Day 253 — September 10th 2021
The Power of Kroll Parts Three and Four
The Power of Kroll — Part Three
One of the big things which is letting this one down for me isn’t the special effects; it’s the set design. There’s something incredibly half-assed about it all, and it serves to make the whole thing look far cheaper and shoddier than it has any right to. The main culprits are the sets for the gas refinery. The model is nothing special — it’s perfectly competent but we’ve had so many brilliant model shots of late that this doesn’t particularly stand out — but it sets the scene well enough. When I look at the model of the rig I picture the inside to be incredibly industrial and possibly a bit run down. At the very least I expect it to be filled with switches and dials and levers, giving the impression that there’s actually difficult work to be done here.
Instead we’re presented with largely featureless grey walls, and a single bank of controls, but because this is ‘the future’ they’ve only got a handful of buttons from which everything can be operated. I want to see something more akin to a factory, with pipes and valves and a bit of dirt. Even when we do get industrial elements like pipes, they never feels as though they’ve been given any thought — they’re just there, and even then it’s only if there’s a plot reason like a character needing to be dragged inside one. I think if you were to fill the place with pipes — some large, some small — and give the impression that Kroll’s tentacles could be lurking inside any one of them (or even every one of them!) it would be all the more effective when the characters are attacked.
It doesn’t help that the sets here are incredibly poorly rendered, and this is all the more noticeable having come directly from The Androids of Tara, where locations were expertly rendered and felt very real. There’s a proper ‘can’t be arsed’ attitude to the creation of the sets in this story, and although it means jumping ahead of myself it’s most prominent in Part Four. There’s a sequence where we watch a countdown clock ticking along, and it’s just a flip clock stuck behind a wonky hole cut in the wall. I’m genuinely astounded that the director thought they could get away with showing it in close up twice.
And then there’s the design of the corridor leading up to the room. It just looks like a couple of leftover grey flats have been propped up in a vague corridor shape, with a bit of flooring dropped in between them. This example is especially bad because it makes the characters look stupid — there’s a moment in Part Four where Doctor Who and Romana have to creep along the corridor, listen to the conversation happening in the main room and then slip away again before being seen. Because of the way the set has been laid out they just stand there in full view of the characters they’re eavesdropping on and go unnoticed. I know the peripheral vision in this show can be a bit dodgy at times, but this takes the biscuit!
I think what’s frustrating is that there’s moments which show they can do it. When Doctor Who slips down to sabotage the missile launch we get treated to some breeze block walls and rusty doors, which feel far more suitable than anything ‘upstairs’. For the first time it looks like the kind of location I’d expect. Likewise, when he goes out to confront Kroll on the outside of the rig, I suspect they’ve built a bit of set on location and it looks fab. Moments like these only make the lack of effort elsewhere more noticeable.
Add to that the extra scenes of boring men stood around spouting exposition to each other and this episode’s a real step backwards. I’m going for a 5/10.
The Power of Kroll — Part Four
This final episode feels like it’s had a bit of a kick up the arse, and accordingly it’s the strongest episode of the story. That’s fairly unusual for me — I’m more a fan of opening episodes than closing ones. The biggest thing which helps here is that all the human characters suddenly become far more interesting. There’s less standing around in the control room awkwardly spouting exposition at each other and far more actual human drama on display.
It made me realise just how long it’s been since we did a proper Season Five style ‘Base Under Siege’ tale, with an obstinate commander going slowly mad as he refuses to heed Doctor Who’s warnings. Thawn is a pretty good example of the type, and his decent into both madness and murder in this final episode are the most interesting part of the whole story. It makes me long for a version of this story where the characters feel this fleshed out right from the beginning. I think if you could do away with a lot of the tedium from those first three episodes this would be held up as a much better tale.
On the whole I think the effects have stood up pretty well across the story, although I’ll admit that they’re at their weakest during this episode. Where the split-screen effect to show Kroll looming over the swamp worked relatively well the first couple of times, here it’s used as a much closer thing, mixed with shots of the tentacles poking through the tall reeds and it doesn’t work even a little bit. It’s such a shame to see when I’ve been championing the effects throughout this one.
Thankfully in other places they do work well. If you ignore the split-screen, the actual tentacles poking through the reeds look fantastic, and the final battle between Doctor Who and the tentacles on the outside of the rig looks fantastic. It’s helped by being shot on film, but it works incredibly well, and feels genuinely dramatic. It’s the first time I’ve felt any real tension in the whole story, but it’s been worth the wait. There’s also the model effect of Kroll attacking the rig which I think works surprisingly well. On their own the models of Kroll and the Rig aren’t anything especially great, but combined it stands up just as well as the Krynoid attacking the house in The Seeds of Doom. If I’ve one complaint it’s that the scale of the tentacles between the model and the full-size sets feel incredibly mis-matched, which somewhat spoils the overall effect.
And I know I mentioned it under Part One when it arrived, but the TARDIS hidden in the reeds really does look incredibly beautiful, so that always helps…! I’ll go with a 7/10 here.
