Doctor Who: The Key to Time - The Complete Adventure (1978)
Review by Doc Ezra
Film:
DVD:

Starring Tom Baker and Mary Tamm

Features:

• Commentary track on each disc
  
• Pop-up production notes
  
• Who's Who character and cast info
  
• Photo galleries
  

Rating: NR, suitable for most audiences

Anamorphic: N/A

My Advice: Own it.

Collecting six complete Dr. Who story arcs from the 1978-79 broadcast season, The Key to Time is a massive story arc that covers an entire season's worth of episodes. Packaged together in a nice boxed set, it represents the largest continuous run of the show to be committed to DVD so far. Drawn from the Tom Baker years as the Fourth Doctor, it also represents a significant chunk of Baker's career as the "definitive" Doctor.

The individual stories in the story range in quality from some of the most mediocre Who to some of the most inspired, but taken as a whole, the collection is worthy. It's also notable for including a story by Douglas Adams himself ("The Pirate Planet"). Add to this that it also features one of the more entertaining companions that the Doctor ever travelled with (Mary Tamm as newly-graduated Time Lord Romana), and some serious screen time for the Doctor's home-made sidekick, the andriod dog K-9.

In broad strokes, the story follows the Doctor on his quest to recover the six segments of the Key to Time, an incredibly powerful artifact that has the potential to destroy the universe, should it fall into the wrong hands. In order to prevent such catastrophe, the enigmatic White Guardian tasks the Doctor with assembling the pieces before his opposite number, the Black Guardian, can dispatch agents of his own to do the same. The quest becomes a race against time and often-hostile native species on a half-dozen different worlds, and the Doctor and Romana must overcome everything from Great Old Ones to Neo-pagan wackjobs in order to complete their quest.

The most consistent element of these stories is the interaction between Baker and Tamm, which is some of the finest interplay between the Doctor and a companion I've seen so far. Tamm's Romana takes none of the Doctor's flack, and is endlessly exasperating to him in return (something the Doctor needs, I think, to keep him on his toes). Her by-the-book approach to Time Lord-ing is a direct slap in the face to the Doctor's more carefree attitude and approach, and it leads to quite a few amusing moments of conflict between the two of them.

Individual reviews of the stories can be found here:

I highly recommend this set for all fans of Doctor Who, as well as for those interested in expanding their sci-fi geek repertoire. If you've never seen any of the shows, or haven't seen enough to have an opinion, this set makes a great way to get a big chunk of story with enough continuity to allow a new viewer to make sense of the Who universe, as well as bringing you in with the best actor to portray the Doctor in the show's storied career.