DOCTOR WHO-TIME FLIGHT part 3

 

DOCTOR WHO-TIME FLIGHT part 3

HAYTER: Focus your mind on something you're very sure of. Your family, fish and chips. Concentrate on that one thought to keep the dream images out. All right? Now come on, everybody, we haven't got much time.

 

DOCTOR: The Master's Tardis.

HAYTER: That pillar?

DOCTOR: Of course. That's where he's hidden the other passengers.

HAYTER: But it's not big enough.

DOCTOR: Something else for me to explain later.

HAYTER: This revolutionises the whole concept of relative dimension. Oh Doctor, if only I were a younger man and had the time to make use of your knowledge.

DOCTOR: The time. Yes, that's another thing.

HAYTER: Huh?

 

Huh, indeed.

Something you are very sure of…fish and chips? Explain later? That’s another thing?

What is with the dialog in this episode? Well, why single this one out.

 

Angela walks into the Master’s TARDIS and despite TARDIS wikia more than implying she is with the freed passengers of the lost flight that bumped into the Master’s TARDIS (really?), she really isn’t. Is she still in the Master’s TARDIS? How horrible an idea.

 

But that seems typical of this erm, story. I’ve been pretty unfair to TIME FLIGHT in the past. So has everyone else really but it’s …well, not quite the worst story ever in classic WHO (that would be something from the last five seasons, Colin’s terrible two and probably McCoy’s first awful season but his last two…the LAST classic seasons…had a few stinkers, too, sort of). First, the trio of pilots are mildly amusing as one watches the Master make off with TARDIS parts AND ANGELA (!) and leaves the Master alone, which means he will survive. Can’t say the same thing for poor Angela. Incidentally, it is reported on wikia and other places that this poor lady died in real life in her late 30s, sadly.

 

The other two try to sabotage the TARDIS when the Master steals it but finds he’s having trouble because of something the Doctor did (I used to care about what but find now I don’t). So the Master takes all the sabotaged pieces that the two pilots ripped out and leaves them hovering over the citadel (“The TARDIS is acting like a helicopter!”).

 

At the start why was Kalid’s nose and mouth watering green in the most stomach churning scene since the maggots? No matter, it’s just the Master in an improbably plan.

 

What IS interesting (no, really!) is that the aliens are in one sarcophagus…and have to regenerate (their words) and they look creepy enough, only half of them are what the Doctor calls “evil”----sigh---and the other half “good”. Sigh again. It’s a sort of immature manner of being in the writing that is either evil or good but whatever, it IS an interesting concept. Perhaps the power of that blob thing (it really looks gross, too, like a fungus you need cleared up) houses the life essence of the Xeraphin (cool name) and that some of it was corrupted…or were they evil the entire time? Here, both the Master, who definitely wants power and energy and OUT from the place he’s stranded in and the evil Xeraphin seem evil, despite motives, for evil’s sake. “Let’s go and do bad things because we’re bad, mawwahhhha ha.” Kind of evil. Sigh.

 

In any case, Davison, on the commentary (and I think the much later BEHIND THE SOFA on the blu ray) apologizes for his last bit in this episode during the cliffhanger as going over the top but I don’t see it any worse than some other cliffhangers and it is certainly better than most of the cliffhangers….during Colin’s time (all of them, really) and half of the ones during McCoy’s time (I love the snake thing attack on the 7^th Doctor in BATTLEFIELD while Ace is really dying in a water tube in a lake sunk spaceship).

 

It goes like this:

 NYSSA: Transferred to the centre of the Master's Tardis.

TEGAN: What does that mean?

DOCTOR: It means the Master has finally defeated me.

 

 

Speaking of Tegan, Fielding is pretty subdued in this episode though Tegan does save Nyssa’s life AND also helps “THINK” telepathically of good thoughts to hold back the evil ones. Nyssa’s again a know it all, even more than the Doctor.

 

Speaking of the Doctor, I know this is NOT true but the old Professor Hayter seems to be right that it is electronics and not telepathics but then as the Master says, wonderfully, “How you love the company of fools,” we learn it is also telepathic. It seems the Doctor was wrong and right as was the Professor. Does the Prof show the Doctor up so much, the Doctor thins the Prof worth taking with him into the dangerous tomb? Or is he just trying to get the man killed? No, can’t be. Of course, he warns the Prof away but the man, stupidly, wants ALL KNOWLEDGE and lets himself be absorbed into the tomb’s life form to save the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa (how? To get them out of the tomb?). I wonder if he would have done it if he knew how painful his death would be. And it was. And it was horrid, more so than I remember. His sticky skull can be looked at by Nyssa and the Doctor but Tegan, ever human despite what fans criticize about her, turns away…sort of.

 

If the Prof didn’t, they might have all died? By being left in there? The Prof allows them to communicate with the good and the bad which is a way out for them, I suppose. Yet, moments later, the Prof seems forgotten about but to be fair that happens late in this episode so we shall next episode…Angela is forgotten about is the Master’s prisoner forever?

 

In any case, this episode isn’t great, good or even entirely bad. It’s sort of there. Still reeling from Adric’s death, even the last time I watched this in say 2009 or 2010 or so (?), perhaps my reaction toward it is less hostile here in 2021. It’s still almost laughable in almost every way, though, there IS a good story in there somewhere.

 

When the Prof is explaining to Angela about the Doctor…the Doctor is feeling up a wire. The commentators think this is hilariously funny while Sutton and then the others seem to politely, adroitly and strategically criticize the actress playing Angela’s acting choices. I found her to be fine, certainly as good as they were, if not better in some ways and certainly as good as the rest of the guest cast.

 

Love Stapley’s efforts to fly the TARDIS….he even takes his jacket off first. His co pilot changes his mind about using the big red button lever to shut the door but he’s wrong: that IS the door opener.

 

TIME FLIGHT might not be as bad as its reputation but it seems to forget a lot about what it is doing, even in each episode’s moment to moment so it seems…forgettable as a whole, even before it’s over.

 

SCREW THIS SHOW, THE POWERS OF MATTHEW STAR is on and he’s quite hot.