DOCTOR WHO:  THE ARMAGEDDON FACTOR

commentary by Judy Harris

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#29:  THE ARMAGEDDON FACTOR (6 Parts)	
ORIGINALLY AIRED:  1/20/79 to 2/24/79
WRITTEN BY:  Bob Baker and Dave Martin
DIRECTED BY:  Michael Hayes
PRODUCER:  Graham Williams
SCRIPT EDITOR:  Anthony Read
	

THE ARMAGEDDON FACTOR is the sixth and final story concerning the quest for the Key to Time. Considering it was a 6-parter, there was certainly ample time to tie up all the loose ends and deliver at least as much explanation as Robert Holmes had provided to start the quest off in THE RIBOS OPERATION.

Unfortunately, what we get instead is the soon to be overused device of a time loop. Although it had been mentioned in previous stories, we now get to see it in action, and it is pretty boring. In the past, when DOCTOR WHO had done stories of 6, 7 or even 10 parts, extra time was taken up in chases. This show is instead padded by showing the same footage over and over. It would be quite unbearable if the footage weren't blessed with the presence of John Woodvine, who is wonderful in the role of the military minded Marshal.

We finally get to see the Black Guardian, of whom the White Guardian warned us in THE RIBOS OPERATION, but he doesn't seem so bad; in fact, he isn't nearly as menacing as his henchman, the Shadow. Although the Black Guardian threatens to destroy the Doctor, he doesn't figure in any of the subsequent Tom Baker shows, although he does eventually make things tough for Peter Davison's Doctor.

On a video screen, a dramatized propaganda film plays out, harping on the nobility of the war Atrios is engaged in.

In the TARDIS, the tracer shows the next destination is Atrios. It and Zeos are the twin planets on the edge of the Helical Galaxy.

In the War Room on Atrios, technicians receive damage reports of another nuclear attack by Zeos. Among the areas hit is the hospital. Princess Astra insists on going there to help. Before she leaves, accompanied by a guard, she tries to convince the Marshal to negotiate with the Zeons, but his military mind refuses even to consider this.

At the hospital Surgeon Merak tells Astra her rad-check is due for renewal. He takes off a wrist device which pulses in the presence of radiation and gives her another one. Taking her aside out of the guard's hearing, he hurriedly asks if she's been able to contact the Zeons. Astra says she sent the last signal herself, but there was no answer, as if Zeos wasn't even there.

In the War Room it's clear Atrios is losing the war; their fleet is lost; their navigation systems are blocked. They can't even locate Zeos.

The TARDIS materializes in parking orbit over Atrios which, at first, isn't even visible. The Doctor and Romana take another reading--008010040. "What a lot of zeroes," the Doctor remarks. Atrios appears on the scanner but it's miles away from where it should be and there's no sign of Zeos. The Doctor thinks something fairly serious has gone wrong. He decides to take the TARDIS in on manual, with circumspection.

The Marshal contacts by radio the guard escorting Princess Astra, rerouting her to K block, although it was closed down years ago due to radiation contamination.

Romana takes a reading on Atrios and sees high radiation levels. She tells the Doctor it's probably due to a nuclear war. "Empirical poppycock," he replies, "Where's your joy in life? Where's your optimism?"

"Listen, Romana," he says, "Whenever you go into a new situation, you must always believe the best until you find out exactly what the situation's all about. Then believe the worst," which it always turns out to be.

The guard forces Astra into K block and locks her in. The Marshal comes up behind the guard, shoots him and leaves. Astra's rad-check starts to pulse and beep.

The TARDIS appears on the War Room scanner. The Marshal thinks it's a Zeon secret weapon and orders it vaporized.

In the TARDIS, K9 reports a nuclear warhead approaching. The Doctor decides to dematerialize at the last moment so whoever's shooting at them will think they've been hit. "Always confuse the enemy," the Doctor advises.

Romana links the tracer in so the TARDIS will rematerialize as close as possible to the sixth segment. The TARDIS dematerializes just as the warhead explodes. Frankly, I don't know why the warhead explodes, since it doesn't impact on the TARDIS; but it does, which pleases the Marshal.

The TARDIS materializes in an underground passage near K block. Romana sighs. "Don't say it, please," the Doctor anticipates her; "Don't say another underground passage." K9 reports they're 400 meters below the surface of Atrios; and radiation levels indicate nuclear warfare is in progress on the planet's surface. He points out the corpse of the guard shot by the Marshal.

