{"id":189,"date":"2013-10-27T16:46:24","date_gmt":"2013-10-27T21:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/keithgoodnight.com\/blog\/?p=189"},"modified":"2013-10-27T16:46:24","modified_gmt":"2013-10-27T21:46:24","slug":"dr-who-the-power-of-kroll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keithgoodnight.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/27\/dr-who-the-power-of-kroll\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr Who: The Power of Kroll"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Power_of_Kroll\"<\/a>The search for the fifth segment of the Key to Time takes the Doctor and Romana to the swamp-covered third moon of Delta Magna, where a conflict between the crew of a methane refinery and the tribal natives called \u201cSwampies\u201d (a derisive name used by the refinery crew, but we never get to hear any other) is interrupted by the appearance of Kroll, a Godzilla-sized giant squid the Swampies worship as a god.<\/p>\n

The script is by Robert Holmes, penning his second story of this season, but has to be considered a disappointment. Partly it\u2019s betrayed by expectations: if any other writer\u2019s name was on the episode, I\u2019d say it was a run-of-the-mill outing for Dr Who at this period, but Holmes\u2019 previous brilliance has led me to expect more than run-of-the-mill work when I see his name in the credits. The episode shows little to none of Holmes\u2019 trademark brilliance in creating memorable characters and deftly-drawn science fiction worlds. The characters here are largely dull, stock figures, and the world barely realized.<\/p>\n

The situation is a rather ham-handed allegory for the historical treatment of Native Americans, but with little effort to create a proper fictional world for the metaphor and, strangely, even less effort to make the Swampies sympathetic. Holmes essentially makes both sides into villains\u2014 or at least, none of them are very nice. The primary villain of the piece is Thawn, the director of the refinery, who is scheming to commit genocide against the Swampies (and is delighted when it briefly appears Kroll might do the job for him).<\/p>\n

But on the other side, it\u2019s hard to get as worked up over this as we should, because the Swampies are almost equally unpleasant. There are a lot of scenes in their supposed village but we don\u2019t see a single woman or child, or even one of the background male extras doing any kind of \u201clife in the village\u201d activities. The entire population consists of warriors with spears. This lack of background realism can partly be blamed on the production, but Holmes could have included something in the script to call it out: a scene of the Doctor commenting on something he sees, or trading a line with a Swampie child, or something. There\u2019s nothing.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the warriors just follow their High Priest, as one dimensional a character in his way as Thawn is on the other side. He\u2019s determined to make the Doctor and Romana into human sacrifices, and our heroes are more in danger from the Swampies than from the ostensible villain of the piece. There\u2019s no question that Holmes views the Swampies\u2019 hostility as justified and that of Thawn merely villainous, but he seems to have been diverted by the fact that in many Dr Who stories (as far back as The Aztecs<\/i>) the \u201cdangerous primitive cult\u201d could serve as the main threat. Too interested in putting the Doctor into this familiar kind of peril, Holmes manages to forget that in this story, one side or the other needs to be sympathetic.<\/p>\n

As for the monster of the story, the less said about Kroll the better. Pre-CGI Dr Who just cannot handle a Japanese Kaiju <\/i>(the term for the Godzilla\/Mothra\/Rodan type of monster).<\/i> We see some miniature shots of Kroll attacking the refinery, and some completely unconvincing shots of Kroll seeming to rise up from behind the horizon in front of terrified extras, but these shots completely fail to connect in any way with the foreground action of prop tentacles sticking through walls or up out of the swamp. Holmes knew this would be a problem but he had no choice about it (see below).<\/p>\n

Details<\/h4>\n