October 1: Warriors' Gate Parts One & Two

You can tell right from the start that this is going to be something special; the slow pan around the "cargo" hold of Rorvik's ship, and then down the (graffitied) corridors and up to the bridge, shows that, if nothing else, Warriors' Gate will be a lot more interesting to look at than other shows -- the obvious comparison is with the look of The Leisure Hive.

But then the script really begins, and we see that just as much care has gone into the writing as into the direction.  The crew of Rorvik's ship seem much more realistic than other crews we've seen, with unenthusiastic cheers and problems going wrong with their navigation -- thanks to a leonine man strapped down in a chair.  The end result is a ship thrown through (into?) a time rift and ending up nowhere -- a problem that the crew of the TARDIS also face...

Warriors' Gate is full of striking imagery -- or at least these first two episodes are: the leonine man, Biroc, is constantly shown as a series of images (not unlike a flip-book) rather than with smooth movement ("He's out of phase," Romana says, as Biroc operates the controls of the TARDIS) -- as is the coin that one of the crew tosses right as they go into the time rift (less convinced about the zoom-in, though, which just ends up being a blocky, low-resolution digital blob); everything outside the TARDIS is a very effective white void; and the place where Biroc heads (followed by the Doctor) is a ruined stone structure that appears, like the TARDIS, to be bigger on the inside -- and that interior is as atmospheric a set, with lots of dusty cobwebs and abandoned furniture, as anything you might hope to see.  And not only that, but this story is full of great dialogue too: "We'll burn that bridge when we come to it"; "And why believe Biroc?" "Because he was running"; "All the gateways are one"... even the mundane dialogue seems to have an extra bit of sparkle to it.

Lane, Rorvik, and Packard examine the TARDIS. (Warriors'
Gate Part One) ©BBC

All this and an interesting storyline as well, with the mystery of the gateway combining with the casual villainy of Rorvik and his crew (particularly their treatment of the Tharils and of Romana) to create an engrossing couple episodes.  That white void and the gateway provide an interesting backdrop for two episodes that are, essentially, all about trying to get out of this place -- the Doctor is more interested in learning the secret of returning to N-Space than in the story of how the Gundans overthrew the Tharils long ago, but we the viewers are just as interested in both.  This is also Matthew Waterhouse's best performance yet -- he seems much more at home interacting with K-9 and behaving naturally with Romana than he does pretending to betray our heroes or delivering know-it-all dialogue (so maybe making his character a wunderkind was a bad move).

And while the first cliffhanger isn't anything too special, that second one is fantastic: the Doctor disappears inside a mirror, while Romana, still strapped into the chair that Rorvik left her in, is menaced by a badly-burned Tharil (thanks to Aldo and Royce's accidental electrocution while waking it up -- another example of casual villainy, as they don't care about bonuses the way the rest of the crew does if the Tharils are killed, as they're "on the all-in contract").  If that doesn't get the audience tuning in next week, I don't know what will.  (And what do you know, there was a 1.6 million increase in viewing figures between parts two and three.)