“Time-Flight” is the last adventure of the nineteenth season of “Doctor Who” classic series which aired in 1982. It follows “Earthshock” and it’s a four parts adventure written by Peter Grimwade and directed by Ron Jones.

The story

Tegan (Janet Fielding) and Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) ask the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) to go back in time to save Adric (Matthew Waterhouse) but that would be a severe violation of the Time Lords laws so that’s not possible. The Tardis is driven to materialize on Earth, where it arrives at Heathrow Airport, ironically by mistake after some failed attempts to bring Tegan home.

The Doctor and his companions end up in trouble because they can’t explain their and the Tardis’ presence but UNIT vouches for them. A Concorde has just vanished into thin air and the Doctor is asked to cooperate with the investigation. The Tardis is loaded aboard another Concorde that retraces the route of the vanished one and soon it travels about 140 million years in the past. The crew, however, believe that they have completed the flight regularly because someone or something is causing them a state of hallucination.

Extras

This DVD is rich in extras. There are typical contents such as production subtitles, Radio Times Listings, a promo of the “Doctor Who” DVDs about to be published and a gallery of pictures from this adventure.

There are comments in the adventure alternative audio track by protagonists Peter Davison, Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton and script editor Eric Saward.

Mouth on Legs. Actress Janet Fielding talks about her experience in “Doctor Who” in the role of Tegan.

Deleted Scenes. Some scenes cut in the editing of this adventure.

Jurassic Larks. A behind the scenes during studio recording.

Out-takes. Mistakes and bloopers during the production of this adventure.

Interview. A 1987 interview with Peter Grimwade in which he speaks of his work as the author of this adventure.

The Doctor Who Annual 1983. The 1983 issue of the magazine “The Doctor Who Annual” in PDF format.

Peter Grimwade worked in “Doctor Who” especially as a director but over the years he made a lot of experience as a writer for other TV shows. An idea he had for a “Doctor Who” adventure went through several major changes before going into production after a long time and becoming “Time-Flight”.

The idea to include the Concorde in the plot came during a discussion between Peter Grimwade and then script editor Christopher H Bidmead at Heathrow Airport. At the time, the Concorde was very famous because it was the first supersonic commercial aircraft and entered service only a few years earlier.

Other directing commitments for Peter Grimwade delayed the development of his script but in the meantime producer John Nathan-Turner was able to obtain the cooperation of Heathrow Airport and British Airways. Thus it was possible to film a number of scenes with a real Concorde, making the airplane and the Heathrow Airport a central element in “Time-Flight”.

The script had to be changed also to include other elements and because in the meantime the Doctor had regenerated and Tegan and Nyssa had remained as his companions. These rewrites can be one of the reasons why “Time-Flight” turned out bad but the script has other flaws, including the fact that it’s really convoluted.

The first episode of “Time-Flight” is overall pretty good though from the beginning there’s a lot of technobabble and after two minutes everyone seems to have forgotten Adric’s death. The mystery of the vanishing Concorde is intriguing and for once the story isn’t stretched as they did in the past, when the Doctor got into trouble and it took time for him to convince the local authorities that he had no bad intentions. In this adventure the Doctor fixes his situation very quickly by having UNIT called so the story goes on quickly.

The problems start when the second Concorde arrives in the past too, for various reasons. First of all, Kalid is absolutely ridiculous and his existence is only meant not to show the audience the real villain’s identity from the beginning. His masquerade doesn’t make sense within the story, so much that he goes on chanting his pseudo-spells even when he’s alone, confirming that this is done only for the audience.

Another problem with the script is that part of the story is told by the characters rather than shown and this also happens in the end. This takes all the tension away from the story and makes its flaws stand out even more. This really isn’t Peter Grimwade’s fault but is due to the fact that “Time-Flight” was the last adventure of the season and had to be produced with the budget residue, at that point very limited.

Some sets in “Time-Flight” are below the standards of the classic “Doctor Who” series and that says it all. Clearly, there was no money to produce better special effects and more sets to show all the events, especially at the end, which required building specific sets.

In that situation, it seems that even the director and part of the cast resigned to film a low level adventure so the direction is flat and the performances are often far from brilliant. After an adventure emotionally very strong such as “Earthshock”, “Time-Flight” can be really dull.

“Earthshock” had its faults but had an impact on the audience with great twists whereas “Time-Flight” among other things is flat and also for this contrast with the previous adventure it has built a negative reputation. In the seasons with the Fourth Doctor, perhaps they could’ve made something good stressing the humor of the story but John Nathan-Turner wanted to produce serious stories so in this case it wasn’t possible to even partially save this adventure.

In the end, “Time-Flight” is so bad that it can be unintentionally funny. It’s the only way to consider it in a positive way for 90% of “Doctor Who” fans. Of the extras on the DVD, some are fillers but the interviews are interesting for the show’s fans. Unless you’re one of the few fans of this adventure, buy it only if you want to have a complete “Doctor Who” collection, possibly at a bargain price.

In Region 2 nations, this DVD is part of a boxset together with “Arc of Infinity”, so a global judgement of that box set must necessarily be given only at the end of the reviews of the adventures it contains.