The Armageddon Factor
Doctor Who serial
The Armageddon Factor is the sixth and final serial of the 16th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts on BBC1 from 20 January to 24 February 1979. It was the last to feature Mary Tamm as Romana.
The serial is set on the planets Atrios and Zeos, and another planet in between them. In the serial, a nuclear war between Atrios and Zeos is nearing its end, but with Atrios losing. At the same time, the Shadow (William Squire), a henchman of the Black Guardian (Valentine Dyall), steals the time and space vessel the TARDIS, which contains the first five segments of the powerful Key to Time, and kidnaps Princess Astra of Atrios (Lalla Ward), who is the sixth and final segment.
Plot
The planet Atrios, ruled by Princess Astra, is losing a nuclear war with their neighbouring planet Zeos. Astra, on a tour to rally the injured troops within their safety bunker, is beguiled into seeking safety in a false shelter. Soon after, while searching for the Key to Time's final segment, the Fourth Doctor and Romana arrive, encountering Astra before she is suddenly abducted. After some initial false accusations from the leading bull-headed military Marshal, the Doctor agrees to help his increasingly weak efforts against Zeos. The Doctor and Romana discover that there is another factor in the war, when Romana notices a control device attached to the Marshal's neck, the Doctor deduces there is another planetary object between Atrios and Zeos, and a skull-shaped receiver is found behind a mirror that the Marshal seemingly uses to meditate with.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Armageddon Factor” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.