Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 520: The Power of Kroll, Episode Four

Dear diary,

There’s a single shot in this episode of Kroll on the horizon which really fails to work. It’s a split-screen job done wrong, and it really lets down the effect. I’ve known about it for years - everyone mentions the poor split-screen work on the effects shots in this story. And yet, I’m pretty sure that it’s the only dodgy one in the entrée serial. We’ve only had three or four appearances from the great and mighty Kroll over the last few episodes, but the others have all looked, I think, really quite good. Certainly worthy of kinder words that they currently receive. I’m even almost enjoying the shots of Kroll attacking the station here, too, even if I still think the model shots of that platform don’t look quite right.

As is often the case, it’s the sequences shot on film that have really impressed me in this episode. All the bits done out on location at the marshes continue to look fantastic, and they’re the real highlight of this story. I think I’ve taken my eye off that a little bit over the last few days, while finding The Power of Kroll a struggle, but they’re certainly the bits of this story that I’ll remember a year on from now. Today, though, we also get a sequence of the Doctor outside on the platform, doing battle with the giant squid. It’s a really rather nicely directed few minutes, and the fact that the Doctor has removed his scarf before heading outside simply serves to make it all the more striking. Tom Baker wears his scarf far less often than I always assumed he did (by which I mean he removes it more often than I expected), but not usually for such an extended period.

While I’m on that subject… I don’t know if it’s just me, but there’s been something about Tom Baker’s costume in this story that just looks right to me. It’s hard to explain what I mean, exactly, which is why I’ve been putting it off even though I made a note of it back during Episode One. It wasn’t until today’s episode that I realised - this is the very first time we actually see this version of the Doctor’s outfit! I’d sort of forgotten that we’d not had one quite like this before, but that he’d been wearing a different light coat way back when (we’ve not seen it for weeks now - he’s been in shades of brown since the start of the Key to Time season.

It’s the look that I’ve always thought of as being ‘The Graham Williams Era’, with this coat, and the various badges that adorn it. Today we’ve got the flying ducks, which are perhaps the most famous of his badges, even though they only appear in this one story. He’ll go on to wear the new coat introduced here in the next four stories as well, meaning that I’m familiar with it from lots of publicity photographs larking about in Paris, or felling from the Daleks. Maybe it feels as though the Graham Williams era has actually arrived suddenly? Even after all this time, I’m constantly surprised by just how much the Tom Baker ‘eras’ all bleed into one.

The other thing that’s been prominent throughout this story, but which really takes more of a central focus in this final episode is the idea of the Swampies having their faith in Kroll shaken. I wonder if I may have enjoyed the story more if this had been less of a sub-theme running through the story, and more central? It’s been really rather interesting to watch today, with the Swampies questioning why their ‘God’ would attack them. Of course, the priest claims that it was punishment for allowing the ‘dry foots’ to escape. When it’s pointed out that they only escaped because Kroll was attacking them, it’s declared to be a ‘test’ of their faith.

I’ve always been somewhat weary of religion, and the power that it can hold, and I think there’s a nice parable about that very idea in this one scene alone. It continues to be more and more prominent as this episode goes on, and I really wish that it could have been more the point of the whole story, especially in a season during which the Doctor is effectively on a quest for ‘God’…