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

Day 609: Arc of Infinity, Episode Two

Dear diary,

For the longest time, I’ve always thought you need just a slightly longer gap before bring Tegan back to the programme after the sudden departure in Time-Flight. Not a massive amount of time - just this story away, for instance - but something more than simply bringing her back again in the very next story (albeit with a season break in the middle). Actually watching it again now, though, it’s handled better than I thought it was. I’d forgotten, for instance, that we don’t see her until this second episode, and I’m even surprised to find that she’s not encountered the Doctor again, yet. The fact that he’s still a long way away from Amsterdam helps, too, because you almost get the impression that you’re watching two entirely different stories, following the lives of our three regulars even though they’ve diverged.

I also love Tegan’s new look - the hair really suits her. There’s a short interview with Janet Fielding on the Time-Flight DVD, in which she ascribes the haircut to the fact that the BBC wouldn’t pay her a retainer fee between seasons, so there was a short period in which they had absolutely no say over what she did with her look! It’s certainly for the better, and the way that Nyssa’s hair style has started to evolve more, too, all helps to give this new season a fresh look - it’s like another breath of fresh air being pumped into the programme.

I also can’t go any longer without discussing perhaps the most striking part of this story - it’s Colin Baker’s first foray into the world of Doctor Who. He really does dominate the screen here (I’m sure I’ve heard Colin tell anecdotes to the effect that this is a performance toned down from the way that he played it in rehearsals), and it’s hard not to like him. There’s a kind of grandiose element to the performance that simply makes him watchable. It’s fairly well known that it was his performance at a wedding after the production of this story that won him the role of the Doctor, but watching him here, you can almost start to see why you’d keep him in mind for the title role.

As for the story itself… it’s really not grabbing me very much. Lots of the Gallifrey scenes are leaving me entirely cold - there’s too much back and forth to the TARDIS for my liking - and I just can’t get myself interested in the threats being posed. One of the council is a traitor! So? We’ve seen the mysterious person kill a man to protect their secret, but there’s not a great deal of suspense being built up, with lots of suspects running around and keeping us guessing. It feels as though the story isn’t really trying to make this plot line involving, so I can’t be bothered to try very hard to connect with it.

I’m crossing my fingers that things will get back on track once everyone has arrived in Amsterdam. In fairness, it has to be said that keeping the Doctor away from the city for this first half of the story does help to make things all the more interesting. Perhaps it’s just the memories of City of Death in which Tom and Lalla were forced into as many shots as possible almost top prove that they really are there (and we’ll get plenty of that before this story is out), but having other characters in Amsterdam and not the Doctor makes it feel less like they’ve all gone over there to film an episode, and more like the adventure just happens to be taking place there.