Doctor Who - The Key to Time Box Set (Re-issue) [DVD] [1978]

For his legions of fans, any story featuring Tom Baker as the Doctor is a treat. What sets The Key To Time apart is that it a single quest that spans the whole of season 16, albeit divided into six very different story arcs. The quest is for the Key of the title, an incredibly powerful and potentially dangerous artefact that was split into six parts and spread across time and space. The Doctor and Romana, played by Mary Tamm, are tasked with locating all of the pieces. Oh yes, K9 features too. I know he has his own legion of loyal fans. The six story arcs have different writers and are of varying quality, but hey, the Doctor and Romana are in all of them, so it's all good.First up is The Ribos Operation which provides the set-up, features the search for the first piece of the Key, and introduces Romana, a Gallifreain Time Lady and therefore the Doctor's equal rather than the usual subservient companion. This gives their relationship a great working dynamic when handled well by the writers, in this case Doctor Who stalwart, Robert Holmes.The second arc, The Pirate Planet, is the most eccentric of the season, being written by Douglas Adams, he of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame. Naturally, it plays up the humour, which suits Tom Baker's playful portrayal well despite some clunky writing and dubious secondary characters.Having been a Druid since 1974, the third arc is the one that I most wanted to see. This is The Stones of Blood and remains, I think, the only Dr Who arc to feature Druids. The Stones of the title are a stone circle, the Nine Travellers, supposedly on Boscombe Moor in Cornwall, although the actual location used was the Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire. Featured in it are Arthurian baddie, Vivien le Fay, and a Druid cult who worship the Cailleach, described as a goddess of war but actually a Gaelic embodiment of winter. Despite the writing being a bit of a mess and the elderly Beatrix Lehmann (as Professor Rumford) clearly having trouble remembering her lines, it's still an enjoyable yarn.Fourth arc, The Androids of Tara, benefits from the presence of the great character actor, Peter Jeffrey, as the villainous Count Grendel. The story is essentially a medieval swash-buckling romp taking place in a high-tech society that has maintained feudalism (so a bit like 21st century England).Next is The Power of Kroll, which has a pretty good script, again by Robert Holmes, and a supporting cast that includes the ever-dependable Philip Madoc, but suffers from BBC budget restraints that made it impossible to achieve believable special fx. Despite its limitations, it's still quite an interesting story, one with resonances about the over-exploitation of natural resources that gives it a particular resonance as our own planet continues its inexorable race towards extinction.Finally we have The Armageddon Factor, which sees the Doctor and Romana landing in the midst of an inter-planetary war. This six-parter provides a sort of resolution to the Key of Time story, albeit not a particularly satisfactory one, despite Tom Baker and Mary Tamm's best efforts. Ah well.As said, what matters here is that it's Tom Baker's Doctor. His extraordinary inhabiting of the character makes even poorly-written episodes filmed on shockingly low budgets hugely watchable. Thanks, Tom!

This was a once off effort from Doctor Who, particularly in the classic era. A whole series dedicated to one overarching story arc.The season is broken down into six stories - five with 4 episodes and the sixth and final with 6 episodes. The gift set is boosted as having seven disks, so the first panic was `Where's that seventh disk?' but fear not; the final case is a double disk set. This seventh disk contains much of the special features for the season.This season had the misfortune to be the one that was broadcast at the same time that a seminal science fiction movie propelled science fiction out of movie obscurity and back into a foreground it's fought to retain ever since. Star Wars showed what could be achieved with movie-like budgets, which Doctor Who could never hope to match.Each story has a particular style quite different from any of the others in the series.The six stories are, in order:The Ribos Operation. This story opens the season with a couple of rather unusual things it had to achieve; to introduce a new companion and set up the rest of the season. This had a great cast with Iain Cuthbertson as Garron, an interstellar con-artist who specialises in selling planets he doesn't have title to...There are plenty of neat lines from the Guardian's `Nothing... ever.' to the Doctor's question about refusing to take on the mission to Unstoffe's discussion with Binro the Heretic where they talked about the stars as real objects particularly as this latter was only really done as a filling scene which turned into one of those scenes that really make a production. Unstoffe's OTT discussion of the properties of scringe stone was unfortunate, shall we say?The new companion was a first as well; a Time Lady - Romanadvoratreludar, very quickly shortened to Romana.The Pirate Planet. This story sees the Doctor and Romana chasing the second key. The two time travellers trace it to the planet Calufrax, which is supposed to be a bit of a miserable place so the Doctor deploys sarcasm when they land on a planet that isn't for Romana is updating her skills and programming the TARDIS's navigation systems. But as the story goes on, the truth comes out; the planet they're actually on has the largest set of hypergenerators ever seen by the time lords. Romana thinks they only move the Bridge but the Doctor realises that the whole planet moves...Among the best things in this story is the gun fight between the Captain's mechanical parrot and K9. This story was written by Douglas Adams and there were plenty of Hitchhiker references to keep fans happy.The Stones of Blood. The one story in this season that was set on earth, with a suitably scary horror story. The duo are brought to the location of an ancient stone circle where the detector is adamant the third segment could be found. Only it isn't there. A pair apparently normal women are surveying the stones and invite Romana and the Doctor back to their cottage but the Doctor reckons a visit to the local druids would be more productive but we've all seen the Hammer Horror films and true to form, he's soon wrapped up in the stone circle with the druids about to sacrifice him. Here we get one of the coolest enemies in the Ogri - three silicone based life forms who's favourite tipple is haemoglobin - we get to see the Ogri attack a couple of campers who are quickly reduced to ash and skeleton.The Androids of Tara. This is the Doctor's visit to Zenda; except that the duplicate Prince is an android, this follows the story of `The Prisoner of Zenda' with incredible fidelity (we will so totally forget about the Taran bear creature thing). Mary Tamm gets to play three parts in this; Romana, of course, the Taran princess and a killer android commissioned by count Grendel, all of which she manages to give their own personalities (not too literally in the case of the android).In this story it isn't actually locating the fourth element that causes problems but subsidiary elements and it must rate as one of the lowest body counts in the history of Who. Tom Baker really plays the Doctor at the top of his powers as he hides his abilities behind his affable fool face.The Power of Kroll. Less said about this one the better - the search moves on to the swamps of the third moon of Delta Magna and we lose K9 as a character - far too muddy for him so John Leeson, who voices him gets some on screen time for a change. The fifth segment has mutated some of the local wildlife from a relatively normal sized squid, right up to a mega sized creature that is probably the most derided creature in the history of Who. Apart from the search for the segment, this is a fairly standard base under siege type story.The Armageddon Factor. This is the last story in the sequence and we are taken to the twin worlds of Atrios and Zeos which have been fighting an interstellar war for either a very long time or the last five years. Either way, things are desperate with Zeos totally depopulated though we are not given any particular reason why, and Atrios near to collapse (Zeos has a computer that is prosecuting the war with mechanical efficiency). There's quite a bit of good stuff in this as everyone is manipulated by the mysterious Shadow and its minions. The Doctor decides to create a false sixth segment as the real sixth segment is found to be the Princess Astra. It's also when we learn he has doubts as to which Guardian sent him on this mission...John Woodvine has a great part as the Marshal of Atrios and plays a neat Churchillian role. Valantine Dyal is revealed as the Black Guardian, a role he was born to play. After refusing to hand over the `completed' key to Time, the Doctor and Romana use a randomiser circuit to escape the Black Guardian's wrath.The individual episodes have some special features dealing specifically with things on those disks.