The tracer indicates the segment is behind the door to K block. The Doctor asks K9 to make a small hole in the lead shielded door before they risk opening it. This registers on the War Room sensors. The Marshal decides to deal with it himself.

The Doctor peeks in the hole K9 has made, while Princess Astra peeks out, asking for help. The Marshal shows up, pointing a gun at the Doctor and Romana. He accuses them of killing the guard and takes them to his War Room. Another Zeon attack causes debris to fall, preventing K9 from following, and burying the TARDIS.

Major Shapp, the Marshal's right hand man, brings Merak to the War Room, at the Marshal's request. The Marshal accuses Merak, Romana and the Doctor of being Zeon spies and saboteurs. The Doctor tricks Shapp into blowing K9's whistle. He tells the Marshal he's on Atrios for tourism: "I run this small agency, you see. Trips to battlefields future and past. See how civilizations die."

K9 takes an alternate route to the War Room and, at the Doctor's signal, knocks out the lights. Waving goodbye, the Doctor runs off, followed by Romana, Merak and K9.

In K block a door opens behind Astra and a hooded figure with a black skull-like face carries her into a doorway, where they both dematerialize.

Romana discovers the TARDIS is buried beneath some rubble. Merak rushes up, demanding Astra because he loves her. K9 opens the door to K block, but there's no one inside; only Astra's crown, which registers faintly on Romana's tracer. The Doctor tells K9 to keep an eye on the opposite wall, and he, Romana and Merak leave.

The Marshal orders K9 located and recycled into scrap. K9 is lured into a recycling shaft, where his circuits become inoperative, so he can't escape from the conveyor belt carrying him to the furnace.

The guards recapture the Doctor, Romana and Merak. The Doctor starts talking as soon as he sees the Marshal, who is in a kind of trance, staring into a mirrored wall. Shapp says he's meditating. Suddenly the Marshal springs to life, saying, "Welcome, my friend," and apologizing for the misunderstanding of their previous meeting. The Marshal says the Doctor's coming has been foretold as one who will lead Atrios to victory. "Oh, goodo!," the Doctor shouts, "as long as there's no personal risk involved, of course."

The mighty battlefleet of Atrios is down to only 6 ships. They engage the Zeon ships and 3 more Atrian vessels are destroyed. The Doctor agrees to knock up a deterrent, if the Marshall will help find Princess Astra. He has in mind an umbrella forcefield that no Zeon ship can penetrate, but he'll need K9, his computer. Shapp says it's too late; K9 is on the way to the furnace. The Doctor crawls down the recycling shaft and grabs K9 just as he goes over the edge into the furnace.

Outside the furnace room, the Marshal paces agitatedly, saying, "The Doctor must not die--not yet." Romana overhears this and notices a small black cylinder on the Marshal's neck, usually hidden by his uniform. The Doctor emerges from the furnace room in a cloud of smoke with an intact K9. "Warm for the time of the year," the Doctor observes, adding, "It's a little trick I picked up from the firewalkers in Bali. They do it all the time."

The Marshal wants a one-way forcefield, to keep the Zeons out but allow Atrios to attack. The Doctor says, "I was thinking in terms of a psychological barrier. It's cheap, efficient and energy saving, and it would stop the Zeons wanting to come here--introduce an element of Atriphobia." For this he'll need to meet a Zeon, to get to know his brain patterns, but the Marshal says there are no Zeon prisoners.

Romana gets the Doctor alone and tells him about the Marshal saying he mustn't die yet; she also describes the black cylinder at his throat. "If the Marshal's a puppet, who's pulling the strings?" Romana wonders.

The Doctor tells Merak he thinks Astra is on Zeos. Romana reminds him they haven't been able to locate Zeos. The Doctor suspects something's between them and Zeos, which would account for the orbital shift. Whatever's blocking the view can't be seen because "it's absorbing the light or energy; or it's camouflaged. Maybe it's large; or perhaps it's small." The Doctor isn't sure.

The Doctor sends Romana and Merak to try to see behind the Marshal's mirror. The Marshal demands the forcefield from the Doctor. "I've worked it all out. The problem is energy. If we're using energy to neutralize mass--which is all a forcefield is--we need enough energy or power ergwise to counteract the Zeon bombardment masswise," the Doctor says. K9's calculations prove it won't work; the more the Marshal uses the more he'll need, until Atrios is used up.

