Thursday, 13 November 2014

(547) The Keeper of Traken - Episode 2

So the penultimate story of the Tom Baker era is off to a good start due which is perhaps down to nostalgia and I have to try and take that out of my watching and review this story like I would with any other story. I still think that its strange that the Doctor and Tremas are working together and are the best of friends throughout this story. Anthony Ainley is very good as Tremas and I still believe him as a good person even though a few episodes later he will be the exact opposite. Tom Baker and Anthony Ainley work well together and they are not the only good double act that appear on screen in todays episode. I think that Adric and Nyssa are a good fit together and its probably due to the fact that they appear to be the same age so the two sides of the story work quite well.

The Melkur is still a visually impressive villain and its good that we at least get to see it move in this episode instead of just moving its head. What I like is how we get to see that there is more to Melkur than just a statue walking around. There is someone inside and if you think about it then you would realise that it has to be bigger on the inside than on the outside…..wait a minute!!! The most we see from whoever (wink wink) is inside the Melkur is a hand. Kassia was pretty much singled out as one to watch when we learnt that she tended to Melkur in the gardens and in this episode things got slightly stranger as he gave her a neck thing which means that he can control her and does quite soon after putting it on. There are a few moments when her ‘eyes’ go red and it’s a similar effect to the one used in ‘Planet of Evil’. Somehow despite that story being about six years ago, the effect in this episode seems worse than before.
The problem of today’s cliffhanger is the same as yesterdays. I think that todays is slightly better but it seems that all the efforts have gone into making the rest of the episode work and didn’t have any time in working on a satisfying cliffhanger. It that’s the worst thing that I can say about the episode and story then it’s a pretty good episode and it is just as much fun as I have thought in the past. All the performances are really solid and due to my new appreciation of Adric and there being no K9 it means that there isn’t anything to get me annoyed and that’s a good feeling to have.

 

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