‘THE POWER OF KROLL’

Please feel free to comment on my review.

Kroll Rises from the Depths

‘The Power of Kroll’ by Robert Holmes is the fifth story of ‘The Key to Time’ series. It is a four-part adventure on one disc. This is my least favourite story of ‘The Key To Time’ season, as it’s rather uninspired and unimaginative as the previous stories.

I’m not criticising Robert Holmes, as he’s a brilliant ‘Doctor Who’ writer. But this is an average tale and it didn’t excite me as much. It fulfilled its purpose in searching for the fifth segment of the Key to Time.

The Doctor and Romana visit the third moon of Delta Magna. It’s full of muggy swamps where the primitive Swampies live. There’s a gas refinery and a gigantic squid monster squid called Kroll rises.

This story has swamps everywhere and there are many themes of deity-worshiping and skullduggery. There are past and future echoes of other stories by Robert Holmes in this one, especially the skullduggery, which would be featured in ‘The Caves of Androzani’.

Tom Baker delivers a pretty good performance as the Fourth Doctor here. I liked how the Doctor is curious about a legend involving Kroll and that he saves Romana from a man with a giant clam on his head.

Mary Tamm also gives a good performance as Romana, although she’s rather undeveloped in this one. It was unfair that Romana had to be sacrificed for two rituals (the second one with the Doctor).

K-9 sadly doesn’t appear in this story, as it was impossible to film the robot dog in the swamps. This is probably why I didn’t enjoy this story as much as the other stories in ‘The Key to Time’ season, as K-9 is a highlight for me.

The story’s guest cast does feature some actors I know from other TV shows and previous ‘Doctor Who’ stories. It was enjoyable to recognise these actors in this story and make jokes connected to their other film/TV roles.

There’s Neil McCarthy as Thawn, controller of the gas refinery. Neil played Mr. Bedford in an episode of ‘Some Mothers Do ‘Ave’ Them’. Here, he plays a nasty man who wants to wipe out the Swampies.

There’s also Phillip Madoc as Fenner, a refinery crewmember. Phillip played the U-Boat Captain in the ‘Dad’s Army’ episode ‘The Deadly Attachment’. He isn’t the villain of this story, but he does deliver a good performance.

There’s also John Leeson as Dugeen, another refinery crewmember. John usually voices K-9 in ‘Doctor Who’. It was nice to see him in the flesh as a human character in this story and to use his own voice.

There’s also John Abineri as Ranquin, leader of the Swampies. John guest starred in ‘The Moon Stallion’ with Sarah Sutton and in the ‘Doctor Who’ stories ‘Fury From The Deep’, ‘The Ambassadors of Death’ and ‘Death to the Daleks’. Ranquin believes in Kroll and worships his power.

The guest cast also includes Glyn Owen (who would later appear in the Big Finish audio ‘Nekromanteia’) as Rohm-Dutt, a gun-smuggler. There’s also Grahame Mallard as Harg, another refinery crewmember who gets killed in the story.

The actual Kroll monster is gigantic and looks very impressive when we see it in full view. The actual tentacles grabbing people are a bit dodgy and laughable, especially when Ranquin gets captured.

It turns out the fifth segment of the Key to Time is a holy relic swallowed by Kroll that makes him into the BIG monster.

The DVD special features are as follows. There’s ‘In Studio’ footage and a ‘Variations’ news item. There are two interviews including ‘There’s Something About Mary’ with Mary Tamm and ‘Phillip Madoc – A Villain For All Seasons’ with Phillip Madoc. There are also some ‘continuities’ for this story. There’s also an audio commentary with Tom Baker and John Leeson for this story as well as an info-text commentary option to enjoy. There’s a photo gallery of the story and a ‘Radio Times Listings’ PDF of the story. There’s a coming soon trailer for ‘Planet of Evil’, starring Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen.

‘The Power of Kroll’ is a fairly average tale in ‘The Key to Time’ season. It’s not my absolute favourite from the season, but it’s not terrible. It provides the entertainment, but certainly not for Christmas. 😀

‘The Power of Kroll’ rating – 6/10

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The previous story For the Fourth Doctor was ‘Life from Lifelessness’ (ST) For Romana was ‘Life from Lifelessness’ (ST)	The next story For the Fourth Doctor is ‘Luna Romana’ (Audio) For Romana is ‘Luna Romana’ (Audio)
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