OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 584
STORY NUMBER: 124
TRANSMITTED: Monday 29 March 1982
WRITER: Peter Grimwade
DIRECTOR: Ron Jones
SCRIPT EDITOR: Eric Saward
PRODUCER: John Nathan-Turner
RATINGS: 9.1 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Time-Flight/ Arc of Infinity
The Master attempts to steal the Tardis but the Doctor has left the co-ordinate ovrload on forcing it to return to the Mausoleum. The Doctor & Hayter direct the now freed passengers & crew into penetrating the sanctum where they reach Nyssa & Tegan. They find it contains a Sacophagus with a being on huge power within. Stapley & Bilton hide in the Tardis, attempting to stop the Master from using it but he removes the components he needs and then sends the Tardis away to hover over the Mausoleum. The Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan & Hayter are confronted by a projection of a being. It tells them that he is Anithon, and that the entirity of his race the Xeraphin is stored in the sarcophagus, merged into one being. He wishes to help the Doctor but is opposed by another Xeraphin, Zarak, who believes the Master's promise of power. They try to bring Nyssa into the Xeraphin gestalt but Hayter takes her place and has his body destroyed. The Sarcophagus vanishes, taken into the Master's Tardis.
No, I'm sorry I haven't a clue what was going on there. Lots of wordy explanation that just didn't make sense. A vast proportion of the action takes place in the chamber containing the sarcophagus and that just looks like a cheap fibreglass shell.
Playing Professor Hayter is Nigel Stock, the only actor other than Patrick McGoohan to play Number Six in The Prisoner during the mind swap episode Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling. McGoohan was away while this episode was being filmed making Ice Station Zebra, mainly to finance the production of the remaining Prisoner episodes! Richard Easton (Captain Stapley) was probably best known for playing Brian Hammond in the BBC serial The Brothers. I've never seen The Brothers but many of it's cast get roles in Doctor Who around this time, the most important one being in the very next story..... Bilton, Stapley's first officer, is played by Michael Cashman shortly to find fame as Colin Russel in Eastenders where he would come to national attention being involved in the first gay kiss in a UK soap opera. Since 1999 he has served as a Labour MEP.
I once wrote a review of Time-Flight, mostly to amuse myself:
ReplyDeletehttp://voices.yahoo.com/doctor-timeflight-5116199.html
Actually, I re-watched the serial again a couple of weeks ago, and this time around some of it finally started to make some sense... except there is still no reason why the Master is posing as Kalid (other than JN-T instructing Grimwade to include him in the pre-existing story) and the final episode is drowning in incomprehensible technobabble. I think the story had some good concepts, but the execution was very poor.
As you'll see tomorrow me and the final part have some history....
ReplyDeleteEasily the worst of Grimwade's storys by a country mile. Thankfully his next effort is much much better.