Doctor Who:
Time - Flight
By Peter Grimwade
“Now listen to me, both of
you. There are some rules that cannot be broken even with the Tardis. Don't
ever ask me to do anything like that again. You must accept that Adric is dead.
His life wasn't wasted. He died trying to save others, just like his brother,
Varsh. You know, Adric had a choice. This is the way he wanted it.”
To help them mourn and
ease the pain of Adric’s death The Doctor decides to take Nyssa and Tegan to
the Great Exhibition. But as luck would
have it the do not arrive where they intended but at Heathrow Airport mainly
due to a time disturbance. They are soon enlisted to help C19 to find
their missing Concord. Apparently Victor
Foxtrot just disappeared off the radar and there is no trace of it
anywhere. The Doctor believes it has disappeared
down a time tunnel and plans to follow the trail on another Concord with his
TARDIS as cargo.
It appears that the other
Concord with The Doctor in it did travel back in time but only Nyssa can see
that they are indeed back in time. The
Doctor eventually gets everyone to break the spell and they do see the dead
bodies that Nyssa has seen and a Citidal which is inhabited by Kalid who
mumbles some spells that seems to control Plasmatons. The Doctor believes the key to all this is in
the Citidal and heads there with the Concord pilots leaving Tegan to look after
Nyssa who is incapacitated by a spell by Kalid.
When the Doctor gets to the Citadel he finds the source of the power which
is a Xeraphin sarcophagus.
Nyssa recovers and with
Tegans help make their way to the Citadel but by a different way which leads
them to the inside of the Xeraphin’s Sarcofugus. The Doctor ends up getting into a battle of
wits with Kalid who for some reason wants the key to the TARDIS. Nyssa freaks out and throws an artifact into
the tub like thing which seems to be what controls Kalid and he collapses presume
dead. But all is not what it seems as The
Doctor finds out it is electronics that was the source of the power and a
laughing Master appearing out of Kalids costume ready to wreak havoc yet again.
Time - Flight is not a good
story at all. While a good premise it just comes up short as it is pretty dull
and is by far hands down the worst story of season 19 or in fact the Davison
era. The creatures are pretty bad also
as they used soap bubbles to use as the power to subdue The Doctor and
Nyssa. It just looked so wrong to do
that and puts a new level of cheapness to the BBC. We won’t even get into the green screen
stuff as it was 1982 and well they tried.
Anthony Ainley was pretty entertaining
in Time - Flight. While I say that while
he was Kalid he was pretty funny. I know
he was trying to be in disguise but the voice he used was pretty funny and the
dialog he had to say. Well it made Peter Davison crack up as you can see in
some scenes they had together that he was holding back his laughter. Plus the green puss that spews out at the end
is pretty funny also.
Time - Flight is a story
that could have been better if shorter but probably not. I just found it dull and boring and just not
all that interesting of a story. It did have some moments to it as the takeoff
of the Concord and the cameo by Mathew Waterhouse. It also ended on a bit of a cliffhanger as
Tegan was left at Heathrow and you had to wait till season 20 to see if she
would be back.
Season 19 started with a
Master story and ended with a Master story and unfortunately Time - Flight wasn’t
as good as Castrovalva but it is one to watch from time to time if only to
watch Anthony Ainley’s performance.
Grade C
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