Day 545: Warriors' Gate Part 4

As it turns out, I was left nowhere with regards to understanding much of what happened in Part 3 of this story. But I do understand a good deal of the rest of it, oddly enough. The story concerns an alien race called Tharils. They are time sensitives, able to use their powers as god-like abilities in a variety of scenarios. They created an entire empire, and were rulers over it for a considerable period of time. But they were cruel gods, and enslaved both humans and robots to serve them. Naturally, an uprising occurred, and they were left helpless as the humans took control of them as their slaves, torturing them to use their time-sensitive abilities to traverse the universe. Their story is one of reversals, that they were once kings and now they are slaves, doomed throughout the cosmos, which is symbolised in the fact that the Doctor and Romana travel through a mirror to reach the point in history when they were rulers, as mirrors not only reflect incoming light, they present an image which is the reverse of the one which the mirror reflects. So they enlist the Doctor and Romana to help set themselves free, and in doing so create a better future.

This works as a story, mostly because of the way in which the story is revealed to us, through having us figure out their entire history and so we get that sense of satisfaction of figuring everything out. It would be a much less satisfying story if we were presented with a generic 'free the slaves' plotline, instead we get a story about helping someone, and we have to figure out both how they need to be helped and the motive for which we should give them help.

And there's one other thing about Warriors' Gate. At the end of it, Romana leaves. She makes a simple decision that she'd much rather be helping the Tharils than return to Gallifrey. The Doctor gives her K9, bids her farewell and leaves E-Space with Adric. It's a quick exit for two characters who have meant so much to the programme, K9 bringing humour as well as appeal for children, whilst Romana was a character who proved to be an equal to the Doctor in every way, shape and form, something that we often don't see with companions. It's a shame to see them leave, and more than that, to see them leave quickly, but that reflects the new period that we're in, production-wise. It's a period of 'out with the old, in with the new'. Or at least, out with some of the old...