There - I've made it through the final episode of The Masters of Luxor!
And it isn't bad, really - certainly better than the previous two, and
with a decent cliffhanger resolution; though it's still a little slow,
even for the early days of the show.
One thing I really like about it is that, yet again, Susan is being
proactive and effective. This time she does something physical to rescue
Ian, adding to the wide variety of positive roles this serial has given
her. To be honest I can't imagine something like this making it through
script editing, just because of how consistently dreadful the scripts
were for Susan in the stories that did make it to screen. The Masters of Luxor has now supplanted The Sensorites as the best story for showcasing the unearthly child, in my mind, although once again it's not one of my favourites overall.
Something I didn't enjoy in this episode is the handling of the
(surviving) religious theme. The Doctor telling the Perfect One to abase
himself before his creator doesn't fit with my idea of his character,
and leaves a nasty taste in the mouth anyway. I know it's meant to be
him talking his way out of an awkward situation, but it doesn't sound
like that. Either it's close to blasphemous (setting Tabon up as a
God-analogue) or it's supporting the worst kind of authoritarianism in
organised religion. I'm a parent, and I would never ask my children to
bow down before me. On the contrary, Alison and I have always encouraged
them to think for themselves. Even when they were young, when they
disagreed with what we were saying we would take the time to find out
why - and sometimes they would come up with better ideas than we'd had.
We retained the ultimate decision-making authority - and many times our
greater experience meant we had more context to figure things out better
- but that dialogue meant we could all learn from each other.
Dialogue in the broader sense is at the heart of this episode, though
much of the time it feels like everyone is shouting their opinion and
nobody is listening. (We've occasionally had that in our family too, of
course.) It's good that the resolution doesn't come down to physical
force, but by golly it's a talky episode!
The bit at the end where the image on the scanner recedes as the TARDIS
dematerialises is an interesting artifact of these lost stories. I
presume it was dropped either because it was hard to do for TV, or
because there were better ways of handling endings. I am torn between
thinking it is effective, and feeling that it doesn't really make sense
from a time-and-space-travel perspective.
Rocky Roads (The Robots), part 4: Performed at Last!
This isn't the first time the story has been made. In 2001 it was produced as a four part fan adaptation, according to the TARDIS Data Core; still, it's the Big Finish version that most people will know.
And I can't be bothered to type any more.
Rating:
4/10.
Next Time:
The Masters of Luxor as a whole.
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