Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day 576: The Keeper of Traken, Episode Four
Dear diary,
I can’t decide if the Doctor is trying to play along with the Master’s game in this story, or if he’s just being especially slow this week. There seems to be a point early on in the episode where the Doctor clearly knows that the Master is the one controlling the Melkur (though he doesn’t say as much), but then later on, when he’s trapped inside the thing, he seems somewhat surprised to find that it’s his old foe behind events here. I’d imagine that there’s a way of reading these events as the Fourth Doctor getting a bit slow - another sign of his approaching death - but that only seems to find its way into events because I know the magnitude of the next story, not because it’s been actively inserted to the story here.
But this is just a symptom of a wider issue at play here - it feels like all the build up has been for very little. In the special features for this story on the DVD, Christopher Bidmead makes mention of the Master being shoehorned into the script at the last minute, and I think I can see his point in this final episode. The fact that the Master is inside the Melkur is really irrelevant, and the story would work just as well if the creature was simply a being that had bided its time in the garden on Traken for years, waiting for the right time to seize control and make a move. In fact, there’s almost something quite clever in there, with the idea that all evil turns to stone in the goodness of Traken, but if the Melkur were a creature made of stone, then it could be immune... Then there’s the idea of people flocking to worship at the cult of the Melkur (something which is touched on and then seemingly forgotten in the story as-is), which could also provide an interesting story.
If anything, I’d dare to say that the story is almost weakened by the reveal that the Master has been pulling the strings all along, because it’s such a weak denouement here that I’m left completely underwhelmed by his return. I mused yesterday that the audience may not have really remembered or cared who this person was on the original transmission, but all the same, it feels like I should be punching the air with surprise at the return of the Doctor’s greatest foe. When the final scene comes along and Tremas is taken over by the Master, it’s all the more out-of-place - it feels tacked on (it is).
Still, for all my sourness at the way the Master has been used here, I have to admit that I’ve rather enjoyed The Keeper of Traken as a whole. The world really feels more rounded and complete than we’ve been seeing in the series for a while (though it’s becoming more common in Season Eighteen, with the likes of Full Circle and State of Decay featuring worlds just as whole as Traken), and I’ve liked spending the last few days here. Now, though, I’m heading in to Tom Baker’s final story as the Doctor... and that feels like a pretty special moment...
Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day 575: The Keeper of Traken, Episode Three
Dear diary,
I’m so used to thinking of this story as the first part of a ‘Master trilogy’, that it’s easy to forget that he doesn’t actually show up until this point in the story! We’ve heard his voice right the way though, and there’s been hands flicking switches for a while, but it’s not until the end of this episode that he finally swings around to reveal himself to the audience (and I can’t help thinking that he has the look of an excited puppy in doing so!), and announce his true identity - even if the Doctor doesn’t know it yet.
My wonder is, though... did this have impact when it first went out? The Master here is only a slightly modified version of the one seen in The Deadly Assassin (am I right in thinking that one story goes that they found the cloak from that story in the skip just as they were preparing for this one, and salvaged it in time?), but that last appearance was ages ago. That story went out around October/November 1976, whereas The Keeper of Traken didn’t make it to screen until early 1981! You’re looking just over four years between appearances, and a lot has changed in the programme since then! Graham Williams has come and gone, as have Leela, Romana, and K9... did the audience at the time sit up in their chairs here thinking ‘bloody hell, it’s the Master!?!?’ or was it just an excited puppy in a tatty, skip-bound cloak?
Oh, I’m just nit-picking really, because it is a very good cliffhanger when you’re watching through in order like this. The mysterious bad guy who has been wreaking all this havoc on Traken and causing problems for the Doctor is none other than the Master! And he finally reveals himself to us just as Kassia takes the seat of the Keeper, and is instantly replaced with the Melkur sitting on the throne! It really is a very striking way to end the episode, and the fact that the Doctor has felt more hopeless in this story than many others makes it feel like the Master is a very real threat to him again.
