Arc Of Infinity: Ranking - 237

 Arc Of Infinity

(Season 20, Dr 5 with Tegan and Nyssa, 3-12/1/1983, producer: John Nathan-Turner, script editor: Eric Saward, director: Ron Jones) 

Rank: 237

'So Omega, founder of timelords, this is your life! And who do we have appearing on the show tonight? Lots and lots of famous timelords. First its the Doctor, remember how you tried to kill him? Four of him to be exact! Then there's Councillor Hedin...Oh wait, he died as a traitor protecting you didn't he? Well, you must have some friends kicking about the universe. What no? Only a vegetable has less friends than you! How about family? Yes that's right, all the way from a parallel dimension, your Aunty Matter! What, antimatter? I read that wrong and we're all going to die if it comes into contact with us?...Oops. That was the last in the current series folks.' 

Now that so much is known and so many books have been written about Dr Who you can play a fun game called 'when did the lead actor decide to pack it in?' For Troughton I suspect it was when he was being shouted at by Playschool's Brian Cant in ginormous shoulder pads while a child in a box made squeaking noises at him. For Jon Pertwee it may have been when he was face-to-face with a rubber Brontosaurus that looked at least an epoch past its best. For Tom Baker it may have been the hours he spent in make-up being dressed up to look like a giant cactus. I think my favourite moment is in this story though, when revered actor Peter Davison, already in two minds about staying on after some advice about getting too comfortable and typecast in the role handed to him in the BBC car park by none other than Troughton himself, is asked to parade about Amsterdam covered inbrakfast cereal and green goo. Back in 1983 Dr Who had never been shown in Holland. Nobody walking the streets (which weren’t fenced off from the public or anything) had a clue what was going on or why a random English police telephone box had materialised out of nowhere on their streets. But they did know Peter Davison thanks to his work on ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ which had been a big local hit, so the public kept stopping him to ask for his autograph and inquiring if he was well as he really didn’t seem to be himself (was it, perhaps, some rare bovine infection like mad cow disease for an upcoming All Creatures special? After all Dutch TV was still a little behind showing episodes and didn’t know that filming had been finished). You can imagine Peter desperately trying to explain the series format quickly and that he was really being attacked from an outside source in an anti-matter universe that had used his bio-lock to home in on him and was using his body as a temporary vehicle in this world, thanks to the magnetic properties of a qantam star the curve of which happened to end in Amsterdam and whose electro-magnetic pulses shielded the effects of anti-matter which would normally implode on contact with our universe – and suddenly found himself wishing for simpler times (you have no idea how many times I’ve watched this story to work out what was happening in this story– and that’s form a fan!) Or maybe it was back in the studio when Peter first came across the Ergon, a giant space chicken that either looks like Big Bird from Sesame Street and Skeleton from Superted had a love child or Rod Hull and Emu stuck together, something that even Omega calls 'one of my less successful experiments' (you don't say!) Or maybe it was being covered in dry ice for a scene in the Matrix where the Doctor is brought back from near-death which had to be filmed over and over for technical delays, despite the fact the poor actor was freezing. Last time Dr Who went abroad into Paris in ‘City Of Death’ it felt like one of those golden holidays everyone talks about which somehow was captured on film in everyone’s photosnaps. ‘Arc Of Infinity’ is one of those package deals where you had such a miserable time you’d rather forget it ever happened. 

 A lot of fans feel that way about ‘Arc Of Infinity’, one of those Dr Who stories that’s seen as a lot of promising ideas that never quite comes together. Compared to some other horror-shows its rather harder to work out why this particular one doesn’t work through. The giant space chicken certainly doesn’t help, but nothing else about this story goes particularly badly and it seems like a story worth trying: the Doctor fighting for his life against a dangerous foe with the backdrop of his own people who aren’t too fussed if he lives or dies. What’s odd is the discrepancy between what’s on the printed word and what ends up on screen. In the novel and in the script everything seems urgent, breathless and at least mildly exciting: the Doctor’s collapse is swift and sudden and once the Tardis has been pulled towards Gallifrey he knows he’s likely walking towards his execution. Meanwhile there’s a mysterious figure not quite of this realm that even a timelord is scared of, sitting in the shadows and barking orders. Throw in some scenery from Amsterdam and it ought to be thrilling. Instead it’s a yawnfest. It’s hard to work out why it isn’t. It’s not the actors who are giving their all, nor the direction which is as punchy as 1980s TV ever is, short compact scenes and quick cuts. But watching it just looks like a lot of people spouting scientific technical jargon while some dude we can’t see properly sits in a big chair and talks and talks and talks. It’s as if the antimatter of the programme’s faults has cancelled out the things it gets right so that we end up with a story that’s best described as average instead. 

