|
||||
|
|
||||
|
Doctor Who: Warriors' Gate (1981) The final part of the E-Space trilogy (courtesy Steve Gallagher) is the only one that makes anything of the outside-normal-space premise - the TARDIS and a ship presumably from Earth are lodged in a mostly-white limbo, and conflict arises over the Earth ship's use of a Tharil, an enslaved leonine human, as 'navigator', a sort of living motor for the timeship (which turns out to be carting more Tharil slaves). This is a rare instance of Earth humans being the unalloyed baddies in Who (though it's not quite certain that they are Earthlings) and the situation is complicated more by the backstory that the Tharils were once tyrannical overlords themselves. With Adric still cluttering up the story, the plot strain is mostly taken by Romana (Lalla Ward), who is set up to depart from the show by staying in E-Space (with K9 - hooray!) to continue working with the Tharils. Lo-tech visual effects are imaginatively-used - with frame-repeats
to show the time-dislocated Tharils in motion, the occasional use of
black and white photograph backgrounds and returns to the cobwebbed
ruins of a baronial hall. Baker, who shaped up towards the end of his
tenure, has too much K9ery to cope with, but is otherwise called on
to do man-of-action stuff as well as think through complex problems. First published in this form here. Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
|
||||
