What's Wrong With... Time-Flight

It would probably be quicker and easier if I actually ran though "What's Right With..." for this story...

You do not arrange for a story such as this to be made by a relatively new director, at the end of a season when the money has run out, right after you've just brought back a hugely popular old monster not seen for seven years, and killed off a companion.

Cheap - and it looks like it - and anti-climactic.

To be honest, even had this story been made at the start of a season, it would have struggled. 

We have the basic concept of not one but two Concorde supersonic airliners transported back to prehistoric Earth. You are being allowed to shoot the actual aircraft at Heathrow Airport - but everything else, including the prehistoric landscape, is going to have to be done in studio.

One of the issues is that Time-Flight was written by a director (Peter Grimwade) who obviously worked in visual imagery terms. The trouble was, his imagination was far more suited to a multi-million pound movie than a relatively cheap BBC drama series.

Kalid...

If Peter Grimwade was aware that the running arc of the season was the Doctor trying to get Tegan to Heathrow, and the Master needed TARDIS components to fix his own ship, then it would have made sense for him to have deliberately set up the time contour to the Heathrow flight path, and donned a disguise for when the Doctor fell into it.

But the story doesn't say that. 

We are left wondering why the Master really needs the Concorde passengers and crew (does he really need all that physical labour?), and why he has disguised himself as a weird magician figure. The latter simply makes no sense as it stands.

Is it a physical disguise, or something else? He throws it off as if it is a disguise - but what is it with all the green slime then?

He wants to gain the knowledge of the Xeraphin. That's a race who managed to get themselves almost wiped out in cross-fire - not even their own war - and then they crash-land on a lifeless planet, and then they allow themselves to become enslaved by a crazy disguise-fetishist. Hardly a race you might actually learn anything from.

The Doctor finds some shrunken Xerpahin - obviously killed by the Master. But how did he manage that before he's broken into their sarcophagus?

The use of the time contour is problematic. It relies on an aircraft with lots of people on board just happening to stumble across it. What if it had gone to a more remote bit of airspace, hardly used by larger 'planes? And why does it only ensnare Concordes? Why no Jumbo Jets or small private 'planes?

Nyssa comments on how cold it is - alerting the Doctor that what looks like Heathrow might not be. But we've just seen snow on the ground at the real one...

How exactly did the crew and passengers of two Concordes get in and out of the aircraft if the airport is only an illusion. No steps. And how did the TARDIS get out of the cargo hold without lifting gear? Did the hypnotised passengers form some sort of human pyramid? You can mess with someone's mid with hypnosis and make them think they're Superman, but you can't actually make them physically stronger.

The wheel unit we see is far too small for a real Concorde.

Why does the Doctor run away so quickly at the end? He may have lost one of the Concordes, but he's brought the one back with all the rich, influential passengers, plus both flight crews. The airport authorities know who he works for and that he has top security clearance - so why the panic?

Why does Tegan wander off and act like she's never seen the inside of an airport before? She flew to the UK from Australia, and wouldn't she have trained at one?

If you're going to end a season on a cliff-hanger, best not to advertise the fact that Janet Fielding will be back next year anyway.

And a Time Lord really ought to know the difference between an era and an epoch.