The Doctor proposes going to Zeos, bringing back a Zeon for his forcefield study and picking up Princess Astra, if she's there.

At that moment, Astra comes on the video screen saying she's a captive of the Zeons and Atrios should hand over the Marshal and surrender. The Marshal unplugs the video feed, cutting off her transmission.

Romana and Merak get behind the Marshal's mirror and find a skull. They hear the Marshal telling whomever's controlling him the Doctor has been directed to a transmat point in K block where he's walking into a trap.

The Doctor and K9 walk toward K block. "You know, K9, I've got a feeling we're missing out on something," the Doctor says, wondering why the Marshal is the only one to know of the transmatter link with the enemy planet.

The Doctor enters the transmat chamber against K9's advice. Two hooded figures with black skull-like faces come up behind him. Romana and Merak rush up to warn him, but it's too late; the door closes. The hooded figures grab the Doctor and all three of them dematerialize.

Merak has never seen a transmat before. Romana tells him the term is short for particle matter transmission.

The entity controlling the Marshal tells him now it has the Time Lord there will be no more attacks from Zeos. The Marshal decides to lead a final assault himself. Shapp confirms the Zeon fleet is gone.

Romana decides to try using the TARDIS, but K9 reports it's no longer under the debris. She, K9 and Merak return to the transmat area, where K9 tries to figure out the locking mechanism.

On Zeos, the mute hooded figures place a control device on the Doctor's Adam's apple, but he just removes it. The skull-like figure who controlled the Marshal introduces himself as the Shadow. He has the Doctor put in an electrically wired booth and interrogates him about the Key to Time, sending painful jolts through the Doctor when he lies.

Romana tells Merak they can find Astra using the tracer. K9 gets the door unlocked. Merak steals the tracer and runs with it into the transmat. The door closes and locks again, and he dematerializes.

The Shadow reveals he has the TARDIS and demands the Doctor bring the segments to him. "Interested in time pieces, are you? Chronostatics? Horogenesis, that sort of thing?" the Doctor asks.

He tells the Shadow the TARDIS is covered with automatic defense mechanisms. He can't bring the segments out because he's built a failsafe. "The segments are in a sort of limbo closet in...limbo, and the only way to get at them, you see, is with the next piece." This is probably a lie, as in the previous Key to Time stories, the segments were casually stored in a disused refrigerator.

The Shadow is prepared to wait another thousand years. He knows there is a "want of patience" in the Doctor's nature. He allows the Doctor to go free to let him make a fatal mistake. The Shadow and his mutes disappear.

The Doctor heads for the TARDIS, then changes his mind. "No, I think I'll have a little look 'round first," he says, "for the sixth segment."

Merak materializes on Zeos and follows the tracer.

On a third planet, between Atrios and Zeos, unnamed but referred to as the Planet of Evil, the Shadow interrogates Princess Astra, chained by her wrists to a cavern wall. She's never heard of the sixth segment, but the Shadow doesn't believe her. He shows her an image of Merak on Zeos and she calls to him. The Shadow tells Astra she's not within a million miles of Merak.

Shapp investigates K block and sees Romana and K9 enter the transmat and dematerialize. He follows. On Zeos, Romana sends K9 to look for the Doctor, while she goes after Merak. Shapp arrives, thinking he is still on Atrios.

The Doctor heads back to the transmat and notices the tracks leading away from it. He follows K9's trail, and Shapp follows him, pulling a gun. The Doctor tells Shapp they're on Zeos. Merak finds Astra's bracelet, which provokes a minor reaction from the tracer. Romana finds Merak and reclaims the tracer.

The Doctor gives Shapp K9's whistle to blow. K9 arrives, saying he's been with the Zeon commandant. "It is stimulating to communicate for once with something other than a limited and unpredictable organic intelligence," K9 says, adding he's been communicating with his own kind.

The Marshal takes off in his command module. Although the Shadow's Planet of Evil is between Atrios and Zeos, and no one else can see Zeos, the Marshal has no trouble locating it. Although Atrios has been moved millions of miles from it's regular orbit away from Zeos, the planets seem back in their regular orbit now.