 Let’s start with the script. Originally writer Johnny Byrne (who’d worked with Peter Davison on ’All Creatures Great and Small’, so really ought to know that his description of an Ergon would just end up looking like a big chicken) had come up with a standalone story about Neman, a being from an antimatter universe who found the easiest way to come into ours was by attacking a time sensitive like a timelord at a point when they were at their weakest post-regeneration (this being a story submitted for season 19 when the 5th Doctor was new),before spreading to take over the minds of whatever race inhabited the planet the Doctor happened to be on (which was Earth, naturally). A lot of the story revolved around Byrne’s own creation Nyssa and her Traken sense of telepathy and intuition which allowed her to sense evil, getting the Doctor out of trouble just in time. Script editor Eric Saward liked most of it but wanted a more scientific threat than the shadowy, more cerebral feel of the original (which felt more like Byrne’s earlier story ‘The Keeper Of Traken’) so the script was re-worked from scratch to include Saward’s own pet theory about antimatter universes and the ‘arc of infinity’ itself, which by Byrne’s own admission he didn’t really understand at all. Then, in the midst of preparing season 20, someone (probably fan consultant Ian Levine but other people have claimed the idea) pointed out that as it was Dr Who’s 20th anniversary year how glad they were that so many foes were returning, all except in this story which seemed a bit odd now as a season opener. So Byrne was asked to go back and start again, producer John Nathan-Turner giving him a list of classic monsters and villains to choose from a shortlist to replace Neman; it was definitely Ian’s suggestion to have Omega on that list given that it was already established that he lived in an anti-matter universe in ‘The Three Doctors’ and that a sequel ten years on would be fitting. Byrne, who knew little about Dr Who folklore, wasn’t fussed who it was and went with Omega because he seemed easiest to slide back into the plot. Then just as another draft was completed JNT rang him up and asked him if he’d do yet another re-write because he’d been looking at the budget and figured he could afford to have a location shoot in Amsterdam. Not wanting to change too much of his precious script again, Byrne kind of fudged the background and left a big hole in the fourth episode for a runaround in Holland to be filled in by the production team, depending on what they were allowed to shoot regarding crowds, policing and weather. Byrne probably naturally assumed he’d be asked for another re-write anyway to add something stupid (like Kylie Minogue, a talking tree or a burping wheely bin) – but as it happened that ended up being the finished version of the script. It still feels a little unfinished. 

 The result is a lot of good ideas (most of them from the original draft) that come unstuck because of the amount of re-writing that needs to go on to explain Omega’s background, the scientific jargon and include at least some small reasons why we’re in The Netherlands at all (it is, apparently, because Amsterdam is so far under the water table and the arc of infinity is stronger there – that’s why Omega first materialises in an underground crypt). I have a hard time following this plot and the excuses given to cover up all the plotholes caused by the re-writes and I have spent more waking hours thinking about Dr Who than by rights I should. I can totally see why the general public tuned in and then just as quickly tuned out again, put off by all the technical jargon and the fact everyone has to pause for breath to explain what’s going on instead of getting on with running up and down corridors (even more so as this story was picked as the opener of the season, to capitalise on the expense of all the location filming).Despite the amount of scientific language going on we still never get a decent answer for why the Doctor’s bio-lock is the only one that fits with Omega’s, why the renegade timelord on the High Council throws in his lot with a figure who only exists in negative and why out of all the planets in the universe Omega happens to choose ours. It doesn’t help that Byrne really doesn’t understand the timelords at all: while people say the rot starts with ‘the Invasion Of Time’ I say its this story that reduces them from being the most powerful beings in the cosmos to an intergalactic county council, squabbling and back-stabbing each other instead of living up to their responsibilities and billing.

