503 The Armageddon Factor Part Four

EPISODE: The Armageddon Factor Part Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 503
STORY NUMBER: 103
TRANSMITTED: 10 February 1979
WRITER: Bob Baker & Dave Martin
DIRECTOR: Michael Hayes
SCRIPT EDITOR: Anthony Read
PRODUCER: Graham Williams
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - The Key to Time Box Set (Ribos Operation/Pirate Planet/Stones of Blood/Androids of Tara/Power of Kroll/The Armageddon Factor)

The Doctor sends Shapp & Merak back to Atrios to stop the Marshall but Merak is distracted by an illusion of Astra and is captured while Shapp is stunned by one of the Shadow's servants as he enters the transmat. The Doctor creates a fake sixth segment to use the power of the other five to time loop the Marshall's ship to prevent it attacking but as the fake segment decays the loop stretches. Astra is controlled by the Shadow and he sends her to retrieve the segments the Doctor has. K-9 is lured to the Shadow's base planet through a computer distress beacon placed in a transmat. Astra uses Merak to get introduced to the Doctor then, on the pretext of taking him to Atrios, abandons him in the corridors of Zeos. The injured Merak transmats back to Atrios but Astra, pursued by the Shadow's guards, is sheltered in the Tardis and is attracted to the Key To Time. The Doctor moves the Tardis to the Shadow's base planet, lying between Atrios & Zeos where the Shadow and a controlled K-9 are waiting.

I said yesterday that I remembered nothing of that episode from my youth: he same applies here! I also said that I'd watched these episodes a few days prior to writing the text (a long story involving my mother being hospitalised and dog sitting) One of the side effects of this is I'm reading the text above, written while watching the episode, and still remembering nothing of note. That may be an indication of it's quality in the middle of a six part story!

This is the first Tom Baker six part story to be made entirely in the studio, which unfortunately removes me telling you about the story's location filming as an option. The last entirely studio bound six parter was Jon Pertwee's penultimate story, The Monster of Peladon, five years previously in 1974. Before that the next previous six parter made in the studio was 1969's Patrick Troughton story the Space Pirates,