Castrovalva |
BBC Time-Flight |
|
| Episodes | 4 |  |
| Story No# | 123 | |
| Production Code | 5X | |
| Season | 19 | |
| Dates | Mar. 22, 1982 - Mar. 30, 1982 |
|
With Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton.
Written by Peter Grimwade. Script-edited by Eric Saward. Directed by Ron Jones. Produced by John Nathan-Turner. |
| Synopsis: A Concorde disappears from its flight path into the distant past, and the Doctor must trace the source of the time disruption. |
A Review by Jen Kokoski 27/3/97
How do you recover from a painful blow? That seemed to be the problem of this story. Coming off a grim and tragic adventure (Earthshock), this one pales in comparison. The Master reappears as his archetypal horrid self leaving one feeling like they've seen it all before. Perhaps too much Anthony Ainley in one season. And the arbitrary ending, leaving Tegan behind on Earth, left one feeling as hung out to dry as she was.
What's a Few Million Years Among Friends? by Dennis McDermott 12/4/97
Unlike Jen, I liked this show better than I did Earthshock. It's a nice little story that moves swiftly along and has something to say about the dual nature of humans beings (a well-worn path, 'tis true, but nicely done here.) The threat -- the Master managing to make his TARDIS all-powerful through the Zeraphim -- is both credible and original. And I thought the supporting cast was top-notch. The ending, the old I-got-here-first-so-I'm-zapping-you-somewhere-else, was a bit anti-climatic, but Tegan wandering off and getting left behind was a nice twist, I thought. This show is recommended.
A Review by Michael Hickerson 3/5/99
Time-Flight has always held a special place in my heart. It was, after all, the first Who story I watched all those years ago...
But sentimentality aside, you've got to admit Time-Flight is a prime example of really bad Doctor Who. Easily the weakest of the Davison era stories, Time-Flight suffers on a lot of levels from the sheer unbelievability of the plot, to a greater than average reliance on technobabble to some flat performances by not only the guest cast but the regular cast as well.
Starting off with the plot. I've seen this one at least seven or eight times over the years and I'll be darned if I can yet figure out just what the plot is. Apparently, the Master manuevers Concord back in time to kidnap a slave labor force so he can steal a new power source for his TARDIS is the best I can figure out. Why he needs four episodes and a disguise to do this is a question that remains largely unanswered. Add to it that we're never given any concrete reason for him to need the new power source (funny, I thought a TARDIS power source was pretty much self-sustaining) and it adds up to a plot that needed some serious script editing.
Another beef with the story is the dumbing down of the Master. His plot is fairly superficial--get the Xeraphim to his TARDIS. If he gets to destroy the Doctor in the bargain, all the better, but it's not integral to the plot. Which is a harsh change from the meancing Master we've come to know and love in the Pertwee era. Gone are the long ranging plot to not only humilate the Doctor but also destroy the universe. Instead, we've got a carbon copy of Snidley Whiplash--running around, twisting his hands will glee and cackling manically. Also, one questions his logic of keeping the human passengers to make more Plastmatons while disregarding the pile of potential raw material in the bodies of the Xeraphins... it looks like he's just not thinking things through very well.
The script also falls short because it paints itself into such a corner by the time episode four rolls around. The final episode requires such a suspension of disbelief that it fold under its own weight, descending into luncacy and plot contrivences.
And this is easily Davison's weakest performance as Doctor. There are times he seems to be phoning the performance in as does the usually reliable supporting cast of Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton. You almost get the feeling they are exhausted from Earthshock and looking toward the summer break more than their pefromances here.
Added all up, and you get one of the weaker Davison stories and an overall disappointing Who story...
A Review by Stuart Gutteridge 8/8/99
Time-Flight has been slated before and will be again, so my review isn`t going to be very different. The major problem is the plot, it is too convoluted for four episodes and should have been cut down by at least one. Peter Grimwade`s scripts make unfair demands of the production team (particularly for an end of season story) and they aren`t particularly engaging either. The production values as a result suffer from this, giving a somewhat false atmosphere to the story.
The cast just seem to be going through the motions, although the three regulars are much better at the beginning of the tale. Strangely, Anthony Ainley is better when disguised as Kalid (for which no reason is readily apparant than he is as The Master), while the supporting cast might just as well have stepped out, with no previous acting experience whatsoever.
Time-Flight does have some redeeming features however; the opening episode sets up an intriguing mystery, the scenes filmed at Heathrow are excellent and reminiscent in some ways of The Faceless Ones, the idea of the Xeraphin is something that could have been put to better use, as is the death of Adric and its consequences, and Tegan`s apparant departure is also quite refreshing. Despite all this, however Time-Flight is deservedly one the worst Doctor Who tales.
Time Flight and randomness by Liz Stockwell 10/8/01
I can just see the writers now; "This villian isn't working out. What can we do? I know, we'll make him really be the Master. What about continuity? Continuity?! We don't need no stinkin' continuity!"
And the rest is Doctor Who history.
After the exciting conclusion to Earthshock, Time-Flight is a real hoot. From Nyssa's Deanna Troi impersonation to killer bubble baths and old rubber costumes left for dead in a BBC closet somewhere, only to be found and reused one more time along with Mathew Waterhouse, ths is a very silly story and I laughed through the whole thing.
Then I realized, it wasn't intentionally funny. That's when I passed out from oxygen deprivation.
From the very beginning one can see trouble on the horizon. I could see that the Doctor and his companions are very upset over Adric's death. The Doctor's excuse for not going back is rather lame;
"I ah can't break the laws of time like I do every story...including this one."
For the rest of the story there's only one mention of Adric, in a scene which suggests the Mathew Waterhouse still had one story left on his contract. After that it's like, "Adric? Who's that?"
I guess they were working through their grief.
Then there is Nyssa's incredibly apearing and disapearing psychic powers, which was later ignored like the plot convenience it so obviously was. After the Master is revealed for the clever imposter (or something) that he is, her miraculous powers are thrown out along with the continuity of the plot (or whatever it was that was happening).
In short, this should not be considered a great Doctor Who story, but merely something to watch when you're not up to heavy thinking and badly in need of a laugh.
If, however, you find yourself watching it and find that the millions of inconsitancies are bothering you...
"Just repeat to yourself it's just a show, I should really just relax!"
A Review by Mark Irvin 11/12/01
Amongst Dr Who fans the season 19 story Time-Fight is obviously exceedingly unpopular, constantly turning up in worst story lists and target of considerable criticism. Whist I agree that it's certainly very average, I think that there are many examples that are worse or at least in the same league. The fact that Time-Flight is constantly singled out as the worst in Davison's era is in my opinion is a little unfair.
I honestly believe that it had potential the be a decent tale as the first two episodes are actually quite good. The scenes at Heathrow are plenty of fun and are something a little different. The puzzling dilemma of the missing Concorde's is also rather interesting and mysterious. In addition I also liked the idea of the visual hallucinations and it is certainly a surprise when you finally learn what's really going on.
Kalid was an intriguing character and although it was of great shock value to discover that he was in fact the Master, it was really a bad idea as it wasted a potentially entertaining villain.
From this point on Time-Flight unfortunately falls flat on it's face, the plot falling into the depths of stupidity. It's complicated in a bad and unnecessary way, not in a clever way that provides thought-provoking twists, surprises or themes. A simpler and more accessible second half storyline was certainly the way to go, minus the overly excessive techno talk. In Tom Baker's episodes techno babble was as a sort of self joke, actually being highly amusing. In this case it takes itself far too seriously and is at times slightly annoying.
Perhaps someone could explain exactly what the Master is up to here because I sure as hell don't understand. Come to think of it, any of Ainley's Master's schemes in general - they all seem devoid of any plausibility, logic or common sense. (Castrovalva?)
This one deserves a 6.5> for the reasonable opening half and 2.5 for the poor concluding half - resulting in a average of 4.5 overall.
