This is the second story of The Guardian Trilogy following Mawdryn Undead.
An ambitious story is a good thing and this certainly has ambition in its concepts and script provided by writer Stephen Gallagher which I give credit for. Unfortunately if those ambitions cannot be realised properly on screen it detracts from the quality of the entertainment and for various reasons this fails to fulfill its potential.
The concepts involve a complex mix of ideas involving Turlough tampering with the TARDIS causing dimension of the capsule to break down, the team finding themselves in Terminus at the centre of the universe and discovering a plague and ideas of the origins of the big bang which created the universe. Such big ideas are impressive but they are not put across sufficiently well to make this a success.
The first problem is that there were production problems with delays and disruption causing unavoidable pressures on filming schedules and therefore quality control. The budget was not high enough to do the ideas justice anyway but with added problems and some poor decisions it makes the production look weak. The costumes are impractical, unsuitable and sometimes silly and the director Mary Ridge is unable to cope with the requirements, particularly under the strain of time and budget constraints. Her decision making was wrong and caused some of the issues - for instance choosing to show the Garm creature in all its inadequate detail instead of hiding it in the shadows - her direction is sadly lacking with some stilted filming of events/reactions and the fight scenes especially are bad.
The better aspects stop this from failing completely because there are still interesting ideas and some quality elements. The story is a bit muddled but OK, the dialogue is attempting to be intelligent and sometimes succeeds, sometimes not, the acting (apart from some poorly directed action) is decent, Nyssa gets a decent last story before she (rather inexplicably) is written out, Peter Davison is good as The Doctor and there is good, appropriate incidental music from Roger Limb which evokes Blade Runner.
The best thing about this story is the dark, macabre feeling that comes from the plague subplot, the Black Guardians influence on Turlough and the threat of impending doom. There is a shadow of gloomy horror which adds to the atmosphere and lifts some of this to more compelling levels of drama.
This was up against it as a production and is not very strong as a result but it is certainly not all bad.
My ratings: Part 1 - 7/10, Part 2 - 5.5/10, Part 3 - 6/10, Part 4 - 6.5/10. Overall - 6.25/10.
An ambitious story is a good thing and this certainly has ambition in its concepts and script provided by writer Stephen Gallagher which I give credit for. Unfortunately if those ambitions cannot be realised properly on screen it detracts from the quality of the entertainment and for various reasons this fails to fulfill its potential.
The concepts involve a complex mix of ideas involving Turlough tampering with the TARDIS causing dimension of the capsule to break down, the team finding themselves in Terminus at the centre of the universe and discovering a plague and ideas of the origins of the big bang which created the universe. Such big ideas are impressive but they are not put across sufficiently well to make this a success.
The first problem is that there were production problems with delays and disruption causing unavoidable pressures on filming schedules and therefore quality control. The budget was not high enough to do the ideas justice anyway but with added problems and some poor decisions it makes the production look weak. The costumes are impractical, unsuitable and sometimes silly and the director Mary Ridge is unable to cope with the requirements, particularly under the strain of time and budget constraints. Her decision making was wrong and caused some of the issues - for instance choosing to show the Garm creature in all its inadequate detail instead of hiding it in the shadows - her direction is sadly lacking with some stilted filming of events/reactions and the fight scenes especially are bad.
The better aspects stop this from failing completely because there are still interesting ideas and some quality elements. The story is a bit muddled but OK, the dialogue is attempting to be intelligent and sometimes succeeds, sometimes not, the acting (apart from some poorly directed action) is decent, Nyssa gets a decent last story before she (rather inexplicably) is written out, Peter Davison is good as The Doctor and there is good, appropriate incidental music from Roger Limb which evokes Blade Runner.
The best thing about this story is the dark, macabre feeling that comes from the plague subplot, the Black Guardians influence on Turlough and the threat of impending doom. There is a shadow of gloomy horror which adds to the atmosphere and lifts some of this to more compelling levels of drama.
This was up against it as a production and is not very strong as a result but it is certainly not all bad.
My ratings: Part 1 - 7/10, Part 2 - 5.5/10, Part 3 - 6/10, Part 4 - 6.5/10. Overall - 6.25/10.
