Jack Bronson is a teenager who spends his free time playing warrior video games and working at a Chinese curios and antiques shop. His mother is trying to sell the house they live in before it goes into foreclosure. When Jack goes to a biking park, Travis, a neighborhood bully and his friends chase after him and he hides inside his bosses shop and helps out. A family heirloom, The Warriors Gate, from Mr Cheng's cousin in Beijing arrives at the shop and he gives it to Jack as a gift.
The Wizard tells Jack that Zhao was one of seven children raised from birth to protect the Emperor and that the only person who could defeat them was Arun the Cruel, King of the barbarians. Arun poisoned the warriors and killed the Emperor and the only people left alive were Su Lin and Zhao. The wizard searched through his seeing stone to find the greatest Warrior to protect the Princess and found The Black Knight; Jack's in game avatar; a ferocious and clever Warrior. Jack and Zhao find out that Arun will marry the Princess, become Emperor and then have her killed; so their mission is to save her.
While on their way through the "Unknown Kingdom" Jack tries to get Zhao to dance and have fun. In the forest, Jack and Zhao encounter the mountain spirit who is cooking a pot of potatoes and blocking the duo's way. Zhao asks the witch to move but she refuses and they start fighting. Zhao falls off the cliff and the witch is trying to get him to fall off before Jack throws a burnt log at her, killing her afterwards. Zhao then says that Jack may not be worthless at all. At night Zhao starts to teach Jack how to fight. They get to a lake and Zhao says the trek around it will take days because he cannot swim. Jack agrees to teach him if Zhao continues teaching him how to fight like a Warrior.
When they arrive at Arun's kingdom they turn themselves in; as part of Zhao's plan to get into the kingdom and past all the guards and knights. They get free by working together to kill the guard when he gives them their food. Jack saves Su Lin but just as they're about to kiss Zhao barges in and interrupts them. On their way out they get recaptured and put back in their cell, Jack tells Zhao that he's too young to die, having never even kissed a girl. Zhao reveals that neither has he. A butterfly appears and Zhao has a conversation with it. Jack asks if the butterfly understood him and Zhao replies that he hopes so.
During the wedding when Arun lifts up her veil and goes to kiss Su Lin he sees that her face is of that of a reptilian monster with a long tongue and huge eyes. The Wizard uses his magic to distract everyone and frees Jack and Zhao just before hanging. The Wizard pours magic powder on Jacks shoes and tells him to jump. Jack saves the princess (whom the Wizard soon turns back to normal) and all the barbarians try to kill them. The wizard gives Jack bags of magic powder to throw at them. One of the bags makes one of the barbarians a huge monster, however; too large for Jack and a formidable foe for Zhao. Eventually, Jack and Su Lin catapult themselves faraway and Zhao and the Wizard get away as well.
Su Lin is crowned Empress and sometime afterwards they kiss and she tells Jack that she never thought he was worthless; not even when they first met. The Empress's guards see her lipstick on Jack's face and try to kill him for touching her; but he gets home through the Warriors Gate; smashing it to pieces and rendering it useless to get back.
The Hollywood Reporter compared the film to The Last Starfighter. Discussing the director, the review noted that "Hoene keeps things competent rather than creative, and shows little of the flair he did in Cockneys vs Zombies" and that the story wades into "familiar territory" that may attract a young adult audience "for YA audiences that are heavily into the 1980s".[9]
The serial is set at an intersection between the universe of E-Space and the home universe of the alien time traveller the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker). In the serial, the Doctor and his travelling companion Romana (Lalla Ward) seek to free the time-sensitive Tharils from a group of slavers led by Captain Rorvik (Clifford Rose).
Inside the TARDIS, the Fourth Doctor, Romana, Adric, and K9, while travelling between E-Space and the normal universe (N-Space), become trapped in a white null space between the universes. Elsewhere in the void, a slave vessel, run by Captain Rorvik, has also become trapped. It uses members of the leonine Tharil race as their navigators. On becoming stuck, the current navigator, Biroc, escapes the ship and makes his way to the TARDIS on the winds of time. Biroc warns the TARDIS crew of Rorvik's treachery before disappearing. K9's memory wafers are shredded by the winds of time, leaving him functional but lacking long-term memories. The Doctor leaves on his own to explore the null space. He encounters some robots, called Gundans.