Thus spoke the Xeraph... by Andrew Wixon 22/5/02
It wasn't until midway through part four on my latest viewing of Time Flight that I realised what the story reminded me of. Here's a story that bears a vague resemblence to Doctor Who as we know it, but suffers from a massively far-fetched premise, silly dialogue, a general lack of coherency and dopey guest characters. Brothers and sisters, the writer of all those bizarre stories from late 1970s Doctor Who annuals stands revealed - it was Peter Grimwade all along!
Grimwade was the best director of DW in the early 80s but unfortunately one of the weaker writers. His scripts tend simply to be overreliant on coincidence and silly plot devices and come with more than their fair share of holes. To wit: why does the Master bother to dress up as Kalid and do a highly inflammatory Benny Hill impersonation? Why, later on, does he bother to materialise his TARDIS around the (cheap model of) Concorde? How can the Doctor's TARDIS operate with what looks like half the innards of the plinth missing or jumbled around? There's at least one plot device too many (the Master has to conveniently visit 1981 Heathrow, but of course he arrives after the Doctor for no adequately explained reason) and the story is topped and tailed by hurriedly passed-over improbabilities: why can't the Doctor rescue Adric, no-one actually saw him die and his death was not a historical necessity? And the Doctor seems rather too keen to bugger off without Tegan at the end of episode four for it to be convincing. (I suppose we can blame JNT for that.)
The best DW takes a recognisable real world setting (contemporary or historical) and clashes it with an alien presence or setting of some kind. One of Time-Flight's major problems is that the 'real world' setting is utterly unbelievable. Captain Stapley and the boys are high-camp ciphers. Stapley's performance is particularly rich, by the end his utter adulation for the Doctor borders on the lustful. And the words 'British Airways' are not and have never been evocative of high-concept SF thrills.
But more seriously, Time-Flight marks the first time that continuity is used instead of good storytelling, rather than as a garnish to it. I'm referring to episode one where a quick mention of UNIT saves Grimwade from having to find reasons for BA to entrust a second concorde to a total stranger with terrible dress sense. A very bad precedent has been set.
Time-Flight is horribly contrived and a bit of a mess in all departments. One can only imagine that Grimwade pitched the idea to JNT including the magic words 'BA... Concorde... loads of publicity...' at which point, one presumes, the bearded one's eyes glazed over happily and the story just had to be made, no matter how poorly it might (and did) turn out.
"Why do I love this adventure sooooooo much" by James D 11/11/02
Now before I got Time-Flight on vidieo I was under the impression that it was the worst of the Davison era so I was preparing myself for the worst but when I actually watched this little masterpiece I loved it sooooo much. Just the idea of Concocorde traveling through time is enough to keep me amused as its such an original idea, I do think many people forget that when they critisise this, also people have said Davison's performance isn't very good but I don't agree I think Davison is magic in Time-Flight and always is (I just think people were having a grump because they didn't like an EXCELLENT story)
Now I have not forgotten about the contrived appearance of the Master but it does provide a good cliffhanger (something which I love in DW) so it really didn't bother me. OOOOOOOOOH yes the bad special effects, well never in my life have I seen a DW story with BAAAD special effects ever, oh no that's just pure wrong. Good god if you watch DW for good special effects then you're gonna have some hatred watching so some more unfounded criticism.
So all in all I love this adventure and everything in it soooooooo there!!!
A damp squib ending for the season by Tim Roll-Pickering 1/4/03
It is difficult to know where to begin with this story. It shows a degree of ambition and an attempt to bring more realism into the series through its use of Concorde, but at the same time the story is poorly structured, contains several inconsistencies such as the complete disappearance of Angela Clifford (though Judith Byfield's performance is so unspectacular this oversight is not exactly missed) or the Master adopting a disguise for no apparent reason that he abandons some considerable time before his goal has been apparently achieved. The story also contains a lot of technobabble that makes very little sense and might as well be magic, whilst the Doctor initially establishes himself with the authorities not through his actions but by name dropping about UNIT. [Those who get wound up on UNIT dating might nitpick for this story clearly having a contemporary setting yet it appears to be set some years after the Doctor's time with the taskforce and then wonder why Mawdryn Undead gets all the flack for this but who cares about that can of worms anyway?]
Peter Grimwade's script is fundamentally flawed from the outset and is further let down by some atrocious dialogue. The story starts with the Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan still coming to terms with Adric's death in Earthshock but quite quickly they stop their tears and seem to forget about their late friend. It would have been better to have established that some time had passed since the events of the previous story rather than this half-hearted attempt at characterisation which fails to satisfy any of the conflicting demands of the story and the ongoing narrative. Apart from this switch, both Peter Davison and Janet Fielding give competent performances but they are not at their peak, indicating perhaps a dissatisfaction with the whole production, whilst Sarah Sutton is noticeably weaker than usual as Nyssa. Anthony Ainley returns as the Master but gives first an almost comical performance as Kalid and then fails to make a strong presence whilst the disguise is shed. None of the guest cast make much of an impact at all.
The production values feature some good filming at Heathrow, but it is clear when stock footage of Concorde is being used, whilst the intercuts of film of the cockpit interior or closeups of the engines with the videotape of the prehistoric studio set or CSO illusionary Heathrow result in many shots being ineffective. he stock shot in Part Four of Concorde taking off with the landscape CSOed in front of it is particularly poor. The studio sets generally show little imagination at all, whilst the Plasmatrons seem to be little more than lumps of grey plasticine with legs that just stand jump around when they appear. The result is that much of the story is tired and so the season limps to a conclusion. The only noteworthy point at all comes when it appears that the Doctor has abandoned Tegan when he and Nyssa escape in the TARDIS. This apparent departure makes for a memorable final shot for the season, but otherwise Time-Flight is a complete damp squib for Peter Davison's first year to end on. 1/10
A Review by Will Berridge 26/5/03
There's really lots of words that spring to mind when reviewing this story; insipid, boring, drawn out, farcical, dull, badly acted, etc,etc. I could just encompass all of these into one and say crap. There's only actually one colour that defines it though: grey. Not the grim, mystical grey that enchants Warrior's Gate, but a sort of ugly, splodgy grey that seems to permeate all throughout the design and you really don't want to look at. The daft "Khalid" costume the Master is wearing; the plasmatons, or virtually anything the Master creates with his psychokinetic wotsimejiggery; the Jurassic landscape (I really had something more verdant in mind when I read the synopsis. And where were all the dinosaurs?); and also the set design, though this also suffers from the odd garish splodge of green and red here and there.
This is what really brings Time-Flight down; usually, I can enjoy a story even though the plot is ridiculously far-fetched and the characters uninspired, but this is so visually uninvolving I didn't really want to turn my eyes toward it. Incidentally, though, the plot is ridiculously far-fetched and the characters are largely uninspired, even the regulars aren't great on this occasion. Tegan gets on my nerves in her good stories, of which this is not one. Still, at least too much attention isn't paid to her, but this doesn't shift the emphasis onto Nyssa, whose remains as bland and undefined as ever. I still enjoyed bits of Davison's performance as the Doctor - such as "I don't know what English cricket is coming to", but then I always seem to take something out of the Doctor's performance whoever's playing him whichever adventure it is. Davison is, however, on this occasion, seriously below par, as seen in his complete failure to evoke any dramatic tension in the 3rd episode cliffhanger as he states "It means the Master has finally defeated me". (I also, rather tangentially in an earlier review, had a go at Davison's delivery of a similar piece of dialogue for the 3rd episode cliffhanger for Terminus. It seems he isn't very good at these.)
