Inspirations - Time-Flight

The writer of Time-Flight is Peter Grimwade. He had directed a couple of Doctor Who stories - including the previous one, Earthshock, after spending a number of years working on the show as a Production Assistant. A complaint from him about there always being robots in stories he worked on led Tom Baker to change the scripted 'Grimwold's Syndrome' in Robots of Death to 'Grimwade's Syndrome' - another name for Robophobia.
Time-Flight was his first effort to write for the series - and it's a surprise that he was invited back. Actually, that's quite unfair, as most of this story's problems have nothing to do with the script itself. The really big problem was that Grimwade put forward a story that involved a Concorde supersonic airliner being transported back to prehistoric Earth, and the producer and script editor thought that it would be okay to produce it at the end of the season after all the money had ran out.
John Nathan-Turner, as should already be apparent if you have been reading these in order, was nothing if not a showman - keen to do anything that would garner publicity and hopefully get him some freebies into the bargain.
An airport-based story would obviously tie in with closing Tegan's story arc, what with her being an airline stewardess. Despite having been in service for more than a decade, Concorde was still a symbol of luxury and status. If they could get the real thing into the programme then this would be a major publicity coup, and show that the programme was sticking to high quality standards. When the aircraft had featured in a Bond movie, it had been footage of Roger Moore's actual arrival in the USA to begin filming that they recorded - having Moore change in to his Bond suit just before landing.
Apparently, when British Airways looked like they might not allow use of a Concorde for filming, JNT told them that Air France had already said yes - just to prompt BA into agreeing. They only agreed so long as neither BA nor the aircraft itself were shown in a negative light.
The BBC were offered a single morning with the aircraft, a spare one, to be filmed at Heathrow.

Never let it be said that Doctor Who ever trades in cliches, but there is a popular conception amongst the general public that male air stewards are often gay. We only see one male steward in this story, but the three cabin crew of the Concorde in which the Doctor and his companions travel all just happened to be played by gay actors. Most notable is Michael Cashman, he of the first gay kiss on the soap Eastenders, and who went on to become a Labour MEP. With gay actors, a gay writer and a gay producer, you might have thought that this story's reputation might have been salvaged at least a little by being championed by the series' many gay fans - but at the end of the day a generally derided  story is still just a generally derided story.
Peter Grimwade was an opera lover - German opera, if his later Mawdryn Undead is anything to go by. He has some elements of the Parsifal quest in this story, as Nyssa is drawn by an unseen force to delve deeper and deeper into the Xeraphin pyramid. On the way she meets several terrors, designed to stop her from proceeding with her quest - including dead friend Adric. She first sees an image of the Melkur - the disguised form of the Master's TARDIS as it had appeared on Traken. As she tells Tegan, the thing that came from the Melkur killed her father. We also get to see a Terileptil, from a recent adventure the two young women both shared. Then we get an image of the now dead Adric, warning them not to go any further. Matthew Waterhouse's inclusion here is entirely down to the Radio Times. These days it always comes out on a Tuesday, along with all the weekly TV and Radio listings magazines, but back then it came out on a Thursday. Viewers tuning in to see Part Four of Earthshock weren't supposed to know that Adric was going to snuff it, and the eagle-eyed might have spotted that he wasn't in the credits for the following week's two episodes. Waterhouse was therefore brought back to appear briefly as a mirage - just so he could be included in the cast listings and maintain the surprise ending of Earthshock.

Talking of Radio Times cast listings, alongside Waterhouse was one Leon Ny Tain, playing the rotund magician character of Kalid, who appears to be behind these temporal hijackings of Concorde aircraft. It doesn't take Inspector Morse to work out that 'Leon Ny Tain' is an anagram of Tony Ainley. For no discernible reason whatsoever, the Master is disguising himself as a vaguely oriental mystic, wearing a mask and fat suit. The production team seem to be labouring under the delusion that the Master was always disguising himself. We've already seen this new incarnation of the villainous Time Lord pretend to be the Portreeve of Castrovalva - but then he had a reason for doing so. He was laying a trap for people who would recognise him. The Roger Delgado Master only wore a face mask twice - in Terror of the Autons when he played a telephone engineer, and in The Claws of Axos when he pretended to be an army officer. He did employ masks on two other occasions - but it was to make folk think that other people were him - Rex Farrell in Terror of the Autons, and the hypnotised hovercraft pilot in The Sea Devils. Both times the masks were employed to create a diversion which would allow him to escape. Yes, the Master pretended to be other people lots of other times - but he didn't resort to any form of disguise save for the relevant costume to do so.
There is no way that the Master would have any inkling that anyone who knows him will pitch up on prehistoric Earth in this story - so why the deception? The script doesn't even try to explain.
The story ends with Tegan being left behind at Heathrow as the Doctor makes a hurried departure with just Nyssa on board the TARDIS. It was never intended that Janet Fielding was going to be leaving the show at this point - Tegan was always going to be brought back for the opening story of Season 20. This was simply a way to create a season break cliffhanger, rather than one between episodes or between stories, as was beginning to happen again after being common in the Hartnell and early Troughton eras.
Next time: Season 20 begins and, as it's a big anniversary, we get elements of the past in each story - starting with someone we haven't seen since the last big anniversary. Turns out tulips aren't the only things to come from Amsterdam...