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Post by Cyggy on Mar 5, 2022 3:59:11 GMT
Please rate and discuss this story here.....
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Post by Black Orchid on Mar 12, 2022 20:01:22 GMT
Probably not the worst Tom Baker story but certainly the most boring - six episodes of mind numbing tedium.
5/10
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Post by GC on Mar 19, 2022 4:00:29 GMT
Rather liked The Shadow in it but other than that, yeah real tedious stuff unfortunately.
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Post by johnnybear on Mar 26, 2022 7:45:37 GMT
I quite liked this one as I really hated the Key To Time series! A bit more Time Lord legends and history would have been nice and just who were the Guardians actually? We never got a reasonably good explanation! JB
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Post by Cyggy on Jul 8, 2022 9:38:11 GMT
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Post by GC on Jul 26, 2022 3:08:27 GMT
Tom Baker Swears at K9
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Post by Future-Diver on Jul 26, 2022 8:25:06 GMT
"Once we have the Key to Time, we shall set not two small planets but the two halves of the entire cosmos at war, and their mutual destruction will be music in our ears."I've seen some quite scathing reviews of The Armageddon Factor over the years and that's fine, but how can anything featuring the rather marvelous John Woodvine be that bad? And The Armageddon Factor introduced Lalla Ward to the world of Who - surely that in itself should be cause enough for celebration? Further still, Episode One contains this cracking bit of innuendo: "Men out there - young men - are dying for it!" If I had a criticism, it would be that The Armageddon Factor contains an idea almost identical to that in the Star Trek TOS episode 'A Taste Of Armageddon' (even the titles are similar) - i.e. interplanetary war is conducted as a computer simulation. Yet despite this, I can appreciate both the Trek and the Who tales, so it's not really a criticism. Very underrated. 8/10
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Post by iank on Aug 25, 2022 23:28:17 GMT
I've never understood why this one gets so panned, or called boring. Ramshackle but thoroughly entertaining throughout thanks to a nicely twisty plot and some great guest characters, with Tom, Mary and K9 all on fire. Woefully underrated. You want boring? Try almost any Pertwee 6parter.
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Post by profh0011 on Nov 3, 2023 4:07:21 GMT
So many old 6-parters (and, God help us, 7-parters) seem slow and overlong and boring... but not during Tom Baker's era. Several of them managed to break up the structure into a 4-parter connected with a 2-parter, or vice-versa. "Armageddon" instead did 3 consecutive 2-parters tied together, each one taking place on a different planet. So it never gets boring!
It's crazy I don't think I ever connected this with "A Taste of Armageddon", one of my very favorite STAR TREKs, despite the name and concept. Wild. (That was a story where violating the "Prime Directive" was not only NECESSARY, it was a GREAT idea that helped save countless lives.
As off-the-wall as it first seemed, I think my favorite part is when Drax suddenly appears, and we find out he went to school with The Doctor, and he's the kind of old school-mate The Doctor is ASHAMED to know and wants nothing to do with. (At least Simon Templar tended to have chummy relationships with old Chicago gangster types he'd run into years later. He found them amusing!)
Several things during Tom Baker's run, and particularly, this season, wind up, in the long run, running COUNTER to long-term WHO mythology-- both before AND after! In "Ribos", it's hinted that The Doctor somehow just barely passed his final academy exams on the 2nd try. Here, he runs into an old school buddy who praises him for having done so, perhaps because Drax DIDN'T, and wound up as a technician instead. Yet... in "An Unearthly Child", The Doctor hints he was once an architect of his civilization... and we see hints of this same idea again in "Remembrance of the Daleks". WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?
I've thought about this a lot since the 80s, and what crosses my mind tends to be, The Doctor WAS a collaborator with Rassilon & Omega-- but afterwards, didn't want anyone to know it. Or perhaps something happened that caused him to lose his memory, and he wound up going to Time Lord Academy as though he was a normal Gallifreyan student, to re-learn what he lost. Or, to fool people into thinking he was just a normal member of their race.
I have a feeling, the way the dialogue was written in "Ribos", that it's meant to HINT he wasn't too bright, but that may all be a LIE. Romana's heard the lie, but only the Doctor knows it's a lie. Like how both Troughton's Doctor and Lt. Columbo spend so much time ACTING like an idiot... when really, THEY'RE NOT. (The problem too often with Baker's Doctor is... "the act" is TOO CONVINCING, and you come to believe he's saving the universe through DUMB LUCK.)
So many, especially in America, view Tom Baker as "THE" Doctor, the "real" one, the only one who "counts". But as I've seen all of them back then, I tend to often view Baker as a bizarre psychological anamoly. Cho-Je told Sarah he might be "erratic" from his regeneration-- no kidding. The thing is, it often feels to ME as he never quite recovered from that regeneration, until Leela and then Romana came on the scene. Going back home and almost getting killed in "Assassin", I think, woke him up, and having to look after Leela helped pull himself together again. When Romana arrived, it became a competition! Although, once SHE became self-confident, he began to relax and act really idiotic again.
