Ooo this is not very good.
An almost routine space story is ruined by a very silly universe ending subplot which seems to just evaporate halfway through ep4 via an illogically written deux ex machina (bending the lever? Srsly?). Clip out ep3 about 18m onwards to ep4 about 13m and see how it affects the story.(Hint: it would be an improvement...)The Lazars disease and it's sufferers are poorly defined and their fate seems ignored. The ugly compromised Vanir are gladly handed both control, the upper hand in Terminus society and the services of the lovely Nyssa despite being a bunch of pirates at the start. Are they gonna turn into good citizen managers of the Lazars' treatment facility or will they quickly descend to exploiting them after another 6 months (or what)?
This production was hit by BBC studio industrial action and some careless technical errors. The set was built three inches too big and led to a scenery shifters' strike about encroachment on to safe area fire zones...which in turn resulted in a remount which also affected Enlightenment and then the cancellation of the 7th serial of Series 20 and then Peter Grimwade's career as a director. Tiny ripple to major tsunami there....
First time on Who director Mary Ridge seemed out to sea on this. Like Fiona Cumming she had a few good eps of Blakes 7 (Terminal, Rescue, Blake) in her recent work. She had a long history since the mid 60's of directing drama, cop shows, medical drama, and some soapies. It is difficult to decide what is due to studio troubles or poor direction. Either way the narrative presented on screen is annoying, disjointed and does not make sense.
The Vanir costumes are disastrous. They sound silly and are rankly unsuitable for fight scenes. The way the face cover on the mask swings up is like Sir Bedevere in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. (Oh Terry...)
The Garm is ridiculous. Steve Gallagher claims it NOT what he scripted ("glowing red eyes in the dark shadows which we never actually see became a comedy giant dog-man.)
Why did anyone think reusing the Zygon signalling sound effect for the Garm would be ok? (It's not.)
Liza Goddard and Dominic Guard as Kari and Olvir needed to be played for laughs (or something). They are particularly dull and lacking in interest.
Peter as the Doctor and Sarah as Nyssa are fine. Mark as Turlough and Janet as Tegan noticeably spend 4 eps crawling around tunnels and trotting up and down corridors achieving nothing but a giant loop sub plot.
Andrew Burt makes something of a fairly crummy part as Valguard. Martin Potter as Eirak is like diarrhoea: painful and stressful. Peter Benson is wasted as Bor.
Apparently BAFTA award winning actress, writer and director Kathy Burke plays one of the Lazars in episode 1 and 3. Rightly she claims this on her very impressive CV. See https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0121755/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
ABM Rating 2.05/4.00
LJM Rating 1.00/5.00
SPJ Rating 6.90/10
No. 102 (out of 126)
Link to Cumulative Rankings
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