As I said the other day, I think this is the weakest story of this Season. There are a number of reasons for this. The first is really the feel of the story. I think it was Chuffnobbler who said yesterday that The Androids Of Tara has a summery feel to it and he was right. This story, however, has a completely contrasting feel to it with the rain, wind and the soggy location which makes it feel very bleak and isolated.

Then there is the silly lock-of shots of Kroll and the apparent fact that it looks what it is, a toy monster.

Then there is the crew inside the refinery who seem to spend most of their time squabbling and not really doing that much. I felt so sorry for Philip Madoc in this. I've read he wanted to play Thawn but he ended up playing Fenner which compared to his previous two parts in the show was a really big comedown.



And then there is poor Mary Tamn, who's Romana wasn't best served in this story. I'm not sure when she decided to quit but I wonder if this story was one of those that made up her mind as Romana was nearly reduced to the screaming companion role and not really used that well at all.

To be fair, I'm really struggling to think of anything I like specifically about it and I really can't. The only thing of note for me is that it was the first story I ever remember catching a glimpse of with The Doctor and Romana in the boat trapped by Kroll at the end of Part 3.

It's not the most awful story there's ever been but of all the scripts Robert Holmes ever wrote for Doctor Who, I think this is was one of his worst.

oh dear is there really anything positive to say about Power of Kroll -apart from the end credits - green painted men s bad enough but rubber tenticals awful cgi effects and an embarrassingly bad monster. Tom looks and acts like he's thoroughly bored with it all and even the usualy reliable Phil Madoc just looks like he'd rather be some where else.

And then someone kept making fartlike sound effects under Madoc's lines. You can hear them if you turn it up loud enough.

I quite like this story - I think the location works pretty well: suitably bleak and isolated. The idea's quite good too, though perhaps not the most original.

My only minor gripe is that it's just a bit too long - there's quite a bit of 'running around', and the scenes of the poor extras dressed as Swampies doing their endless chanting before yet another sacrifice all gets a bit tedious. It might have worked better as a two-parter.

Also the refinery model looks like a model, and the sets look a bit cheap.

But overall an entertaining tale, especially compared with what followed...

It's just not very good. Kroll looking so cheap and bad isn't necessarily fatal - the Loch Ness Monster in Terror of the Zygons looked just as bad yet that story was great - it's more that there's nothing especially good to compensate. The acting, the production, the location - none of it is awful, exactly, but none of it is that good either. All just half-hearted and mediocre.

The best thing about this story is the location. lol
Although it meant that we weren't graced with K9's presence at all as he couldn't even leave the Tardis. It was a great excuse if they had difficulty fitting K9 into the script, rather than just relying on the usual excuse by having K9 in bits at the start of the story with the Doctor doing some repair work on him.

One major positive of the story though is that the segment in this story is actually central to the plot, taking the form of a huge monster randomly terrorising everyone, and having all the mythology based around it. In other Key To Time stories the segment tends to be a distraction or just an after-thought to the plot. I don't think the Doctor had to work as hard for the other segments as he did in this story.

It was nice to see John Leeson playing a human being for a change.

Just rewatched it and it's even better than I remember.

The script is great. Good core concept, with another clever reveal for the Key to Time fragment.

Brilliant Robert Holmes characters, well portrayed: Rohm dutt, the gun-runner, fantastically played by Glyn owen, Thawn, played with great character by Neil McCarthy (and what a face), and of course, Phillip Madoc, possibly who's greatest repeat 'guest star'. and hey, John Leeson is not a bad actor is he?

Oh... not to mention TOM BAKER AS DOCTOR WHO. He was good wasn't he? Just because every story for seven years was blessed with this strength, doesn't mean it should be discounted.

There's also one of Robert Holmes trademark twists: Rohm Dutt turns out to have been hired by Thrawn.

For an era that is considered too light hearted (and a children's show by much of the contemporary audience) the stories were very sophisticated, and employed a lot of Sci-Fi parallels to the unflattering side of contemporary human civillization; in this instance gun running, imperialism and the cost of industry. This was especially true in Bob Holmes scripts; he was clearly a very intelligent man of the world. Compare it to some of the simplistic pap we often get on our TV screens today and you wonder if classic Doctor Who is a little too clever for some people.

The criticisms for this story are generally aimed at the production side, and admittedly it isn't particularly strong on that front. The Swampies look a tad ridiculous and pretty unconvincingly green, Kroll is badly imposed onto the scenery (although the monster model itself looks excellent) and the model shots of the refinery are not terribly convincing. The indoor sets aren't the best either.

On the plus side, the location shooting is mostly excellent (it actually seemed a bit like a Letts era story (the high point for location shooting in Doctor Who, in my opinion)) although you can never quite believe the location as the perillous swamp it is meant to be.

But i'm going to be blunt: why are you watching classic Doctor Who if any of that stuff really bothers you very much? If that was the determining factor for my enjoyment of Doctor Who then I wouldn't be able to sit through a single 80s episode of Doctor Who, because it mostly looked like absolute carp. It's about the story with old Who; that was what made it good. And this serial has a very good one (it's a shame Romana couldn't have been a bit smarter though; she did tend to get reduced to a screamer).

This story is not the weak link of the Key to Time season; absolutely not. It's only problem is that nearly every serial in this season is excellent, but it definately doesn't let the side down.

I agree, like Revenge of the Cybermen, this is better than its reputation suggests.

It's not the weak link of The Key to Time either, unfortunately that was to follow.

I have finally got round to seeing The Power of Kroll. One of a handful of Tom Baker stores I never saw first time round. I knew it had a fairly poor reputation, but I found after watching it I was pleasantly surprised -I thought it was great & I enjoyed it more than any other story from the Keys to Time Season.

Rather than start a new post I thought I'd see if there was one already here, & I found this one.

It's good to see there's a couple of others who agree with me & have positive comments towards this story!

The location & outdoor filming worked really well. I even didn't mind the split screen with Kroll, it was actually quite effective. Sure the model work was pretty average, particularly the oil rig but I agree with the above comments, you've got to look past a lot of the cheap special effects to give a fair appreciation of much of classic Who.

"Well he's obviously one of those monsters who's not always about the place."

Like Pertwee's The Time Monster, I always have a soft spot for this usually-unloved Tom Baker story. It's dead easy to pick out the faults of The Power of Kroll. But I wish sometimes people would look beyond them and look at its strengths - which, to my mind, are considerable.