The TARDIS crew as a whole also participate in one of the least convincing "mental battle" sequences in DW just before this cliffhanger. It seems that from the sight of 3 people, standing slack-jawed and open-eyed, we are supposed to conjure up in our minds images of evil aliens intelligences being dispelled away. Well, I can't. The supporting cast aren't really up for it either. The aircraft crew behave like comic book characters throughout the whole story, and the obvious reason Angela Clifford was disappears half way through the story was that the director took her off to try and explain she'd recovered from the mesmeric influence and should start acting like a real person. When the production team realised that she was only capable of acting as if under a mesmeric influence, they shot her. Hayter rises above the rest in that he actually has defining characteristics, such as his obstinacy and thirst for knowledge, and his notion that the planes have landed "behind the iron curtain" is about the funniest moment in a fairly turgid plot.
As for the Master... this version started getting good in The Five Doctors, and not before. It's the writing that really lets him down here though, not Ainley. It's not that having the Master fighting for his survival rather than conquering the universe is a bad idea, as was demonstrated in... erm, Survival. But, here, stranded in a barren wilderness and trying to escape, he shows a great deal less savage desperation than that particular serial. In fact, I've never seen him less ruthless - he doesn't murder a single character in the entire story (though one compressed Xeraphin corpse is found.), though he has plenty of opportunities. He's a fairly generous bargainer, too, giving the Doctor most of the parts he wants back for nothing in return. And once the Doctor gives him the temporal whatever-it-was, why oh why doesn't he just gun him down? I mean he's got the tissue compression eliminator on him, hasn't he?
The plot, quite apart from being indecipherable, is also thoroughly unengaging. It takes till virtually the end of Episode One for the adventure to actually start when we the second Concorde materialises in what the designers think Jurassic England looked like. Apart from a lot of babbling about "the force", annoyingly reminiscent of Star Wars, nothing particularly interesting happens for the next 50 minutes. In fact, the only reasoning behind the Master's simulation on this particular occasion seems to have been to save the writers producing a decent cliffhanger for the end of Episode 2. The mysterious alien entity behind the whole plot then appears, disappears, and we spend the whole last episode watching the Master and Doctor discussing politely how they can both get out of the predicament they're in.
It doesn't really get much worse than this. 2/10.
"So you escaped from Castrovalva..." by Joe Ford 3/7/03
Peter Davison gives a passable performance in this story, the last of his first season as Doctor Who. He'd had his ups (the elder gent of The Visitation, the action hero of Earthshock) and he'd had his lows (the schizo from Four to Doomsday and the bland observer of Black Orchid) but on the whole in this he settles down and proves to be quite watchable if hardly anything to shout home about. It would be next year that the real damage started but here we are treated to some enjoyable histrionics (his frantic yelling and organising in episode four) and some almost-funny humour (the million "I'll explain later!"s!). His chemistry with Nyssa and Tegan is quite good as well and Peter Grimwade writes all three of them as sensible, rational and intelligent people. What's more, Davison seems to be enjoying the material, or at least trying to make an attempt to make it work. So ner.
There is something enjoyable about the first ten minutes of this story, having the TARDIS back on contemporary Earth in a setting as recognisable as Heathrow with mentions of UNIT being thrown about casually. All the shots of the Concorde, inside and out, are stylish and give the sense of an impressive budget and it appears for a while it was entirely sensible to not end the season on the cliff-hanger of Adric's death.
Unfortunately things proceed in a downwards spiral of ineptitude the second the Concorde leaves the runway.
The real monster in this story is the budget that just cannot reach the heights of Peter Grimwade's scripts. The scripts themselves aren't at all bad, the idea of a Concorde being trapped on prehistoric Earth and a battle between the two Time Lords is appealing but the production does not treat the story with the same affection and style it lavished on Earthshock. The worst example is that horrible backdrop prehistoric set with the ONE boulder in the centre, so obviously false and the team pass it so many times but from different angles that attempts to cover up its repetitiveness by episode four is just hysterical. The sets for the Citadel are much better but still a bit on the shiny side, it is clear early on the are only three real sets and it limits the action somewhat.
Then there are the FX such is the miniature Concorde and the Plasmatons, surely one of the worst ever monsters to appear in the show. They have no arms, no legs, they are just some guy dressed up in a rock costume jumping about. Hardly fear-inducing stuff.
Annoyingly this Roger Limb score is quite good which is a shame because I really do enjoy bitching of about his horrible music. Early scenes of vanishing aeroplanes are treated to an eerie whistling score and the score is punctuated by some unnerving stings, especially in scenes concerning the hypnotised passengers.
It is so frustrating because this story has the cast Earthshock so clearly needed! Forget laughable characters like Briggs and Kyle and Scott, all one-dimensional stereotypes... here we are treated the highly engaging team of Stapley, Scobie and Bilton. Stapley especially is a terrifically acted part by Richard Easton, assured and level headed, he makes a completely believable pilot. And the crotchety old Professor Hayter is great fun, his acidic barbs are a joy. Plus one of those pilots is pretty cute. Not bad going really.
Oh look! It's that intergalactic party pooper the Master! What a wally! He's dressed up as a pot bellied genie who babbles on and on in nonsense speak! Why oh why is he disguised even before the Doctor shows up? How the hell does he know the Doctor WILL show up? That's what I call forward planning! Seriously though, that plodder Ainley just blows any sense of credibility he might have salvaged in the far superior Castrovalva with his pantomime performance. I cannot believe they actually asked him to play it this way? All chuckles and villainous twitches of the mouth. Pur-lease. All memories of the gorgeously suave Delgado are insulted here.
The plot rattles along harmlessly, trying to succeed despite the obvious lack of money. The thing that surprises me most is how much more watchable I find this story than much of the Davison era and not just because of the shoddy production values. There is some nice twists along the way and you never really know how the crew are going to escape right until the end. The surprise return of Adric is sweet and it is very un-Doctor Who to have a first scene like this one discussing repercussions of the last story. And of course any story where Tegan gets left behind at the end is okay by me. My boyfriend has a high up job at Gatwick so all this stuff with aeroplanes is quite appealing to me. Let's put it this way I would rather watch Time-Flight than Arc of Infinity, Terminus, The Kings Demons, Warriors, The Awakening and that ripe old turkey Four to Doomsday. It might not look as good as any of those stories but by God it's a hell of a lot more engaging.
So surprisingly I'm giving this story a thumbs up despite all its faults. It might be crap but its well played crap with a big heart.
I quite like it.
A Review by Paul Rees 9/7/03
Time-Flight must be one of the most maligned stories in Doctor Who's history - in my view, undeservedly so.
It's never going to be a classic, agreed, and some of the acting is less than top-notch. The effects have not aged well (the use of CSO is particularly noticeable at times) and this story consequently has a high 'cheese factor'. It also has to be said that the plot here is a bit of a mess: in particular, the Doctor's eventual defeat of the Master seems to rely upon a combination of meaningless technobabble and random explanations.
On the positive side, however, the story is generally well-paced, with the regulars being in particularly fine fettle. This is their first outing without Adric and, to be honest, they are the better for it: without Adric's brooding presence, there is certainly less bickering and squabbling amongst the TARDIS crew. It has to be said, however, that they get over his death remarkably quickly - Davison's reference to the need for a holiday to "cheer us all up" being particularly crass.
As the Kalid, Anthony Ainley is wonderfully off-the-wall. The ending of episode two (when the Kalid is revealed to be the Master) is particularly effective - even though I'm still not quite sure why the Master decided to disguise himself in the first place. I'm also unclear as to whether the Doctor has fallen into an elaborate trap set by the Master, or whether their near simultaneous arrival on pre-historic Earth was just an amazing coincidence.
The idea of the Master's interference provoking a schizoid split within the Xeraphin gestalt was an interesting if underdeveloped one. Also worthy of note is Nyssa's previously unmentioned psychic ability; this was a potentially interesting development, which was unfortunately not followed up in later stories. A missed opportunity, I feel.
To conclude, Time-Flight is certainly not one of the best Who stories - but neither is it one of the worst.