Meanwhile, Rorvik and his crew have discovered the TARDIS. Romana leaves to talk to them. Rorvik, believing Romana to be time-sensitive like the Tharils, dupes her into returning to their ship to examine the engines. When Romana does not return, Adric and K9 leave to recover her, but get separated; Adric eventually makes it to the ship and hides aboard, while K9 reunites with the Doctor and aids in repairing the Gundan, after which he learns from it that they were built by slaves and used to overthrow their masters in a violent battle. The Doctor's work is disrupted when Rorvik and several of his men arrive. During a stand-off between the crew and the Doctor, another Gundan activates and walks through the seemingly-solid mirror. Rorvik demands an explanation from the Doctor, revealing he has Romana captive, but the Doctor's only response is to walk through the mirror himself.
Aboard the slaver ship, Romana is freed by another Tharil named Lazlo, and she hides in the hull. She encounters Adric; the two work out that the ship is made from an incredibly dense dwarf star alloy that can contain the Tharils. K9 arrives, and informs the two of dimensional instability in the null space, which they attribute to the alloy, causing the space to collapse in on itself. Romana rejoins Lazlo, who takes her to the gateway and through the mirror, while Adric remains aboard the ship.
As the saved Tharils pass through the mirror, Romana announces that she will be staying with them, having become empathetic to their plight and not wanting to return to Gallifrey. The Doctor gives her K9, as passing through the mirror will restore his memory but he will be unable to return. The Tharils, in exchange, provide the Doctor with information on how to leave the void back to N-Space.
Originally, the fifth story of season 18 was Sealed Orders by novelist Christopher Priest before being abandoned. Stephen Gallagher, who had written a number of radio plays, was called upon for a replacement, resulting in Warriors' Gate. Commissioned in March 1980, this was Gallagher's first script for Doctor Who and had the working title Dream Time. The story was influenced by a radio serial he had done in 1979 called "The Babylon Run" as well as the films of Jean Cocteau, such as Orphe (1950), in which mirrors provide a gateway into another world.[2]
On completion in June, script editor Christopher H. Bidmead found the scripts to be overlong, as well as needing more work to keep them in line with other stories in the series. Therefore, he and director Paul Joyce re-worked the story significantly, including re-writing much of the dialogue. Originally, the script was much more comedic, with Rorvik's crew being given a lot of humorous dialogue, two of the workers being played as a double-act. Executive producer Barry Letts in particular was against this, saying that it was turning the show into pantomime and stated that the crewmen must be played for real. As many of these lines were cut from the script, the few remaining "comedy" lines were to be played straight as well. The scripts were finalised in late August 1980, but were then criticised by Letts, who found them rather confusing. By this time however, there was no more time to rework them further as Bidmead needed to begin work on the following story. Producer John Nathan-Turner too found the story complicated but had not got involved with the story during its scripting stages. Bidmead met with Gallagher with the revised scripts, the latter being none too happy with the extensive changes.[2]
Warriors' Gate was significant in that it was the last story to feature companion Romana played by Lalla Ward as well as the last regular appearance of John Leeson as long-running companion K9. Ward had requested to leave earlier, having been offered a part in another series, but Nathan-Turner kept her to her contract. It was also during the making of this serial that Tom Baker let it be known that he would leave at the end of the series.[2] Ward and Baker were in a relationship and had been for some time, but by now things were turning acrimonious between the two, with many production personnel believing that they were on the point of splitting-up. It was with much surprise when they learned that just a few weeks later they had married. Leeson, who left the series at the end of Season 16, returned for Season 18 on the understanding that K9 would be written out toward the end of the season.[3]
Joyce was keen to push the limits of the series by directing the serial like a film as he considered some of the earlier productions to be quite bland and workmanlike.[4] This approach however caused problems early on with significant delays in order to achieve various shots such as the pan through the spaceship in the opening sequence. This included shooting the camera upwards where the gallery lights could be seen - known as "shooting off set", something which is forbidden by the BBC. Problems such as this increased as time began to run short and he and producer Nathan-Turner clashed frequently and even executive producer Letts had to step in to advise Joyce. With letters being written to higher executives complaining of Joyce's style of work (also seen as inexperience), Joyce was asked to leave part way through production. His duties were taken up by assistant Graeme Harper, who directed a number of scenes before finally Joyce was re-instated.[5] Setting up of certain shots that Joyce had envisaged proved to take up too much time and shooting over-ran on a number of days.[4] In the end, the serial was completed and was indeed a departure in terms of style over the norm and was complimented by Bidmead, but Joyce was never to work on Doctor Who again.
c80f0f1006