From: ira2p@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU (Iain Robert Asplin)
Subject: Invasion of Time SUCKS! Was Re: Continuity catalog part two
Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 22:30:10 GMT

In article <15431@umd5.umd.edu> jblum@hamlet.umd.edu (Hi ho -- Kermit the Frog here...) writes:
>In article <01GOPP8XUW1E8WW3HM@kinni.acc.uwrf.edu> steven.k.manfred@UWRF.EDU writes:
>>9.	"The Invasion of Time"
>>	In "The Deadly Assassin," the Doctor must be told what the Matrix
>>	is, and it is clear it isn't nearly the all-knowing universe-
>>	spanning knowledge bank it becomes in Invasion of Time and later
>>	stories.  
>
>No, that was the APC Net that he was connected to, a sort of subset of the
>Matrix.

	True, but if the Matrix is such a key ingredient of Time Lord
society, why is it such a mystery to the Doctor that Engin has to explain
its functions to him?  

>
>>	The Great Key fromThe Deadly Assassin is here renamed the Rod of
>>	Rassilon and we get a new Great Key that every Time Lord
>>	President is supposed to search for.
>
>It could be that some senior Time Lords (Borusa?) didn't want to advertise
>that this rod was in fact the key to something, so they re-named the Key
>the Rod.  Who's going to pay any attention to what they call a couple of
>creaky old ceremonial artefacts anyway?

>I think what we have here is a plethora of separate keys all attributed
>to Rassilon (the Key of Rassilon from Deadly Assassin, the Great Key from
>Invasion of Time, the Key of Rassilon from Trial of a Time Lord part 13),
>all of which have nothing to do with each other.  They all bear his name
>because of the Time Lords' "Rassilon Slept Here" tradition of attributing
>everything to this legendary culture hero.  Either that, or Rassilon had
>one hell of a key ring.
>
>>       The Great Key is entrustd
>>	to the Chancellor, creating another problem when the Doctor
>>	says in the same story that no President has ever known the
>>	whereabouts of the Great Key (after he's been in th Matrix and
>>	asked them all, he says he's done this), yet if it is in the
>>	care of the Chancellor, then surely at some time a Chancellor
>>	must have become President and he would know that the new 
>>	Chancellor has got the Key!
>
>Oh, that's a simple one.  When a President is inducted, he is linked to
>the Matrix.  Once he's in there, the minds in the Matrix (i.e. Rassilon
>and company) mess with his memory.  If he was Chancellor and knows where
>the Great Key is, he suffers convenient amnesia.  Just like the Doctor did
>at the end of "Invasion of Time".  That way the Matrix Lords protect their
>secret.

Still, what's to stop a Chancellor/President-elect from leaving a note
for him/herself in the future telling him/herself that the Chancellor's
got the key?  No matter what memory blocks the Matrix imposes, the fact
that the Chancellor's got it, and that Chancellors can become President,
is just too big a security hole for me.
Even without that, I would not call "the Chancellor's got it" the most
clever way of hiding the key in the first place....after all that time
the Doctor is the first person to figure out such a basic puzzle?


>
>>	Also suggestions are made in The Deadly Assassin that there are
>>	other Cities on Gallifrey than just the Capitol, yet in
>>	The Invasion of Time we are told everyone lives in the Citadel/Capitol,
>>	and that everyone lives indoors, which is at variance with things
>>	the Third Doctor told us about his visits to the old hermit behind
>>	his house when he was a boy, and would later tell us about theem
>>	again as being in the mountains of South Gallifrey in State of
>>	Decay.  
>
>So the Doctor was a rebel who actually went outside the city.  That doesn't
>seem outside of his character.

	No, that's not out of character, but the fact that his family
had an actual house outdoors does conflict.
	And what about the air car Romana says she got for her 70th
birthday in "The Pirate Planet?"  (OK, so that's after TIOT, but still..)

>
>>	Solutions:  To many of these there are none, and I consider muh
>>	of the things we hear in Invasion of Time to be invalid since
>>	they are not only at variance with established facts, but also
>>	very limiting to future writers of Gallifrey stories if they
>>	all have to be set within the Capitol and nowhere else on the 
>>	planet.  
>
>Why?  After all, Isaac Asimov wasn't limited by having to stay inside the
>worldwide city on Trantor, or "The Caves of Steel".


	That's two stories.  Who has already done three on Gallifrey,
and the fact that we're stuck in one city every time is really restrictve,
I feel.

	
>Invasion of Time is one of my favorite pieces of Who, simply because it
>leaves so much un-explained and for the viewer to figure out.  It's flawed
>-- MAN is it flawed -- but it makes a fascinating effort.
>

 I too like stories that leave things for the viewer to figure out, stories
like "The Leisure Hive," "Full Circle," "Warriors' Gate," "Logopolis,"
or "Ghost Light."  
	The difference between those and "The Invasion of Time" I feel is
that in the above stories, it was intended by the writer to be something
to make you think.  The only impression I ever get from "Invasion of Time,"
both production-wise and script-wise, is that the writers, the producers,
the directors, and the set designers didn't much care if it made any sense
or not, or if it agreed with previous stories or not.  They just knew
they had six episodes left to fill up in the season.
	God, this story is bad.  From the tinfoil Vardans who turn out to
be ordinary humans in stupid-looking uniforms, to the plot holes and
continuity errors, to the trundling in of the Sontarans for the last two
episodes just to make the story last six instead of the usual four,
to the appalling larking around in the TARDIS corridors for no good reason
other than to fill up the last episode, to Christopher Tranchell's
so-called acting, to K9's noisier-than-ever motor, to the Time Lord
technology that looks as if it were built in the Fifties on Earth,
to the gratuitous bunging-in of some outside rebels just to provide a
basis for some fight scenes, to the lighting which in this story and most
of the others in this season is about two levels two low, to the one ofd
the worst cop-outs in the series' history: Leela's magical marriage at
the end,  it all makes me wish the story had been hit by an industrial
strike mid-production, or better yet, thrown in the rubbish bin on the
second draft.
	Good points?  A few.  A very few.  Rodan is a great character,
and a sort of prototype for Romana the next season.   The TARDIS swimming
pool is a fun idea, and the use of the full theme music on three of
the episodes was long overdue, but other than those, I can't think of much
else to recommend this dreary tale.