Daveportivo's Cultural Evaluation Facility

Doctor Who - The City Of Death Part Four

the episode continues from the death of the poor russian scientists the count then goes on to demand that Romana builds him a time stabelizing thingy so that the time bubble will work in the real world and he can time travel back 400 million years to stop him self getting trapped on earth and to try and save his race. Romana dispite being meant to be one of the brightest time lord accidently builds it encase duggan gets shot.

The counts wife still cant understand whats going on dispite the doctors arrival and trying to explain to her that her husband is more than a petty criminal the doctor then gets captured and taken underground to the science lab (its all happening in this sceince lab wow what a party is going to take place), after this other explanation to the countess she looks around the house she has livied in and finds a box full of tresuers including a copy of how to build pyrimids for dummies and a picture of the alien in egypt. the countess then gets a gun and waits for him to confront him he reveals him self laughs at her then kills her with the bracelet from the first episode.

Back in the super fun happy science lab the doctor asks romana why she went along and built the time device for the count then comes a shambles of an explanation of oh doctor i didnt realise, the count does the sinister evil plan reveal how he will travel back in time to the year 400 million when the alien in the ship (him) tried to leave planet earth and caused an explosion which fractuered him in 12 time periods allowing him to influence himan history. so the doctor cant stop his plans he then looks all 3 of them in the said prison back in episode 2, the count escapes into the past, romana reveals she has delyaed his time travel in the thing she built and he can only stay there for 2 mins. so there is time to save humanity a race against time is on literally so duggan destroyed yet another door and then the race to the tardis begins.

What follows is novel chase around paris going past all the scenic locations to get to the tardis which is parked in the modern art museum, when they eventually arrive john clese is an art curator admiring the tardis then the dynamic tri cram in vanish and he is left amazed by the wonders of art.

They all arrive back in the time the count (original) was going to launch his spacship the doctor and co wait for the count they know to arrive he appears from over the hill trying to warn himself not launch a spaceship off from planet earth in warp mode but hes to late as duggan punches him, they all escape and the count gets transported back to the 70's were the token henchman dosnt reconise him as an alien so shoots him this sets off a fire (????) which burns the building down the doctor and romana say bye to duggan que end of the episode.

Overall thoughts: Enjoyable dialouge written by Douglas Adams, a good over all story although I do feels it suffers due to the the 4 parts of it proberbly would have worked better as an overal long story it was noticable as the count seemed to explain all his plans every 10 mins ) Romana seemed under used and it almost seemed that they kind of forgot she was meant to be smarter than the doctor also how did her hat stay on at that angle for the entire episode. Sets were all pretty good except for the alien ship but even by 70's standards it was ok. The ending felt rushed as if they only realised there was 10 mins left

Rating £85 of an story

By Oliver Brooks (Doctor Who, Bonekickers, Charlton and General Sci Fi specailist)