A Review by Ron Harmon 16/8/03
Many people have slammed Time-Flight for having too much plot, but I'm going to stand up for it because it was forced to go through so many changes. To begin with, Peter Grimwade originally wrote it for Tom Baker's last season, but was forced to temporarily cease work on it to direct Full Circle and Logopolis. Then, JNT asked Grimwade to replace the 4th Doctor, Romana, and K9 with the 5th Doctor, Nyssa, and Tegan. Then Grimwade was asked halfway through the serial to replace Kalid with the Master. Finally, he was asked to write out Tegan so she looked like she was going to leave the show. Despite the many changes the scripts went through it's still an ok story. Many people on this site when giving Time-Flight a bad review seemed to forget that Grimwade was forced to make many changes to the script like Planet of Fire.
A Review by Brian May 22/9/03
Time-Flight begins with an interesting - and relatively original - premise. The idea of a Concorde disappearing in time and the subsequent expedition to follow it is rather intriguing. Unfortunately the premise is the only good thing going for this shockingly woeful tale.
The plot, while straightforward and potentially interesting - a trapped Master seeking to awaken and utilise a dormant alien power - its execution is unengaging, boring and quite pointless. Only the first ten or fifteen minutes hold any interest - the disappearing Concorde, the discussion of Adric's death, the arrival at Heathrow and the Doctor using his UNIT credentials make for some interesting viewing. Not enthralling, but with some promise. Unfortunately after this, the descent into tedium begins.
There is no dramatic tension, there are no memorable moments, and the only real attempt at a plot twist, Kalid revealing himself to be the Master, is indicative of the now tired "recurring villain" element of the show and the pantomime character the Master had become (not the fault of Anthony Ainley, but the production team who veered his role in this direction). The Master has no reason to disguise himself as Kalid in the first place; it is merely a means for a trite "it was the Master all along" cliffhanger - one of a number of such tiresome moments in the Davison era.
The cast does not help much either. Peter Davison and Janet Fielding deliver competent but unenthusiastic performances. It's not Sarah Sutton's best day as Nyssa and apart from Nigel Stock as Professor Hayter and the Xeraphin brothers (Hugh Hayes and Andre Winterton) the rest of the acting is mediocre at best, dreadful at worst. There are some dreadful lines - Angela Clifford's "I didn't know you had a New York stopover" - and some unnecessary ones - Bilton inside the TARDIS regarding the door control: "I wouldn't have thought it was that" - an attempt at irony, as the control in question is for the door, but in fact a stupid excuse to further the plot, which at this stage requires the Master to re-enter. The end of episode three, simply a close-up of the Doctor saying "The Master has finally defeated me" is also poor, both as dialogue and as a cliffhanger.
There is no real climax either. The use of technobabble - fiddling with a few wires, an incomprehensible explanation, the use of an assortment of gadgets and components to bring an adventure to a close - has occurred before. Sometimes it can spoil the end of a good story (e.g. Doctor Who and the Silurians, The Masque of Mandragora) but doesn't ruin the tale as a whole. In Time-Flight, a series of convoluted, technical explanations from the Doctor IS the climax. There is no real showdown with the Master - his TARDIS just vanishes and the Doctor explains his fate. The expulsion of Tegan from the TARDIS is also poorly executed - the Doctor hurries inside to evade the police officers (surely they would have known he had security clearance?) - he shuts out his Australian companion without even noticing, then asks where she is - next scene we cut to Tegan strolling through the terminal.
The story is also indifferently directed. The puppet hydra-like monster that appears near the end of episode two is laughable - if its teeth were better designed that would have made all the difference. The Plasmatons look like huge pieces of used chewing gum (with legs!) The only remotely interesting alien components are the aforementioned Xeraphin, who don't appear for very long. And what about Professor Hayter in the TARDIS? Is he just a mental projection? So what happened to him/it in the end? Peter Grimwade has made some impressive contributions to Doctor Who as a director (Full Circle, Logopolis, Earthshock). I believe this is his forte, not writing.
The lack of any action or suspense leaves the viewer uninspired and uncaring. After the tension and pace of the previous story, Earthshock, a quieter, recuperative story is probably a good idea, but not a lifeless venture such as this.
The question stands, could it have been better? Probably not. The chance to film in and around a Concorde was too tempting for John Nathan-Turner and the BBC. According to the blurb on the video release (which I read upon renting it - I certainly wouldn't buy it!), this was the first time any production team had been allowed to film Concorde - indeed, a major coup for Doctor Who, but all the recorded scenes seem extremely gratuitous and self-congratulatory, like the travelogue Amsterdam scenes that occur in the following story, Arc of Infinity. These indulgent moments prove the worse for wear later, during the studio bound scenes in the final episode when the Doctor and company stand around the plane's wheel preparing for take-off. It is painfully obvious they are all standing beside a model wheel, without access to the real thing. The blending in of stock footage Concorde vision as it takes off from the prehistoric earth is also dreadful.
A most forgettable story. Definitely one of the weakest tales of the Peter Davison years. 1.5/10
The beginning of the end by James Aanensen 2/10/03
The first season of the Davison era just had to be good.
Why? There are two obvious reasons:
However, after this is where the production team seemed to lose hold of what they were doing. The death of a long-term character in any program is a massive plot element to introduce. The next episode therefore needs to be equally as competent in the way it deals with the events of the previous episode.
To say that this theme in Time-Flight was handled disastrously is an understatement.
The TARDIS crew show a token moment of grief then forget all about it. Even Adric's phantom appearance in episode 2 conjures minimal emotion in Nyssa and Tegan. Even if as a character he was not that popular (which is arguable anyway), the production team should have shown more respect to the intelligence of their audience. The Doctor's refusal to change the situation does not make sense and ridiculously Tegan's argument does. How many times has the TARDIS de-materialised in the nick of time before a tremendously bad "something" happens? The Doctor talks about not interfering, but ahh..., ahem. Removing Adric from the bridge before the freighter crashed would not have changed the outcome or history.
This is one of far too many plainly ridiculous plot holes throughout Time-Flight. Yes, the script asked too much of the budget, it also asked too much of our imaginations. Being Who fans we are all quite imaginative, but this was too much. The reliance on continuity is one all too convenient element, but a false and contradictory continuity is just bad management. At this particular point in the series' history, I believe they proved near fatal mistakes. Some purely horrid dialogue, an incomprehensible and convoluted plot, below par effects and the bad characterisation following Adric's death undoubtedly led to many viewers switching off forever. Thus ratings began to decrease and while nothing else in the Davison era scraped the barrel like Time-Flight, nothing was good enough to repair the damage either.
Add an equally poor start to the C. Baker era in The Twin Dilemma and Bob's your uncle, we got the shortest season ever then cancellation, from which the series never recovered. To be fair, the late McCoy era finally saw some cracking Who return to the screen (namely Ghost Light and The Curse Of Fenric) but by then it turned out to be too late.
Why this story was produced given the budgetary restrictions after Earthshock is interesting, however I am inclined to agree with Andrew Wixon in his review of the story. Also, some note must go to the review by Ron Harmon who points out the problems faced by the crew when commissioning Time-Flight.
For a story that starts quite promisingly, Time-Flight ultimately evolves into the first link in the chain that began to hold television Doctor Who back.
A Review by Keith Bennett 28/4/04
A number of critisms of this story are, by now, well known in Doctor Who fandom; why does the Master dress up as Kalid... the story's oversized demands on the budget... the co-incidence of the Doctor arriving just when and where the Master is doing his dastardly deeds (although that last one is a bit silly - without co-incidences, we wouldn't have very many Doctor Who adventures at all).
This story is, indeed, pretty ordinary, which is a shame, seen in the light of its good points, of which it does have a few. The scenes at Heathrow are excellent (apart from the ones showing a dark, tiny traffic control room), the premise of the concorde disappearing is intriguing, and (unlike most fans, it seems), I really like the three-member crew who get caught up in the events - they're natural, believable and likeable.
The quick dismissal of Adric's death at the beginning is certainly kind of iffy, but what is the alternative? Have "The Funeral Of Adric" as the next installment? I suppose the production crew could have done better at trying to find some kind of happy medium.
