REVIEW OVERVIEW: WHICH UMBRELLA SEASON IS THE BEST? - PART TWO- A: THE KEY TO TIME

After a brief overview of what to expect in this latest series, we can get on with the true work at hand: Reviewing the actual Umbrella Seasons! 

We begin at the beginning with the show's first attempt at a season-long tale. For this part (and the next, for that matter), we shall embark upon a journey into the deeper mysteries of the Key to Time. But will it be worth the trip?! 

A BIT OF BACKGROUND

As Doctor Who moved into the late 70s, Tom Baker now had several seasons under his belt as Doctor Four. Most of his material had been produced by the famous Philip Hinchcliffe. This particular era would go on to be known as the Golden Age of the show. Though it wasn't necessarily appreciated as well back then as it is currently. Nowadays, many fans consider this to be the show at its ultimate pinnacle. It's never been better. 

(Not really my opinion, though. There was some good stuff during this period. But I do find a lot of it to be over-rated!) 

But then it came time for a change. Hinchcliffe bowed out and in came Graham Williams. Tom Baker stuck around but he started getting new companions. That Gothic Horror vibe that dominated so many stories during those first few seasons of the Fourth Doctor shifted into something more comedic. Tom Baker, himself, started pushing the humor harder and harder. Guest cast members often followed suit. Writers might even try to hand in serious scripts but they were quickly changed into high farce during the read-throughs and rehearsals.  As we near the end of the Graham Williams Period, the show started becoming a parody of itself. 

In the middle of all this sits The Key to Time season. A somewhat bold idea for late 70s television. Back then, TV tended to be very fragmented. Producers didn't want to confuse viewers so, for the most part, a new plot was introduced and resolved in every episode. In some cases, characters even seemed to forget what had gone on before. The slate was wiped clean every week. So to create a season-long story thread was definitely something that was very much going against the grain, at the time. 

In many ways, creating the first Umbrella Season for Doctor Who gives Williams a bit of notoriety within the context of the show. The Big Question Is: Does this first effort earn him praise or malice?    

GOING THROUGH THE CRITERIA - THE MORE OBJECTIVE STUFF 

With a bit of background established, let's start putting The Key to Time through the paces. We'll begin with some points of criteria that are a bit more tangible. Traits I can actually prove a bit. 

(NOTE: If you want to better understand these points of criteria and haven't read my introductory essay, you should probably check out this link: https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2022/03/review-overview-which-is-best-umbrella.html) 

1. The Foundation 

The Ribos Operation establishes the Foundation of the whole Quest for the Key to Time in the most straightforward of manners. I mean that quite literally. Of the the three Umbrella Seasons, the central premise to this one is told to us in the bluntest of ways. Which isn't, necessarily, a bad thing. It was quite nice to just take a few minutes of that first episode to have everything explained in a great big infodump. 

The scene, itself, with the White Guardian is very nicely executed. Holmes wrote it well. Tom Baker and Cyril Luckham do a great job on the performance end of things. Even the set looks pretty good! This is a great way to set things up. Problems don't really arise with anything that is done here until we reach the end of the season and certain key points in the introduction aren't properly addressed. But that's hardly the fault of the Foundation. 

I do find the whole intro scene to be executed fantastically. I especially like how cool and laid back the White Guardian seems as he sips cocktails and tells the Doctor nothing will ever happen to him if he refuses to help. It's a great moment. 

But Ribos Operation offers a greater Foundation than just its opening few minutes. It does provide the basic gist of how most stories in this season will work. Aside from a slight variation in Androids of Tara, the Doctor and Romana will spend the bulk of the plot just trying to figure out what the latest Segment has disguised itself as. While they do this, they will also deal with a few other conflicts that need to be solved (ie: stopping the Pirate Planet, bringing Cessair of Diplos to justice, disassembling Kroll, etc...). It's not just a bit of exposition at the beginning of Part 1, the basic format of the whole season is also displayed. 

All in all, a very solid Foundation. 

2. Momentum

Here is where The Key to Time begins to flounder.   

Ribos Operation, I feel, creates a great Foundation (although some fans claim it moves a bit too slow). Pirate Planet and Stones of Blood continue to entertain with engaging, well-paced stories (although some fans complain that Part Four of Stones drags on a bit). By the time we get to Androids of Tara and Power of Kroll, however, it really does feel like the whole thing is starting to lose some serious steam.

Part of the problem, I feel, is the quality of the stories, themselves. I find neither of these tales to be particularly engaging so sitting through them does wear me out a bit and causes me to lose interest in the thrust of the whole season. I'll get into their problems at a later point, though. Here, I'll focus on legitimate pacing issues. 

While Androids of Tara does mix things up a bit by having Romana find the Fourth Segment right away, I do think the structure of the season is still too rigid.  Telling a whole story and only revealing where the Segment is in the last few minutes gets too repetitive. Which I think really starts to make things feel like they're moving too slowly. I do feel we needed more than just the slight variation in Tara to keep things interesting. The Doctor finding a Segment halfway through a story but deciding to stay to sort out whatever mess is going on could have made for a nice change, for instance. If, maybe, one or two other stories in the season had subverted the structure just a bit more that would have helped pacing enormously. But getting the same thing over and over (for the most part) really takes the wind out of The Key to Time's sails.  

