The Power of Kroll - Episode 3

This episode was the first to be broadcast in 1979. There that is about as interesting as this entry is about to get.

I know that I have commented that this isn’t a great story, I think that this is the worst episode of the serial. The problem with the episode is that it just doesn’t really get going until the final five minutes. The Doctor and Romana start the episode about to be stretched to death. They spend nearly half the episode in this situation which does seem like a lot of padding was needed for this story. The Doctor is the one that saves the day by using his high pitched voice to shatter a window and use rain to stop the vines stretching them further.

It is perhaps the most obvious case of padding by having the leading characters do pretty much nothing of worth. The humans on the refinery do nothing apart from sit around and talk about things and the swampies also do very little. The only saving grace for the episode is that we do get some good location filming. Norman Stewart’s previous Doctor Who credit was ‘Underworld’ where he did a remarkable job in making that story work. He does the best he can but the problem with the story is the script so where the scrip allows it, the directing helps saves the day.

The performances from this episode are the sort that I would expect to see if nobody can see a reason to take centre stage. Not even Tom Baker’s comedy tone can help save him and if there was a time that his humour would have helped me get through an episode then it would have been now. As I mentioned the episode only really gets going in the final five minutes as the Doctor, Romana and Rohm-Dutt are escaping from the swampies. The cliffhanger is of the Doctor and Romana sitting in a boat just in front of Kroll. If they were going to have the sight of Kroll looming over people then it would have been better if we hadn’t seen it already in pretty much the same way as we see in in the cliffhanger.

This is one of the weakest episodes for sometime. I have rated this episode 7.00 and it’s the first time that an episode has received this low a rating since episode two of ‘The Face of Evil’. That was back in July. Out of the five episodes of this season it is just about in third place ahead of ‘The Ribos Operation’ but out of Tom Baker’s entire run it is currently in 23^rd place out of 28 stories. It’s tied with ‘The Invisible Enemy’ on 7.30. Hopefully the final episode will do something that makes me think this story has some hidden secrets just waiting to be shown to us but I could be wrong.