Timelash

Do you have a fat, female Morlox with slinky legs?

I had originally planned for my next viewing to be Enlightenment so I could finish off the Black Guardian trilogy. But the version available to me was missing Episode Four so I had to put that one on the back burner until I can get a full and proper version. Instead, I'll tackle another story near the bottom of everyone's list. I don't recall why this one is supposed to be so bad. I only recall that it involves H. G. Wells, which seems like it would be a decent premise. But good premises often fail due to poor execution, so on we go.

Plot Summary

The Doctor is planning a trip to the Andromeda galaxy when Peri walks in and asks if they could take a trip to someplace fun. The Doctor attempts to suggest the Eye of Orion but Peri shoots him down as he has brought that location up a few times too often. He decides to continue on with his planned visit to Andromeda.

On the planet Karfel, a trio of rebels are attempting to escape as they have been exposed. Their planet is ruled by a dictator referred to as the Borad. All three are captured with the leader being executed by the Borad himself and the other two exiled by being pushed through a time vortex called the timelash.

In the TARDIS, the Doctor observes a time vortex opening in front and pulling the TARDIS in. He tries to avoid it but cannot escape it. He and Peri secure themselves to the console and hold on as the TARDIS is rocked about.

One member of the Karfel high council, Mykros, is frustrated by the Borad's rule and follows his soon to be father-in-law, Renis, into a power room. Renis is the Maylin, the head of the high council. He reveals to Mykros how he channels power for the Borad's experiments and a perceived weakness of the Borad. However, they are overheard by a hidden microphone and arrested.

Renis is brought before the Borad and executed. A new man, Tekker, is appointed Maylin and sentences Mykros to exile through the Timelash. Renis' daughter Vena pleads for mercy but when it is denied, she steals the amulet that controls the power supply but accidently falls into the timelash. She passes through the TARDIS as an apparition and materializes in the living room of a young man named Herbert. He believes her to be a spirit but she passes out and he lays her on a couch to recuperate.

The TARDIS materializes in the central hall and the Doctor and Peri emerge. They are welcomed by Maylin Tekker who knows of the Doctor as he had visited fifty years ago with Jo Grant as the Third Doctor. They are shown around and Peri is offered a private tour just after being handed a mysterious note. As Peri goes on her tour, the guards attempt to kill her but she is able to open a door where she finds herself in a system of caves.

Tekker is summoned away by the ambassador of the Bandrils, the people of the neighboring planet. Karfel has violated a peace treaty and has stopped grain shipments to the planet. With famine growing, the Bandrils threaten war unless the shipments start again. Tekker refuses, believing that the Borad will protect them.

Unaware of Peri's escape, Tekker threatens to kill Peri unless the Doctor retrieves the amulet stolen by Vena. The Doctor reluctantly agress and plots the TARDIS along the time corridor created by the timelash. He materializes outside Herbert's cottage and finds Vena inside. She agrees to go along with the Doctor's plan of giving back the amulet but insists on going to, although the Doctor tries to get her to stay with Herbert. Herbert wants to go along as well but the Doctor refuses. However, he manages to sneak aboard while the Doctor is still talking with Vena.

In the caves, Peri is attacked by a snake-like creature called a Morlox. It is beaten off by a cadre of rebels who then take Peri. She convinces them she is with the Doctor and the debate what to do next. However, Tekker's men discovered the note given to Peri, which she accidentally dropped, and come and arrest all of them.

The Doctor arrives back on Karfel and gives up the amulet. However, Tekker reneges on the agreement. Peri is taken away and Tekker instructs an android to push the Doctor into the timelash. The Doctor manages to pull out a mirror he took from Herbert's house which causes the android to malfunction. The rebels use the distraction to turn on and overpower the guards. Tekker and his lackey retreat and the rebels seal the door.