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Post by dsjr on Feb 15, 2024 11:46:37 GMT
Interesting post above Tom I believe, seems naturally ott in life as well and I think that makes his eccentricities more 'normal' to his character (I can't explain it properly). I wonder if the Doctor didn't lark about in his studies and maybe, he was always bright but hated the confines of enforced studying (there are many people like that who hate school and 'formal education' yet they're bright as buttons and fly once let free and begin live their lives, learning as they go). This story goes on and on, yet survived easily a binge-watch last night. I do see Mary Tamm's reason for pushing to leave, as she became yet another screamer in places as Tom was 'THE' lead here (why does so much NuWho swap this round to the Doctor being the support? I think Tom would seriously struggle in NuWho unless he forced re-writes). I'll get through the extras for this and the previous story and look forward to once again enjoying 'Destiny.' Lalla Ward was cheeky with it in her portrayal and obviously being attached to Tom back then helps enormously...
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Post by profh0011 on Feb 15, 2024 16:47:11 GMT
While it doesn't answer the question of the Doctor's past history, I do believe your idea about his time in school makes PERFECT sense.
"I decided to leave because the part was not up to what had been promised, and there was nowhere left to go with character."
Sadly, while it LOOKED that way, Season 17 proved that WRONG. There WAS plenty they could do with Romana-- and they DID-- once Lalla Ward took over. Perhaps she was more involved with rehearsal-time script rewrites? According to Patrick Macnee, Ian Hendry instituted that during his season of THE AVENGERS, and Macnee and his later partners cotinued it in subsequent seasons. As did Douglas Wilmer on SHERLOCK HOLMES, as did Tom Baker & Lis Sladen on DOCTOR WHO, as did Jeremy Brett during HIS run of SHERLOCK HOLMES.
Mary Tamm went in determined to only do one season, perhaps she didn't feel it was her job to improve the writers' work? I would have loved to have seen her playing Romana as Romana became a more confident character, but, maybe that couldn't have happened without Lalla Ward taking over.
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Post by dsjr on Feb 16, 2024 11:19:22 GMT
In one of the disc extras, I did get the feeling that Ms Tamm *at the time* may have felt she was a bit above a show like this... Lalla and Tom were close at this point, so maybe a better dynamic was available in their acting too? All supposition of course
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Post by Future-Diver on Mar 3, 2024 8:12:57 GMT
"There will be a rather large bang, big enough to blow up Zeos, take Atrios with it, and make certain the whole thing ends in a sort of draw. That's the way these military minds work. The Armageddon factor".
I've just watched The Armageddon Factor again and enjoyed it, especially the first two episodes, but I've tempered my enthusiasm, just a bit. The character of the Marshall and the space war between Atrios and Zeos are fascinating, as is the notion of the slowly decaying time-loop created by the incomplete Key segments, but sadly, The Phantom is a silly, hackneyed, pantomime villain ("Bwa Ha Ha! You Fool!"). This corny character lets the side down, in a season that gave us quite a few memorable baddies - The Graff Vynda-K, the Pirate Captain, Cessair Of Diplos, Count Grendel, etc. Still, I was amused by Drax, the cheeky Cockney Timelord in Episode 5:
Drax: Blimey, it's a dog. Who's a little tin dog, then? K9: Your silliness is noted.
I hate to say this, but its obvious after seeing Lalla Ward and Mary Tamm together in Episode 6, that Tamm is the better actress and I find Princess Astra quite a whiny, insipid character (although I do adore both versions of Romana).
It's cool that the Black Guardian (played wonderfully by Valentine Dyall) turns up at the end in closing scenes written by Douglas Adams himself in which we see a truly lunatic turn by Tom:
"As from this moment there's no such thing as free will in the entire universe. There's only my will, because I possess the Key to Time!" .
Not the perfect ending to the quest or the season in general, but not a miserably disappointing anti-climax either.
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Post by rapscallion on Mar 3, 2024 11:06:00 GMT
It's cool that the Black Guardian (played wonderfully by Valentine Dyall) turns up at the end in closing scenes written by Douglas Adams himself in which we see a truly lunatic turn by Tom: "As from this moment there's no such thing as free will in the entire universe. There's only my will, because I possess the Key to Time!" .
Not the perfect ending to the quest or the season in general, but not a miserably disappointing anti-climax either. I find the 'lunatic turn' (as you aptly call it) by Tom towards the ending of The Armageddon Factor a bit difficult to watch. In my eyes it's here, not during the often derided Season 17, that Tom oversteps the mark. Other than that, I'm neither a fan nor a disliker of this story, but I do think it goes on too long. It's strongest at the start and I become less interested in it as each episode progresses.
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