DOCTOR WHO-WARRIORS' GATE part 2

 

DOCTOR WHO-WARRIORS' GATE part 2

DOCTOR: Oh, hello. You seem to have attracted a big audience.

I still love this, don't get me wrong. It's just that the editing and intention seem a bit...off track here and I never noticed before, checking out Adric as I used to, enjoying having someone I could relate to and someone who was being useful here. Romana's plan to go out and give herself up to the men seems...ill advised.

I wonder if as in Hartnell times, she and Adric could communicate to those outside and those outside could talk with those inside TARDIS? She spends most of her time here being clever and then not so much as she's stuck in a metal chair.

Similarly, while the Doctor does get more to do, K9 does not really. The scenes with the Gundans are all wrong. They sort of play like the Tom Doctor's first scene with the ROBOT in, uhm, ROBOT and are just as clunky and he might have uttered something similar to what he utters here, "I usually get on so well with machines."  I'm sure he's said this before but never mind. We learn little from them but the point is the scene should be dripping with either action or menace and while it seems to think it has both, it fails at both. The Doctor basically bows to give up and the two cut each dead and one even drops the pointy part of the ax onto the Doctor's back! This should have been a fast paced action sequence. Or a slow moving mummy horror sequence of the Doctor cornered and being stalked. Or both. It's neither. It almost doesn't work as anything to be honest.

While Adric is doing the only functional thing here, navigating his way through the void, the editing seems to have left out a lot. First, he is smart enough to use K9's ear, removing it so there is more distance between the two ears of the robot dog so that K9 can navigate again in the void. Next, we see K9, he has both ears, is separated from Adric and is in the gateway structure approaching the Doctor. Obviously bits were cut out as we can see and check no the blu ray and the DVD extras. It is then Adric uses the coin to navigate and there is an explanation for this that was cut out.

There also seems to be a trim where Rorvik and his men listen to the Gundan  recording in the gateway structure. One second they're in one place and the next shot back to them and they're somewhere else! Slightly.

Then we have the scenes with the crew. They're mildly funny and the scene with the door:

(The group enter the spaceship. Packard picks up a telephone by the main entrance.)

PACKARD: Packard here. Party aboard. Make safe the hatchway.

MAN [OC]: What?

PACKARD: Close the door.

(A door slams shut in front of Packard.)

PACKARD [OC]: After I've gone through!

It's funny and the rest are approaching mean comedians as they release or electrify another Tharil.

And the traditional DW long winded sequence of having the creature stalk about with face unseen, showing only feet and hands, really doesn't work here as it did in, say, the SILURIANS because....WE ALREADY KNOW WHAT THE THARILS LOOK LIKE! In full. There's no suspense here just a WTF moment as Romana screams and the Tharil hand covers her face? Her mouth? Cliffhanger.

Hmmm, not as good as I had hoped and the best bits are Adric in the void and they cut a lot of that! Still, it DOES make sense even with the bad editing.