Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day 605: Time-Flight, Episode Two
Dear diary,
Do you know, I honestly can’t tell if I’ve enjoyed this episode, or hated it, or if I’m just plain indifferent to it. On the one hand, it’s got everything that I think of as ‘not liking’ about Time-Flight - the slightly cumbersome monsters, the sets which simply don’t do anything for me, some not-all-that performances - but on the other hand, I’ve gotten through the episode without that feeling that accompanied other stories I’ve not enjoyed - the Dominators and *Pirate Planet*s of this word. To be honest, I wonder if it’s simply a case of the episode being so bad that it’s almost come back round to good again.
It’s fair to say that Perter Grimwade’s strengths lay far more in the direction side of production than it does in the writing - my notes on this episode describe several things as being ‘generic sci-fi rubbish’, and lacking any of the charm or whimsey that usually helps to make Doctor Who stand out. The best example of that comes early on in the episode, when the Doctor is released from his cliffhanger peril and his companions ask about the creatures. “Oh, you mean the Plasmatrons!” he replies, with all the enthusiasm of a child being dragged around the boring shops for hours on end by his parents. There’s an almost identical line a little later on, and to me it just feels like something you could pick up and transplant into any science fiction franchise and it would fit in simply by being ‘bland’.
The script isn’t helped by some particularly flat direction, either. Ron Jones’ work wasn’t stand out enough in Black Orchid for me to really notice it, but equally, it wasn’t bad enough for me to pick up on, either. Here’s I’m just finding that there’s very little pace or energy being injected into half the scenes, as people wander around into various sets and half-heartedly try to engage with the plot. It seems strange to think that both this and Kinda could be part of the same season of the same programme, when they seem to me to be such a distance apart in quality.
Hm. I have a feeling that writing up today’s entry may have helped me decide that, no, I haven’t really enjoyed this episode much after all.
Still! Let’s try and focus on the positives for a moment, shall we? The idea of Nyssa and Tegan encountering various people and creatures from recent adventures is a great one, though it feels a little too much like it’s brushed aside here. I particularly like that they encounter Melkur, and we get a reference to Nyssa’s father’s death (although, it seems strange that she tells Tegan that ‘what comes from it killed my father’, when she knows that it also killed Tegan’s aunt), although I’d have expected Tegan to encounter the Mara - surely that had a bigger effect on her than the Terrileptil did? I’d have placed him second, don’t get me wrong, but it seems an odd choice (if a better costume…).
And then we’ve got Adric appearing. Or, more specifically, we’ve got Adric appearing before any of the others, as a sign that they’re simply illusions. For me, this feels like the biggest lost opportunity. I know he’s only there so that John-Nathan Turner could include him in the Radio Times cast list and help to cover up his death, but this should be a chance for Nyssa and Tegan to make their peace with the boy - to apologise for the fact that they never got on with him and tell him that he’ll be missed, as they tell the Doctor at the start of Episode One. Yes, he’s only an illusion, but I really think we should have had them feeling a lot more shaken up about the death until now, and use this illusion as a turning point - it would have felt more true than simply declaring that he can’t be there, because he’s dead (with very little emotion at all, perhaps another fault in the direction?), and moving on quickly. A shame. I think it’s this which has let the episode down the most for me: there’s so much potential in the various ideas (using the airport and the Concorde, prehistoric Earth, and the return of Adric for a brief scene), but it’s all just being washed down the drain.
Mind you, much as some people hate it, I do love the reveal of the Master at the end of the episode. It’s possibly the best that this is ever pulled off, and I’m sure I’d not have guessed as a kid!
