The keeper of Traken (1981)
Review
DVD review
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Review
This is a four-part serial, first broadcast between 31st January - 21st February 1981. A brief and somewhat spoiler-ish summary of the plot: summoned by the Keeper the Doctor and Adric travel to Traken, where they discover an old enemy...
Potentially, there's a lot to like about this serial:
- Tom Baker as the Doctor and Anthony Ainley as Tremas are excellent in this, showing us that the latter - spoiler ahead, though the cat's going to be already out of the bag for most people - may not have been entirely to blame for his over-the-top performance as the Master
- the serial does a good bit of world-building, and manages to do it without resorting to an exposition overload
- the art nouveau sets and the neo-Elizabethan costumes are beautiful
- there are some witty bits of dialogue between the Doctor and Adric
Nevertheless, the serial leaves me mostly respectfully bored. The things that bother me - and beware, there are spoilers ahead:
- the story doesn't make a great deal of sense. How has the Master been able to remain his evil self in a world where all evil is supposed to shrivel up and die? How is he able to corrupt Kassia, a prominent citizen of Traken, and how is she, in turn, able to trick her fellow citizens into performing arguably evil acts? Though the explanation might be that the Master's arrival caused Traken's defences against evil to break down, I guess that the real problem is that there's actually no such thing as a world without evil
- apart from Tremas, who is a well-rounded character, we get little sense of who the people of Traken are or why they do the things they do. This is most apparent in Kassia's case. The reason given for her falling under the Master-disguised-as-Melkur's spell - she's afraid that her husband Tremas will become the next Keeper of Traken and thus be lost to her - makes no sense, since her fascination with the Melkur started long before her marriage to Tremas and she has no reason to believe that the Melkur will be able to stop Tremas from becoming Keeper. There are hints of other possible motivations, like compassion becoming obsession or fascination with evil in a world that knows only good, but the story doesn't explore them
- the sets are beautiful but never feel like spaces that people live and work in, events that are supposed to take place outside are obviously filmed indoors, and a great deal of the story is being 'told' rather than 'shown'. All this gives the serial a static, theatrical feel that makes it difficult to suspend disbelief
- suspense of disbelief also isn't helped by some extremely bad visual effects, most notably the 'eyes' painted on Kassia's eyelids and the beams emanating from the Melkur's eyes
My verdict:
It might have worked. It didn't.
DVD review
This serial is included on the 'New beginnings' boxset. Review:
Doctor Who: New beginnings
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An introduction:
Doctor Who reviews: introduction
More "interesting" Doctor Who:
Doctor Who reviews: interesting
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Doctor Who reviews: 1974 - 1981
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Doctor Who reviews: space opera
Original version of this review:
07/03/19
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BBC Cult
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Outpost Gallifrey
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