The Key to Time is great fun
With a fantastic new companion in the sophisticated Romana (Mary Tamm), Season Sixteen feels like a reboot following the horror show (with two notable exceptions) of Graham Williams’ first year as producer. Watching them all in turn, there’s so much to enjoy. Robert Holmes provides a pastiche of classic Russian literature in ‘The Ribos Operation’, which is simply bustling with incredible supporting actors. Iain Cuthbertson and Nigel Plaskitt should have had their own spin-off series as intergalactic confidence tricksters. Timothy Bateson instils the minor character of Binro the Heretic with so much humanity, and Paul Seed’s spitting, irritable villain stays just the right side of pantomime to be hugely impressive. Holmes’ script is beautifully-written, and more than makes up for the awful ‘The Sun Makers’. Then there’s Douglas Adams’ sparkling, funny, ingenious scripts for ‘The Pirate Planet’ that gives the show a whole new postgraduate appeal that suited the star so well. What a shame that it has such leaden direction. ‘The Stones of Blood’ is ghoulish, clever and fun all at the same time, and it’s clear that Tom Baker adored guest star Beatrix Lehmann in one of her final roles. After that, there’s the sublime Peter Jeffrey to enjoy in the odd but also literature-based ‘The Androids of Tara’, which is a direct pastiche of ‘The Prisoner of Zenda’. ‘The Power of Kroll’ is something of a downturn, and Philip Madoc’s final contribution to the show is a muted, unremarkable performance for such a fine actor. It’s only ‘The Armageddon Factor’ that disappoints, and raises the question of whether or not writing team Bob Baker and Dave Martin ever contributed a notably good script for the series? Such an unsatisfactory ending inevitably negatively colours our perceptions of the season as a whole, which is bursting with life, ideas and lovely production values, certainly in comparison to the mostly-awful Season Fifteen that preceded it.