K9 leads the Doctor and Shapp to Merak and Astra, and then heads toward the computer room. He spins around and makes strange electronic sounds in front of a door decorated with circuit boards. The door opens and K9 enters, asking everyone else to wait. Romana thinks K9 has just performed an identification ritual, like the dance of bees. Merak asks what bees are. "Insects," the Doctor hisses, "with stings in their tails."

K9 communes with the computer and then returns for the others. The Doctor and Romana enter. The Doctor looks around and then calls Shapp in. "There's your enemy, Shapp, runs everything: attack, defense, surveillance, production, everything--the ideal war general. No glory, so speeches, no medals and no blood," the Doctor says, pointing to the computer, which is a triangular shaped box with blinking lights on top, about waist high.

The Doctor explains, "It's fully automated; there are no Zeons on Zeos"--nor do we ever, ever find out where the Zeons are or what happened to them, since none of the Atrian bombs ever got through. "Just this passionless lump of minerals and circuitry, highly efficient, doing very well, giving Atrios a battering, killed millions without a flicker, just doing its job and totally invincible," the Doctor says.

Shapp pulls a gun on the computer, but the automatic defense mechanism cuts in, zapping the gun out of his hand.

K9 tells the Doctor the computer's name is Mentalis. Communicating through K9, Mentalis says the war is over. The next step is obliteration for everything. Mentalis knows the Marshal is on his way to bombard Zeos, which will cause Mentalis to self destruct in a "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," the Doctor says.

The Doctor feels Atrios and Zeos are playing out a game for some evil alien spectator--the Shadow. He decides to try to neutralize and dismantle Mentalis. He sends Shapp and Merak back to Atrios via the transmat to contact the Marshal to try to talk him into aborting his attack.

On his planet, the Shadow places a control device at Astra's throat. On Zeos, on the way back to the transmat, Merak hears Astra calling him. He sees a projection of her, which entices him to fall into a strange sort of bubble.

The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to open a panel in Mentalis, which triggers its primary alert function. Mentalis enters self destruct sequence. The Doctor tricks Mentalis into aiming its defensive weapons at its own control center, "like a scorpion stinging itself to death," the Doctor says. "It's mindless now. Clicking toward oblivion."

The Doctor shouts "TARDIS!" and dashes off, followed by Romana and K9. Assembling the 5 segments of the Key to Time, the Doctor asks Romana to insert the tracer--which is also the Core of the Key--and lock it in the center of the segments. The Doctor hoped with 5/6ths of the pieces, it might give them some power, "but obviously Guardian technology doesn't work that way," he says, when nothing happens.

They know what the missing segment looks like, so they can try to make a substitute. A short while later, in his shirt sleeves and wearing an apron, the Doctor emerges with a segment made from chronodyne. K9 says the compatibility ratio is 74%; the component is unstable and liable to deteriorate.

"This should, in theory, give us powers of balance and stasis. We should be able to create a neutral timeless zone for a while," the Doctor explains.

Romana inserts the replacement sixth segment and locks the tracer, just as the Marshal gives the order to fire his warheads. On the scanner, the Doctor and Romana can see the Marshal's ship repeat the same sequence over and over. The Doctor's succeeded in setting up a 3-second time loop.

"I've stopped the universe!" the Doctor exclaims; "Still, they'll never notice. Just imagine--somewhere, someone's just slipped on a banana skin and he'll be wondering forever when he's going to hit the ground." This pratfall idea must have appealed to either the writers or Tom Baker, as it shows up in another time loop story--MEGLOS--and it's the Doctor who's doing the tripping--repeatedly.

Romana wonders why the time loop doesn't affect them. "Oh, come on, Romana," the Doctor admonishes, "If it affected the operators no one would be able to use it--even the Guardians would think of that."

K9 reports the deterioration of the chronodyne chip is in direct proportion to the area affected; he predicts it will hold for only 3.25 minutes.

The Doctor decides to try to localize the time loop by commanding the Key to Time. "I command that the spatio temporal loop be confined to the vicinity of the Marshal's vessel, the coordinates of which are already known," the Doctor says, "and the Zeon computer room," he adds, at Romana's reminder, "Let it be done. I thought I handled that rather well."

K9 reports the time loop is stretching .3 milliseconds per second. "Nothing lasts forever," the Doctor says.

