Lalla Ward | the m0vie blog

Doctor Who: Warriors’ Gate (Review)

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Darren

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the longest-running science-fiction show in the world, I’ll be taking weekly looks at some of my own personal favourite stories and arcs, from the old and new series, with a view to encapsulating the sublime, the clever and the fiendishly odd of the BBC’s Doctor Who.

Warrior’s Gate originally aired in 1980. It was the third instalment of the E-Space Trilogy.

We found it.

Yes, well, that’s one of the advantages of living in a rapidly shrinking micro-universe.

What are the others?

Other what?

Other advantages?

Ah, well, it’s difficult to say.

– Adric, the Doctor and Romana discuss modern living

I’m actually very, very fond of Warriors’ Gate. It’s a piece of bold science-fiction that actually manages to accomplish what a lot of these stories in Tom Baker’s final season try to do. It offers an effective bit of speculative fiction while playing to the theme of entropy, decay and collapse. Both Stephen Gallagher’s fine script and Paul Joyce’s direction come together to produce a very thoughtful and clever Doctor Who story that manages to avoid a lot of the problems facing this era of the show.

More than that, though, it turns some of those disadvantages into advantages. After all, when else is the show’s tiny production budget going to produce something this beautiful?

Shades of grey…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: arts, bbc, christmas, doctor, DoctorWho, fiction, Graeme Harper, John Nathan Turner, Lalla Ward, literature, Online Writing, Romana, science fiction, Stephen Gallagher, Story arcs in Doctor Who, tardis, Warrior, Warriors' Gate | 2 Comments »

Doctor Who: Full Circle (Review)

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Darren

Full Circle originally aired in 1980. It was the first instalment of the E-Space Trilogy.

Why can’t people be nice to one another, just for a change?

– the Doctor is still an optimist at heart

I have to admit, I’m kinda a bit frustrated with these “arcs” that Doctor Who was so fond of in the late seventies and into the eighties, with themes like The Key to Time, or The Black Guardian Trilogy or even Trial of a Timelord serving as an excuse to tie a bunch of distinct stories together with a few shared elements, mostly confined to intrusive opening and closing scenes rather than anything especially substantive. In particular, The E-Space Trilogy feels especially odd, because it’s located inside a larger arc exploring the final year of Tom Baker’s tenure, with entropy and decay evident everywhere. Being entirely honest though, it does help that Full Circleis a solid and clever little story, which genuinely feels like something quite different than the typical Doctor Who adventure.