| Production Code: 5F
First Transmitted
The Doctor - Tom Baker
In their search for the final segment of the Key to Time, the Doctor and Romana arrive on the planet Atrios, which has endured a recent bombing by their neighbouring planet Zeos, with whom they are at war. The Marshal of Atrios is about to launch a counterstrike on Zeos, but the Doctor finds that Zeos is deserted save for the giant computer Mentalis, which is controlling the war. He also discovers that the true opponent is a third planet called the Planet of Evil, ruled by "the Shadow". The Shadow, an agent of the Black Guardian, has Princess Astra of Atrios captive, threatening to torture her if she doesn't give him the location of the final segment of the Key to Time (which she doesn't know). After disabling Mentalis, with the assistance of Romana and K-9, the Doctor creates a substitute sixth segment out of chronodyne, which gives the Key enough power to create a time loop in which to trap the Marshal's ship (armed with missiles for the final strike) as well as the Mentalis control room (engaged in an automatic self-destruct sequence). On the Planet of Evil, the Doctor encounters an old Academy mate, a fellow Time Lord named Drax, who has been employed under duress by the Shadow but agrees to help the Doctor. With K-9 and Astra now under his control, the Shadow wants the Key for himself, and forces the Doctor to retrieve it for him. The Doctor leads the Mute to his TARDIS and opens the door, but is suddenly shrunk to tiny size by Drax, using the dimensional stabilizer from his own (in-need-of-repair) TARDIS. (Originally, as implied by the Doctor's reaction, Drax was supposed to use the shrinking beam on the Mute, but deliberately misaims and shrinks the Doctor instead. Episode 5 ends on this scene, and it's only at the beginning of Episode 6 that Drax shrinks himself as well, having misinterpreted the Doctor's plan.) The Mute returns to the Shadow with the Key, but the Doctor realises why the Shadow has requested it: Astra is the final segment, and is transformed in front of everyone. Using their diminished size, the Doctor and Drax smuggle themselves into the Shadow's lair inside of the now-restored K-9. Drax again uses the stabilizer, this time, however, to return them to their normal size. The Doctor snatches the partially assembled Key and the final segment, and disappears with Romana and K9 in the TARDIS, assembling the Key after dealing with the Mentalis self-destruct (with the help of Drax) as well as the Marshal's missiles (using the TARDIS to deflect them onto the Planet of Evil). The White Guardian appears to congratulate the Doctor on finding and assembling the Key to Time, and requests that it be sent to him. However, the Doctor, realising that it is actually the Black Guardian in disguise, orders the Key to re-disperse. Enraged, the Black Guardian, now reverted back to his true form, threatens him with death. In an attempt to shake him off, the Doctor fits a randomiser into the TARDIS console, sending it to an unknown location in time and space, and leaving the Doctor with no idea of where they are headed.
Analysis by Cuisle Positively the most surreal opening for a Doctor Who episode was the wonderfully over the top soap opera with the hero going to war for all that is great and good about Atrios. This is immediately followed by a nuclear attack on Atrios’s hospital and not long after by the blips representing the last six ships in the Atrios space fleet blinking out on a computer scanner. Fiction and reality are two different things on Atrios as elsewhere. But the war, as well as many other things, isn’t what it seems. The war is actually being waged against a computer on the empty planet of Zeos, while the real villain is on a hidden third planet. The Princess Astra is actually the embodiment of the sixth segment of the key, and the white guardian is actually the black guardian in disguise. Things not being what they seem is thus the underlying theme of the story. But it takes several episodes to work out just what the truth is by a process of deduction by The Doctor and Romana. That the marshall is a baddie doesn’t come as much of a surprise. He is in a position of the wicked uncle of the prince in pantomime or the grand vizier or some other eminence griz in the land. It was only a matter of time before he revealed his true colours. He was still less one dimensional than the characters on Atrios TV. But only just. That is the problem with some of the supporting characters in these episodes. They are rather stock characters of bad guys and victims. The stories lack a certain sophistication. But they are still a lot less wooden and the plots less obvious than the average episode of Star Trek with the usual death of unnamed officers in the yellow jumpers. The idea of the princess being the embodiment of the sixth piece of the key was quite innovative in its time. It has been done a couple of times since. Buffy’s sister in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the girl in Men in Black II who was the Light of Zartha are two examples of later variations on the theme. But Doctor Who got there first! Then there is DRAX! A Time Lord, apparently, though a bigger renegade than The Doctor ever was by all accounts. This old lag with a cockney accent seems a very long way from the Princes of the Universe concept of the Time Lords, let alone the proud Prydonian Academy whose alumni are more usually gentlemen of breeding even if they are evil ones like The Master or Morbius. Who gave a character like Drax his own TARDIS I don’t know! But the sequences involving him were interestingly done, all the same. And we learnt from him for the first time that The Doctor’s school nickname was Theta Sigma. As for the black/white guardian, that looked like being a damp squib of a conclusion to the series, but it worked all right, really. Despite my previously stated dislike for the ‘flippant’ I rather enjoyed The Doctor stalling for time until the guardian revealed himself. And his conclusion – that the White Guardian WOULD have cared about Princess Astra being one of the pieces. The Doctor certainly DID. The princess at the bedside of her secret lover was a nice touch in the closing scenes. One thing that is getting irritating in these episodes, though, is
the insistence on the last shot of the episode being a close of up
The Doctor laughing his uniquely sinister laugh. It was starting to
become a little stylised.
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