On the Shadow's planet, he orders Astra to lure the Doctor to him and help him gain access to the TARDIS. Astra and two of the mutes transmat to Zeos, where she rescues Merak, who has hurt his head and leg. The two mutes lure K9 away from the TARDIS, but Astra is unable to open the door.

K9 follows the mutes to the transmat, where they dematerialize. A box appears, transmitting a galactic computer distress call. K9 follows it into the transmat and dematerializes.

Merak introduces Astra to Romana and the Doctor, who suggests they return to Atrios via the transmat, but Astra says she'd feel safer with him. He sends them off anyway.

K9 exits the transmat on the Shadow's planet.

On Zeos Merak stumbles outside the transmat area and Astra leaves him there. He crawls into the transmat and dematerializes back to Atrios.

Astra runs shouting to the TARDIS. The Doctor lets her in. She tells him Merak made it to the transmat but she was attacked before she could follow.

The time loop has stretched to 5 seconds. The Doctor has an hour to sort things out.

Astra seems mesmerized by the Key to Time. The Doctor is able to turn down her collar to see the control unit on her throat, without her noticing. She tries to touch the Key but the Doctor prevents her, warning that it's hot.

Romana sets the coordinates for the Shadow's planet and the TARDIS materializes there. The Shadow, in the company of K9, who calls him 'Master,' laughs maniacally.

The time loop has stretched to 6 seconds; Romana is worried. "Diagonal thinking, that's what's required!" the Doctor decides.

The Shadow orders Astra to bring Romana to him. The two girls set off together. In the TARDIS the Doctor picks up the same intergalactic computer distress signal that lured K9.

The Doctor locks the TARDIS and heads off with a device to home in on the distress signal, which is on a bearing of 260. He sees projections of Romana and Astra, which disappear, multiply and fade out again. The Doctor even sees a duplicate of himself, heading in the opposite direction, which waves to him.

The Doctor finds a device to communicate with the Shadow and tells him he knows Princess Astra is in his control. The Shadow says he serves the Black Guardian and forces the Doctor into the same kind of bubble which previously trapped Merak.

Astra lures Romana through a sliding rock door, where a mute pulls a gun on her and the Shadow tortures her.

The Doctor wakes up next to the distress signal and turns it off. Someone's tunneling through from the next cavern. "Hello, Thete," the newcomer says, cheerfully, in a Cockney accent. He recognizes the Doctor as Theta Sigma.

Drax introduces himself as a fellow Time Lord - class of '92. He and the Doctor were on the same tech course together 450 years ago. Time is relative, of course, the Doctor's been racketing around the cosmos in the TARDIS for 523 years, according to Romana in THE PIRATE PLANET.

The Doctor now remembers Drax, who was good on the practical but not on temporal theory. Drax is impressed his old classmate got his Doctorate. He went into repair and maintenance--cybernetics, guidance systems and armorments. Drax admits he installed Mentalis, but strictly under duress. He's also responsible for the distress beacon the Doctor followed.

Drax is actually a delightful character, somewhat reminiscent of Flash Harry from the ST. TRINIAN'S films. It's too bad he shows up so late in this story and has so little to do in it.

The Doctor says, "Drax, I don't want to pry, but where did you acquire this peculiar vocabulary?" Drax says his transport broke down--the hyperbolics, as usual--and while he was stealing replacement parts he was caught and sent to prison in Brixton, near London, for 10 years, where he had to learn the lingo to survive. He says he's been on the Shadow's planet for 5 years.

The Doctor checks out the tunnels Drax has dug and finds stabilizer components from Drax's TARDIS. "For five years you've had a dimensional stabilizer virtually intact and you haven't managed to escape?" the Doctor asks.

The Doctor checks Drax for the Shadow's control box, while Drax crosses both his hearts to indicate he wouldn't join forces with the Shadow. The Doctor doesn't believe him and asks Drax to change sides and help him. "Together we stand a slight chance and, after all, we are Time Lords, you and I, class of '92. If we don't stick together, who will?" the Doctor says.

Under torture Romana has told the Shadow everything she knows but it's not enough. The Shadow still needs the Doctor.

The Doctor kibitzes over Drax's shoulder as he works on a stabilizer component. "Try synaptic adhesion," the Doctor suggests. "It's the chronostat; always is," Drax assures him. The Doctor disagrees but leaves it to the expert.

