Time-Flight

Shall I say "Bon Voyage"?

Time Flight is one of the stories that is invariably in the running for worst Doctor Who story ever. Sometimes I find these reputations are justified but other times they are not so I'm very curious to see if this story is as bad as people think it is. I'm sure it won't be good, but there can be a broad gap between "not good" and "abysmal."

Plot Summary

While approaching Heathrow Airport, a British Airways Concorde disappears from radar and vanishes into thin air.

On the TARDIS, the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa decide to lift their spirits following Adric's death by visiting the Victorian Great Exhibition. However they run into a time warp which causes them to materialize above the runway at Heathrow just after the Concorde disappeared. The Doctor reroutes the TARDIS and has it materialize in the main terminal instead.

They head out to find out what happened when they are approached by airport security. The Doctor invokes his UNIT credentials and is given full access. He learns of the Concorde's disappearance and decides to replicate the experience but with the TARDIS on board to monitor events. The TARDIS is loaded to a second Concorde and Captain Stapley flies the plane out to match the course of the prior flight.

As they come in for approach, the concord undergoes the same effects and disappears from radar. Stapley however lands at what he thinks is Heathrow and escorts his crew and the TARDIS team off. Nyssa however sees human remains and screams. The Doctor uses her vision and encourages the rest to see through the illusion. As they do, Heathrow disappears around them and they find themselves on a stretch 140 million years in the past.

Inside a cave, an Oriental looking man is watching the new arrivals through a sphere. He sends the passengers and crew from the first flight out to work under hypnosis. When Stapley's under-officers, Scobie and Bilton, try to convince them of the delusion, several bubble creatures appear and vanish both men. Two more creatures appear and envelop the Doctor. He is covered in ectoplasm for a few moments in which he hears voices appeal to him for help. They then vanish and the Doctor rises once more, aware of a race called the plasmatons.

They continue towards the workers, who are carrying away the TARDIS when they are intercepted by one of them, Professor Hayter. Hayter specializes in hypnosis at his university as was able to shake off the control. He informs them that a cave system is where the workers all are concentrated, though he is very hesitant to go with the team after the rest of the passengers.

As they approach, plasmatons envelop Nyssa and speak through her, warning the Doctor of the danger. She then collapses in a semi-comatose state. Tegan opts to stay with her while the others head into the caves. In the caves, the Doctor moves ahead while Stapley and Hayter discover the passengers and crew digging into a large rock. Stapley, with Hayter's help, manages to rouse Bilton and Scobie and the four go looking for the Doctor.

The Doctor finds a hidden cavern and meets Kalid, the person manipulating the plasmaton energy. He verbally spars with the Doctor and demands that the Doctor grant him access to the TARDIS. The Doctor refuses. When Stapley, Bilton, Scobie and Hayter enter, Kalid suspends them in a dome of energy.

Nyssa wakes and despite Tegan's insistence on heading back to the Concorde, heads towards the caves to help the Doctor. Kalid notes their approach and tries to stop them with visions of Adric pleading for his life, the Melkur, and a Terileptil. They bypass all of them and enter the central core of the caves, the power source of the plasmaton energy. Angered, Kalid refocuses the energy into a two-headed snake to attack the humans but Nyssa, sensing danger, smashes part of the power source. Kalid is seemingly killed and the snake vanishes.

The Doctor begins to examine the control orb, confused by it's make when the Master emerges from beneath Kalid's robes. The orb is actually from the Master's TARDIS who used it trying to create a time corridor to allow his eventual escape using the power source as a replacement within his own TARDIS. He forces the Doctor to give him the key to his TARDIS, ducks inside and vanishes.

The Doctor leaves the three flight crewmen in the control area while he and Hayter head back to the place where the passengers were digging into the central core. The Doctor refocuses their efforts and they manage to cut a hole into which he and Hayter slip through. They rouse Tegan and Nyssa only to find that the hole has disappeared behind them.

The TARDIS reappears and the Master leaves to enter his own TARDIS in the core room. Stapley and Bilton slip into the TARDIS while Scobie stays outside to keep an eye on things. The Master then returns to the TARDIS where Stapley and Bilton retreat into another room to hide. Scobie then leaves and runs into the stewardess Angela. She and the other passengers have emerged from the hypnosis and are struggling to figure what is going on.

In the TARDIS, the Master attaches some equipment and then leaves. Stapley tries to sabotage it but is noticed by the Master. The Master removes the last of the parts he needs and then mockingly gives the TARDIS over to Stapley. Stapley tries to take control and manages to get it outside the caves and hovering above the ground where it holds position. Meanwhile the Master reenters the core room and forces all the remaining passengers into his TARDIS along with the equipment he has stolen.

