When you’re watching Doctor Who, there should ideally be more interesting things about the adventure than who was cast to appear in it. “The Power of Kroll” is a dreary, boring slog and the best thing about it is the guest actors. Above, here’s our hero along with familiar faces Neil McCarthy and Philip Madoc.
Weirdly, this would be Robert Holmes’ last story for the series for about six years. If he hadn’t come back in the mid-eighties for more, then not only would his Who career be topped and tailed by his two weakest adventures, starting with “The Krotons” in 1969, but Philip Madoc would have been in both of them.
John Abineri, a good character actor who everybody remembers fondly as General Carrington in “The Ambassadors of Death”, is also in this one, only he has the indignity of being painted green from head to toe and cast as the leader of a superstitious ooga-booga tribe of men with green dreadlocks.
Outside of these actors, the story is just boring and not at all engaging. Too much of the drama is built around people in space uniforms sitting in plastic chairs looking at computer readouts saying this just can’t be happening, and debating whether to use depth charges or poison to kill the mighty Kroll, a squid that’s about a mile across and has awakened just in time to join all the other parties as they squabble about guns, native rights, and methane. Our son says that Kroll is too big and too scary. I say that every Doctor Who producer has to learn the hard way that if you try to realize a giant monster on a BBC budget, you are more likely to fail than to thrill.
Fire Breathing Dimetrodon Time 
One thought on “Doctor Who: The Power of Kroll (parts one and two)”