THE PLOT
Having escaped from the pocket universe of E-Space, the Doctor and his newest companion, Adric, find themselves called upon by the ancient Keeper of Traken (Denis Carey). The Keeper's power has protected Traken, maintaining it as a place of absolute harmony for a thousand years. Now he is nearing the end of his time, leaving Traken open to evil beyond imagining.
The evil in question is Melkur (Geoffrey Beevers), a being left paralyzed by Traken's harmony. As the Keeper's power wanes, Melkur has regained mobility. He has also gained control over Kassia (Sheila Ruskin), a member of Traken's ruling council. The Doctor and Adric have no sooner arrived than Kassia has denounced them as the very evil the Keeper feared. Now the time travelers find themselves with only two allies: Kassia's husband, the wise and compassionate Tremas (Anthony Ainley), and his plucky daughter, Nyssa (Sarah Sutton).
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: I'm reviewing this story shortly after Season 13's Terror of the Zygons. One thing about skipping forward like that is that it's instantly startling just how much Tom Baker aged in the interim. It was something I never noticed watching the series in sequence... but his seven years in the role seemed to age him far more than seven years' worth. From his energetic debut to here, you'd about swear twenty years had passed!
The shock of his appearance aside, Tom's performance in this story is magical. With his excesses under control, it becomes apparent that he has grown as an actor. He always had presence. Now, there's also a maturity. He's not only under control, but in control, dominating without being actively domineering. Watch him in this story when he isn't speaking, and you see something that wasn't true of his earliest performances. He's listening, reacting even when he's not at the center of the screen.
The Keeper of Traken has been one of my very favorite Tom performances since my first adult re-watch of the story about a decade ago, and so it remains. It's one of a handful of stories in which all the elements of Tom's performance come together: the cranky, the compassionate, even the silly. In a real sense, this story feels more like the Fourth Doctor's last hurrah than its funereal successor. Grinning in the face of danger, turning apparent defeat into an absolute victory (if, in this case, an all-too-fleeting one), this is the last time that we see the Fourth Doctor in all his larger-than-life, heroic, flippant glory.
Adric: The Keeper of Traken is a very rare story, in that it's a story in which Adric works as a character. Matthew Waterhouse was hardly a skilled actor, but he does have decent screen rapport with Tom. Adric is also entirely helpful throughout. He figures out that Melkur's energy signature matches that of a TARDIS. He is eager to help the Doctor with the problem on Traken and readily acknowledges the Doctor's authority. Basically, all the character's worst traits are absent. Given a positive characterization to play, Waterhouse doesn't do half-badly. Certainly, one doesn't have to look very hard at British family and children's television of the era to find far worse teen performances from the same era.
Nyssa: Sarah Sutton's first story as Nyssa. It's a decent debut given that Johnny Byrne had not intended for her character to be an ongoing one. She gets some good scenes as the serial progresses, particularly when she breaks the Doctor, Adric, and Tremas out of prison in Episode Three. She also plays well opposite Matthew Waterhouse. Adric and Nyssa seem to fit together as a team, making me wonder if they mightn't have fared a lot better in Season 19 without the addition of Tegan.
The Melkur: Geoffrey Beevers' silken tones make him an excellent choice for a villain personified only by his voice for most of the story. Beevers is a very good Melkur, spiteful and villainous, yet also calculating in finding people's weaknesses to use against them. The serial's final image of him - corpse-like and leering over his frozen victim - is one of the more chilling ones Doctor Who has offered up to this point.
THOUGHTS
As Tom Baker's reign neared its end, the handover from Tom to his successor was handled in a very different way than any handover before or since. Tom's final two stories make up the first two installments of a trilogy, concluded in Peter Davison's first story. Tom's farewell stories also establish many of the elements that would dominate the Davison era. The major recurring villain of Davison's era is (re-)established in this story and the next one. Also established are the new companions, their relationship with each other and the Doctor, and Nyssa's relationship with the new recurring villain. Tom's still the Doctor here, and very dominantly the Doctor. But in many ways, the Davison era begins here.
The story itself is a good one. It's Johnny Byrne's best script for the series by a considerable margin, unfolding at a pace measured enough to allow each revelation to unfold gradually, but not so measured as to cause restlessness. Take Melkur. In Episode One, we only see him as a statue. He only speaks near the end of the episode, and the cliffhanger hinges very much around the revelation of him being able to move. In Episode Two, we discover that he can kill, that he can control Kassia completely and see and hear whatever she sees and hears. We even discover that the form of Melkur is only an outer shell, and that the real being is inside the statue, looking out at events through a viewscreen. New revelations come with each episode, even as each episode raises the stakes a little higher, until it seems at the end of Episode Three that the Melkur has won.
Some might complain that John Black's direction is stagy. It is - but that's actually a good thing for this production. The script borrows many theatrical tropes. Its dialogue has several Shakespearian allusions ("What's in a name? Kassia is as good a name as Tremas"). Aspects of its plot are borrowed from both Shakespeare and Arthur Miller's The Crucible, in its presentation of the rational aspects of Traken society being overturned, even oppressed, by the irrational and superstitious ones.
The guest acting is good all around. John Woodnutt, very good in Terror of the Zygons, is even better here as Seron, the consul member who acts as Tremas' confidante. Seron seems to be the council's unofficial leader. He keeps the council on a rational path, refusing to allow what he views as Kassia's superstitions to dominate. Inevitably, bad things happen to him. In the story's second half, effectively robbed of both Seron and Tremas, the council is left in disarray, ripe to be taken over by Kassia's forceful personality.
Anthony Ainley is splendid as Tremas. There's no ham in his performance. He's subdued, reasonable, even humorous. Ainley and Tom Baker play splendidly off each other. The Doctor genuinely likes Tremas, which makes it all the easier for the audience to grant Tremas their full trust as well. That Tremas is such a good man, and that Ainley is so good in the part, makes the ending that much more effective.
...Because, as the Doctor observed way back in Genesis of the Daleks, even he isn't right about everything. As the Doctor and Adric depart, they are confident that they have been completely and absolutely triumphant. They have both done well and done good. Moving us on to a coda that turns their triumph beautifully upside-down.
"A new body at last!"
Rating: 9/10.
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