Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Armageddon Factor (VIII)

10 Feb 1979 

“Now no one knows where we’re going. Not even the Black Guardian.”

It isn't possible, is it, that Graham Williams embarked on the Key to Time saga without a clear idea of how he would end it? 

It isn't possible that he sent the Doctor off on a scavenger hunt for the ultimate weapon, and then handed the final episode to a couple of decent but plodding Who scriptwriters and said “Finish this off however you like”?

We know about the terrible fate that befell the Trial of a Time Lord: how Robert Holmes died and Eric Saward walked out and the fourteen part saga had to be wound up by two equally decent but equally plodding scriptwriters, on a set which had already been built, with a lawyer standing over them preventing them using any of the original scenario. 

No such shenanigans seem to have befallen the Key To Time. Graham Williams handed the ending of the saga to Bob Baker and Dave Martin of his own free will.

Did Williams always conceive the Sixteenth Season as a cosmic shaggy dog story? Did the back of his original envelope say “In Episode One, the Doctor is told by the Guardian to collect the segments of the Key. In Episode Twenty Six, the Doctor refuses to hand the segments over and disperses them again"? 

That could have been the plot. The Doctor could have been told to assemble a weapon that was too powerful for any one person to control. Each story could have turned on one person being tempted or corrupted by the awesome power of the Key. In the final story the Doctor himself would have been tempted by it. So he would have cast it into Mount Doom. 

The sudden revelation that the Doctor might have misidentified the Guardian could have been foreshadowed. Imagine if, in the Ribos Operation, after the Doctor had been sent on his cosmic errand, Cyril Luckham had turned to the audience and said “little does he know that I am really the BLACK Guardian, not the White one. Bwahahaha!” The question “Will the Doctor realise he's been fooled?” could then have hung over each story like a thing which hangs over a story. Each Segment would have tempted the Doctor to act against his own conscience; but in each story he would have found a solution which enabled him to retained the moral high ground. 

But as it is, Armageddon Factor ends with a cosmic reset. The Doctor proves that the White Guardian is the Black Guardian. Very probably he gets killed on the next zebra crossing.  

The psychotic Marshall fires his last nuke at the planet Zeos. But the Doctor diverts it, and it hits the Planet of Evil, the lair of the Black Guardian’s evil minion. It isn't quite clear if he uses the TARDIS to generate the force field, or if he uses the Zeon’s own war computer. He definitely does not use the Key to Time. Which would make a kind of sense, and given the story a kind of unity. 

Romana assumes that the TARDIS is returning to Gallifrey.There is a major plot glitch here, I think. Romana was told to fetch the key by the President of the Time Lords on Gallifrey; she naturally assumes that she has to return home and deliver it to him there. So when the Guardian appears, she is surprised. The Doctor reveals that the President of Gallifrey had been the Guardian all along!

But Romana already knows this. The Doctor told her, in the entirely pointless TARDIS interior scene in Stones of Blood. 

We now know that that scene was a very late addition to the script, hurriedly written when the “birthday cake” sequence was deemed too silly. It appears that the ending of Armageddon Factor was written before that change was made. We think that Douglas Adams wrote the Armageddon Factor epilogue and Anthony Read wrote the Stones of Blood prologue. Is it possible that the incoming and outgoing script editors simply failed to compare notes.  

I wonder... 

The final story in Season 15 was set on Gallifrey. It was all about the appointment of a new President. There is a snooty Time Lord lady called Rodan, who is not entirely dissimilar to Romana. And it includes a sub-plot about the Great Key.

Could it be that the Key to Time saga was originally going to be trailed at the end of the Invasion of Time? Is it possible that, after Leela announced her intention to stay on Gallifrey; Borusa was going to order Rodan to join the Doctor in the TARDIS to help him on a mission of utmost importance? The scenes in Armageddon Factor and Stones of Blood could then be explained as ret-cons made necessary by the sudden introduction of the two Guardians. 

Certainly, Borusa imposing a new companion and a new mission on the Doctor would have been a dramatic way to end to the previous season--much superior to Tom Baker gurning over his  flat-pack K-9 Mark 2. But it fell through because  Hilary Ryan didn't want the gig. 

Total speculation. 

But in the extant script, Romana believes she was sent on the Quest by the President, not the Guardian; she's disabused of this misconception twice; and it has no bearing whatsoever on the story. 

The White Guardian appears; and asks for the Key. The Doctor spots that he is now being played by an actor generally associated with evil roles, and refuses to give it to him.


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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