Season 16

The Key To Time season seems to garner decidedly mixed opinions amongst fandom, perceived by some as an adventurous and enjoyable set of stories and by others as something of an uninspired slog, but what does the forum generally think of it?

The Key to Time season is one of my favorites. I think Stones of Blood stands out as the best story in the season by far. Androids of Tara and Ribos Operation are very good, Pirate Planet is solid, Power of Kroll is ok, but I think the season is somewhat let down by the last story.

The one thing that bothers me the most about how it ends is that presumably the whole season is about the Doctor collecting and assembling the Key to Time so the White Guardian can use it "restore the universal balance" or some such thing - And we never see this happen! We get the Black Guardian impersonating the White Guardian to try to get the Key, but we never see the White Guardian use it. Now I assume that this must have happened, but we didn't see it? Or the White Guardian could do it without actually physically appearing in front of the Key?

But what I would have liked to have happened is to find out that the Doctor never actually saw the White Guardian in Ribos Operation: It was the Black Guardian impersonating the White Guardian the whole time and it was all a ruse by the Black Guardian to get the Key. I think if they went this direction with the last couple of episodes of Armageddon Factor it would have been better. As it is, they leave it so vague that there is actually nothing that goes against this interpretation even though I don't believe it was what was intended.

A favourite of mine too. I don't think there's a bad story in the bunch, Pirate is an inspired debut for Adams, Androids is great fun, Kroll is absurdly underrated and Ribos is the best thing Holmes ever wrote, albeit a bit too intellectual for some thickos who only want action and monsters.
Add to this the arrival of Romana and Tom on top form and it's a top 10 season for me.

iank wrote:A favourite of mine too. I don't think there's a bad story in the bunch, Pirate is an inspired debut for Adams, Androids is great fun, Kroll is absurdly underrated and Ribos is the best thing Holmes ever wrote, albeit a bit too intellectual for some thickos who only want action and monsters.
Add to this the arrival of Romana and Tom on top form and it's a top 10 season for me.

Totally agree. Ribos, Pirate, and Stones, in particular, are all fucking brilliant and I think The Armageddon Factor is underrated. Love it.

The season introduced Lalla Ward so naturally it rules.

I'd say it was something rich, magical, remarkably confident and adventurous for most of its length.

Until the finale, where it suddenly just gets unGodly depressing.

Ribos - 1/10
Pirate - 2/10
Stones - 5/10
Tara - 6/10
Kroll - 5/10
Armageddon - 1/10

Toms weakest season in my opinion.

Even Davison hits higher than this with his seasons.

It sort of reminds me of a year of post-Grade hiatus quality-wise, but come early, almost like a foreshadowing of shite to come.

Cracking dialogue from The Ribos Operation:

ROMANA: Very exciting, isn't it?
DOCTOR: Yes, I suppose it must be for someone as young and inexperienced as you are.
ROMANA: I may be inexperienced, but I did graduate from the Academy with a triple first.
DOCTOR: I suppose you think we should be impressed by that, too?
ROMANA: Well, it's better than scraping through with fifty-one per cent at the second attempt.



Imagine Whittaker's Doctor talking about graduation:

" I were dead good at uni, me".

Having just rewatched it a couple of weeks ago, I found (with the exception of Stones of Blood) it to be a decidedly average season. Certainly not the worst, but a continuation of the drop in quality, and gradual change in tone, towards a more light entertainment feel that began in the latter part of season 15, and would lean even further into farce in the following Season 17.

Best aspect of the season was Mary Tam. Beautiful woman - both then and in the noughties. Gave the Doctor's companion a touch of class. Its a shame she didn't get more work on tv after her Romana role. Of the stories in the season i only really like Stones and, in retrospect, Ribos.

Ribos is okay now. When it was aired i thought it was a boring load of overacted tosh. However over the years I have become very appreciative of the careful characterisations of some of Holmes' lead characters in his stories. Thus i came to love Unstoffe, Garron and Binroe in this story. Some of the scenes between them are delightful to watch. The scene where Unstoffe is chatting to Binroe in the catacoombs is brilliantly written and acted. But sorry - much of the rest of the acting is horrendously campy and ... well ... shit. The story itself is just too drawn out. That said its the second best production of the season.

Pirate Planet is just pure annoying camp with very little merit to it. The Captain's and Mr Fibuli's performances are awful as are those of the Mentiads, Pralix and his family. The twatty robot bird served no other purpose than to give K9 sthg to do when the most useful thing K9 could have done was to spontaneously blow up off-air during the opening credits of Ribos. Some of the concepts Adams' used were interesting in themselves but they were ruined by a superficially funny-yet-unfunny script.

Stones of Blood was very good with excellent performances by Susan Engle and Beatrix Leahman. Its my favourite story of the season. However, there is sthg seriously unconvincing about the Ogri (i.e., the stone monoliths if i have misnamed them) and its a crying shame that they didn't happen to crush K9 to a pulp on their first encounter with the cretin. The first two episodes are good. Problem is once it transfers to the Hyperspace ship it becomes a very dull and boring court trial.

Tara. Dul, dull, dull. Nice costumes - apart from the fuckin' gorilla suit in episode one - but it is essentially a rather uninspired rip off of The Prisoner of Zenda. Lamia / Lois Baxter was attractive though. Her relationship with Count Grendell / Peter Jeffrey was more along the lines of what we should have had with Jobel and Tasembeker in Revelation of the Daleks but alas no. After seeing this I felt Jeffrey would have made a good choice for the role of the Master. He might have been less campy than Ainley.

Power of Kroll. Poor. It just doesn't grab me -  a sort of cheap King Kong rip-off. I like some of the model work but some of the actors deserve better than the roles they were given - John Abineri (Ranquin - the tribal leader), Philip Madoc (Fenner) in particular, and it was nice to see John Leeson in person for a change. However other than that not much of interest going on.

The Armageddon Factor. Okay. Some annoying jokey characters who served no other point than to add filling - Davyd Harries (Shapp), Barry Jackson (Drax) and the wimpy love sick Merak. Condense it down to 4 episodes and it might have been better. I thought John Woodvine was good as the Marshall. William Squire's performance was okay but his makeup was unspired crap - but not as crap as the Nimon a year later.

Once Anthony Read bailed on the show Williams should have gone too. He had outstayed his welcome as far as i was conerned.