The plot's "devolopment" in the second half becomes weary and confusing (I know... that's old news too...), resulting in a tired and pretty forgettable story which, as I said earlier, is disappointing, as a lot more could have come from this.
And it all comes crashing down by Thomas Cookson Updated 22/1/22
Time-Flight was a terrible way to end a season. A shocking story in itself, the script and production giving the visceral sense of a show in rotting decay. It was also one that actively dropped all the season's weight and undid virtually all its good work.
In hindsight, Earthshock would've made a stronger finale, but Time-Flight was always in JNT's line-up. Indeed, Earthshock was an eleventh-hour replacement for a junked Christopher Priest script. Saward was so preoccupied with Earthshock, he had little time to refine Time-Flight's shoddy leftover script.
JNT seemingly believed including Concorde was an unmissable opportunity to elevate the show's look and publicity. If it did, it was at the cost of dramatic impact. The devastating impacts of Earthshock and Logopolis are rendered utterly hollow here.
The bereavements Tegan and Nyssa suffered from the Master's murderous antics would've been given some plausible closure had Castrovalva's ending stood and the Master remained vanquished. But seemingly any hands that knew what they're doing were being overwritten by ones who didn't.
It's possible the Master's repeated comebacks and Davison's laxness about vanquishing him would've made sense and felt righter had the more Williamsy Project Zeta Sigma happened instead of Logopolis. But JNT was resolute in a direction that blatantly should've been changed.
The wisdom of Hinchcliffe, who'd strived to develop the Doctor beyond trite boy scout morality, was overwritten. Regressing the Doctor from a thought-out character, to one embodying trite thought-terminating cliches.
Is my expectation that the Doctor be utterly ruthless regarding the Master an unrealistic, extreme one? Well, not if you've watched Pyramids of Mars. Logopolis was an extreme event. Davison's lax counter-measures barely qualified as moderate.
The ruthless methods the Doctor adopted in Pyramids of Mars and Brain of Morbius weren't just for the sake of it, but to reinforce he wouldn't just let apocalyptic catastrophes happen or pass. Sadly, in this post-Logopolis era, he's contractually obliged to do so.
Time-Flight rather defines this as a show where nothing matters. The grieving of Adric particularly so. Perhaps a viewer taking casual interest in a populated living room might pick up Davison's "don't ever ask me to do anything like that again" and think it was a powerful scene.
Unfortunately it carries on, and we see the hysterical regulars, by the clock, suddenly shift to disinterest, rendering the whole scene insincere. Frustratingly, the time distortion could've happened earlier to interrupt Davison's eulogy, and the scene would feel a lot less crass. But Time-Flight feels designed to run out the clock as much as possible. Even the cliffhanger reprises do.
My first response to that grieving scene was strange bafflement. Frankly, most of the season's histrionics seemed more bizarre than dramatic. This, however, culminates an era where everything about itself was taken ridiculously, exhaustively seriously until eventually nothing was.
The TARDIS being fork-lifted into Concorde's cargo might be the naffest padding ever filmed. It also removes all stakes, ensuring the Doctor is never really stranded in prehistory. Concorde somehow does touch-down harmlessly upon Jurassic rock. Frustratingly, a single rewrite could've explained that the plasmatons cushioned their landing. Instead, we're palmed off with the kind of logic that would've insulted any young Thunderbirds viewer.
The scenes with the hypnotized crew would've been far more effective if filmed from within their hallucination. As it is, they're just embarrassing to watch. Furthermore, it feels the story's only binary is whether the hypnotized should worship Khalid or Davison's TARDIS.
I've called Time-Flight unimaginative. I think, more accurately, it's indigestible and uninviting. Never really meeting our imaginations halfway. It just presents us with leaden theoretical exercises we're expected to follow.
Tom Baker could explain The Invasion of Time's ridiculous resolutions in a way whereby we'd just take his word that's how the rules worked. Davison's era couldn't suddenly earn that kind of faith. Furthermore, Time-Flight brings real-life aerodynamics into the equation, which the average young Thunderbirds fan would've understood implicitly enough to reject Time-Flight's nonsense.
It's been suggested the logic's no worse than The Three Doctors, but that functioned as a layer cake of hypothetical pseudo-science. The power of black holes and matter substitution, honed by Omega's ancient mental powers.
Time-Flight feels like an arbitrary lumping together of the Master with the Xeraphin power (in what's supposedly only weeks after Castrovalva), making him as powerful as the writers need.
Tegan and Nyssa's journey through the labyrinth gets worse with each rewatch. Fielding's performance when fooled by Adric's phantom is terrible, making Tegan look dense. It just isn't convincing that Tegan would be fooled. She never liked Adric enough to plausibly lose her head over the mythical prospect of him surviving. It'd maybe make more sense were the roles reversed, with Nyssa needing Tegan's reality check. Frustratingly this is a plausible setting to discover Adric alive in. But for us to believe Tegan's fooled, Waterhouse's performance needs to be convincing. It isn't.
Eventually, Khalid is unmasked to reveal the Master, giving the impression the story's scrapped its plot midway through and started again. Time-Flight simply can't afford further setbacks.
Truthfully, Davison and Ainley's sparring isn't without its delights. There's a certain charm to Ainley bidding Stapley farewell rather than killing him. But why are we persisting with this tedious test of character for this new Doctor against his old foe when Castrovalva should've put it firmly to bed with Davison clearly the winner?
To clarify my issue with Ainley's Master, he's often dismissed as a pantomime villain. But it's worse than that. He's a murderous figure, but he's as brazenly murderous as he is stupid. Quite simply, the Doctor should easily get the measure of him, but Logopolis depended on him getting that measure wrong and perpetually continuing to thereafter.
The nadir moment is part three's cliffhanger, where Davison declares himself finally defeated. This feels a ridiculous declaration concerning a foe he's survived worse traps from, but it's Eric Saward being on the nose, having characters declare themselves defeated. Priming us for an era where the Doctor embodies such a state of learned helplessness he'll become nigh impossible to root for. Frustratingly, it's never even made lucid whether this is the Doctor realizing Logopolis has changed the stakes or taught him not to underestimate his foe again.
Part four is probably the most fun. There's something charming about Davison and Ainley's double-bluffs and parts exchanges. They play off each other well. But it's hardly up to snuff as a satisfying climax, and certainly not enough to reward having endured the rest. The story has accumulated too many elements to manage, with Ainley's hostages seeming the most nonchalant bunch. None seem to possess the gumption or spirit to try to tackle him. It all feels soulless.
The fact that Concorde makes the second flight on miles of jagged rock as its runway baffles plot sense. It barely seems worth the risk if the Doctor can just bring the passengers home with his TARDIS. Pertwee's era would've done so, with a sermon about how lives matter more than technology. But as this is a promotional film, Concorde has to finally be seen to take off and land safely home. It's like the ultimate JNT pantomime ending where even the plane's shown unharmed in the end. The sense that it's gone all corporate. That after Auntie Vanessa's death, Earthshock and the Mara possession, Tegan's great moment of catharsis is finally delivering her hostess speech to the passengers.
The Doctor's final measures to exile the Master are almost completely low-effort, if only for the fact that later stories exist where he's not even trying. What hurts is that this season has otherwise been Davison's strongest showing as the new Doctor. Yes, Genesis of the Daleks ended with the Doctor failing, but with still a reassuring, believable reminder of the resilience of human tenacity.
Here we're simply given an info-dump explanation that some unseen planet's magical healing properties will resolve the whole plot for him. That after four serials of the Master being an unstoppable planet-destroying menace no one even manages to leave a scratch on, he'll somehow be harmlessly overpowered off-screen. It would at least be something had the story ended on Davison visiting Xeraphus to ensure the Master's exile, only to find he'd already escaped, and warning Nyssa to be vigilant that they'll surely meet him again.