He goes exploring another tunnel and runs into K9 who calls him 'Doctor,' and tells him the Shadow has Romana. The Doctor lures K9 closer and pulls him into the tunnel. He tells Drax to remove the control device from under K9's chin. Setting off to rescue Romana, the Doctor is captured by a mute.

K9 introduces himself to Drax, threatening to blast him if Drax doesn't return him to a vertical position, rectifying a malfunction in his drive systems. Drax complies and calls K9 a "little tin dog." K9 tells Drax the problem he is working on is not the chronostat; it's synaptic adhesion.

The Doctor is brought before the Shadow and says, "I refuse to negotiate in an atmosphere of threat." The Shadow tortures Romana and the Doctor yells, "Stop! Stop!" The Shadow says the sixth segment is present; the Doctor's already seen it.

The Doctor tells the Shadow if he breaks the time loop millions of people will die. "That has always been our intention," the Shadow replies. The Black Guardian, who glories in destruction, intends to set the two halves of the entire cosmos at war "and their mutual destruction will be music in our ears," the Shadow gloats.

With K9's help, Drax gets the dimensional stabilizer working and sets out to meet the Doctor, who is heading back to the TARDIS at gunpoint. The Shadow removes the control device from Astra's throat.

The Doctor opens the TARDIS and tries to stall the mute pointing a gun at him. Drax shows up and shoots the Doctor, who shouts, "No!" and then shrinks. Drax then turns the stabilizer gun on himself and he and the gun shrink as well.

In THE INVISIBLE ENEMY, also written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin, the Doctor also used the Relative Dimensional Stabilizer from his TARDIS, to miniaturize a clone of himself and Leela.

The Doctor runs past the mute, who tries to step on him. He and Drax are about the size of mice, and escape through a crack in a rock.

Astra suddenly realizes her destiny is in this place. She's the sixth princess of the sixth dynasty of the sixth royal house of Atrios. "This is the time of my becoming; my trancendence," she says.

At the Shadow's command, a mute opens the TARDIS but a light flashes out so blindingly, the Shadow can't enter. He sends a mute in to fetch the Key.

Merak has checked Astra's medical record and located a molecular anomaly buried in the genetic structure of the Royal House of Atrios. Astra's every living cell is part of the Key to Time.

The miniature Doctor and Drax perch inside K9. A deactivated control device is under K9's chin to fool the Shadow. "Did you ever get to Troy, Drax? Little place in Asia Minor," the Doctor says.

Merak transmats to Zeos and forces a mute at gunpoint to take him to the Shadow's planet. Upon arrival, he dresses as a mute and follows the Shadow, who carries the Key to Time back to Astra. She touches the tracer and transform into the sixth segment, causing Merak to cry out and reveal himself.

Just as the Shadow is about to remove the tracer, breaking the time loop, K9 enters. The Doctor and Drax hop out of a panel in his side. Drax shoots the Doctor and himself with the stabilizer, returning them to their normal size. The Doctor grabs all the segments and the tracer and rushes back to the TARDIS with Romana, as Drax and K9 hold off the Shadow and his mutes. Merak also stays to look for Astra.

Romana sets the coordinates for Zeos. Drax and K9 transmat there, with Merak, and meet them in Mentalis' computer room. The Doctor asks Drax which color wire to cut to deactivate Mentalis. "Green," Drax tells him, racking his brain to remember. The Doctor cuts it, and Mentalis shuts down forever.

The substitute segment disintegrates, breaking the time loop with the Marshal still on his way. The warheads miss Zeos and hit the Shadow's planet, killing the Shadow and his mutes. The Doctor programmed "a mere deflective forcefield set up for a millisecond between the Marshal and Zeos. Bounced the missile smack on the Planet of Evil," he explains modestly.

Drax says he has a contract job on Atrios--reconstruction, war damage, scrap--a 50/50 deal with the Marshal, who doesn't know about it yet. He exits the TARDIS, although at this point, the 6 segments of the Key to Time have been assembled and held in place with the tracer, so presumably time has stopped everywhere except in the TARDIS.

"We have the power to do anything we like," the Doctor says, eyeing the Key to Time with a maniacal glint in his eye, "Absolute power over every particle in the universe, everything that has ever existed or ever will exist as from this moment."

