{"id":193,"date":"2013-11-04T17:18:32","date_gmt":"2013-11-04T23:18:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/keithgoodnight.com\/blog\/?p=193"},"modified":"2013-11-04T17:18:32","modified_gmt":"2013-11-04T23:18:32","slug":"dr-who-the-armageddon-factor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keithgoodnight.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/04\/dr-who-the-armageddon-factor\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr Who: The Armageddon Factor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>[Caution: this post contains spoilers for the story]<\/p>\n

The quest for the Key to Time reaches its conclusion, and we finally get some attention to the overall story arc\u2014 but just barely, and the story itself is distinctly unexciting. It\u2019s hard to know what to write about an episode that largely makes me go \u201cmeh.\u201d It\u2019s not really bad,<\/i> at least not exactly. Not enough happens in the story to fill its 6-episode length, so it spends way too much time inconclusively wandering up and down corridors. There are some very interesting plot twists, but they aren\u2019t properly exploited: they tend to be tossed out right when they happen then the story moves on without much interest. There are some moments of very broad comedy (not just the Doctor being his silly self but random bits of strange slapstick) that don\u2019t quite fit the tone of the rest of the story, which is trying to play it straight.<\/p>\n

Overall, you get to the end of it and say \u201cYeah, that was six episodes all right.\u201d While better than \u201cUgh that was awful\u201d (as with last season\u2019s Underworld<\/i>) it\u2019s still not really good enough.<\/p>\n

The Story<\/h4>\n

Searching for the sixth and final segment of the Key, the TARDIS finds the planet Atrios on the verge of losing an interplanetary war with its neighbor Zeos. The survivors have retreated into underground bunkers while the Zeos fleet bombards the planet at will with nuclear weapons, while the military commander, the Marshal, still vows to fight on to inevitable victory and plots to assassinate the figurehead monarch, Princess Astra, on learning she\u2019s been trying to contact Zeos to negotiate a surrender.<\/p>\n

The Doctor and Romana immediately conclude the Black Guardian must be behind this\u2014 a mysterious conclusion since there\u2019s been no sign of him behind any of the other troubles they always find, but they\u2019re quite correct. An agent of the Black Guardian, known as the Shadow, is actually behind the war, having the Marshal under mind control, while the Zeos attacks are actually automated, controlled by a computer the Shadow had built. While the Doctor has been chasing all over time and space, the Shadow parked himself by the sixth segment and just waited for the Doctor to bring the others two him. Starting a war of mutual genocide appears to be something he\u2019s done just to pass the time while he waits, because the Black Guardian likes destruction (and plans, after obtaining the Key to Time, to use it to destroy all life in the universe).<\/p>\n

The sixth segment of the Key is revealed to be Princess Astra herself, who will therefore be destroyed if the segment is restored to its true form. The Shadow eventually does that, but the Doctor manages to get the completed Key away from him and escape in the TARDIS, along the way diverting the Marshal\u2019s last missile attack to destroy the Shadow\u2019s base and save both Zeos and Atrios from mutual destruction.<\/p>\n

Then it seems the White Guardian appears to take possession of the Key, but from his callous reaction to Astra\u2019s fate the Doctor deduces it\u2019s actually the Black Guardian, and disperses it back across time and space to prevent the Black Guardian from seizing it (ordering the one segment to return to being Princess Astra, thus saving her life as well).<\/p>\n

Details<\/h4>\n