Eric Saward was in favour of killing the Master off, presumably having him become Xeraphin lunch. JNT overruled him, and the final result feels like Saward passing the buck. Hoping if this went badly enough, the Master might be quietly forgotten. Even the Doctor's few victories can now be expected to not matter and be undone next season. The scoreboard always reset to zero.
Time-Flight just feels mismanaged overall. Suggesting new management's desperately needed. However, BBC memos to JNT suggested they were happy enough with Season 19. That the successes broke even. Frustratingly, much of Season 19 seemed to work out for the same reasons Time-Flight didn't. Reckless persistence.
It seems baffling now, but this wasn't the first time a season had ended in shambles and the producer was given future chances to redeem themselves. In fact, compared to The Invasion of Time, at least Time-Flight lasted only two weeks. But those weeks demolished all point in having invested in the season's unfolding story. Furthermore, Tom Baker was no longer the Doctor, so viewers were less willing to indulge a declining show without him.
Sure, fewer numbers tuned out than you might think. It wasn't yet conceivable that the show could instantly kill its public good will. This was before fandom's paranoia about the show being constantly at risk of cancellation.
Maybe the public liked seeing wholesome actors like Davison and Ainley having a gentleman's face-off and were reassured by the show adhering to safe pantomime morality. Maybe that's how the show was perceived and cursed to continue. Audiences enjoyed the show as a series of entertaining, digestible standalones. Unfortunately, it was now contorting itself into an interlinked continuity nightmare.
Stapley and his crew are a needed enthusiastic presence here. In some ways, their survival vindicates how this era was never meant to go Saward's bloodthirsty way. Unfortunately, story enjoyment becomes too dependent on them brightening things up, and often they're horribly insipid.
I find it hard to square this as something populist. It's too messy in its plotting and continuity fixations to work as simplicity. Too pantomime to be anything sophisticated. It baffles me how the show went from producing the arthouse City of Death to this trite rubbish in three years. Even Terry Nation's weaker stories (The Android Invasion, Planet of the Daleks) clearly had an identifiable populist appeal once. This feels complacent about itself being a jolly, populist lark, but complacent to the point of obtuse.
Perhaps for many fans Time-Flight is the reason it was important the show survived to Season 26. Principally so it wouldn't be remembered for this disaster. The fact the show did survive seems, like the plot, to happen upon a massive miracle of wishful thinking that I've never been able to go along with. It probably owed more to the residual good will cultivated during the show's golden years of the 70s, than anything JNT did since.
It's not that I don't get its appeal. Many of my issues with this Doctor's pacifist methods stemmed from watching in a post-9/11 world. Most fans rewatching this preferred being taken back to more innocent times. The problem I think is by drawing out the Master's overstory, it paints that micro-level outdated, woolly thinking on the unavoidable macro level. As Bidmead's conclusion to Castrovalva demonstrates, correctives were made, but then overwritten and undone. Davison didn't stand a chance.
This is no longer a show interested in or capable of distancing itself from its worst mistakes or past disasters. Now it's determined to keep the worst of its past alive. Disasters are now to be obsessively relived.
Frankly if I'd been 11 in 1982, this probably would've left me sticking to the novelizations after.
A Review by Finn Clark 5/8/09
I remembered this story as being worthless. Timelash and Time and the Rani at least entertained me, but my memories of Time-Flight were merely of boredom. Rewatching it was thus quite a surprise, since in many ways it's rather good.
Best of course is the magnificent Peter Davison. Have you ever noticed how it's the good actors who always seem to find the good lines? Davison here finds humour even in dialogue like, "That's right," "I try to be" and "I'm thinking about it." However, the script deserves credit too. Having just explained to the Heathrow authorities that there's a time warp eating their aircraft, the Doctor adds that "We can't have a navigational hazard like that hanging around the galaxy." This is an absolutely shocking script in certain ways, as I'll be explaining soon, but I like its witty dialogue.
While we're talking about Davison, incidentally, note the way he lowers himself into the TARDIS in Concorde's hold as if it's not just the BBC's Police Box prop lying on its side. I like most of the actors, in fact. Sarah Sutton is bad, of course, but I was pleasantly surprised to see her do quite a nice job of being possessed. She manages some facial expressions, anyway. "An intelligence is controlling Nyssa!" Maybe it can give her acting lessons! "Kalid." Um. So we have a charmless Tegan and a dull, unconvincing Nyssa, but on the upside at least Adric's dead. I still don't see why materialising on the freighter was against the rules, given that no one saw Adric blow up and for all we know a hundred TARDISes could have landed to take him away, but what the hell.
The story even makes use of all this. Blink and you'll miss the first scene with, "Adric wouldn't want us to grieve... hey, who wants to visit Crystal Palace?" However, I liked the hallucinations in episode two. Adric and the Melkur are both meaningful nods to the past, the latter being one of the few times when the tragedy of Nyssa's background was acknowledged in the Davison era, although I think seeing a Cyberman would have had more significance than the Terileptil. It's odd how often the Terileptils got seen or namechecked under Saward. Someone must have liked them. You've got The Visitation, The Awakening, the tippexed one in Mindwarp and also this.
Meanwhile, Ainley is a lot of fun, as always, while the only guest actor I don't like is Nigel Stock. However, him I hate. Professor Hayter is theoretically the story's eccentric, but in the event almost none of his performance even gets past his beard and glasses. He should have been great. He's the only non-regular who isn't simply airline staff. The script gives him all that Cold War humour and even a moment of heroic sacrifice, but Stock simply isn't bringing anything to the party. He's just a waste of space.
On the other hand, Peter Cellier appears briefly in episode one. He was Sir Frank Gordon, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, in Yes, Prime Minister. I liked him.
This story is witty, lively and even more hippy-trippy than Kinda. Any fan of Snakedance and Enlightenment should theoretically treasure it as another of those spaced-out Davisons. Nevertheless, it has two completely different problems that make it boring. The first is that its first episode is a 1970s UNIT story, in all the worst ways. It looks impossibly 1970s. The moustache, the suits, the office sets. The name-dropping of UNIT, followed by the Doctor acting as an adviser for people who stand around self-importantly and have underlings who look at radar screens. It's lots of officials in offices. Basically it's The Claws of Axos episode one, or maybe The Hand of Fear. The only significant difference between this and its siblings is that, unlike Pertwee, Davison's Doctor looks embarrassed to be telling them gobbledigook.
The other problem is, um, episodes 3 and 4. The first half of the story moves surprisingly fast, but everything grinds to a halt when the Master shows up. What does he want? Why, he's exhausted his dynomorphic generator! The Xeraphim nucleus is the perfect substitute and infinitely more powerful. What he hadn't taken into account was the Doctor's temporal limiter! It's two episodes of nothing. The dialogue and the plot are all technobabble. The Master does nothing except fool around with bits of TARDIS innards, which has the additional side effect of bogging down what should have been a mystical fable of Oriental magicians, inner sanctums and an alien supermind at war with its own dark side. I love the ideas in these scripts. They're completely mad; for instance, in their proliferation of impossible magical monsters. Plasmatons. Xeraphim. Psychokinetic rubber snake-creatures. If only they'd been put in a story instead of a fifty-minute wodge of exposition, this could have been extraordinary.
Unfortunately, they didn't. That second half has the worst plot in televised Doctor Who, so much so that it feels wrong to be using the word in the first place. I've been making comparisons with Bob Baker and Dave Martin stories, which is apt since like them it's bursting with cool ideas but can't turn them into a satisfying story. Episode three is a 25-minute info-dump. Nyssa and Tegan get some passable scenes en route to the sanctum, but Grimwade's completely lost it by the time we get to the cliffhanger.
"The Master has finally defeated me." Yes, and live monkeys might fly out of my arse. The unfortunate thing is that the Xeraphim and their schizophrenic superpowers might have been able to almost justify that claim if we'd been introduced to them properly instead of the line coming out of nowhere like the world's biggest "eh?" Thus, instead of The Arabian Nights, this technobabble-choked mysticism feels more like Star Wars. "I shall soon have total control of the Force." There's a crossover to make the eyes water.