In the core area, the Doctor realizes that there is a living entity in the core governed by multiple personalities. It takes control of Nyssa again and prepares to use her up to allow it to communicate. Hayter however steps in her place and is consumed. But the power absorbed allows a figure named Anithon to manifest himself. He is a creature called a Xeraphin, a civilization that was destroyed by a war. To escape, they had the entity absorb all the minds of the Xeraphin and come to Earth to restart themselves. However, the remaining bodies were infected with radiation and they needed time to allow regeneration to take place. Just as they were about to though, the Master arrived and tapped into the core, using the energy and harvesting the negative mental energies.

A second entity, called Zarak, manifests itself and attempts to take control, representing the negative energies given power by the Master. The Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa assist mentally and manage to fight Zarak back. But power vanishes as the Master begins to drain the core energies and transfer them to his own TARDIS. Both Anithon and Zarak disappear and the Doctor begins to search for a way out.

Outside the caves, Captain Stapley hesitates to handle the TARDIS controls. But Professor Hayter appears and pilots the TARDIS into the core before disappearing once more. The Doctor enters the TARDIS, suspecting that Hayter was another projection by the Xeraphin to help them. He then takes the TARDIS out of the core where Scobie tells them that the Master took the passengers into his TARDIS and disappeared. The Doctor orders Nyssa to take the flight crew and the TARDIS back to the Concorde and prep it for takeoff while he and Tegan try to find the passengers.

Nyssa pilots the TARDIS into the cargo hold and the crew inspects the plane with the only damage being a blown tire and a damaged brake line. Stapely decides to cannibalize the other Concorde for parts but notices that it seems a bit too new and shiny compared to their previous view of it. The Doctor and Tegan arrive and notice the same thing. The other Concorde starts to disappear and they realize that it's the Master's TARDIS. However it reappears and they realize that something has gone wrong.

The Master emerges and he asks the Doctor about the sabotage he's done to the TARDIS. Stapley informs the Doctor that he switched some parts around before the Master could finish his theft, which pleases the Doctor. He makes a deal with the Master that he will give back the stolen parts and the passengers and he will give the Master the spare parts he needs. The Master agrees and Doctor sets out to repair the TARDIS while Stapley and his crew repair the Concorde. Once all repairs are complete, Tegan guides the passengers on board and Stapley readies the plane for takeoff.

The Doctor gives the Master the spare parts he requested and the Master and his TARDIS disappears. However, the Doctor put a fault into the equipment he gave the Master and the Master's TARDIS will appear only after they have arrived back at Heathrow. Stapley takes off and as they approach the point where Concorde disappeared before, the Doctor activates the TARDIS and sends the whole thing forward to only twenty-four hours after they left. The Doctor takes the TARDIS out of the plane and lands it out on one of the buildings just as the Master's TARDIS appears hovering over the airport. The Doctor sends a power surge into the Master's TARDIS and it is sent to Xaraphin where, after 140 million years, the radiation will have cleared up and the people can repopulate the planet. It also will burn out the equipment the Doctor gave the Master, leaving him trapped on the planet.

Tegan escorts the passengers off the plane and then meets Nyssa before heading down the corridor to where she was supposed to report for duty. Stapley and his crew are debriefed by the airport controller who try to explain although the controller doesn't believe them. They head out to see the Doctor, who is being questioned by two airport security personnel. The Doctor promises answers after making a phone call from inside his box. The TARDIS then vanishes leaving the crew smirking but Tegan looking wistful as she had changed her mind about traveling with the Doctor and was hoping to catch him before he left.

Analysis

Time-Flight is certainly not a good story and it might even be the worst Fifth Doctor story, although I'm not completely convinced of that, but I'm a bit hard pressed to see why fans argue that it might be the worst Doctor Who story. I think there are a fair number of stories that I would relegate as worse than this.

To be fair, there are an awful lot of things that are bad about this story. The acting, outside of the TARDIS team, the Master and Stapley is terrible, with Hayter and the stewardess Angela being the worst offenders. The stewardess is pretty forgettable as she only has a few lines and most of them are under hypnosis so she is an easily dismissible blip. Professor Hayter on the other hand is just a bad choice. The actor is wooden both in his delivery and even in how he moves. Given that he sacrifices himself and becomes the Deus Ex Machina for the story, it would seem to be kind of important to have the audience develop him a bit. But when he sacrifices himself, I couldn't be bothered to care and was even relieved as I found him a waste of screen space.

A second significant problem is the plot. The plot is overly complex with the alien collective consciousness that the Master is trying to tap. We are shown two different types of creatures and neither is properly explained. Worse, nearly everything about the life force and the Xeraphin is done through expositional speeches. There are very few points of natural dialogue. Instead it's the Doctor, the Master, or one of the Xeraphin just talking about what is going on. Talking about the plot is nothing new, but the dialogue must be natural and you also can't have entire episodes where people just talk about what the plot is. It gets boring and this story became boring in it's second and third episodes.

