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London, Heathrow, 1982: A Concorde disappears from the radar and
actually from the face of the earth. On the other hand, a vintage police
box appears, containing three strangers, Doctor Who (Peter Davison), Nyssa
(Sarah Sutton) and Tegan (Janet Fielding) - the police box is of course
the Doctor's space-and-timeship the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions
In Space), and when the Doctor hears that something is wrong, he is quick
to pick up investigations - and before long, he has discovered a time
contor that has drawn Concorde 140 million years into the past ... and
soon enough, the Doctor has persuaded the higher ups at Heathrow to lend
him another Concorde with crew (Richard Eston, Keith Drinkel, Michael
Cashman) to get the other ship back.
140 million years back, the Doctor discovers a realm ruled by Oriental
mystic Kalid, who uses the first Concorde's passengers as his slaves via
mind control - and who before very long turns out to be none other than
the Doctor's old arch enemy the Master (Anthony Ainley). But the Master
has a problem: He is stuck in the Jurassic age, and to get away he needs a
new powersource, the power of the Xeraphim - an alien race melted into one
single intelligence marooned on earth - but that power is sealed away in a
seperate chamber, which is why the Master needs the airplane passengers as
slave labour. The other problem is that not all of the Xeraphim want to
support the Master, so the Doctor sees a fighting chance to defeat him ...
but no, in the end, the Xerraphim intelligence puts up with the Master and
all seems lost - until the Master realizes there is still one part missing
from his TARDIS, which he can get only from ... the Doctor - who trades
the part for all the passengers and so on, and then he sees to it that the
missing part transports the Master right to the home planet of the
Xeraphim, while he sees to it that all the passengers return to Heathrow,
present day ... now all that he had to leave behind is one of the
Concordes ...
Veteran actor Nigel Stock plays a scientist on the Doctor's side who
ultimately gives his life.
By and large, Time-Flight is considered as one of the weakest
episodes of Doctor Who, mainly because the meagre
BBC-budgets were nowhere nearly up to the requirements of two Concordes in
the Jurassic age - which clearly shows in some weak sets, clumsy effects
and horrible miniature work. That said however, Time-Flight isn't
half bad: Even though the episode is full of esoteric mumbojumbo, it does
make perfect sense (at least for a John Nathan-Turner produced episode),
the Doctor is at his eccentric best (in an episode that was allegedly
written with Tom Baker in the lead in mind) with Peter Davison giving one
of his better performances, and the supporting cast is quite fine as well.
Admittedly, Time-Flight is not great, but at least it's
perfectly watchable.
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