Monday, September 23, 2024

Armageddon Factor (VII)

10 Feb 1979

“Key to time I command you...to stay exactly where you are...”

The Doctor says that he has complete control over the Key to Time, that it gives him power over every particle in the universe; that he can make Romana do whatever he wants and that from now on there is no such thing as Free Will. 


We have conceptualised the White Guardian as an authorial self-insertion; the personification of the Plot. But the Doctor's possession of the completed Key gives control of the Plot back to him. He can decide what happens in the universe; he can decide what other characters do. For some time, he’s been aware that he’s the main character in a TV show; in recent stories, he’s become increasingly aware of the audience. Now he’s in charge of the Whoniverse itself.


This development came at a time when Tom Baker—by his own admission—was becoming insufferable. He was aware that Doctor Who was now his own show; he knew how to set up shots better than some of the producers; he improvised dialogue of his own and refused to say certain lines in the script. And he had distinct ideas about where the series should go next. Not all his ideas were terrible: a Victorian street urchin or a portly comedic lady would indeed have been interesting departures from the traditional companion persona. The idea of a talking alien cabbage that lived on the Doctor's shoulder, not so much. Towards the end of Season 16, Tom started to make veiled threats that he would quit the show if his suggestions were not taken up; reasoning that the series couldn't continue without him. 


And while all that is happening behind the scenes the on-screen Doctor appears to turn evil and demand complete control over the universe.


Tom Baker plays an excellent villain. He flaps his eyelids and goes cross-eyed and overacts shamelessly. He’s more compelling than he’s been at any time in the last six episodes. 


But he’s only bluffing.  


“Are you all right?” asks Romana

“Well of course I'm all right”, says the Doctor, “but what if I wasn’t?”


For a brief moment, it seems as if something interesting is going to happen: something that would have made the whole Key to Time saga worthwhile. 


Imagine that this was an end-of-season cliffhanger. Imagine a Season 17 in which Romana was the main protagonist, and a corrupt, Key to Time wielding Doctor, the main villain. (This was before Dark Phoenix.) Gandalf wouldn't take the Ring, not because he thought that it would turn him evil but because he knew that he would try to use its power for good. “Gandalf as ring-lord would have been far worse than Sauron", wrote Tolkien.” Imagine a universe in which the Doctor himself had become the Guardian of Time. 


The Doctor once had the power to destroy the Daleks in his hands. He decided not to use it. He agonised: he was torn. The audience felt that their hero was facing a genuine moral dilemma. Tom brought his considerable acting ability to bear on the scene. A writer I respect and admire once called it the greatest moment in the greatest episode of the greatest story of the greatest TV show of all time. But the denouement of Key to Time is tossed out lightly and played for laughs. The Doctor is not tempted. The Doctor was never tempted. The joke is on us and Romana for briefly supposing that he might have been. 


The Planet of Evil blows up. The Black Guardian’s minion grovels that he has failed in his mission and that the Doctor now possesses the Key. But it turns out that the Black Guardian intended the Shadow to fail. “Your death is already encompassed in my designs” he rants “The Doctor will deliver the Key to Time to me."


As Evil Villain plans go, it’s not a bad one. The Doctor has spent six months rushing all over the universe collecting the Segments. The Black Guardian could have engaged in a race, sending the Shadow to hunt down each segment before the Doctor could get to them. But instead, he has sat back, allowed the Doctor to gather the five Segments at his leisure, and sent his Minion to grab the last one before the Doctor gets there.


The sequence in which the Segments are collected seems to be significant. The Sixth segment is not merely “the sixth segment which the Doctor went looking for” but “the segment with a built-in quality of six-ness about it”. Astra is “the sixth child, of the sixth dynasty, of the sixth royal house of the planet Atrios". Presumably, as long as Dynasty Five remained in power and the King and Queen only had five little princes and princesses, the Key was irretrievable. (Did the Swampie Holy Relic only become the Fifth Key when the squid swallowed it, I wonder? Do keys exist in particular places, but also at particular moments?) 


But the Black Guardian has been even cleverer. He was bluffing from the beginning. He never meant the Shadow to get the Sixth Segment. He intended the Doctor to complete the Key. The Dark Side positively wanted the Light Side’s agent to obtain the Ultimate Weapon, so that they could steal it from him. The Doctor was unwittingly playing into the Black Guardian’s hands the whole time. If he succeeded, he would have failed. 


The Doctor doesn’t fall for the bluff. He breaks the Tracer and sends the pieces back to their original locations. I was going to say this renders the previous twenty five weeks pointless; but that’s not quite true. Key or no Key, the Doctor overthrew the Pirate Captain and freed the Swampies from their colonial oppressors. He did, in fact, exactly what he would have done if he’d fetched up on Delta Magna or Calufrax without any Tracer telling him where to go. The best way of defeating the Black Guardian would have been to ignore the segments altogether. 


The entire quest, and the entire season, has been a complete waste...of Time. 


Available to Patreons -- The Androids of Tara 

Available to Patreons  -- The Power of Kroll 

Available to Patreons -- The Armageddon Factor


Or read my compleat Key To Time essays in PDF booklet.


 

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