An Hour of Who a Day: October 21: Arc of Infinity Parts One & Two

October 21: Arc of Infinity Parts One & Two

Season 20 opens with some shadowy Time Lord figure making a deal with someone unfamiliar, displayed in a negative image (you know, like a Dalek extermination effect). So it's going to be a Gallifrey story, I guess.

And it seems they've decided to make this some sort of mystery/suspense story, so we get lots of shots of shadowy figures and first-person-from-the-culprit's-point-of-view scenes. This is fine (even if it's aping The Deadly Assassin somewhat), but there's a lot of technobabble going on to support the mystery (biodata, Quad magnetism, temporal bonding), which instead has the effect of taking you out of the mystery rather than pulling you in.

Still, it's nice to see Nyssa interact with the Doctor without anyone else in the TARDIS to take up screen time, and we see a genuine affection there of the sort that wasn't really present in TARDIS scenes during season 19. It's a welcome change, and there's also a feeling that Nyssa has grown up a bit. Although the fallen hatstand in the console room seems to suggest that little time has passed between Time-Flight and this, it's hard to reconcile that with the easier and stronger relationship. Maybe the hatstand just fell over again.

There's also some stuff in Amsterdam with young tourists, but, while somewhat interesting, it's hard at this stage to really see how it ties in with the Gallifrey stuff, beyond the fact that the same person seems to be responsible for both Colin's "death" and the Doctor's attempted abduction/takeover. Although there is that weird chicken creature, the Ergon, to watch. Actually, I don't mind the Ergon as much as the rest of fandom seems to; it's not a total success, but you can sort of see what they were going for, and I don't think it looks that bad, especially if they were going for "weird" rather than "scary" (mind, if they were going for "scary" then it is a failure).

But look! It's Colin Baker as Commander Maxil! Which wouldn't normally be anything of particular note, except that Colin Baker is going to go on to become the next Doctor (not that anyone knows that yet). Here he's quite ruthless -- although he doesn't seem actually evil -- in the pursuit of his duties. Maybe the Doctor upset him at some unseen point before this story, since his reactions over the Doctor are much more extreme than anyone else we see. And Borusa has regenerated yet again, it seems.

Part two shows us why we're really supposed to care about the Amsterdam stuff: Tegan's back (well, that was fast).¹²¹ She's now unemployed and sporting a pixie cut, and it turns out that Colin the now-possessed tourist was her cousin (thus getting her involved in the story). So she and Colin's friend Robin go around trying to convince the police that there's a problem while Gallifrey gets on with executing the Doctor, so that the thing that tried to bond with him ("the Renegade", according to the credits) is unable to do so. The Renegade is composed of antimatter, you see, and if the bond were successful there would be a tremendous explosion as matter and antimatter mixed. Although you'd think the Renegade would have thought of that and would have plans to prevent killing itself.

But yes, this episode seems to just be marking time for large portions: Tegan learns about Colin and that's about it, while the Doctor is sentenced to execution (only the second time this has happened -- the first being Morbius, presumably) and waits around for it to happen. And that's largely it for plot purposes. Yes, there are some complications, and we learn that it must be someone on Gallifrey who's working with the Renegade in order to use the Doctor as a candidate for temporal bonding, but that's it. It does lead to a good cliffhanger, though, as the Doctor is led to the execution chamber and then appears to be vaporized -- although not before the Renegade has bonded with him...

¹²¹ To be fair, Tegan's departure was never intended to be permanent, but rather a cliffhanger to sustain interest over the season break. Except it sure looks like a departure and not any sort of cliffhanger at all, but never mind.