What's Wrong With... The Armageddon Factor

Above, Tom starts counting the number of things wrong with the Season 16 finale...

One of the biggest issues with The Armageddon Factor is its role as the finale to a storyline that has lasted an entire season - the Key to Time. In many ways, it is this aspect of it which attracts the most criticism, rather than the plot set out by Bob Baker and Dave Martin.

As a concluding chapter, it is frustrating and unsatisfying. By simply sending all the Key segments back to where they came from, without properly explaining what the Doctor did with them, is anti-climactic.

You wonder what the point of the entire quest was.

Throughout the season, we have seen nothing of the Black Guardian or his agents. Each of the villains of the individual stories is clearly acting towards their own personal ambition - the Graff wanting to regain his throne; the Captain plotting to free himself from Xanxia, who seeks eternal life; Grendel wanting the throne of Tara; and Thawn a genocidal racist, obsessed with one small primitive (in his view) settlement.

Only Cesair might possibly be an agent - a popular fan theory - as she exploits the Key segment in her possession. For me, this doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.

If she was an agent, then why did the Black Guardian leave her with the segment for the thousand or more years she has been trapped on Earth. Why remain stuck on Earth in the first place? Would the Black Guardian really leave his agent languishing on prehistoric Earth, waiting for sausage sandwiches to be invented?

Why has the Black Guardian done nothing to get the segments for himself, or at least prevent the Doctor getting them?

The only thing that makes sense is that other fan theory: that it was the Black Guardian who sent the Doctor on his mission in the first place, disguising himself as his White counterpart.

Where was the White Guardian at the end, if it had been him who sent the Doctor?

If this is the case, however, why set up the Shadow to hinder him right at the point of success?

And if a piece of electronic equipment can identify segments of the most powerful artefact in the Universe, why not the agent of the Black Guardian? He has Astra under his nose the whole time.

If the White Guardian can stop a TARDIS in flight and divert it, why can't the equally powerful Black Guardian? Is Time Lord technology (the ship's defences) really capable of thwarting an omnipotent being?

An oddity about the latter is that the Shadow does not know what the Key segment is, since he captures the Princess and interrogates her about it.

Later, however, he suddenly knows that she is the segment.

As agents of the Supreme Evil One, he's a bit rubbish. He has various people under his power throughout - the Doctor, Romana and Astra - but never exploits the situation.

A simple light stops him getting into the TARDIS to take the Doctor's five segments. The console room is notoriously over-lit at times, but hardly floodlight strength. Why select a henchman who can't walk into a lighted room?

At the climax of the story, he stands there laughing like a lunatic for half a minute - giving everyone time to organise themselves to beat him.

If his Planet of Evil - which looks like a space-station (almost as if the designer didn't read the script) - is half way between Atrios and Zeos, why did the Atrian battle fleet not spot it, and won't it get blown up when Mentalis detonates?

If the Marshal is the military commander, why does he not know how many warships he has, or how to read a computerised battle display?

Performances vary. John Woodvine as the Marshal of Atrios is the best thing here, but he's totally side-lined in the second half, stuck in a spaceship on a video-loop. Shapps is either delightfully camp, or an annoying ham. Merak is just wet. Similarly Astra. From this performance you have to wonder what made Williams and Read think she was Companion material. 

Whilst Drax's accent is explained, you expect something more serious from a Time Lord. Why make him a Time Lord in the first place? Why not just an abducted Atrian engineer, or a Zeon allowed to live until his usefulness is over.

(And why keep him alive in the first place? As the creator of Mentalis, who knows how to deactivate it, he's a liability to the Shadow's plans).

Why leave Drax with so many tools which he could use to escape? And why has he never used any of them?

Talking of liabilities, having the Marshal say out loud his schemes in front of a mirror ain't a very clever idea.

The mind controlling devices are hardly subtle.

The Doctor and Romana discover that there's someone trapped behind the door to K-Block, yet don't mention anything to the Marshal or Shapp - even when they hear that it's potentially fatal to be in K-Block, and there's a Princess missing.

You can see the TARDIS when it's supposed to have gone missing.

Romana is surprised to learn that it wasn't the President of the High Council who sent her - despite the Doctor having already told her this.

The Doctor is surprised to see K-9 spin round, claiming he's never seen him to this before. Yet he did it in The Pirate Planet only four stories ago.

Lastly, if Astra was reconstituted, were all the other segments returned in the same way? The folks on Zanak will get a terrible shock if Callufrax were to pop back into being...