Linx is distracted from killing the Doctor by Sarah, and then distracted from killing Sarah by another of the scientists collapsing. The Doctor spots Professor Rubeish behind Linx, so talks to him while pretending to still be talking to Linx:
Doctor: "Every species has its own weakness, Linx. For instance, you can only be stunned by a blow on the probic vent, that small hole at the back of your neck."Linx: "In our case, Doctor, it is a strength, because it means we must always face our enemies."
Except that Rubeish is then able to hit him on the "probic vent" with a plank of wood, knocking Linx out. Not so rubeish after all! Rubeish then helps the Doctor tie Linx up - can we please get him as the Companion as well as, or even instead of, Sarah?
Bloodaxe comes in to demand Linx go to see Irongron. The Doctor, hiding, puts him off for a bit by impersonating Linx's voice and manner, but he knows this will not keep Irongron away for long so he disguises himself as the robot and goes to meet Irongron.
Irongron, being Irongron, decides to have a fight with the robot to "see something of the mettle of this gift," so the Doctor is forced to fight with him. After Irongron and Bloodaxe together can't beat the Doctor, Irongron suggests shooting it with crossbow bolts to "slow this iron man's speed a little." The Doctor then gives himself away in a most un-Doctorish fashion, more like Harry Sullivan's way of talking:
Doctor: "Isn't that a bit unsporting, old man? I mean... sitting ducks and all that?"Irongron: "This iron man talks like some Norman ninny. Lift up your visor."
When Irongron and his mannys see the Doctor's face they call him "the wizard" and capture him.
"No, the sword is too quick and clean a death for you. Well, since you are a wizard, then by wizardry shall you die!"
Sarah, meanwhile, has been captured as well, and forced to help cook noms for Irongron and his mannys. She tries out some feminism on the other servants, although this is played for laughs because it was made in the '70s:
Sarah: "I'm not afraid of men. They don't own the world. Why should women always have to cook and carry for them?"Meg: "What else should we do?"Sarah: "Stand up for ourselves. Tell the men you're tired of working for them like slaves."Meg: "We are slaves."Sarah: "Then you should set yourselves free."Meg: "Oh, and how should we do that?"Sarah: "Don't you want to be free?"Meg: "Women will never be free while there are men in the world, girl. We have our place."Sarah: "What subservient poppycock. You're still living in the middle ages!"
Mew, what a terrible joke! Fortunately, the Doctor's plan was for Sarah to doctor (speaking of terrible jokes, mew) the noms so they will send the mannys to sleep, and Sarah is now in the perfect position to do this. She distracts one of the other servants by shouting
"Look at that great spider!"
which is some clever foreshadowing of the end of the season.
Irongron finds Linx and rescues him, and takes him to where his mannys are using the Doctor for target practice with the "magic" guns Linx gave them.
They keep missing him until Sarah sends a chandelier across the room for him to swing on over their heds to escape. They run away, and get out of the castle when the Doctor does some Venusian Aikido to the guards on the gate. They escape all the way to Sir Edward's
He and Sarah take Hal the Archer with them, and get straight past the sleeping mannys into the laboratory. The Doctor starts sending the scientists back to the future but Linx comes in. The Doctor uses a metal fan to deflect his pewpewpew attempts.
Irongron wakes up and mistaikenly blames Linx for making all his mannys sleep:
"What, sorcery? Treachery! That toad Linx bewitched us all!"
He runs into the laboratory just as Linx is about to pew the Doctor and Sarah, so he gets pewed instead.
Linx goes to leave in his spaceship, but Hal comes in and shoots him in the probic vent - as we learned earlier, his one weakness. Phew, that was lucky!
The Doctor can tell from the noise that the spaceship is about to blow up, so he, Sarah and Hal run away. The spaceship blows up the castle with a tremendously poor bit of stock footage of an explosion. Outside the TARDIS, Hal says
Hal: "Goodbye. You are truly a great magician, Doctor."Doctor: "To tell you the truth, Hal, I'm not a magician at all."
...except inasmuch as his technology is sufficiently more advanced than Hal's as to be indistinguishable. But then the Doctor's technological level is matched only by the level of his pedantry. Hal is amazed by the TARDIS dematerialising, so he is probably just left thinking the Doctor is a liar as well as a magician.
What's so good about The Time Warrior?
As the first Doctor Who story be to predominantly set in a historical time period since (not counting the Atlantis scenes of The Time Monster or other stories only partially or briefly set in the past) 1967's The Abominable Snowmen, it certainly isn't the history!
The time period it is set in is only vaguely sketched through the odd line of dialogue, and is impossible to pin down precisely. The Doctor tells Rubeish it is "the early years of the middle ages" but Irongron's references to "Normans" suggest a post-conquest setting, putting it in the High Middle Ages. The king is mentioned but not named, though Sir Edward's line about "interminable wars" suggests one of the Plantagenets may be most likely, as they not only fought a lot of wars (that alone wouldn't really narrow it down) but many of those were abroad.
Robert Holmes's approach to writing history is more akin to that of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (which was in the process of being made at the same time as The Time Warrior was first broadcast), where all the mannys have dirty castles and dirty faces, unless they're a king or a time traveller.
The script's strength, therefore, is in being witty without undermining the drama or tipping over into being an outright comedy (except maybe in a few places where Sarah's feminist character trait is established in order to then be sent up - do we detect the paw of script editor Terrance Dicks in this?), and this is especially apparent in the dynamic we see between the baddys Irongron and Linx.
Robert Holmes specialised in writing memorable double-acts, such as Vorg & Shirna and Kalik & Orum who we saw in Carnival of Monsters, and Irongron & Linx certainly qualify for that too (Irongron also forms a good double-act with his henchmanny Bloodaxe in a couple of scenes). Circumstances bring them together and force them to team up and, despite one being an alien and one a manny from the middle ages, they are both bloodthirsty warriors which makes them kindred spirits in a way - shown most clearly in the times each one's dialogue unknowingly mirrors the other's. But their similar natures as baddys also mean they can never truly trust each other, and this in the end leads to both of their undoing.
No comments:
Post a Comment