October 19: Time-Flight Parts One & Two

I think it was Jonathan Blum who pointed out that it was in the previous episode that Adric died in a freighter crash in the late Cretaceous period, and although this story takes place in the late Jurassic (quite a time span away, but still), no one even mentions Adric's death after the opening TARDIS scene.  Even though there's a crashed spaceship nearby.

I bring this up because it illustrates one of the inherent problems with the show at this point in time: it wants to have more interconnectedness between stories, to have a longer-running story than just the four episode serials, but it does it in a shallow way.  There's a scene of grieving at the beginning, with the Doctor declaring that he can't go back and save Adric, and then it's on to business as usual; Adric might as well have been dead for months, for all Tegan and Nyssa seem to be subsequently broken up about it.

There are some nice ideas at work in Time-Flight proper; the thought of Concorde disappearing back in time is rather interesting, and there's some nice back-referencing to UNIT in part one, of the sort that's pleasing for long-term fans but not required for more casual fans to understand.  But the issue is that because this is the last story of the season, there's not much money left to spend on sets, and because this is such an ambitious script, the results look particularly cheap.  Air traffic control is one guy in a small windowless room, for instance, and while the Plasmatons aren't the worst creations ever, their appearance effect is an overlayed smoke funnel, and the effect of holding people prisoner consists of soap suds.  And you can hear everyone walking around the wooden rostrums "outside" in the Jurassic wilderness.

One thing that's pleasingly odd is the Arabic magician who brought them all back in time, Kalid.  There's something wonderfully bizarre about his performance, with his incantations and his threats toward the Doctor, and I find him terribly watchable.  And his death in part two is particular gruesome, with all the green slime bubbling out as Kalid dies.  It's actually a bit disappointing, since no one else in this production is really worth watching.  And then, in the part two cliffhanger, it's revealed that Kalid is in fact the Master!  Oh.  Well, ok then.  Now I don't understand where this story is going.