What's Wrong With... Timelash

Now there's a question...

It's another one of those where it might be quicker and less painful to look at what went right - but here we go.

It should be noted from the outset that writer Glen McCoy can't be held solely responsible for this story. He was an ambulance driver at the time who had submitted scripts for medical soap Angels, so his experience was limited, to say the least, and his original submission had been a Dalek story built around HG Wells' The Time Machine - not realising that Terry Nation had already delivered that back in 1963.

As a new writer, script editor Eric Saward claimed to have had a lot of input into Timelash, so needs to share some of the criticism.

And let's not forget JNT, who took the regulars out of rehearsals (and it shows) for his latest tacky pantomime. Oh yes he did...

A problem with this season generally is the long delay in the Doctor actually getting into the plot. This one is particularly badly structured, with the whole "seat belts in the TARDIS" scene coming across as unnecessarily padded. It's a problem with the 45 minute episodes - prolonging the big cliffhanger rather than just using what would have been the end of Part Two of a traditional four-parter.

When has the Doctor ever resorted to those belts, considering the number of times the TARDIS has been out of control?

Part One actually overran, whilst Part Two underran, so another problem with pacing and structure.

That whole argument between the Doctor and Peri before he goes off to stop the Bandril missile had to be filmed during the making of the next story and edited in.

Everyone dreads the Timelash (presumably because they don't know where it takes you and think it might be an airless moon or some such), but it goes to a rather attractive part of Scotland. Okay, so the earlier history of my homeland was a dangerous place (still is not a million miles from where I write this), but a bunch of people turning up with advanced technological knowledge, assuming they escaped being burnt as witches, could easily have come to dominate the area - especially as the established ones would have welcomed the newcomers. Maybe this is why we came to be at the forefront of the Enlightenment and to invent a heck of a lot of stuff - it's all down to descendants of refugees from Karfel.

The Borad is simply creating a potential power base elsewhere in the galaxy that might then come to invade and dominate Karfel in revenge.

The idea that the Borad is the Loch Ness Monster is obviously nonsense, as he's just a human sized guy with a flipper, whereas we all know it's the Skarasen, established in the loch well before the period mentioned here.

The whole Bandril conflict revolves around Karfel being the bread basket for that world, yet the model shots of the citadel appear to show it sitting on a rocky, barren, moon-like landscape. Shouldn't it be corn-fields, under a blue sky? VFX don't appear to have examined the script too closely.

The Bandrils aren't given anything to contrast their size with, making them look even more like glove puppets than they needed to be. Are they small, or are they twenty feet high? There's no sense of scale.

The Bandril response to having their wheat withheld? To destroy the planet they rely on to provide them with wheat...

The Borad is said to have lots of experiments going on, yet all we see is the Timelash - already up and running for some time, and his private plans to create a Morlox-hybrid mate for himself. If he's that great a scientist, why hasn't he built sufficient power generation capacity for himself - then he wouldn't need to divert energy from hospitals etc and stir up rebellion.

The story opens with one rebel being brought to his inner sanctum to be aged to death, whereas her comrade goes into the Timelash. What's so special about her (apart from providing a pre-titles style hook for the story)? Presumably this is something personal between him and her, but it's not clear on screen.

Why would anyone leave acid-spitting plants sitting around in a communal area? The guards wear netting on their faces, but we know this is no defence as we see Peri shove a plant into one of their faces.

Part Two has additional padding as the Borad turns out to have a clone. This one walks about, whilst the original is confined to a wheelchair. Or does it? Which one is the clone, and which the original? Presumably the one in the wheelchair is the original, else why would you make a disabled clone of yourself? What was the clone doing all that time?

If the Borad has mastered cloning, why the whole convoluted "let's-deliberately-start-a-war-so-that-a-stockpile-of-gas-will-be-released-that-will-turn-the-survivors-into-Morlox / Karfelon-hybrids" scheme? Has he been taking lessons from the Cybermen. or watching recent series finales?

He was created in a freak accident, so who is to say that repeating the process would result in anything similar. You might just get people with really long necks.

Why suddenly get the hots for Peri (not as if she hasn't had this sort of thing happen before) over any other female? What was wrong with all the Karfelon ladies? They're beautiful women, probably, so why not just mate with one of them? 

If the Borad is never seen in person in public, why the fake old man? Couldn't he just do his dictating as a voice and picture, like Big Brother?

The Borad's actions are a little inconsistent. He prizes the Timelash yet doesn't properly protect it - allowing the rebels to seize the council chamber very easily, and leaving a Time Lord with access to its innards - the set for which has to be one of the worst ever seen in the series. Jablite, tinsel and disco lights.

(The lack of reflective surfaces might be part of the plot - but it also makes from drab sets).

The Borad also kills Renis for actually refusing to agree to rebel with young Mykros, yet does nothing when Tekker allows Vena to nab the vital power control amulet. (And why trust such an important item to a transient politician anyway, especially when they seem to be so expendable?).

Lucky someone with a TARDIS showed up a few minutes later to get it back...

As for the rebels, Peri gets handed a cryptic note - rather than something which actually spelled out who it was for and why. The person who handed it to her seems to know all about the new arrivals and that they might be useful allies - but doesn't appear to have then told his leader to expect them, so Peri gets captured and threatened by the person who actually wants her help.

Recognising a photograph of Jo Grant magically makes everyone trust her. I can understand Katz keeping the locket as a memento of her grandfather, but would she really recall all the additional information about the woman in the picture.? And how does Peri recognise Jo anyway? Has the Doctor spent long nights in the TARDIS boring her with his holiday snaps, when they aren't arguing with each other?

Tekker seems to think that the Doctor normally has two companions, and it is the Pertwee Doctor he's talking about - but that incarnation never travelled with more than one person.

The Pertwee portrait is hidden behind a panel, and behind it lies a mirror. Why did the Borad not simply remove and destroy these items, and avoid the risk of their rediscovery? How did the Doctor know that they were there? Did he hang around to see his picture before departing last time (possible, for this most vain of Doctors).

McCoy might have managed to cram in the big three HG Wells novels - War of the Worlds, The Time Machine and The Invisible Man - but he doesn't seem to have done much research into the man himself.

He preferred George to Herbert and was short and blond. He certainly didn't get all embarrassed around the ladies like Herbert here...

Last, but by no means least: is Timelash the only Doctor Who story to have a title which is also an anagram of its description...?