4.29: The Armageddon Factor

In which everything just gets worse.

Broadcast: January-February 1979

Watched: September 2020

The Armageddon Factor, Part One

I had remembered this started well and got worse – I had forgotten that this meant a genuinely great episode 1. Invisible Enemy, Underworld, this... Bob and Dave are really great at episode 1s. Shame there are five more of the bloody things.

Anyway, there’s loads to love here. John Woodvine’s performance as the Marshall. The opening with the propaganda video, which shows the sky, then pulling back to the underground hospital ward, where everything is dark and bleak. The way it sketches out a massive interplanetary war almost entirely through dialogue.

Also this is Star Wars isn’t it? This is the first story that isn’t just vaguely influenced by, but massively ripping off, the original movie. There’s a good princess, whose name is “star”, being kept prisoner by an evil space general in the middle of a space war. She has weird hair, and her delivery of “Whoever you are, help me” is a bit “Help me, Obi Wan”. Funny that Lalla was cast to be Princess Leia.

I am now wondering whether the leftist blogger Atrios know where he got his name.

I really enjoyed that.

Now for it all to go shit.

The Armageddon Factor, Part Two

“The TARDIS! It’s gone!” is a rubbish cliffhanger.

Anyway, it’s not as big a drop in quality as Underworld 2 but it’s still disappointing after episode 1. The Marshall’s turnaround on the issue of whether to kill the Doctor or whether he in fact is the chosen one is not massively well explained. “What would you do if you had this deterrent?” “Use it of course” is quite nicely done.

K9 in peril is a very boring trope.

Oh right, they explain the turnaround before the episode is out, that’s something.

The Doctor walking into an obvious trap is bloody annoying, not least since two stories ago he was so smart and meta about such things.

The Armageddon Factor, Part Three

“There are no Zeons on Zeos.” This is a nice twist, but it makes for a bloody boring run up. I think to work this episode needed to be more sinister and creepy? As it is, it’s just people wandering round saying “This definitely ISN’T Atrios!” when it’s obviously the same sets.

The Shadow and friends interrogating the Doctor is strangely inconsequential given that they all just vanish. Lalla is getting her screaming in early.

The cliffhanger, with the Marshall attacking, is memorable (in that I literally remembered it) but also not as dramatic as the show wants it to be.

Maybe I’m being unfair. Watching three episodes of a story back to back isn’t generally a way of giving it a fair chance as there will always be diminishing returns. But episode one was fun and intriguing and it’s already just dull and there are three episodes to go.

The Armageddon Factor, Part Four

My main thing with this is that it’s just massively incoherent and really hard to follow. The Mutually Assured Destruction theme, which it looked like this story was going to be about, is only there if you massively squint – the Doctor says it out loud at one point, but the plot logic doesn’t really follow. The idea that Mentalis (bit close to “we mentiads”) can’t retaliate because it thinks the war is over is interesting, but they don’t do anything with it, and you have to be concentrating quite hard to get it at all.

It’s just... a mess. There’s something involving the Key to Time and a Time Loop, and Astra is being mind controlled and lures people into a trap. Shapp screaming “MERAK!” and dying is a truly dreadful moment.

It’s really rubbish, it’s wasted all that potential from the first episode to be a runaround where you can’t even keep track of the stakes, and Drax hasn’t even turned up yet.

Oh, and the Shadow looks like a mole.

The Armageddon Factor, Part Five

The bit with the gradually extending time loop also flirts with being interesting but isn’t articulated well enough to make it work.

K9 sounds delighted to have been forced to betray the Doctor.

What is it with Doctor Who and the idea people can be controlled by a thing on the neck?

I don’t really know what the point of Drax is. He doesn’t fit with anything else in the story, it’s a weird direction to go in, just... why?

And the last cliffhanger of this season, this 26 part story of the key to time, is... a cockney geezer Time Lord we met 10 minutes earlier shooting the doctor so that he shrinks.

This whole thing is just baffling.

The Armageddon Factor, Part Six

I’ve been trying to pay attention, I really have. But it’s just so dull, and it has nothing to do with what came before.

The ridiculous lead up to the big reveal of Astra’s true identity is so cack-handed (“the sixth of the sixth of the sixth…”) that it sort of undermines the tragedy of a human being turning into a lump of crystal. Romana’s push back on all this, and the Doctor’s disinterest, feels completely unearned – it’s like the end of Dalek’s Master Plan, but lobotomised and shit.

There’s a countdown going on but I’ve genuinely lost track of what’s going to happen and why it matters.

Tom’s evil acting is not great, but also it’s clearly a pisstake so he gets away with it. The real problem is that there’s not really any peril to that final scene, the Guardian is just on a screen shouting and the threat never feels real.

And we’ve just had an entire season of stories collecting this thing that... doesn’t matter. It feels like a waste of time.

I’ll be glad when Graham Williams buggers off and this show gets a producer.