The Doctor finds a coil of strong rope and has the rebels lower him into the timelash. Inside, the cavern is a set of crystals that, when harmonized, produce the time vortex. The Doctor takes several crystals but slips and nearly falls in. Herbert and Mykros enter the timelash along the rope to help pull him out. With the crystals, the Doctor builds a device that pushes him forward ten seconds in time, but leaves an image of what happened in real time. He also develops a weapon to redirect energy from the weapons to transport the source away. The rebels recall seeing a burning android appear shortly before they were captured in the caves and realize that it was the Doctor's weapon.

The guards blow their way through. The rebels manage to take most down with the weapons stolen initially, but the android fights them back, killing one rebel. The Doctor uses his weapon, causing the android to short circuit and then disappear an hour into the past. With the guards beaten back, the Doctor orders the rebels to hide themselves while he goes to see the Borad. Herbert goes with him although the Doctor tries to dissuade him.

Meanwhile Peri has been taken by the guards to a holding cell, where she is equipped with a mechanical device. She is then taken into the caves and secured to a pole to await the Morlox.

The Doctor enters the Borad's quarters while Herbert climbs a ladder and finds a ledge overlooking the area. The Doctor is held at gunpoint by Tekker and the Borad reveals his true form. He is a scientist who was repudiated by the Doctor on his last visit. He was caught in an experiment gone wrong and fused his tissue with that of the Morlox he was experimenting on. He now plans to have the Bandrils destroy the population of Karfel, after which he will destroy the Bandrils. Tekker is appalled at this and tries to stand up to the Borad but the Borad kills him.

The Borad reveals to the Doctor that he plans to repopulate the devastated planet with other humanoid/Morlox hybrids. He has placed Peri in the caves with a lure for the Morlox and the same batch of chemicals that created him. When attacked, the Morlox will rupture the chemicals and create a female version for him to breed with. The Doctor activates his time device and eludes the Borad's attempts to kill him. He reemerges with the device pointed at the Borad who fires at him again. It absorbs the energy and redirects it at the Borad, killing him. The Doctor sends Herbert out to collect Peri while he finds the release mechanism. He releases Peri and Herbert pulls her back into the citadel away from the Morlox.

The group returns to the main chamber where they find that the Bandrils have launched a missile that will devastate the planet. The Doctor is able to contact the Bandrils but they refuse to call off the attack without conformation of the Borad's death. Lacking time, the Doctor heads out to the TARDIS to intercept the missile. Peri tries to go with him but the Doctor forces her to wait on planet. He is unaware that Herbert has snuck aboard until after taking off. He moves the TARDIS in the path of the missile and destroys it before it can hit the planet.

The Bandrils, believing the Doctor has sacrificed himself, call off the attack and prepare to land and negotiate with Mykros, who is the new Maylin. The Doctor arrives, unwilling to disclose how the TARDIS survived the missile impact and the group prepares to depart. However, a clone of the Borad appears and grabs Peri. He threatens to kill her unless the Doctor surrenders and destroys the Bandrils. The Doctor refuses and knocks down an old picture of his Third iteration to reveal a mirror. Unable to look upon himself, the Borad shields his eyes and releases Peri. The Doctor then pushes the Borad into the timelash, where he believes he will land in 12th century Scotland.

The Doctor and Peri prepare to depart, Herbert coming along reluctantly. While he is saying his goodbyes, the Doctor reveals that Herbert is actually H. G. Wells and will be drawing off these experiences for his stories.

Analysis

I really tried to keep an open mind about this one but every time I found something that was good, it was immediately followed by something bad and it just dragged me down. This story has a lot of sins but the worst of them is the fact that it is padded and boring. There were some individual performances that were good, but the story as a whole, both in writing and direction were quite subpar.

