Day 252 — September 9th 2021
The Power of Kroll Parts One and Two
The Power of Kroll — Part One
After all my talk in the last story about how they keep introducing new variations of Tom Baker’s costume and each one gets better than the last, this episode introduces another new look, and it’s another pretty iconic one! I don’t think I’d appreciated before just how many distinct outfits Baker had in the show — I’d always got it down as his Season Twelve look, his Season Eighteen look, and alternating between a couple of coats in between. Here we get the first appearance of the jacket he’ll go on to wear for the next few stories, including City of Death from which some of the photographs are pretty well-known, hence the instant recognisability of this style.
As a brief aside, while on the subject of photography, this episode is also the source of my single favourite image of Tom Baker, which I’ve used as today’s header. There’s something so joyous about his smile!
The costumes are pretty good here across the board, and I think this is my favourite look for Romana, too. She’s come a long way since The Ribos Operation in picking outfits that are suitable for the adventure, and it culminates in this one. I’m pleased to see that you can get an action figure of her in this look, given that it’s probably not her most iconic. The Figurine Collection went with her white Ribos cloak, which is probably the more sensible option.
The guest cast are nicely kitted out, too. I’ve not had a lot to say about the costumes in the series for a while but they’ve broadly fallen into a couple of categories. Ribos and The Androids of Tara are both historical-type settings, so the BBC Wardrobes have been raided well to create some fairly lavish outfits. The Pirate Planet on the whole looked a bit naff — especially the yellow cloaks of the Mentiads. The uniforms of the crew here feel like they’d be at home in any era of the show, which is probably the mark of them being a success. The colours of them (blue and white) are nice, and they help the characters stand out.
(Popping back from the future here, having just watched Part Two, to say that I really love John Leeson entering a scene putting on his costume. We’ve been told he’s on his break and he’s called back to work, and it’s a tiny moment which really makes it feel like this is a uniform, rather than a costume he’s wearing.)
Even the Swampies, who often get held up as ridiculous, look pretty decent here. It’s always going to look a bit strange when you paint a group of men dark green from head to toe, but there’s no denying that they’ve made a thorough job of it. They certainly look more effective than I was expecting.
We’ve had a lot of stories in the Tom Baker era — largely from his first three seasons, it has to be said — which have pretty unassailable reputations for being the best stories ever made. I’ve sometimes agreed with those reputations, but on several occasions I’ve been completely baffled when they’ve left me cold. The Power of Kroll feels like it’s having the opposite effect. This one’s got a reputation for being dreadful (in the 2014 Doctor Who Magazine Poll it came in 212th, making it the lowest-rated Key to Time story), but I’m not finding it so bad at all. Oh it’s certainly not a stellar episode, and I’m not about to declare it my favourite of the season, but it’s better than I was expecting to begin with. I’ll admit that I delayed sitting down to watch today’s episodes because I was dreading going back to a run of ‘poor’ episodes having enjoyed the last few days, but touch wood I may have worried unnecessarily.
There’s several little elements in here which I like. The TARDIS arriving among the reeds and being almost entirely hidden by them is great fun, and the location as a whole feels nicely different from any alien worlds we’ve had before. The costumes I’ve already mentioned, and we’ve got a decent guest cast on show, with a return for Philip Madoc (making his fourth and final appearance in Doctor Who) and a rare on-screen glimpse of John Leeson.
I’m going with a 6/10 for this one. Not world-shattering, but better than I’d been expecting.
The Power of Kroll — Part Two
Ah, this episode is packed full of the things that people complain about with this story. We spend lots of time in the company of the little green men, there’s the ‘monster’ which attacks Romana during the sacrifice, and we get our first glimpses of Kroll, in the form of some rubber tentacles and a split-screen effect on the horizon.
I have to say I’m not that bothered by any of this, though! If anything, I think these were probably my favourite parts of the episode. Let’s talk about the big one first; Kroll itself. People complain that the split screen effect where the horizon meets the model isn’t the most seamless thing in the world and they’re right… but I don’t think it matters. There’s such an impressive shock from seeing a Doctor Who monster this huge which I think takes away from any of the other considerations. The effect isn’t perfect, but it’s more than good enough to sell the concept.
Going into this story I was all prepared to talk about how ridiculous it was that they thought they could pull off a monster two miles wide, and that Robert Holmes of all people should have been more considerate of the programme’s limitations, but that’s not how I feel at all while actually watching it. I wonder if part of that is because I didn’t expect Kroll to pop up so soon? I was expecting him to be the cliffhanger of Part Three, so there’s an added shock to him showing up here, and I’m always a sucker for being surprised.
And then there’s the tentacles, which I think look great! Our first sight of Kroll comes in the form of a tentacle wrapping itself around a Swampie out in the marshes and I think it looks fantastic. It’s definitely something which would have scared me as a kid. The same goes for the bloke being dragged into the pipe at the end of the episode — that’s brilliant! Okay, if you’re being really critical then you might say that it looks like a bloke wiggling around in a slightly dodgy bit of set, but the idea is great, and I can’t say the execution let it down all that much.
Kroll’s not the only monster in this episode, because we also get the sort-of clam-looking man who terrorises Romana during the sacrificial ceremony. Obviously the gag is that it turns out to genuinely be a man in a monster costume as part of the narrative (‘it probably looked more convincing from the front’, says Doctor Who. That got a big laugh from me…), but I don’t think it looks that bad anyway! Granted we only see the costume on screen for a moment before it’s ‘unmasked’ and it’s helpfully shot in darkness, but I certainly don’t think it does anything to spoil the episode. As for the Swampies, I think I’ve already indicated that I think they’re pretty well realised, even if they do look a little silly, so no problems there.
The thing that does let this episode down is just how boring it is in places. There’s lengthy scenes in which the crew of the gas refinery stand around and talk to each other, and they feel like they go on for most of the episode. It’s made worse by the fact that it’s the characters telling each other things they should already know, simply for the benefit of the audience. I’m never a big fan of that sort of thing. It also means that moments which should feel like big scary revelations — such as the idea that whatever’s blocking the view from the cameras is more than two miles wide — fall flat.
So while I’m not put off The Power of Kroll by all the things people usually complain about, it’s still not doing a lot for me. Another 6/10 feels fair for now.
Oh, and one last thing I want to touch on, although it feels like a really petty mistake. Doctor Who and Romana discover the history of the Swampies on this Moon because he discovers it all written down in a convenient hardback book. It just feels oddly out of place, where the rest of the civilisation feels well thought through. Loose scrolls I’d have gone along with, and I think they’d have solved the issue of Romana declaring that they’ve reached the end of the book… five pages in!