 That said, it’s not hopeless. Byrne has a rare gift for character and it feels as if we get to know both the 5th Doctor and Nyssa better than ever. Nyssa is no surprise given that Byrne created her and was very fond of her (legend has it he agreed to write a second script for Dr Who because he was worried other writers hadn’t got her quite ‘right’). Her calm, quiet nature usually means she’s overlooked with so many noisier figures in the Tardis but she’s at home in this story in a way Tegan, Turlough or Adric could never be, used to a world of ancient traditions and people pontificating in funny hats. There’s the all time greatest Nyssa moment when she, of all people, gets so angry with the timelords she pulls a gun on them and all but forces them to stop their execution of the Doctor: if this had been any other character (and for a draft or two it was hoped that to feature a returning Leela in a cameo, given that she lived on Gallifrey now, till Louise Jameson made it quite clear she wouldn’t be coming back – this was written for her originally) then this scene would just be the noisier, shoutier Dr Who companions doing their usual thing. But this is Nyssa, the character who understands more than anyone just how unprecedented it is in a world like this for someone to start holding people up at gunpoint as if it was a local corner shop. Some fans say its out of character, but as well as being timid and gentile Nyssa is also loyal and in the minutes before she bumps into Tegan again and as an orphan, the Doctor is the only person she has left in the universe. She’s desperate like never before and even with all the horrors thrown at her (including her near-death in ‘Terminus’) we never see her quite so unruffled again. It makes her feel more ‘real’, at least temporarily. 

 Peter Davison also gets to be dashing and heroic in a way his Doctor’s never really been allowed to be before. Like the 2nd Doctor, the 5th is one that’s always on the outskirts of the action, on-looking before stepping in to save things at the end rather than meddling from the second the Tardis lands as the 3rd or 4th Doctors would. That character trait means that, more often than not, this regeneration is pushed into a corner (a lot of the time the corner of a prison cell), trying to get people to listen to him without having the natural charisma or leadership of a Tom Baker to make himself heard. ‘Arc Of Infinity’, though, is a plot that centres around the Doctor like never before since Peter Davison took over the role and gives him more chances than usual to shine. Although it’s while playing the decayed, fragmenting Omega that Davison gets some of his best scenes in the series: his Doctor is usually in control at all times (some would even say bland) but Omega is pushed to breaking point. Davison doesn’t get many lines as Omega and has to deliver that haunted feel with his limp and his eyes, but he’s totally believable running around Amsterdam on fumes as a figure who thought he would never ever get to feel the cool breeze on his skin or be amongst people again. Davison really needed a lot more scenes like this one to get his teeth into and sadly he won’t till the grand finale ‘Caves Of Androzani’ when it’s the Doctor whose collapsing on his feet. 

 Omega, too, is well catered for. Having said ‘yes’ in principle to Omega, Byrne went back to see the video of ‘The Three Doctors’ but found to his horror that he’d picked one of the most ranty, shouty villains in all of Who (so opposite to his subtler, gentler style). Rather than recreate that again Byrne decided to ‘regenerate’ Omega, to bring out the same massive ego and frustration so that he remained recognisable as the same character from ten years earlier but make him sad rather than just mad. Actor Ian Collier could have still delivered the lines the same way anyway, but he picks up on the melancholy in the script and gives Omega Two the feeling of a man trying hard to be patient this time, whose still prone to temper tantrums when things go wrong but who is just grateful at any chance to be alive. By the end of the story you care for Omega in a whole way you didn’t the first time – his story is a tragic one where his only choice is suffering or permanent death, rather than triumphant gloating, where he puts whole swathes of people in danger in a last ditch attempt to save himself rather than simply because he can. Originally the script made much play of how similar the Doctor and Omega are, renegade timelords their own people never quite understand and too restless and impatient to cope with all that bowing and scraping and wearing funny colours when there’s a whole universe out there to see. The script even calls on him to be ‘young and blonde’ when glimpsed under his helmet (and Ian Collier isn’t: he’s Stuart the scientist in ‘the Time Monster’ if you want to know what he really looks like without all the makeup, green paint and Rice Krispies). 