There were three characters I rather enjoyed: the Borad, Tekker and Herbert. Herbert had youthful naiveté that was understandable and made him more interesting. Tekker was hammy but it worked both in his toadying villain role and in contrast to the Doctor's own hammy arrogance. The Borad was the best for him. His makeup wasn't bad and he had a restrained performance that actually made him more menacing. His primary flaw was to go into Blofeld mode with the Doctor and explain all his plans before actually killing him. He was more decisive in killing Tekker than he was in killing the Doctor, but it was still enjoyable to watch. Even with the ludicrousness of the clone Borad, there was still a nice rapport between him and the Borad that it made the scene more interesting.

The Doctor was decent in this story. He was still arrogant but I felt he wasn't trying to be overly insulting. It was also nice that he was legitimately thinking his way out of problems rather than letting others do it for him. Peri, on the other hand, was dreadful. She started off wrong in the beginning as the Doctor actually attempts to be civil with her and she acts like a wet blanket about any holiday destination. Once on Karfel, she is separated from him for most of the story and serves only to scream and act the damsel in distress. Then, when the Doctor is racing against time to try and stop the Bandril missile, she refuses to listen to the Doctor and argues until he literally throws her out of the TARDIS. Neither comes across as good but if time is an issue, why are you pressing when you know you are just going to stand there and not be useful? It made Peri so aggravating at that moment.

So that covered the few positives. The negatives are more broad. First the story. Pulling on the works of H. G. Wells seems like it would be a phenomenal idea. However, the works of H. G. Wells are only used on the barest cursory level. It's almost like someone read a paragraph summary of four Wells novels and pulled only one of the ideas mentioned in that summary: the Doctor being invisible during his time jump (The Invisible Man), the Morlox and the TARDIS itself (The Time Machine), animal-human splicing (The Island of Dr. Moreau), and a battle between planets (War of the Worlds).
With all the ideas available and the richness of Wells' text to draw on, the story is boring through nearly all of Episode One. It picks up in Episode Two but once the original Borad dies, the story just drags out, trying to figure out how to fill the last fifteen minutes. It then takes the extremely lazy way out by first not bothering to figure out how the Doctor survived the Bandril missile but also to bring back the Borad for the equivalent of a final jump scare in a horror movie.

There are a lot of logical flaws in the plot as well. I understand why the Borad would hate to look on himself and ban mirrors, but why does a mirror have any effect on an android? Why do most people sent through the timelash end up in 12th century Scotland but Vena manages to land 800 years further in the future? Why would the Borad become the Loch Ness Monster when he still has legs that would allow him to walk out of the lake? Are the tales of his existence in the lake strong enough to last until the Zygons build the mechanical monster several hundred years later? Why don't the Bandrils even acknowledge Myros' attempt to talk with them and call off their attack? They might not believe him, but they should at least be willing to talk with him and maintain a holding pattern to see if the Borad has been overthrown, especially if they are familiar with the Doctor and can wait for his appearance. All of these things pile up and punch huge holes in the story.

The direction of this story is also very flat. Understand the idea that they didn't want the set glossy per the request of the Borad. But to compensate, the people should have been made to pop more. Color could have been used to more effect as could have a different type of shooting style or tape when doing different areas like the timelash itself. Instead it maintains this dull finish throughout. There is also nothing particularly good about the style of direction used. It's a very point one way and shoot rather than using any extra angles or framing to make the shots more interesting.

In the same vein, you have the contrast where the Borad looks very good as does the effects of aging people in his ray but the Morlox themselves look awful. I understand you are limited by budget and time effects, but if a mechanical puppet is the best you can do, light the cave differently so that it takes on a touch more menace. The Morlox looked like an animatronic dinosaur that you would see at any kid's museum and that is something that pulls you right out of the story. When you have that compared to how well other things were realized, it just makes the first thing look worse.

About the only saving grace I can give this story is that due to the quality of acting of a couple of the characters, it is not a story that I would necessarily plop into the bottom five as it typically seems to among fans. But it is not a good story and unless you were working on being a completionist and wanting to watch every story, it could easily be passed over without a second thought.

Overall personal score: 1 out of 5