N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!
Michael Gough really deserves better than to be reduced to the kind of frantic hand-wafting that wouldn’t seem out of place in the ‘Diabolical Acting’ bit of the Spanish Inquisition sketch. This is not the first time Gough has been ill-served by Doctor Who although it’s fair to say that Arc of Infinity isn’t anywhere near as tough a slog as The Celestial Toymaker.
“It’s just a question of time.”
Castellan, Arc of Infinity: Part Three
Were Doctor Who fans really crying out for the return of Omega? I wasn’t a Target novelisation reader in my youth, but I don’t remember thinking during The Five Faces of Doctor Who that it’d be great if that ‘shouty guy’ (as my son described him) comes back. I have nothing against either Ian Collier’s or Stephen Thorne’s performances as Omega — sometimes though, it’d be nice if one-off villains remained one-off.
As with City of Death, the streets of a major European city make for far more interesting corridors than we usually get; even though the chase goes on a bit in Part Four, it’s worth it for the scenery and for Peter Davison’s excellent performance as Omega. The quality of the Amsterdam scenes is even more apparent here when contrasted with those set on Gallifrey. The Doctor’s home planet seems such a drab pokey place, it’s not hard to see why he left. And after its extraordinary first appearance in The Deadly Assassin, the matrix now appears to be simply a very buoyant void.
Colin Baker does his best to liven things up as the ever-eager-to-kill Commander Maxil and the aforementioned Michael Gough is excellent in those scenes where more than just his pen can be seen (and his barely disguised voice heard), but it does feel as though the Time Lords spend all their money on clothing and uniforms and very little on decor these days.
Unless I dozed off somewhere and missed it, it’s not really made clear how long it’s been since the Doctor and Nyssa have seen Tegan, not even when they have time to catch their breath at the end of the story. I kept waiting for a hint from Nyssa or the Doctor that it’d been months since they’d been at Heathrow or a ‘Why did you leave without saying goodbye, you drongo?’ from Tegan.
In a way, it’s a shame that this story is all we get to see of the Doctor and Nyssa travelling alone — they do work very well together as a team. The Doctor would appear to think so too. As wittier bloggers than I have said, the look on his face when Tegan says she rejoining is priceless.
Before starting this marathon, there were only three Fifth Doctor stories I remember thinking weren’t much cop. Thankfully we’ve got two of them out of the way back-to-back!
