"The budget for this wouldn't buy the coffee on a science fiction production nowadays," says director Michael Hayes in the commentary for Armageddon Factor, and when it's plainly obvious that the "captain's chair" in one of the main sets is clearly a rolling office chair fixed in the middle of the set only by virtue of its wheels being trapped in a "bowl" built into the floor, it's hard to disagree with the man who made the thing. The Armageddon Factor, despite bringing the eagerly-awaited resolution to the Key To Time story arc of Doctor Who's 16th season, moves at a snail's pace at times, and could have easily had two of its six episodes harmlessly excised to tighten things up.

The commentary, featuring Hayes, Mary "Romana" Tamm and guest star John Woodvine, seems to reinforce this point - there are quite long stretches where not much is said, and it's clear by the end of the proceedings that, as the participants are discussing how tiring it was to make this would-be epic, they're also getting surprisingly loose-tongued about how tiring it is to watch as well. In a few places, Woodvine even admits to not knowing what's going on at all. Earlier in the commentary, however, Woodvine and Hayes are discussing having voraciously read such golden-age SF authors as Alfred Bester and Robert Heinlein, so this is by no means a reflection on Woodvine's ability to follow a science fiction plot. It just confirms my own feeling, at around the time the DVD hits the two-hour mark (at six episodes, Armageddon clocks in at around two and a half hours), the twists and turns intended to pad the story out to fill six weeks' worth of shows have gotten hopelessly muddled. Then again, to be completely fair, it wasn't watched all in one sitting back in the day - it was rolled out over six weeks. I probably should've watched it that way, or maybe over six days.

As with the rest of the Key To Time stories rushed into production for the North America-only box set of that season, the commentary and a production notes/trivia subtitle track are really the only bonus features on this DVD. When even the special subtitles spend a lot of time discussing early drafts of the story and I cease to notice they're there, once again, it seems a bit obvious: The Armageddon Factor is far too long. It's nice to have it digitally archived, but I'm not sure this is a Doctor Who DVD I'll be pulling down from the shelf again any time soon. More extras might have helped - this, or the first story of the season, would've been a good place for a nice featurette about the making of the season and the development of the stories - but perhaps that'll be forthcoming one of these days when this season is released in the UK. I know some British fans are anguished about the fact that this was released over here first, but trust me, guys, even one featurette would've made this enterprise more worthwhile.

Nice to have for completion's sake, but unless you're a big fan of this particular story, it does drag on a bit.

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com webmaster / editor-in-chief