October 20: Time-Flight Parts Three & Four

Part three is something of a halfway house between the first two parts and part four; there's some maneuvering with the Master, as he takes the Doctor's TARDIS -- his own not working properly after he apparently barely escaped Castrovalva -- but there are also some efforts by the script to explain what's going on with the Xeraphin, the alien intelligence that the Master is attempting to control to use in his TARDIS.  It does feel a bit mystical at times, with telepathic gestalt entities that are having an internal conflict between their good and evil sides and yet are still able to remove walls and create psychic projections, but as the first two episodes also had that mysterious quality, this isn't too bad.

The problem with this episode, then, is that Peter Grimwade (who actually began work on this story before his Who directorial debut in Full Circle) has had to write a number of scenes with the Master in the Doctor's TARDIS while Captain Stapley and First Officer Bilton spy on him, leading to some sabotage and then later an attempt to work out how to fly the TARDIS.  (It may not surprise you to learn that a good deal of this material was padding to fill out an under-running script.)  It's rather at odds with the surrounding material involving the Doctor and the Xeraphin tonally, and so it ends up feeling like something of a letdown.

The Doctor and the Master exchange TARDIS components outside
the Master's TARDIS while Concorde passengers look on.
(Time-Flight Part Four) ©BBC
Part four almost completely abandons the more mystical qualities the script has had in favor of a dull runaround, with the Master and the Doctor sparring with each other over TARDIS pieces while the Concorde crew readies their plane for takeoff back through the time contour that brought them there.  The sets aren't very convincing and neither are the airplane parts (the wheels, for instance, aren't even the size of a standard car's), and you do sort of wish they would get on with it.  This makes the very end of the episode, back in Heathrow, a refreshing breath of air -- there suddenly seems to be an energy present that was missing the previous twenty minutes.  And it is a nice surprise ending: four episodes after the death of Adric, Tegan is suddenly and unceremoniously left behind (admittedly at the airport she'd been spending most of the season trying to get back to), without even a farewell.

There are two problems with Time-Flight.  The first problem is that there's no money to make a story as ambitious as this one, and so a story that wants to be sweeping and epic is reduced to some tiny, cheap-looking studio sets representing Jurassic Earth.  It's unlikely that there would have ever been enough money to do this story justice, but making it as the end-of-season runt just dooms it.  The second problem is that, although the production team has spent this time bringing the Master back to the show, now that they've got him they don't seem to know what to do with him.  This means he spends two episodes in disguise and then two episodes running around being generically villainous, rather than having a plan with some flair or drama.  This isn't really Anthony Ainley's fault, as he's just playing the role they're giving him, but they really need to give him something better than this to make him rise to the occasion.

It's a weird story.  It probably never would have worked (although it's fun to imagine how a million pound version of this would have looked), but there are some interesting ideas at play in various parts.  Filming at Heathrow and being able to use Concorde is something of a coup, but unfortunately Time-Flight reaches a point where it's no longer sure what to do with the ideas it has and settles for something rather simple and dull, and so you can occasionally get the feeling that it's squandered its resources.  It's not offensively bad, but it is worryingly aimless at times.

Time-Flight is, of course, the last story of season 19, and it's been an interesting season.  There have certainly been some uneven moments, and this last story doesn't help matters any, but it's fascinating to watch Peter Davison's debut season as the Doctor -- you can visibly see him growing more confident with how he wants to play the part, such that he seems much more self-assured and consistent in his performance in Time-Flight than he did in Four to Doomsday.  The large number of companions aboard the TARDIS is a bit of a problem (albeit one that the production team seems to have recognized, as they've been slowly culling the crew), and the varying quality of the stories has led to a less consistent run than season 18 was, but this appears to be a show comfortable with its identity again -- and the audience seems happy as well, with ratings consistently around the 9 million viewers mark, give or take a million.  If there's a cause for concern, it's that the later scripts seem a bit less tightly plotted than the earlier scripts did -- but as incoming script editor Eric Saward is finding his feet as a brand-new editor, these could easily be teething troubles.  It hasn't been an outstanding run, but it's rarely been less than entertaining, and the diversity of the scripts has been a definite positive.  If they stay on this path, they'll be fine.  Whether they do is a subject for next season...