The pope of Atlantis introduces himself to the Master:
"I am Krasis, high priest of the temple of Poseidon in Atlantis."
The Master introduces himself in turn, and lays out his deal to Krasis, ending with "together we shall become masters of the universe."
The Master learns what he can from Krasis's seal, which has on it knowledge about Kronos that Krasis didn't even know he had, then he switches the machine back on.
"Come, Kronos, come!"
he says again, presumably because he enjoys it. Benton escapes back to tell the Doctor and the Brigadier about what the Master has done.
Kronos appears and noms Dr Percival (who, now that Krasis is here to be the Master's henchmanny, is superfluous to the plot), and then flaps about scaring the Master until he realises that he can use the seal to control Kronos. Krasis disagrees:
Krasis: "For all your sorcery, you are as a child trying to control a rogue elephant. A puny child."The Master: "But I have the crystal?"Krasis: "That crystal is but a part of the true crystal of Kronos. A small fraction."The Master: "Fraction? And the rest is in Atlantis?"Krasis: "Deep in the vaults of the temple of Poseidon, guarded by night and by day from such thieves as you. You may command the slave but never shall you command the mighty one himself."
A lucky side effect of Kronos's return is that Stuart gets returned to his real age. Less luckily, the Doctor sees the Brigadier, Benton and Ruth all running in slow motion, so he rescues them from the field of slowed time by running in at normal speed and pulling them out.
Back in soft-focus Atlantis, Hippias is talking to King Dalios. I know he's called "Dalios" from the credits, but it always sounds to me like they're saying 'Darius' due to the echoey effect and the incidental music. Dalios claims to be over 500 years old and takes Hippias to see the "true crystal" and hints about how he also has a minotaur down there. Well, he says it is
"A creature too horrible to imagine. Half man, half beast."
but I have a suspicion the BBC budget will not be doing that description justice any time soon.
The Master wants to go to Atlantis to get his paws on the "true crystal," but the story would be way too short if he managed that immediately so it's time for some padding or, as the Doctor calls it "delaying tactics" (I suspect the series Producer called it that as well). Stuart offers to make tea and sandwiches for everybody, which annoys the Brigadier.
"This isn't a picnic!"
he says, having gone from being a competent commanding officer last episode to a komedy sidekick in double-quick time.
Despite giving every impression that he's trolling the Brigadier on purpose, the Doctor makes a gadget out of the odds and ends in Stuart's room.
Doctor: "It's a time flow analogue."Stuart: "Of course it is, Ruth. You should have seen that at a glance."Doctor: "The relationships between the different molecular bonds and the actual shapes form a crystalline structure of ratios."Brigadier: "Does this make any sort of sense, Dr Ingram?"Ruth: "None whatsoever."Brigadier: "Just as I thought. Doctor, please stop this silly game at once."
Only once he gets it going does the Doctor deign to explain what he's doing:
"Well, it's just like jamming a radio signal, Jo. We used to make them at school to spoil each other's time experiments."
The Master soon overloads it using TOMTIT.
"Ah, well. It was fun while it lasted."
says the Doctor, and I have to agree with him. This whole bit was padding, but it was fun padding.
The Master sees that Mike Yates is on his way with the Doctor's TARDIS using his wrist-mounted, CSO-powered TV, a different model from the one we saw in Colony in Space - he's obviously upgraded from a csoPhone to a csoWatch in the meantime. He uses TOMTIT to summon a knight on a horsey to charge at Yates's convoy. When Yates reports this to the Brigadier, the Brigadier replies
"Are you suffering from hallucinations, Captain Yates, or have you been drinking?"
Lol.
Next the Master summons up some historical reenactors to exchange fire with the UNIT soldiers.
"Oh get on with it, you 17th century poltroons."
he says when they're not very effective, lol.
The Doctor and Jo head towards the TARDIS in Bessie. The Brigadier drives his own jeep, expecting it will be faster than the Doctor's car, but is swiftly overtaken - another komedy moment.
As his "grand finale" the Master summons a V1 "buzzbomb" to try to blow up the convoy with. The Brigadier, suddenly serious again, tries to call Yates to warn him:
"Yates, get out of it, man! It's a bomb! It's a bomb! Get out of it, Yates!"
but the reception is poor and it is not clear if he heard the warning in time. We see things from the Doctor, Jo and the Brigadier's point of view as the bomb explodes in the distance, and the episode ends with Yates's fate unclear - and we can only hope he has been blown to bits.
No comments:
Post a Comment