I think another big problem with pacing lies in the fact that giving the retrieval of each Segment, at least, four episodes each was too much. I think a couple of two parters would have really tightened things up a bit. Finding a Segment here and there in only two episodes instead of four would have helped enormously with the pace. Taking so long to retrieve each and every Segment just drags on a bit too much. Yes, Williams has an obligation to produce so many episodes a season but he should have just gotten permission to shorten the season a bit. Or not taken a whole season to do the saga (maybe a free-standing story or two with the leftover eps after Key to Time was over?) Or something to that effect. As with a lot of 70s Who - there does feel like there's not enough story to fill the run-time. Which really damages the Momentum of this Umbrella Season.    

 3. Conclusion

That bad momentum in the latter half of the season takes us into a Conclusion that I feel is largely unsatisfactory. 

Armageddon Factor does have some good moments. It starts off quite decently and actually manages to get us excited again about the Quest for the Key to Time. The concept of making a mock piece of the Key to get it to freeze Mentalis and the Marshal was also quite clever (although the execution seems a little awkward and disjointed). Drax is also a very fun character and it's good that he gets introduced into the story when he does. These are all things about this story that I feel work really well and make for a great final story of the season. 

But there are two gigantic problems that really sour the Conclusion of this saga for me.

The first is the comedy element. Quite simply, it goes way too far. A little levity now and again throughout the six episodes would have been okay. Even letting Tom Baker get really playful works (Invasion of Time benefited greatly from this during the last season - the Doctor translating Latin to an imaginary Borusa is still so delightfully surreal!). But everybody really starts going for high farce as we reach those middle episodes. Shapp doing a comic pratfall into the transmat shaft after his shoot-out with a Mute is truly the moment where I find myself giving up on trying to take anything all that seriously anymore. Which is not how you should make an audience feel at the climax of a season-long saga. There really should have been a stronger emphasis on the drama. But because everyone just seems to be trying to create as many gags as they can, the ending to it all feels very hollow. Like it was meant to be so much better - but failed.  

And then there's that final confrontation with the Black Guardian. It's great that the Doctor figures out who he really is and denies him the Key. That was certainly very important. But the White Guardian emphasised way back in the Foundation that he still needed it, himself, to restore balance to the Universe. So the Doctor just splitting up the six Segments again and installing a randomiser seems too irresponsible for even him! What happens to the Universe because he didn't give the Key to the White Guardian? We needed a better explanation than what we got. 

Yes, we can create a bit of headcannon for this sequence (and I did exactly that in these links: https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2016/06/fixing-continuity-glitches-what-hell.html and https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2016/06/fixing-continuity-glitches-what-hell_19.html), but I feel this is similar to one of the problems I discussed in my Greatest Hits Essay about Pyramids of Mars a few entries back. There are moments in a good sci fi franchise where you can leave things a little ambiguous and let the fans make up their own resolution to an issue. And there are times when an author should provide a better explanation than they did. The final ending to Key to Time is like giving Sutekh his own means of escape. Things just aren't making sense and they should have been made clearer to us. I'm amazed when the script writer(s) and script editor let this sort of thing slide. 

4. Coherency 

For the most part, the adventures in The Key to Time do feel very interconnected. This is best achieved by the TARDIS Console Room Scenes that bookend all the stories. With the exception of the beginning and ending of Power of Kroll (which does brings a very refreshing change), every tale starts with the Doctor and Romana in the TARDIS fitting the Locator into the console to find the next Segment. The final moments of Part Four show the Doctor and Romana back in the TARDIS fitting the latest piece of the Key into place. This really does help us to feel like we are watching one big saga broken down into smaller parts. Everything connects together nicely because of this structure. 

(Super Pedantic Sidenote: Androids of Tara also doesn't have a console room scene at the end. I didn't forget! Although I'm trying to forget its final scene as it was rather cringy!) 

But there are some inconsistencies that damage the Coherency. Most of them seem to involve Romana. In Ribos Operation, she seems obsessed with Pop Psychology. Spewing all sorts of psycho-babble all over the place anytime she can. This trait then largely disappears for most of the season until Robert Holmes is writing for her again in Kroll. Clearly, Romana's proficiency for Armchair Psychology should have either been written in to the rest of the season or written out of Holmes' scripts. Season 24 experiences a similar problem with the Doctor mixing up his proverbs during Time and the Rani and Delta and the Bannermen but not doing it at all during Paradise Towers and Dragonfire. 

There's an even bigger problem of this nature regarding Romana's understanding of her mission. The Doctor finally explains to her during Stones of Blood that she wasn't actually assigned her job by the Lord President. But rather, the White Guardian in the form of the Lord President. Working at the behest of the White Guardian seems to make a strong impression on her. Apparently, not strong enough, though. As she seems to forget completely about this by Armageddon Factor and is shocked, once more, to learn that the Guardians are involved with the retrieval of the Key to Time. 

There things are fairly easy fixes that seem to have slipped by the Script Editor. While they're not huge mistakes, they do damage the overall sense of Coherency to the Umbrella Season. 

As I worked through the editing stages of this entry, I started thinking to myself: "Goodness! This is going on for a quite a bit!" So I decided to split the thing in half. This way, you can take a little break. Hope to see you in the next part.