At present-day Heathrow airport, a Concorde on landing approach vanishes in mid-air— it doesn’t crash, it just disappears. While en route to the Great Exhibition of 1851, the TARDIS encounters a “time contour” and makes a forced landing, ending up at Heathrow airport right where the Concorde was supposed to land.
After using his UNIT credentials to get out of trouble with airport security, the Doctor is quickly recruited to investigate the Concorde’s disappearance. He has the TARDIS loaded into the cargo hold of another Concorde and has it replicate the missing plane’s course exactly, following the time contour back to the Jurassic period, where our heroes discover a crashed alien spacecraft, a massive citadel, and what appears to be an alien dressed as a comic-book Oriental sorcerer claiming he’s done it all by magic. But the power Kaleed taps into isn’t magic, and it seems divided against itself, sometimes doing Kaleed’s bidding and sometimes helping the Doctor.
Sound intriguing? Like many of the Classic series’ poorer outings— and Time-Flight is one of them— it’s got a story idea that could have been so much better. But what ends up on the screen is simply a silly jumble of rather half-baked ideas. This story is notable for being the first time that Heathrow airport allowed the BBC to film on premises, and episode 1 makes full use of the opportunity with scenes in the terminal, on the tarmac around an actual Concorde airplane, and inside the Concorde itself. Unfortunately it comes across as more of a Concorde publicity film than a Dr Who episode.
Then, back in the Jurassic, all sorts of things seem to happen for no reason. Hypnotized into thinking they’ve landed safely back at Heathrow, our heroes discover the illusion when Nyssa sees a pile of mummified corpses— but then when the illusion breaks, those bodies aren’t there and they’re never explained or mentioned again. It seems like the writer just stuck them in there for a scary moment and then forgot about them.
There are plenty of similar examples of lazy writing through the story, but the worst is the episode 2 cliffhanger when Kaleed the sorcerer turns out to be the Master in disguise. It’s meant to be a surprise twist. A reveal like that ought to make the viewer nod his head and say “Ah, of course!” (I’ll cite as an example a similar halfway-through-the-story appearance of the Master way back in the Pertwee story Frontier in Space. When he walks on screen, you almost want to cheer as you immediately realize exactly what’s been going on in the story to that point.) Here, though, it only raises a question: what was the Master doing dressed up as Kaleed in the first place? We see him in this disguise and pretending to cast magic spells even when he’s alone, even before he knows the Doctor (or anyone else) has arrived or is even involved. So why the silly disguise? Not even the thinnest rationalization is ever offered: the only reason is so that viewers wouldn’t know who the villain was. I don’t know if it was originally the writers’ idea, or JN-T’s, or Eric Saward’s. All I know is that whoever it was apparently couldn’t be bothered to even attempt an in-story justification for it.
There are some nice moments in the story. The Master’s plan is to exploit the psychic powers of an alien race called the Xeraphin, who have merged themselves into a single entity as a form of suspended animation after their ship crashed on Earth, while they await the chance to regenerate themselves. The Master wants to transfer the Xeraphin to the center of his TARDIS as its new power source, where their psychic energy will give him unlimited power. In the far superior episode 3 cliffhanger, he succeeds and the Doctor says “The Master has finally defeated me” — and the story follows through on that: the Doctor is unable to rescue the Xeraphin from the Master, and in the end has to be satisfied with getting the passengers and crew of the first Concorde back to the present day.
There are also good scenes with several supporting characters. The crew of the second Concorde, Captain Stapley especially, become the Doctor’s allies and have some very nice moments. Trapped in the Doctor’s TARDIS at one point, which the Master has set in a permanent hover over the Xeraphin citadel, Stapley decides he’ll try to take the controls and land it. He can’t, but its a nice scene as he and his copilot make the attempt, being very businesslike about it. Also good is Professor Hayter, a psychologist from the University of Darlington and a passenger on the first Concorde. An expert in hypnotism, he’s able to resist the Master’s mind control and see through the illusions, but he’s convinced they’ve been captured by the Soviet Union and persistently dismissed as more illusions every sign of aliens or extraordinary powers— until finally the Doctor’s had enough and challenges him, “I do not wish to believe, therefore I hallucinate— is that the philosophy of Darlington Man?” What makes Hayter an interesting character is that he takes the point, and adjusts his thinking.
But these interesting moments are not enough to save the overall story. FCW (fan conventional wisdom) routinely puts this in the dishonorable mention category as one of the worst episodes of Classic Dr Who. I don’t think it comes near to plunging the depths of an Underworld or some stories we haven’t gotten to yet, but it’s definitely well below par. Season 19 ends on a disappointing note with the weakest of its stories.
Details
- Once again the story opens with the characters discussing the previous story, part of JN-T’s desire for an “ongoing serial” feel. It’s a reasonably effective scene this time, as it gives the characters a chance to react to Adric’s death (which occurred in the final seconds of Earthshock). As the story opens, Nyssa and the Doctor are rather woodenly talking about the loose ends they’ve cleaned up— taking the commandos and freighter crew back to their own time, etc.— when Tegan explodes that they sounds like they’re ticking items off a list instead of thinking about Adric. She wants the Doctor to use the TARDIS to go back and save him. The argument touches on the possibility of changing history. The Doctor is firm that it can’t be done. When Tegan presses the point, he finally gets angry and almost shouts at her, “Don’t you ever ask me to do anything like that again!” The current series could stand to listen to the Fifth Doctor here: Steven Moffat has gotten over-fond of trying to build suspense by showing us timelines that can’t be changed, except it turns out they can be and are.
- The Doctor’s use of his UNIT credentials reflects, like the past-Doctor video clips in Earthshock, a new awareness by the series of its own past. As season 19 came to a close, JN-T explicitly announced that more of this would come, promising that every story in the historic season 20 would feature the return of someone or something from the series’ past. It’s a promise that will only partially be kept, as we’ll see going on.
- Peter Davison joins with the FCW, and calls Time-Flight the most disappointing story of his time as the Doctor.
- At the end of the story, Tegan wanders away to where she was supposed to report for her stewardess job, apparently thinking over whether she still wants it. Meanwhile the Doctor makes one of his “I hate goodbyes” retreats, and while it’s not clear whether he thinks she’s left for good, or is just careless in the haste of the moment, he and Nyssa depart without her. It may appear that’s the end for Tegan as a companion, but she’ll be right back.
Next Week:
“Arc of Infinity,” 4 episodes, and the season 20 premiere.
