This is the fourth and final episode which does do what I
hoped it would do at the end of the previous review and that is to save the story
and boy does it do it in style. It’s hard for me to imagine just how bad the
story started off and one reason why things picked up is that the Myrka doesn’t
feature and that is a blessed relief because it means that my focus can move
onto the important stuff. After spending an awfully long time getting ready,
the Silurians are ready to put their plan into operation. The sad thing about
what happens with the Silurians is that it is made less effective by the voice.
The Silurians want to use the base to launch a war so that
the countries go to war with each other. Considering that they are suppose to
be peace loving creature, its quite a change in character although they have
been through quite a lot so maybe its not that surprising. I think as a design,
the Silurians are a moderate success. I like the headlight that indicates which
one of them were speaking but sadly the speech was something the just didn’t work.
I think they could have turned it down a bit which would have helped. The Sea
Devils didn’t need to come back because they lost any of the menace that they
had during their debut story 12 years earlier.
The Doctor does try and find a peaceful way of ending things.
When told he should kill the Silurians and sea devils he gets quite angry and
it harks back to the days of Jon Pertwee which I thought was nice. It’s hard to
be the Doctor in this episode because with time running out he is being nagged
at by Tegan, Turlough and the others. The sadness that the Doctor shows on the
last shot of the episode shows something that I don’t think I have seen during
the Peter Davison era which is surprising considering that this is his 15th
story as Doctor. This is one of the strongest performances from Peter Davison
for sometime. Janet Fielding and Mark Strickson haven’t been mentioned a great
deal during this story but to be honest they haven’t really done anything of
any note.
The gooey death that a Sea Devil goes through is quite grim
and is in keeping with how deaths were done during this period of the show.
What makes their death (along with the Silurians) is that they were warned to
leave but refused to and so it could be argued that they only had themselves to
blame so it’s a slightly confusing ending for them. It’s a shame that after
over a decade away that things didn’t come together to make this story work. I
know that there were circumstances that meant the show was never going to work
as well as it should but the second half of this story helps salvage this and
at the moment I have given this story a rating that places it above Four to Doomsday, The Kings Demons,
Snakedance and Time-Flight. This is probably a fair position.
The show has quite a grim ending with all the Silurians, sea
devils and the human dead. Only the regulars are alive which is the first time
this has happened since Horror of Fang Rock. The opening story of the season doesn’t
quite have the impact that maybe Arc of Infinity had and so its fair to say
that the twenty-first season of Doctor Who has gotten off to an average start.
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