This is the final episode for Elisabeth Sladen
as a companion. She asked that her departure didn’t feature a wedding (like Jo’s)
or that her departure was the centre of the story as she didn’t consider Sarah
to be the central character which is a rather selfless thing to do. The episode
starts off (as it always does) with the reprise and I don’t know if it was the
case in the cliffhanger but looking at Eldrad, the way she is standing seems to
suggest she is already holding the dart and just waiting to turn around. Anyway
that’s irrelevant really but the early moments of this episode are given over
to Eldrad and trying to save her. The bit where Eldrad falls onto Sarah after
some rocks come down is a slightly comedic moment and does seem out of place
during this early part. There is bit of ‘Death to the Dalek’s in this episode
where they are travelling through tunnels with booby traps involved. This doesn’t
happen for long as the female Eldrad doesn’t last long as she gets squashed.
Just when it looks like that all is over the story has another twist when
Stephen Thorne appears as the male Eldrad. The problem that arises pretty much
straight away is that Eldard sounds an awful lot like Omega. Thorne played
Omega in ‘The Three Doctors’. I still think that Thorne is a great addition to
the story but I think that he could have done something else to make him sound
less like Omega. King Rokon is introduced just moments after the male Eldrad is
at first I thought that this was going to ruin the good work done but it turns
out that what we see of Rokon is actually a recording and so saves the
situation. What isn’t saved is how Eldrad is defeated and its simply done by
tricking him over into the abyss. Bit of a shame really.
The final scene between the Doctor and Sarah is a great
scene. It starts off as a rant and Sarah thinks that she is going to make a
point to the Doctor but it back fires when he gets a message from Gallifrey and
the Doctor is forced to dump Sarah on earth. I really don’t want Sarah to go
and even though I have seen this countless times, I still hope that she will
stay and go to Gallifrey. When she leaves the TARDIS I know that it go down the
same way. The very last moment between Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen is very
emotional and just as emotional as when Patrick Troughton, Wendy Padbury and
Frazer Hines said goodbye to each other at the end of ‘The War Games’. Telling
each other not to forget the other and that travel broadens the mind are two
bits which are sad and the Doctor caps it off with “until we meet again”.
It wouldn’t be Doctor Who if something wrong didn’t happen
and moments after the Doctor leaves, Sarah realises that Sarah probably isn’t even
in Croydon. This is something that would crop up when Sarah Jane meets the
Tenth Doctor but I don’t quite know what better way there could be to have
Sarah Jane walking out on the show. Whilst I might not have been sold on the
idea of Sarah Jane going from feminist journalist to what a normal companion
would be like (minus the screaming), but Elisabeth Sladen has been one of the
greatest companions in the shows history
I think that ending the episode on a cliffhanger was perhaps
the wrong way to end it as it doenst actually serve a purpose to the story and
so that is the only thing that I would have changed. That said I get the
feeling that the honeymoon period of Tom Baker’s time is over because I don’t think
that the relationship between the Doctor and the companion will be the same
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