A third point of trouble and one most often cited by fans about the problems with this story is why is the Master dressed as Kalid? His disguise as Kalid does absolutely nothing for the overall story. The orb is made of components from his own TARDIS. The Xeraphin are completely aware of who the Master is due to their telepathic communication and the people on the plane have no idea who the Master is and wouldn't care what he looks like. In fact, bringing the first Concorde was an accident so he was dressing as Kalid even before they arrived. It serves absolutely no purpose except to give misdirection to the audience that it's the Master once again.

I can't help but wonder if Kalid was the original villain but Peter Grimwade was told to include the Master in the story and he just merged the two, thinking it would be a cool twist but didn't think of anything beyond that. Whatever the reason, it gives one mildly interesting cliffhanger and nothing else. It would have worked just as well if Kalid had been an android or a psychic projection and the cliffhanger to Episode Two is the Master stepping out of his TARDIS with his Tissue Compression Eliminator. In that case, the Master could have waived it off as a means of interface while he operated things from within his TARDIS. It might not have been the best reason, but it would have made more sense that having the Master dress up.

A fourth reason that is probably a bit more subtle in people's dislike of this story is both it's following Earthshock, which was well received, and the style and set up of Episode One being pretty decent. The story addresses Adric's death and then it get sucked into a missing plane adventure similar to The Faceless Ones. We even bypass all the typical stalling garbage by having the Doctor flash his UNIT credentials and then be given full reign of the place. It's even on film which gives it a slicker look. Then towards the end of Episode One, we are taken to studio and the contrast is palpable as the sets suddenly look so much cheaper. You can just imagine that after the visual treat of the first part, the comedown infects the viewer's expectations and the story does nothing to alleviate this.

A fifth fault is in the little things involving the Concorde that the story doesn't take care of. Concorde, being a sleek and sophisticated aircraft, has no internal stair so how do the passengers get on or off? Where do the crew get the tools to cannibalize the previous Concorde for the parts they need? Given what happened with the Paris Concorde disaster, the idea of a Concorde getting up to speed without a proper runway is pretty laughable. In the film cut, you can even see that it's taking off from a normal runway with some rocks placed in front to hide the cut (although you can see part of the terminal in the background). It's just a bunch of little things that are hard to let go but clearly never occurred to the production team when given the opportunity to include a Concorde promotional.

So is there anything good? Actually base cast is pretty good. The Doctor is his normal Doctor self although he does have some moments of bad melodrama towards the end of Episode Three. Tegan and Nyssa are both pretty good as Tegan is actually given some things to do which distract her from complaining and Nyssa becomes much more engaging as she becomes the interface for the Xeraphin. I suspect that Sarah Sutton was never really given much direction with Nyssa and it became a default that she would be impassive which translates to wooden. When given emotional range such as here and in Black Orchid, her acting is actually decent.

Despite the nonsense with Kalid, I enjoyed the Master in this story. He's over the top but he's so clearly having a good time. Even Ainley's stint as Kalid is decent. It's a mildly racist caricature and the makeup is terrible, but the character still draws you in with the mystery of who he is and what he is after. You even get some nice snark by the Master when he gives up the TARDIS to Stapley. I can't help but enjoy it.

Some folks gravitate to Stapley as enjoyable but I'm a bit more hesitant to go that far. To me it was more like Stapley was good by comparison and when all the other extras range operate mostly in the terrible range, an average performance looks great by comparison. He had bearing and a sense of leadership, which is why Hayter assumed he was in charge, but his overall performance was just decent in my opinion and he functioned well in the role of extra companion. In fact, Stapley should be considered as one of the many guest companions that appeared in the Fifth Doctor era, nearly all of which showed better range and characterization than the normal companions. I would say though that Stapley was one of the few who did not outstrip Tegan and Nyssa in their interaction with the Doctor, which pulls him down a bit more in my estimation than others probably have him.

I can't speak much for the direction of this story. The director was clearly trying to compensate for the lack of set and budget but I didn't see anything that might have hidden flaws in the sets or in framing the story in ways to compensate for the lack of action. It was very point and shoot, to the point that the backdrop for the scenes in front of the Concorde tire is pretty clearly a backdrop. It's not as bad as in the days of the First Doctor, but it's pretty obvious that it's a set at that point and no effort is made to add any freshness or tricks to draw the viewer back in.

Although I'm going to be giving this story a low score, I still think it's not quite as bad as it's reputation. I also think I would actually rate Terminus as a worse story because it feels more plodding and boring while this has some action in the first and fourth episodes and the hammy-ness of the Master to provide some measure of relief. In fact, if the overall flaws weren't so glaring and obvious, I think I might even rate this story above Four to Doomsday and Frontios, because again, I found a measure of entertainment in some of the performances. But there is an awful lot that drags this story down and you just can't overlook that at the end of the day. I will still throw in the caveat that I don't think it is a contender for worst story of the classic era. But again, that doesn't mean that it's good either.

Overall personal score: 1 out of 5