She drives much of the story whilst the Doctor is on the other side of the mirror. This is Romana's last story & Lalla Ward gets much more to do than usual. Tom Baker is up to his usual standards but feels coldly distant throughout, as if he's contemplating his impending departure. He's one of my favourite Doctor Who villains ever. It's a blackly comic role played dead straight. He's playing a sf version of Captain Mainwaring really: a slightly useless leader with ideas above his abilities. They whinge, they moan & they skive off.Ĭlifford Rose himself as Rorvik is superb. But these foundations are added to by some excellent performances across the board: Kenneth Cope as Packard & Freddie Earle as Aldo should get a mention for excellence in a supporting role but almost all of Rorvik's crew, brutal thugs though they are to some degree, are interesting. Joyce's concept creates the atmosphere & it really feels like he's trying to make something bigger than a Doctor Who story. You could slot this into Moffat's Doctor Who with a few minor changes & some CGI. This timey-wimey element of the story gives it a surprisingly modern feel. It's karma.Īll of this comes out over the four episodes as the Doctor stumbles through a mirror into the past. The Empire gone the Tharils are now slaves to the humans. The Tharil's once held a great Empire enslaving humans but eventually the humans rose up, using Gundan robots to destroy the Tharils.
Rorvik's crew - slave traders pimping time sensitive Tharils across the Universe - treat the Tharil's with thoughtless violence but this we discover turns out to be a mirror of how the Tharil's used to treat human beings when they had power. It is done." Which alongside references to the I-Ching makes this very Zen & the Art of Time Travel.
His mad cry of 'I'm finally getting something done" is from the edge of madness whilst Biroc (David Weston) tells the Doctor to "Do nothing. In Warriors' Gate on the other hand Rorvik (Clifford Rose) is desperate to act but can't & when he does destruction follows. They procrastinate until finally they have to act. In that story the Deciders don't decide anything.
INTO THE WARRIORS GATE FULL
In some respects it is a mirror image of Full Circle, the first of the E-Space Trilogy. But there's not much else like this in the Doctor Who canon & that's down to Paul Joyce's vision. Oddly it reminds me of both The Web Planet & The Mind Robber. The lighting, the sets, the black & white landscapes & the weird off-white void all contribute to this story feeling so different to most other Doctor Who. It draws on Cocteau's La Belle et la Bete, Rosencrantz & Gildenstern Are Dead & Waiting for Godot to produce something with real atmosphere & power.Īlmost every shot seems to be carefully thought out. The fact that he worked with Christopher H Bidmead (the script editor) to knock Stephen Gallagher's original script into shape adds to that. Warriors' Gate is directed by Paul Joyce, the nearest thing to an auteur Doctor Who has ever had. Today is the Fourth Doctor adventure Warriors’ Gate. Our Doctor Who expert, Tony Cross, is journeying through all of time and space to bring us his thoughts on every available Doctor story.
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