The TARDIS scanner opens and a white-clad figure appears. Romana doesn't recognize this as the person who sent her on the quest. "I can change my form or shape at will," he says. The Guardian asks the Doctor to release the Key to him. The Doctor asks what about the sixth segment; it was a human being and now she's imprisoned forever. The Guardian says it's regrettable but necessary.

"Key to Time, I command that you say exactly where you are," the Doctor says, fully activating all the TARDIS' defenses. The figure on the scanner suddenly turns negative. It is the Black Guardian.

"Don't you see, the White Guardian would never have such a callous disregard for human life," the Doctor explains to Romana. The Black Guardian vows to destroy the Doctor. "Well, I wish I could stay and watch you try, but you know how it is--places to go, people to see, things to do," the Doctor says.

He removes the tracer from the segments and tells Romana to dematerialize, as he breaks the tracer. The segments disperse. Astra is restored to her human self and reunited with Merak on Atrios.

Romana asks the Doctor what he's done with the Key to time. "Scattered it 'round through space and time," he replies. When he admits he doesn't know where the TARDIS is heading next, Romana says, "You have absolutely no sense of responsibility whatsoever. You're capricious, arrogant, self opinionated, irrational, and you don't even know where we're going!"

"Exactly," the Doctor agrees, "Well, if I know where I was going, there'd be a chance the Black Guardian would too. Hence, this new device," he says, pointing to the TARDIS console--a randomizer fitted to the guidance system, which "operates under a very complicated scientific principle called pot luck."

Now nobody knows where they're going--not even the Doctor and Romana.

It is certainly disappointing after accompanying the Doctor and Romana through their long quest not to have some kind of resolution to it. In THE RIBOS OPERATION, the White Guardian specifically told the Doctor the segments had to be returned to him, and yet he never shows up in this story, and the segments are scattered before he can get his hands on them to restore the balance of the universe.

On the other hand, the White Guardian did say in THE RIBOS OPERATION that time must be stopped for only a "brief moment" and apparently when the Doctor put the segments together in the TARDIS, this did stop time, although we are never shown this, and while the segments are assembled Drax leaves the TARDIS with no apparent problem.

Another minor quibble is when did the Doctor have the time to invent, build and install the randomizer in the TARDIS? He was rather busy at the time.

A more important question is if the segments are scattered again, how come Astra wound up back on Atrios? If all the other segments went back to where the Doctor originally found them, couldn't the Black Guardian simply go and pick them up?

Considering this was a 6-part story, padded with plenty of repetitious time loop footage, there was certainly time to address most of these questions. Apparently Mary Tamm decided quite late in the shooting not to return for the following year, so there was no chance to write her exit into this story. It has been supposed by fans who like to come up with logical reasons within the reality of the show that Romana was so badly tortured by the Shadow that she was forced to regenerate (as, in fact, she does regenerate in the next story, into Lalla Ward), but in her last TARDIS scene when she goes into a tirade about the Doctor, she looks and acts perfectly all right.

In fact, the whole situation is just part of the sloppy handling that began to take over the show, which would continue to deteriorate in the following season when Douglas Adams took over as script editor.

Lalla Ward, who plays Princess Astra, returned in the next story (actually the following season) as the regenerated Romana.

John Woodvine, who plays the Marshal, is another Royal Shakespeare Company member; he provided the voice of one of the Tripods on THE TRIPODS, another BBC science fiction series seen in American on PBS.

Barry Jackson, who plays Drax, played Ascaris in THE ROMANS and Garvey in GALAXY FOUR, both Hartnell stories.

John Cannon, who plays a Guard, played Elgin in the Tom Baker story THE HAND OF FEAR.

Harry Fielder, who plays a Guard, also played a Guard in the Tom Baker story THE SEEDS OF DOOM.

Pat Gorman, who plays the Pilot, has had many small, stunt or background roles on the show, including an Auton, a Cyberman, a Primord, a Sea Devil and a Silurian.

Valentine Dyall, who plays the Black Guardian, also menaced Peter Davison's Doctor in this role in MAWDRYN UNDEAD, TERMINUS, and ENLIGHTENMENT. In the Colin Baker radio DOCTOR WHO adventure (produced during the show's 18-month hiatus in 1985) he played Captain Slarn. He died in 1985.