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Serial: 5F Episode Nos. 500, 501, 502, 503, 504, and 505. Title: The Armageddon Factor
The sixth, final, and most important segment of the Key to Time is located on the planet Atrios, which is at nuclear war
with it's twin planet Zeos. Somehow the segment is linked to the Princess Astra, and when she is abducted, the Doctor
and Romana start a search that leads them to the master general on the planet Zeos: a computer called Mentalis,
programmed to obliterate Atrios and to destroy everything before being destroyed. Can the Doctor and Romana
complete the Key to Time before the agent of the Black Guardian destroys all?
This story is the last to feature
Mary Tamm as Romana, and the first to feature Valentine Dyall as the Black
Guardian.
It is the last story in the quest for the Key to Time.
starring Tom Baker as Doctor Who, Mary Tamm as Romana, Valentine Dyall as the Black Guardian, and
John Leeson as the Voice of K9.
Written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin, Produced by Graham Williams, and Directed by Michael Hayes.
Originally
transmitted from
DVD Features:
On Disc 1:
-
All six 25-minute
episodes with full restoration treatment.
-
Graphical menus,
episode and scene selection features, and subtitles for the hearing impaired.
- Commentary
1 with actors Mary Tamm and John Woodvine
(the Marshal) and director Michael Hayes.
- Commentary 2 with actors Tom Baker,
Mary Tamm, and John Leeson.
-
Production Notes subtitles. Displays pop-up production trivia throughout
the story.
-
PDF Files. Two pdf files on the disc: one of the Radio Times TV listings
for this story, and the 1979
Doctor Who Annual. The files are readable by a computer.
On
Disc 2:
-
“Defining Shadows" 16-minute making-of featurette, featuring interviews with writers Bob Baker and
Dave Martin, actors Lalla
Ward (Princess Astra), Barry Jackson (Drax), Davyd Harries (Shapp),
designer Richard
McManan-Smith, and director Michael Hayes.
- Alternative/Extended Scene. 3 minutes
from a black and white videotape of a scene that was truncated
a bit in the
final edit in Part Three of the Doctor meeting up with Shapp
on Zeos.
- Directing Who. 8-minute featurette about Michael Hayes' three stories as the director
(those were
The Androids of
himself.
- “Rogue
Time Lords” 13-minute featurette about all the
renegade Time Lords we've met down the years.
- Pebble Mill at One. 8-minute interview
with Tom Baker from 1979 tying in to the series hitting its 500th
episode as of
Part One of this story.
- Radiophonic
Feature. 4-minute segment from Pebble Mill in 1979 that visited the BBC Radiophonic
Workshop. Features interviews with
Dick Mills and Brian Hodgson of the Workshop.
- The New Sound of Music. 1-minute bit
from the cutting room floor of that same BBC RW feature.
- Merry Christmas, Doctor Who. Special
1-minute sketch recorded from the Armageddon
Factor set where
K9 asks the Doctor what he most desires
at Christmas... and then he has a look at Romana....
- Continuities. 3 minutes. (These are the BBC introductions and trailers
for the episodes.)
- Photo Gallery.
5 minutes.
- Late Night Stories. Five children’s short story readings by Tom Baker for a short
TV series.
Each is about 15 minutes. The titles
are The Photograph, The
Emissary, Nursery Tea, The End
of the Party, and Sredni Vashtar.
- Easter Egg. Highlight the blank area below to reveal the
invisible text and find out what this is and where…
Highlight the “Continuities” selection on page
2 of the Special Features, then press the right arrow.
A Doctor Who logo
will appear up in the top right corner.
Select this and you will see a reconstruction
of a technical fault that occurred during the
original 1979 broadcast that interrupted the program for
a minute as the video playback machine jammed
and they put up some music to cover the dead air.
