My biggest problem with this story is not the horribly crap monster costume, nor all the awful technobabble, nor the inane idea to try to do the entire freakin Atlantis story in just 1 1/2 episodes...
It's that this story is set in a parallel universe where the phrase "groovy" and women's lib coexist. Screw the old UNIT debate as to whether these stories take place in the 70s or the 80s, I want to know whether these stories take place in the 60s or the 70s!
And yes, the women's lib thing is handled horribly. If you want to make Lady Scientist Whose Name I've Forgotten And Whose Only Plot-Relevant Purpose Is To Be Duped By The Master seem smart and liberated, then why on Earth would you pair her with Stu? No disrespect to Ian Collier, but Stu is not a character many of us menfolk would really want to be. His entire shtick is he's a bumbling coward who says very silly things.
EPISODES ONE and TWO:
So anyway, at the Institute Whose Only Plot-Relevant Purpose Is To Be Duped By The Master, the Master is hard at work trying to summon an ancient demon/god/monster "Chronovore" named, appropriately, Chronos. (Chronos, Cronos, see what they did there? Now they can bring in cod-Greeks.) He's doing this with the aid of a machine called TOMTIT and a magic crystal that can only be moved if it's not linked in time with its earlier self. Um, whatever that means.
EPISODE THREE:
Anyway, Chronos is manifested as a giant white bird-thing that looks for all the world like someone wrapped up in toilet paper and suspended from a wire. Hooray. The Master locks it in a room, which begs the question of why he wants to summon the thing in the first place, if four walls can hold it so easily, and then he drains it into the crystal, again, somehow. TOMTIT is the sonic screwdriver in this story; it does whatever the plot demands that it do.
The Master also gets up to shenanigans by unleashing a knight, some Roundheads and a doodlebug (look them up) on UNIT. Because again TOMTIT can do anything, but it apparently can't summon warriors from the future. At least in The War Games they provided some sort of explanation for why there weren't any soldiers from the First Earth-Draconia War involved. He's briefly hampered by the Doctor's newest invention, an automatic mobile constructed from a wine bottle and a cup of tea. But not for long because he does some stuff and the Doctor's new toy explodes. Then the Master takes the crystal and heads off to Atlantis. Um, because.
EPISODE FOUR:
The Doctor gives chase in his TARDIS, despite the fact that it's currently disabled by the Time Lords and won't be operational again until the end of the next serial, while meanwhile Lady Scientist and Stu manage to turn Sgt. Benton into a baby, because that entire episode was mindless, senseless, oh-God-please-just-let-the-credits-roll-now filler. The Doctor and the Master teleconference for a while before the Master sics Chronos on the Doctor. But this cliffhanger is quickly resolved by Jo pressing a button, and soon both TARDISes land in Atlantis, at the beginning of the fifth episode.
This serial started with a nightmare of the Doctor's; he's in a room in Atlantis and the Master is laughing at him. Yet in reality, neither he nor the Master ever visits this set. Which is sad, because it looks so grandiose on film. The Atlantis set from the videotaped studio sessions is bland and overlit, and a column visibly wobbles during the Minotaur sequence (less than half an hour after Barry Letts calmly insists, in the commentary track, that there were no wobbly sets during his time on Doctor Who).
EPISODE FIVE:
There's all sorts of inane political machinations going on in Atlantis, but the Master allies himself with Queen Cleavage (not her real name, but her most distinguishing feature after her accent) to overthrow the King Played By The Same Actor Who Will Go On To Be The Doctor's Mentor In Planet Of The Spiders. Meanwhile the Doctor and Jo fight Darth Vader with a bull's head. It's a stupid and pointless scene that only exists because they needed a cliffhanger - in other words, it's exactly as sad as the previous one.
EPISODE SIX:
The Doctor and Jo are arrested, and the Doctor does his famous sermon about the blackest day of his life (New Series fans take note). But then the King dies, and Queen Cleavage is all upset about this, despite the fact that she helped overthrow him, offscreen. The Master unleashes Chronos on Atlants, which may or may not destroy it. Then he runs off in his TARDIS, taking Jo hostage. But Jo activates a time-ram (explained two episodes ago, it seems like this involves materializing two TARDISes in the exact same spot, as opposed to one inside the other) and she and the two Time Lords end up in a void...
And then half of Jo disappears, because her outfit is the same as the CSO backdrop. Oops. Chronos turns out to be a girl who lets the Doctor go on his way for some reason. The Doctor pleads for the Master's life (presumably to put a stop to the only embarassing performance Roger Delgado ever gave - the Master beseeching the Doctor for mercy has to be seen to be believed), and Chronos lets him live. The Master escapes, obviously, and the Doctor and Jo return just in time to see the comedy scientists turn Benton back into his older self. His older, apparently naked, self. Even though we'd just seen a shot of the baby sitting on Benton's uniform.
And on that comedic note, this farce comes to an end.
The plot almost just manages to hold together until Episode Six, when suddenly everything has to be resolved and virtually nothing gels with what we've previously seen. This is particularly inane as we know that Episode Six was actually the third episode written, and that Three, Four and Five came afterwards.
If this serial is remembered for anything positive, it's the Doctor's "daisiest daisey" sermon about the blackest day of his life. And yet, if that had been cut in favor of maybe just a tad more exposition about, oh, what the Master was trying to accomplish, this might have held up better.
It's watchable, and even somewhat enjoyable (but, and I cannot stress this enough, not actually "good"), up until about the last five minutes. Then it subjects the audience to the Master begging for his life and Naked Benton. Seriously, just pretend the Master escaped from Atlantis alone, as opposed to taking Jo hostage, and end the story there.
3 out of 10.
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