Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day 522: The Armageddon Factor, Episode Two
Dear diary,
Tom Baker is really on form in this story, isn’t he? It feels as though he knows the end of the season is coming up, so he’s just going for broke and enjoying himself in the story. The dramatic bits, the comedy bits… he’s really sinking his teeth into everything (including, in fairness, the scenery in one or two places!) and I’m really enjoying simply watching him be the Doctor here. I’ve given him a lot of stick over the last couple of seasons, so I’m always glad to see that he can still pull it out of the bag when he needs to.
Elsewhere, I’m simply enjoying the story here. In many ways it’s fairly standard stuff, and nothing much too taxing, but it’s all of a fairly good quality, and I can sit back and just watch it. I think I’m also impressed by the way my attention is being held so effectively with a small cast and very few sets (much of today’s episode takes place in three or four rooms, and some characters - like Astra - only appear in a single scene), whereas other stories recently with a lot more going on have completely failed to grip me.
I’m also very keen on the way that we watch the battle between these two worlds. Model effects in Doctor Who can vary from the extremely good to the… well… not good. I’d be weary of seeing them attempt any kind of large scale battle between various space ships, so it’s perhaps for the best that we see it all on the radar screen here instead. But you know what? It’s actually ten times more effective seeing it presented in this way than if we were to watch some big special effects scene. It really hits home to you just how fruitless this entire war effort is when it’s reduced down to watching six dots on a screen being reduced down to three. I don’t know if we might still get some kind of large scale battle before the story is out (the best of both worlds!), but if not then I’m glad that they decided to go with doing it this way.
As for the story itself… I don’t really know what to think. I did have a brief moment of wondering if it could feature the return of the Fendahl (when Romana peers behind the looking glass to find a creepy skull on a pedestal with knowledge of the Time Lords, it did lead me to think - could it be that I’d failed to realise the Fendahl ever made a reappearance, but the more I think about it, the more I’m sure I’m wrong!). There’s a lot of bog-standard plotting going on here at the moment - the Doctor mustn’t die… yet! - but I’m enjoying all the performances, so they’re keeping me entertained so far.
My biggest worry is that things will all go toppling over the edge at some stage. I couldn’t help myself, and had to peek at the Doctor Who Magazine ranking for this story in their recent poll results, and I’ve found that it places relatively low - within the bottom fifth - and not much above The Power of Kroll. Suddenly, I worry that things might not be keeping me this interested for long! Still, I’ve been known to enjoy stories that others don’t before now, so The Armageddon Factor could yet turn out to be something of a gem for me!