The story's most obviously lacking dinosaurs. It's 140 million years ago! What kind of lunatic sets a Doctor Who story slap-bang in the middle of the dinosaurs' 160 million year reign and doesn't at least have a pterodactyl flying overhead? We don't even hear anything roar! C'mon! DINOSAURS! DINOSAURS! Am I asking too much? Man, that was lame. In addition, what we now know as Heathrow was still being deposited at the bed of a shallow tropical sea in that era, while the Doctor's line about an ice age would seem to be about 140 million years premature.
The Plasmatons are a nice idea, but they should have been more eerie and mysterious. The return of a dead man is spooky, though. I particularly liked the bit where someone's molecular structure breaks up and they become a Plasmaton, although it should have been nastier. I also thought the Xeraphim look amazing, with those cracked zombie heads and shoulders.
Time-Flight needed many things. Firstly, the Master needed to get more stuff to do and preferably kill people. Secondly, it needed better monsters. I actually quite like the designs we got, especially given that they're all essentially cameos, but it can't be denied that the Plasmatons look like walking turds. It's The Hand of Fear again! No, I'm being frivolous. The Three Doctors is actually a much closer parallel, since both stories involve a trapped Time Lord pulling humans from a contemporary UNIT story into a fantasy realm of the imagination policed by psychic blob monsters. Kalid's citadel even looks a bit like Omega's. It's grey instead of orange, but it's also about as far as you can get from anonymous BBC corridors. It looks great! Believe it or not, this is one of the best-lit sets of its era, with lots of lovely atmospheric shadows. Hell, it's even dark in Concorde's hold.
This story surprised me by being much more interesting than I'd expected. It's still comfortably Ainley's worst story, just as The Time Monster is Delgado's, but it's also full of good stuff and is managing to be original with it. There's Davison's coin-tossing gag. Even the bits that don't make sense are too mad to be easily dismissed as mere plot holes. Why does the Master dress up as Kalid? He looks so fake! I like both of Ainley's performances a lot, but I'd like him as Kalid more if he wasn't doing that voice. It makes for a good episode two cliffhanger, though.
Ainley gets to say, "I am the Master and you will obey me" and Davison says "I'll explain later" twice That was good. However, this is a story so directionless that its dramatic climax involves a plane taking off. The Master is defeated with meaningless technobabble and the Doctor abandons Tegan so offhandedly that it's almost hilarious. I can't believe he wasn't aware of what he was doing, but then again she'd been moaning all season about wanting to get back to Heathrow. The moral of the story: be careful about what you bitch for. This story is tedious and yet also mad, sometimes both at the same time. It's drab, yet also often surprisingly good-looking. Someone should do a fan edit that cuts it together with footage from Airplane! One of the flight staff is even called Roger.
Episode one is a 1970s UNIT story. Episode two is quite good. Episodes three and four lose it completely, but you might yet enjoy them if you go in prepared for that. The technobabble is one of several horrible mistakes, but Ainley and Davison are always worth watching. Is there another famously bad story like it? Not in the 1980s, I think. Its nearest bad cousin might be... hmmm, The Time Monster.
British Airways circa 140,000,000 BC by Joe Briggs-Ritchie 8/6/12
Is it just me or is Time-Flight a BA advertising campaign masquerading as a Doctor Who story?
This might actually explain why it's all a bit crap.
When I purchased Time-Flight on video, I'd only seen it once before about eight years previously. I remembered that I'd enjoyed it as an 11 year old, a memory which was somewhat at variance with the mountain of negativity that this story seems to have attracted over the years. Rewatching it in 2004 only confirmed what I felt about it in 1996: that it's an unfairly maligned and essentially enjoyable adventure which is (almost) free from the taint of Adric. Watching it again in 2011, having seen it quite a few more times, is another matter entirely.
You see, the more you watch Time-Flight, the more its flaws become glaringly obvious and ergo the more you start to dislike it. My most recent viewing led to several conclusions, none of them particularly enthusiastic. First, I wondered why on earth this was being filmed in a studio rather than on location. A quarry may very well be a quarry I hear you cry, but I think that it would have worked wonders here. Why on earth would anyone try to create a prehistoric set on an end-of-season budget that was evidently so low it existed only as a concept in John Nathan-Turner's head? I suppose we should be grateful that they didn't attempt to extend the tableau one step further and incorporate dinosaurs. We all know where that kind of thing leads... Secondly, I pondered why the direction is flatter than Hull. Was Ron Jones manically depressed? Was he on a course of tranquilising medication? Actually, the latter explanation is my favourite since Time-Flight bears all the directorial hallmarks of a man wandering around in a chemically induced fog and flat direction wedded to a visual palette that makes heavy use of various shades of grey is not a happy union.
I also began to wonder why Roger Limb was ever allowed anywhere near the Radiophonic Workshop. His score for The Keeper of Traken was okay, but it doesn't make up for the rest of his Doctor Who 'input'. Time-Flight is full of the same turgid, dreary, tuneless noise with which he filled up Four to Doomsday, Arc of Infinity and Terminus. It adds nothing to scenes, it has no variety and it makes no comment on the story, it just gets in the way. Anyone who doubts that he should have had his keyboards taken away should try sitting through all four episodes of Arc of Infinity.
It did occur to me that there was a distinctly pro-BA attitude running throughout the story. Captain Stapley is a jolly hockey sticks type who describes Concorde as the best aircraft in the world. Stapley, Scobie and Bilton seem to spend the entire story larking about and generally being jolly nice, and there is a very much an attitude of 'fear not, we'll get the passengers home'. Perhaps JNT thought that maybe they could get free flights on BA if they made a story about Concorde. You know, just like he thought having an Australian air hostess would get them free flights on Qantas and having the Doctor and companions all wear the same costumes constantly would be a smart move in terms of marketing. Hands up who thinks letting an accountant run Doctor Who was a good idea...
Let me just see if I've got the plot right because it all seems a bit ridiculous to me:
The Xeraphin come to Earth after their own planet is devastated in a war. They build a citadel and decide to go to sleep for some time. The Master comes along and decides that with the Xeraphin Nucleus in his TARDIS he will be invincible. In order to facilitate this, he generates a time contour and hijacks a Concorde so he can use the passengers to break into the Xeraphin inner sanctum and access the Nucleus. So far so stupid. This is all very well, but it does lead to some utterly inexplicable 'nuances', the most ridiculous of which is the Master dressing up as Kalid and spouting all that quasi-mystical crap. I can understand him wanting to deceive the Doctor to some degree, but he obviously isn't doing it solely for the Doctor's benefit as we see him as Kalid long before the Doctor does. The real reason is to mislead the audience so as to have a surprise return of the Master. That's all well and good, but they could have done it in a way which was at least a bit more thought out. Is there any good reason for him to collapse with snot running down his face only then to get up moments later and reveal his true identity? Have I spectacularly missed the point of all this? Has the Master gone barking mad and resorted to impersonating characters from the Arabian Nights purely for his own amusement? Or was it all some clever postmodern joke about the Master's penchant for pantomime villainy?
Acting is decidedly questionable on all fronts. In fact, the one person who feels like a safe bet in all this is Anthony Ainley, chewing the scenery as reliably as ever. It's not a great story for the regulars and the guest cast are plain ridiculous. The Xeraphin are utterly boring, so let's be thankful that they get little screen time. The Plasmatons are an interesting idea but the execution is lame.
I wasn't exaggerating when I mentioned the grey colour scheme. The citadel interior is grey, the outdoor set is grey, the Plasmatons are grey, the Xeraphin are grey. It's endless.
