At the time of watching, back in 1981, I remember the following feelings - after the E-space trilogy, I didn't expect the season to get any better than 'Warriors' Gate' (remember this was only a year after 'Horns of Nimon'). That I was proved wrong, spoke volumes for the heights that the show was hitting at this point. The story starts with almost a clean slate - Romana and K9 have gone, E-space has been left behind - back to one companion and the Doctor. So 'Keeper' certainly doesn't feel like the penultimate story of the longest Doctor's reign - the writing is fresh with some wonderfully playful dialogue ('but what's in a name?') and some of the best set and costume design the series ever saw. Added to this is fine ensemble playing by a very experienced cast (most notably Ainley's impassioned playing of Tremas and John Woodnutt's imperious Seron). But of course, the icing on the cake is the way in which the character of Nyssa is introduced. Has there ever been a less affected, more natural first story for any character in the series? When we first see her at the wedding on the TARDIS scanner, she has her back to the viewer, and only appears in close-up when she comes to receive the Keeper's blessing - she doesn't speak, but her love for her father shines through Sarah Sutton's restrained but expressive body language. In fact, Nyssa only has one line in the whole first episode. In this way she slips into the audience's perception far more naturally than any 'introductory' story. Throughout the story, we see her as part of a wider society, therefore we know how she behaves and how she thinks in her own worl - unlike most alien companions, she is not an outsider, she is quite happy to stay with her father at the end of the story, and the pathos of the character is reinforced by the audience's knowledge of this.
Her big scene only comes in episode 3, where she stands up to Kassia, in a way that no other character had yet been able to do. The indignation and anger that Sarah Sutton puts across ('This Melkur has made you mad!') impressed me so much at the time that, from that moment, I was positive that she would make one of the best companions the series had seen. The next scene, where she returns to her room, pauses, and collects the ion bonder, is well worth re-watching, just to see how Sutton's considerable screen experience enabled her to put across the character's thought process without opening her mouth - an ability that only Peter Davison shared during this period of the programme.
The plot itself suffers, to some extent, by having the Master suddenly appear - the Melkur with its silky voice was a much more menacing character - but I certainly didn't feel that at the time - I just felt total surprise - one hadn't yet got used to old villains popping up every other week . But if that wasn't enough, for the first time the Doctor really screwed up - the Master didn't just escape, he reduced the most heroic of the Traken characters to a living husk, and set in train the 'chain of circumstance' that would reduce the planet to dust -only 4 weeks after seeing the Doctor save Traken, I watched, horrified, as all that good work was undone. No wonder the hands of the Master's TARDIS are set at 5 to midnight at the end of the story. Just like Nyssa, I was left bewildered at the end of the story - the Doctor always wins doesn't he? At just the right moment, Chris Bidmead made me doubt the Doctor's ability. The stage was set for the 4th Doctor's last story, and suddenly all certainties and assumptions about the series had dissolved - what on earth was going to happen next?