 Byrne is less successful at writing for Tegan, but then she was a very last minute addition to the script. It had never been intended for her to leave the series for long when she left at the end of ‘Timeflight’, the Doctor having finally got her back home to Heathrow Airport via the scenic route of the Jurassic era. However it was maybe not the original plan to bring her back this quickly. The script struggles to slot her in alongside the setting, eventually settling for having her on holiday and aiming to meet up with her cousin Colin as a way to cheer herself up after losing her job as an air hostess (which seems an odd thing to do if she’s suddenly lost a reliable income, but hey ho; surely it would have been easier to have her working and getting stranded in Holland, so setting off to explore the local sights). Her cousin just happens to choose the night Omega comes back to sleep in the exact cavern that Omega and his space-chicken return in, even though as we see a few minutes later there’s a perfectly good youth hostel down the road he and his friend Robin have pre-booked with no problem. Oh – and he’s almost the only person alive related to a time traveller who knows the Doctor. What are the odds?!? With those statistics Tegan should play the lottery. Except once again she ends up being one of the unluckiest companions around: until the modern series most regular characters had never lost a relative on screen through one of their adventures, but now Tegan has two in danger (following the death of her Aunty Vanessa in ‘Logopolis’) and in her haste to rejoin the Tardis at the end doesn’t even hang around to check poor Colin’s alright or explain what happened to her Aunty and Uncle (if Colin is indeed on Aunty Vanessa’s side of the family then they are definitely cursed in some way; the same goes with her grandfather Andrew Verney who pops up in ‘The Awakening’ and though he’s unharmed must be shaken by the Malus devil coming to lie in his sleepy English village). There’s just no reason for Tegan to be here, at this moment, except that the next story along ‘Snakedance’ needs her to be back on board The Tardis, so return she does. Even though Amsterdam seems the last place someone like Tegan would be, especially so close to the red light district (though given the way our ‘Welsh’ Torchwood behave there’s probably another Torchwood hub in Amsterdam just round the corner, which would explain a lot about how the arc of infinity works). There is, though, one good thing about Tegan in this story: for maybe the first time in the series (a single letter from Jo aside) we get to see the impact of a life without the Doctor and what happens to someone we care about after the Tardis leaves them behind, Tegan talking about how much she regrets walking out on everyone – ‘Arc’ is basically a trial run for Donna’s return in ‘Partners In Crime’. 

 Byrne struggles to fit Tegan into the plot but hasn’t a clue how Amsterdam might fit so barely tries. JNT had been trying to do more location filming for a while and had been intrigued to read about the fun time soap-opera ‘Triangle’ had filming there and how easy it was (JNT really did love his soaps). After nearly an entire season negotiating with Heathrow over the one day of filming with Concorde for ‘Timeflight’ he wanted something easier all round and found to his joy that the Amsterdam tourist board couldn’t have been more helpful: though they’d honestly never heard of the series they were quite happy for these eccentric Englishman to run around Amsterdam with breakfast cereals on their faces if that’s what the BBC really wanted. What’s more they would happy to help with accommodation and show off their magnificent local hotspots (and maybe some British holidaymakers would be intrigued and not too put off by the fact a fictional antimatter portal was in the heart of their city). Better still it was cheap – as cheap as the trip to Paris for ‘City Of Death’ had been anyway. No one else was quite as happy. The mood in the cast and crew wasn’t as joyous as it had been when Graham Williams and party had set off to film round the Eiffel Tower. Most of the cast privately thought the ideas was stupid. Eric Saward, particularly, hated Holland – he’d lived there for three years in his younger days and never wanted to go back again. Byrne was just confused: none of his script lent itself to Holland and he’d done the usual reliable Dr Who writer thing of trying to keep sets and costs down to a minimum, so why was the producer splashing out now unnecessarily? The reason was simply that the producer had a bee in his bonnet about making the show look as if a lot of money had been splashed on it and none of the other stories ‘fitted’: ‘Snakedance’ was clearly an in-studio kind of a story, ‘Terminus’ was set in outer space so couldn’t exactly be shot ‘on location’ whilst ‘Mawdryn Undead’ had set location filming all of its own (though a parallel world version of ‘Enlightenment’, shot on an actual Edwardian sailing ship, could have been fun). Byrne was also advised not to write scripts based around anything that might be controversial: so no sex (despite the red light district being right there), no drug or diamond smuggling and no stealing of Old Masters (because that would make this story a little too much like ‘City Of Death’). So what did that leave as Dutch colour exactly? Killer tulips? Eurovision? A windmill that was bigger on the inside? The Anne Frank Museum? 