The only thing I like about this story is that all-too-brief scene when the Doctor and Tegan approach the wreck of the spacecraft with the sound of the wind in the background. It's pretty eerie and should have been extended. The scene probably lasts about ten seconds. Yes. I thought ten seconds of this story were worth keeping.
Nine-tenths of fandom hate this story. They're probably right.
A Review by Robert Fuller 9/2/13
This story has often been a target of abuse by most of fandom and, devil take me, I can't particularly see why. I don't think it has much to do with whether or not the story is enjoyable or well-written or if it's interesting. It seems to boil down to the fact that there is a lot going on, so most people at some point, throw their hands up in the air and say "I give up, it's crap." I myself found it fairly easy to follow and have rarely found myself operating against convential wisdom when it comes to Doctor Who stories. For example, I enjoyed The Caves of Androzani, and yet I thought Four to Doomsday was a waste of potential. So I guess this is my chance to play devil's advocate.
Let's start with the plot itself. I found the fantastic ambition of the whole thing remarkable. A supersonic jet lost in a time contour emanating from an SOS sent 140 million years in Earth's past by an old arch enemy of the Doctor's, stranded and posing as an alien mystic requiring the Doctor's TARDIS so that he might have full access to a mysterious dualistic gestalt alien energy source containing the whole knowledge of an ancient race who crashlanded on prehistoric Earth in flight from a war in which their home planet was caught in the crosshairs, now having used the same psychokinetic energy being used by the Master, though not entirely within his control, to contain, preserve and manifest the total sum experience of their entire race and its collective consciousness into a sarcophagus occupying a single room in an inpenetrable inner sanctum.
It's the stuff of lavish, large-scale science-fiction novels and adventure. Even Time Flight's critics would not accuse the story of slow pacing. Within that, there are so many more interesting nuances. The psychic projection and hypnosis, the way the Doctor breaks it, Nyssa's relationship to the intelligence, the role of the plasmatons, the drama as the crew fight to break the hypnosis, the cat and mouse game between the different sets with members of the crew evading the Master through the Doctor's TARDIS, the stuggle to get to the inner sanctum, all the different tricks that the Master uses against the Doctor and the crew or vice versa... I could go on all day.
There are many interesting story elements here beyond the main plot points mentioned. The personification of the Xeraphin life force and its communication with the other characters was quite effective. Kalid would have been an interesting character all on his own. The story of the Xeraphin and how it relates to the Master's plan was also handled well. Stapley and Scobie and their misadventures in the TARDIS (and subsequently successful attempts at thwarting the Master) are especially enjoyable, as were the action scenes where different members of the crew are split up hiding from the Master as the Doctor tries to stay with them while at the same time having often to part ways while he looks for a solution. All the different teaming up and splitting up as the characters have to move from one place to another, one situation to another, to accomplish the next goal, makes for good character interplay in different pairings or groupings. There are more than a few memorable lines. "It's times like these I wish I still had my scarf," "Psychotronics, was it Doctor? I call it electronics," "It seems you still prefer the company of fools, Doctor," "The force must be resisted," "Remember the Indian rope trick," and, last but not least: "I shall know everything."
The character interactions are top notch all around. Nigel Stock gives an excellent performance as Professor Hayter, supplying great intellectual foil for the Doctor. Their transition from an adversarial relationship to a more friendly one is parcelled out quite nicely. Both share an intellectual curiosity and a sense of caring for the other characters as well as a dramatic sense of immediacy in each performance, working on the same side, even when they don't get along. Some particularly nice touches occur when Hayter mistakes the landscape for Siberia and when he encourages the poor impressionable Angela Clifford (a well-acted performance by Judith Byfield) to fight the hypnosis that allows the Master to trick her and the others into thinking they are still on Concorde; she must break the spell by focusing on something she is sure of, even if it's just fish and chips.
Captain Stapley, admirably and capably portrayed by the fatherly and gentlemenly Richard Easton, is hands down one of the the most lovable characters in any Doctor Who story. How I wish he could've stayed on as a companion! Some of his greates moments include hiding with Scobie in the TARDIS while the Master decides whether to use the Doctor's machine or merely just take parts from it. Other highlights include his caring for the Doctor's compainions, his wide-eyed enthusiasm and curiosity, his ability to think on his feet, gentle sense of humour, rapport with his crewmates, his kind and loving nature which makes him a classic lovable good guy (those big wide eyes just say it's going to be okay, my wit and charm will get us out of this), not to mention the fact that he's a first-rate pilot. One of the sweetest and most genuine characters ever in the series, and portrayed with competence and intelligence.
Keith Drinkel gives energy and a first-rate performance to the blue-eyed, wide-eyed loyal sidekick Scobie, the flight engineer. You're pulling for him as the plucky adorable character stands by his captain through the crazy hijinx of trying to pilot the TARDIS or attempting to break hypnosis and stay loyal to his friends and the Doctor. Sarah Sutton gives one of her best performances here both when possessed and when not possessed. Janet Fielding, who tended to be overtly assertive, is kept at somewhat more of a respectable distance, reading her lines with flare but thankfully not eating up the screen every five minutes as she tended to do in some other stories. Her role in the surprise ending was an interesting twist. Michael Cashman has both wonderful comedic and dramatic moments in his role as Bilton. His delightful sense of humour comes through in interactions with Nyssa and the crew. The moral grounding of the character comes through as he bravely waits while Stapley and Scobie are in the TARDIS or when he consoles Angela as she fights off the hypnosis. The interplay between Doctor and company/crew with the officials and technicians at Heathrow in the begining and at the end was brimming with dynamism and humour.
The dramatic flow and pacing of this story are two of its most appealing features. From the very start, with the TARDIS in a spot, the emergency landing right in the middle of the airport, is marvellous. The Doctor telling them to contact UNIT and the eerie sense of calm before each plane is swept away in the time contour is just amazing. From there, we have the genuine sense of atmosphere as the Doctor helps to break the delusion that they are back at Heathrow, as corpses are seen by Nyssa, who is sensitive to what's going on, in this prehistoric world. The Xeraphin life force takes more of a hold over Nyssa as the plasmatons manifest themselves. The drama here is exceptional. Sarah Sutton's sense of poise and timing, Professor Hayter's stubborn dynamic honesty (resisting hypnosis, distrusting others and their stories), and the earnest loyalty of the crewmen to the Doctor whom they now trust. The Doctor learns more about the mystic and the power that he doesn't control as the others in different teams (Nyssa won't stay behind) make their way to the citadel, which has superb design.
The hypnotized crew being used as slave labor to penetrate the sanctum of power makes for excellent drama, as the endearing crew attempt to free them while others traverse the corridors of the citadel. Hayter, who doubts everthing around him because of the horror of what's happened, becomes an unwilling adventurer, while the Doctor is forced to relinquish the TARDIS key to help save his friends as more adventurous wandering through the citadel corridors continues in an attempt to thwart the Master before he can make good on his plans. Hayter's reincarnation after being consumed by the Xeraphin life force, whereupon he aids Stapley and Scobie by piloting the TARDIS, is wonderful. The Doctor, with the help of the superlative wit and genuine emotion from Stapley and the others, is able to beat the Master to the sanctum, where we see the Xeraphin life force at war with itself; as good and evil conciousness clashes with the fate of the Xeraphin life force and our beloved characters hanging in the balance. There are compelling dashes back and forth as different characters attempt to evade the Master in the corridors or as they attempt to get to the sanctum, and it never drags. The induction loop from the Master's TARDIS as an indirect route to the sanctum's power is inspired, as is the ingenuity shown by the crew to use a little excavation to create a workable runway so the plane can make it back to the future. Stapley's idea of putting "a spanner in the works", thwarting the Master's plan to raid the Doctor's TARDIS for spare parts (thanks to Stapley's quick thinking, the Master has the wrong parts) was yet another especially nice touch.
Time Flight is one of the most enjoyable Davison stories and easily the strongest of his first season. It's a lavish adventure with many compelling elements, whose bad reputation is most undeserved. 10/10