1979-01-13
N/A
100 min
The Doctor and Romana arrive on the marsh moon of Delta Magna in search of the next segment of the Key to Time. They are caught in the conflict between the native Swampies and the crew of a chemical refinery. The presence of a gun runner complicates matters; to make things worse, the Swampies intend to awaken Kroll, the giant god that lives beneath the swamps.
You might get the impression from watching this that the budgets were already a bit stretched for this season, so they just resorted to some green body paint to create a race of rudimentary "Swampies" who are rebelling against some human interlopers who have plonked a drilling rig off their coast. The "Doctor" (Tom Baker) and "Romana" (Lalla Ward) are still continuing their search for the Key to Time when they arrive and find themselves drawn onto this conflict as she finds herself a would-be sacrifice to the eponymous squid-god and he determined to rescue her and find out just why this monstrous tentacled creature is quite so irritable. There are quite a few famous faces popping up in this drama, not least Neil McCathy, Glyn Owen and the usually much higher brow Philip Madoc (who also did the Brain of Morbius in 1976) but they don't really add much to this disappointingly pedestrian adventure that really needed the "Brigadier" to liven it up. There's no "K9" in this one, but that's perhaps because Norman Stewart decided to let John Leeson out of the tin for a few scenes as crew member "Dugeen", otherwise I'm afraid this is all just at the more forgettable end of the Time Lord's travels.