 In the end Byrne wrote in the sort of scenery that could have been filmed anywhere and left a lot of episode four blank, to be filled in by director Ron Jones and against the odds it’s the best bit of the story by far: Omega-as-the-Doctor is struggling to hold on to his body so much that after three and a half episodes of ranting and sighing he’s lost the power of speech, looking in awe at the world around him. The best scene has him silently watching a calliope and laughing with the children, unaware that they’re looking at him oddly as adults don’t do that sort of thing, and the improvised smile of a little boy who befriends him is a neat touch. Omega, who never thought this day would ever come, smiles back (whether by design or coincidence, just like a little girl befriended by Frankenstein’s Monster in a 1950s adaptation). Omega, the most corrupted, unalive being in our universe, holding his body together by sheer willpower, suddenly gets to be a child again and experience our universe with the sort of awe that gets lost behind adulating, gas bills, alarm clocks and traffic jams. No it doesn’t need to be in Holland whatsoever (it could just as well have been in the road outside television centre) but it’s still one of the most affecting moments in the story and in the 5th Doctor’s run as a whole. 

 The rest of the story is a bit less successful. All the scheming timelord scenes already seemed old hat even the fourth time visiting this planet in 1983 and this is a particularly unappealing bunch of all-powerful beings. Borusa has changed faces again but apparently personalities too, the Doctor’ s old teacher having almost nothing in common with the tour de force of ‘The Invasion Of Time’. The mystery over who might be doing this to the Doctor by stealing his bio-data from the Matrix and helping Omega is one of the easiest mysteries in the series to solve, for all that they keep the actor in the shadows: there are only five people on the High Council that have access to the data files – one of them’s Borusa, one of them’s a woman. That leaves two people we don’t really know and Councillor Hedin, whose so obsequious he might as well have ‘collaborator’ stamped on his forehead. Plus Michael Gough might be speaking in an electronically treated way to make his vocals sound all squeaky but he still has such a distinctive voice it can’t possibly be anyone else (it was quite a coup for the series to get him back, a full seventeen years after playing ‘The Celestial Toymaker’ opposite William Hartnell and so soon after divorcing his third wife Anneke Wills when you would have thought the associations with her most famous role (‘Polly’) would have been a bit too close to home). There’s another brief mystery too about who this returning villain might be, with him listed in the end credits simply as ‘renegade’ during the first two episodes before the ‘big reveal’, but Ian Levine wasn’t the only person who thought Omega was an obvious choice – a person the timelords knew and who lived in an antimatter universe? There aren’t many candidates for that one really. It might have worked better had they given biolink access to Commander Maxil too as he’s such an obvious baddy you wonder if they’re double-bluffing. He’s a man whose everything timelords are that the Doctor isn’t, one of those jobsworths who love rules and regulations so much that they follow them to the letter without mercy. Colin Baker, at this stage of his career most famous for playing baddies in ‘War and Peace’ and ‘The Brothers’, is an obvious candidate for the role, although it was Assistant Floor Manager Lynn Richards who put his name forward when they were having problems casting him, picking up on how similar the part was to ‘Bayban The Butcher’ as seen in Who’s ‘sister’ programme ‘Blake’s 7’ (she clearly had a soft spot for Colin, as it was as a guest at her wedding a few months later that he so impressed another guest, JNT, with his ability to hold an audience spellbound with tales of his acting life, that he was offered the part of the Doctor himself in another couple of years when Peter Davison moved on). Baker had great fun with a part that called on him to actually shoot the Doctor in the first episode cliffhanger (talk about trying to get the job!) and tickled pink that more money had been spent on his hat than him, only it wouldn’t fit on his head and allow him to fit through the set doors, so in order for the cameras to get their money’s worth he had to hold it under his arm like a chicken (he nicknamed it ‘Esmerelda’, causing much hilarity at rehearsals). 

