This sixteenth season has not been consistently that strong, and as a result I did not approach this extended serial with high hopes. It starts well enough though, and there are plenty of nice ideas in the basic construct – a fabricated war, a 'Strangelove' computer, manipulation of characters by dark forces, and an interesting twist to the form taken by the Key of Time. All of these things are pretty good on the face of it, but the problem is that they do not come together into a satisfying whole. The serial builds quite well at first, but as it adds it becomes messy in the narrative, and it starts to lose impact at a point where it should have been building to a good finish. It has enough movement to keep things going, but when I wanted it to sharpen and get tighter, it instead became baggy and lost sight of interesting elements as it got into the mix.
The extension to 6 episodes doesn't help – as is often the case with these serials, it feels like elements are added or drawn-out just to pad out the time to fill this, rather than the story needing that time. The production values also add to the feeling of the serial being a bit 'meh'; it is mostly an ugly serial with locations that are very basic and don't have atmosphere or drama to cover for it. The performances vary; Baker, Tamm, K-9, Woodvine's Marshall, - these are all good performances, however outside of these too many are pretty basic. Perhaps this is not their fault, as the writing doesn't always gave them the best shots.
In the end, while it is a solid serial in some aspects, it has too much working against it. The set design, the messy narrative, the weaker writing at points – all of this occurs at a point where this serial should really be the 'big finish' that the whole season has built up to. I think this is why it felt weaker than it probably was, because I had wanted more from it on this basis.