I’m a little puzzled by exactly what this ‘Source’ is that he’s gained control of, mind. As far as I can tell (bear with me): it’s the power source for the Keeper. A kind of technology that needs to be guided by a living mind (the Keeper), and has the ability to keep everything in check throughout the Traken Union (is this a series of planets? That’s how I understand it, though it could simply be a number of countries on the one world of Traken). Being connected to the Source grants the Keeper an unusually long life, because... well... because it does. Hence, when a Keeper dies, they’re unable to hold back forces of chaos any longer, and thus storms begin to brew etc etc. In some ways, it’s the struggle between the Black and the White Guardian in miniature. If I’ve got that right, then it’s a great target for the Master, and fairly reminiscent of his plan in The Deadly Assassin, without all that boring Time Lord Stuff.
I think what’s throwing me is the mashing of a fairy tale world, all groves and stone corridors, with people dressed in crushed velvet, and the world of science fiction, with lots of machinery and intelligent creations like the Source itself. It’s throwing me even more that they can create technology as powerful as this seems to be, but not an adequate way of mankind the transition more stable between two Keepers. I know Nyssa goes on to have an ability with science once she’s a regular member of the TARDIS crew, and I’m wondering if it may feel less of a clash once she’s away from the trappings of her home world?
Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day 573: The Keeper of Traken, Episode One
Dear diary,
Perhaps more than any other story of this period, The Keeper of Traken suffers when you know about Doctor Who. There’s so many things in this first episode alone that simply don’t work as well when you know what the next few years of the programme are going to be like, and indeed when you know what happens in this story. It suffers because I know the Melkur is a TARDIS. It suffers because I know that the TARDIS is housing the decaying Master. It suffers because I can’t look at Tremas without knowing that he’ll be embodying the Master for encounters with the next three Doctors, and because I can’t look at Nyssa (who is oddly underused in this initial episode), without knowing that she’ll go on to travel with the Doctor for the next season-and-a-half.
For all that, though, knowing these things flags up a few interesting new angles to enjoy with the story. When the Keeper warns the Doctor to think carefully before accepting the mission to help him on Traken, he tells the Time Lord that there is great danger in the task, and that it could cause obliteration to even the Doctor. In hindsight, this can be read as a warning of the impending regeneration, and the fact that this story really kicks off the chain of events that will lead the Doctor to the Pharos Project, and his death. Equally, it’s great to see the way the Doctor behaves here, too, responding to the Keeper’s assertion that the passing of ages have taken their toll on him by claiming to know the feeling.
It’s often said that Season Eighteen has something of a funereal feel to it, and while the whole style has felt more foreboding than ever before recently, this is really where it kicks in. Tom Baker hasn’t looked his best of late - unwell and with hair that’s had to be artificially permed - but this is where he really starts looking old. It’s almost as though the departure of Romana and the return to N- space has taken it all out of him, and he knows that he’s marching towards the end. I think that’s likely to be the thing that keeps me entertained over these next couple of stories. This tale, Logopolis, and Castrovalva are described as being a loose trilogy of adventures, and I’m looking forward to seeing that in action as I move forward. The tone of this first episode certainly seems to be setting us up well for what’s to come...
As for the episode itself... it’s another slightly unusual one, with lots being told in the form of flashbacks, as the Keeper brings the Doctor up to speed with all the events on Traken that have lead to their current situation. I love his initial arrival in the TARDIS, and the Doctor’s solomn reaction to it - it’s almost like the appearance of the Ood in The Waters of Mars, where the Doctor knows he’s being summoned to his final adventures - but it does make for a slightly different feel to the tale. The Doctor and Adric crouch round the old man as he tells us his story, and once the adventure properly gets underway, it’s not long before our heroes find themselves captured and facing inquisition.
It’s great to see them together, though, and I’d forgotten just how much I enjoyed the pairing of the Doctor and Adric on their own. Our favourite Time Lord has agains taken on a more professorial role, teaching the young boy, and it’s perhaps closer to the kind of relationship the First Doctor had with Susan than we’ve seen in a long time. He’s got the irascibility down pat, too. It always seemed to be a shame that they had so few stories together (they barely encounter each other in State of Decay or Warrior’s Gate, so I’m looking forward to enjoying the pairing while I can.