 Funny how chickens comes up a lot when talking about this series. If the writing was weakened by re-writes then the special effects truly are abysmal. The Ergon is one of those aliens that was never going to work on a low budget series like Dr Who in a month of Saturday teatimes (everyone had the ‘alien’ alien in mind – you know the one, it comes out of the future War Doctor John Hurt’s tummy - but they had a whacking big Hollywood budget and prosthetics for that). He’s Dr Who’s Jar Jar Binks in looks and reasoning both: its hard to believe that that many clever and talented people (right down to the voice artist) signed off on an idea that almost everyone seeing it for the first time sat down and went ‘well, that’s just stupid!’ What’s worse is that the Ergon really doesn’t need to be there at all: the plot would function just as well if Omega had materialised in ‘our’ world first time or taken over a dog or something, we didn’t need a malformed alien. If anything it makes Omega look like a pretty limp kind of super villain if that’s the best he can come up with. The shots of the Ergon doing manual labour with its spindly arms and silly feet are some of the silliest in all of Dr Who (not least because it’s also the first race since The Sensorites who look to all the world as if its wearing slippers). It’s not just that though: for such a high-tech race the timelords don’t half have some low-tech equipment, while the shots of the Doctor caught in the Matrix, which should be other-worldly and ethereal, are just some wobbly lines added by computer and Peter Davison shimmering while obviously held up by wires. Most of the money seems to have been spent on Omega’s redesigned helmet, which was planned up until the first recording block to flash lights on and off in synch with Ian Collier’s voice. Only it didn’t work. Instead it looks to all the world as if one of the most powerful beings the universe has ever known has a crash helmet stuck on his head he can’t get off. The only special effect that feels in any way, well, special is the simplest one, with the negative reversed so that anti-matter Omega looks like one of those photo reels before its been developed when black and white are the ‘wrong’ way round. 

 There’s a nice sort of half theme running through this story that I wish had been highlighted a bit more, about whether the end ever justifies the means, something that crops up a lot throughout this story, a sort of ‘Omega’s Choice’ about what the best decision to make is for the most amount of people. Obviously Omega’s the ‘monster’, but what he wants isn’t control over the universe (whatever they think back on Gallifrey) but to live again, something he’s been denied for so long by events that weren’t his fault. From his point of view Gallifrey wouldn’t exist without him, so surely they owe him something – the life of just one timelord? Given that he could destroy the universe if he doesn’t get his way most logical people would have given in and handed him a single life to inhabit, including the timelords who are happy to execute the Doctor without question if it keeps them and their loved ones safe. But that’s not the way Dr Who works. This is a (relatively) fair and just world so nobody innocent can be allowed to sacrifice themselves, including the Doctor. Equally you could argue that the Doctor’s interfering makes a bad situation worse and puts potentially everyone in the universe in danger by making his link with our universe unstable. Had he meekly gone along with Omega he might have saved more lives in the end at the cost of just his. But the Doctor isn’t meant to think like that. He’s meant to try to save everybody up to the point where they can’t be saved, whatever they’d done, with the overall message that there’s always another opportunity if you survive long enough to save everyone. Elsewhere normally Nyssa turning a gun on people would be the moment we dislike a Dr Who character but instead its a moment that makes us cheer because we know how many people will live if these people don’t do what she says (and killing a person, even a timelord, to save a world when they’re being obnoxious and obstinate seems like fair odds). It’s like those diagrams of ‘would you change the train track to kill less people/more people who were going to live less long anyway/leave it up to fate’ and the story can’t decide which way Dr Who feels is ‘right’. Alas, in the end we get the worst possible ending, when the Doctor of all people, in this of all stories, shoots this of all ‘baddies’, with a gun. Yes Omega begs the Doctor to kill him and put him out of his misery once he knows he’s unstable and can’t live, but it all feels so ‘wrong’ – far better would have been to have Omega sacrifice himself (thus solving the dilemma by deciding that no life has the right to take over another life) or if they didn’t want to do that then to perhaps colossally misunderstand the human body and inhabit the carcass of someone already dead or dying. 

