Armageddon Factor" is not exactly "Doctor Who" at its best, at least not uniformly so. The stuff of greatness was within our grasp, and it slipped through our fingers. It has its moments, though, all the same, and is overall an enjoyable adventure well worth watching.
P.S. Since "The Armageddon Factor" is the sixth and final storyline in the six-part "Key to Time" saga of the sixteenth season, this DVD is also included with five other DVDs in a box set, Doctor Who - The Key to Time Collection, so unless you have a particular interest just in this one storyline, that may be the better option both in terms of economics and convenience.
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