 Some nice ideas then, but ultimately it’s all a bit of a muddle – and what’s more, it’s a rather boring muddle, a very talky script that hangs together mostly because of the strong cast performances and whacking great coincidences that nobody comments on. This is a promising commission that really should have been given over to someone else. Gallifrey just isn’t a place that suits Byrne’s strengths as writer. He’s all fairytale and abstract concepts, not scheming and technology. Had they stuck by his original ideas of forewarnings and telepathy it could have been great. Had they let him run around in the matrix rather than Robert Holmes’ distinctly odd go in ‘The Deadly Assassin’ we could have had a classic, but instead there’s a producer and script editor leaning over his shoulder asking him for more scientific jargon he doesn’t really understand and returning characters he doesn’t know set in a location he’s never visited in his life. Had Byrne been given a chance to start again from scratch he might have manoeuvred all the right pieces into the right places, but you feel he’s running catch up all the way through just to fit any of these pieces in any order at all. Even once the script went before the cameras too many things went wrong: there’s just too much talking, too many wonky special effects and too many longeurs when nothing’s happening so that episodes 1-3 fall flatter than an Androgum pancake, with only episode 4 bringing all the disparate parts together (and even that ends woefully badly, in the worst possible resolution a story like that could have). Michael Gough, Ian Collier and Colin Baker between them make for formidable foes and the regulars get some nice moments all the way through, so this ought to be one of those stories that overcomes all the things going wrong just by sheer force of personality, but it never quite does. In theory this story should have a lot going for it, a chilling showdown with a much improved baddy pushing the Doctor to his limits and even taking over his body, against the backdrop of the people he’s been running from all his lives now chasing him because they want him dead. In practice it's a lot of men in funny suits standing around talking, with a big climax that involves revered actor Peter Davison stumbling around Amsterdam with rice krispies on his face. Episode one is still the only Dr Who story to ever go out on a Monday (because they were still playing around with the bi-weekly format in this era before settling on Tuesdays and Thursdays). That’s exactly what it feels like: this ought to be a weekend special, a riot of colour and spectacle to end the week on a high; instead it’s a drab Monday morning that never quite loses that feeling of grogginess and disorientation or panic that you still have so much of the working week to get through to wade through before you can start having fun again. The worst thing about ‘Arc Of Infinity’ is the rather random story acrs and the fact that it really does feel as if it lasts an infinity- or longer. 

 POSITIVES + One aspect I wish they’d worked on more was the link between the Doctor and Omega, the idea of them being two parts of the same coin, one in this world and one in the antimatter world and how, in a parallel dimension, that could be the Doctor stranded in an another universe trying to get home (even more so now ‘The Timeless Children’ presumably means he was alive somewhere in Omega’s day). Even more than The Master, Omega is The Doctor’s equal but unlike The Master he’s actually more like the Doctor than his opposite, someone who wants to be involved in the universe rather than removed from it (which is quite reasonable really, given that he sort-of created it). There’s much more of a sense of Omega as a person this time around, someone whom in any other circumstances the Doctor would admire – indeed, he still does, even when he’s about to be murdered, which is what makes Omega’s loss later all the harder when it comes. As it stands there’s no particular reason why it has to be the Doctor’s bio-link out of all Gallifrey: Omega sounds surprised, if pleased, when Hedin makes the choice for him (the plot would make a lot more sense if Omega had somehow kept the Doctor’s DNA from the last adventure intact, perhaps from the 2nd Doctor’s recorder, and been plotting revenge ever since. As an extra point, if the bio=link is the timelord equivalent of DNA then its notable that it doesn’t seem to change from regeneration to regeneration. Presumably the Doctor keeps the same fingerprints and eye retinas as well). 

NEGATIVES – Roger Limb is one of those composers who can enhance or destroy stories with a flick of his synthesiser. His work on 1984’s magical adaptation of ‘Box Of Delights’ (starring Patrick Troughton) is sublime, some of the best incidental music on TV, all other-worldly alien-ness and Edwardiana. This soundtrack though is just a mess. Everything the script says is punctuated seconds later by a corny riff or a coda it doesn’t need so that it quickly becomes irritating. 

 BEST QUOTE: ‘You know how it is. You put things off for a day, next thing you know it’s a hundred years later’.