Masterpiece Theatre: Timelash

Masterpiece Theatre

Number 9: Timelash

Like The Space Pirates before it, Timelash is a story I had actually never seen before. In fact it was the only story transmitted during the eighties that I either hadn’t seen on its initial broadcast or caught up with later on video or DVD. I have been deliberately avoiding it, warded off by a huge amount of negative comments about the story.

To say that Timelash has a bad reputation is something of an understatement. We are talking about the story that finished second-to-bottom in the 2009 Doctor Who Magazine Mighty 200 Survey. Of all the Doctor Who stories ever broadcast, across close to fifty years of adventures, only The Twin Dilemma is statistically worse. It scores lower than K9 and Company, for goodness’ sake.

It’s a story about which nobody seems to have a good word. Director Pennant Roberts thought it was weak. Sixth Doctor Colin Baker once said about it, ‘I wonder how they thought of this crap?’ Nicola Bryant bemoans the fact that she seems to spend most of the story tied to a pole. Eric Saward has stated that it probably should have been rejected, although surely as part of his role as script editor he might have attempted a rewrite? Even writer Glen McCoy recently told DWM that there are a lot of things he should have done differently.

And yet...

It turns out that popular opinion is (slightly) wrong. It turns out that I shouldn’t have avoided it for so long. It turns out that I actually quite enjoyed Timelash. Maybe it was because my expectations were so low, but I certainly preferred it to The Two Doctors, Vengeance on Varos and The Mark of the Rani from the same season, none of which mercifully appear in the bottom fifty stories in the Mighty 200 survey.

It’s pretty obvious that Timelash was made with a handful of pennies found down the back of the Production Office sofa, but a lack of budget shouldn’t necessarily mean a bad story. There have been many other cash-strapped productions during Doctor Who’s long life. Some of them have been featured in this blog, but others have successful despite having less money. Doctor Who has been, and always will be, an ideas-led programme. Timelash’s budget issues mean that there are problems with the set design, but Karfel’s seemingly endless series of identical corridors are no worse than similar sets in other studio-bound tales. Certainly they are overlit, like so many sets before them, but for every scene in a featureless location, we have the atmospheric green ambience of the Borad’s lair or the lovely period detail of Herbert’s cottage to lift the production values to another level. We mustn’t forget that at least Timelash provides a reason for sterile corridors, as if aware of its failings before it was even filmed.

The biggest set sins are in the design of the titular Timelash itself – a glorified cupboard with a sparkly front – and in the vertical chasm that exists beyond it. This may well be the worst set ever shown in Doctor Who. Poor Colin Baker, a well-built man to put it mildly, inches his way along dangerously sagging polystyrene beams surrounded by tinsel, gingerly straddling each beam with a look of consternation on his face. The scenes inside the Timelash offer edge of the seat viewing; not because of the peril the Doctor faces, but rather because there is a very real sense that the set might break at any moment.

The story is not helped by uninspired direction from Pennant Roberts. He was welcome to criticize the script, but to then not inject any dynamism into his work smacks of laziness and a lack of care from the powers-that-be in the BBC. He allows Paul Darrow to get away with one of the most scenery-chewing guest turns in television history (at least we know that the dull sets of Karfel are edible – Darrow scoffed the lot) yet fails to draw out anything approaching a performance from Jeananne Crowley as Vena. Crowley’s still quite hypnotic though. It’s like she’s permanently stoned. She’s so far out of it that she just wanders across the set in the middle of action sequences. As the Doctor dangles precariously amongst the tinsel and tat, Vena dully states ‘He’s dangling on the edge of oblivion!’ as if she is pointing out that the kettle has boiled. Then she totters off vacantly, clearly in a search for more illegal Karfelan drugs that she can smoke, inject or insert. She’s breathtaking in her ineptitude.

As well as failing to marshal his actors, Roberts directs the story’s action sequences particularly poorly. He insists on filming everything as wide as possible, lending a theatrical air to proceedings. There’s no urgency to any of the scenes. It’s all so pedestrian. The fight scenes appear clunky and under-rehearsed, and there’s never any feeling that people are in actual jeopardy.

The Bandrils, the story’s imminent invading force were envisioned as men in costumes by McCoy, but again money stymied that idea and meant that the War of the Worlds allusion was lost. Instead we have a cobra puppet on a screen doing an impression of Professor Dumbledore. He’s quite cute really and much better than the rubbish Luke-tree in The Mark of the Rani. The only real problem with making the Bandrils puppets is that the ending had to be rewritten so that they are not seen in person, twitching away on Rod Hull’s arm like Emu's cobra cousin. This makes the last few minutes a dull plod totally free from peril. The story in effect finishes after half an hour of the second episode.

The biggest hurdle the story has to jump is in the script. Not because it is particularly badly written by McCoy, although there are one or two moments of very clunky exposition (including the mother of all ‘I’ll explain later’ moments) and the sudden nonsensical reappearance of the Borad at the end of the story. The faults of the script are more to do with the era in which it was being produced. There’s a typical Season 22 opening, where scenes on a planet about which we know nothing and care for even less are intercut with endless TARDIS scenes of the Doctor and Peri bickering. In this case it is a full 22½ minutes before the TARDIS even arrives on Karfel, making the delayed entrance of the Doctor in The Space Pirates pale in comparison. That’s an entire episode where the Doctor does not interact with the plot. This would reach a whole new nadir in the next story, Revelation of the Daleks, where the TARDIS team are marginalised for nearly the entire ninety minute duration. By this point, the Saward and Nathan-Turner dream team had lost all touch with what the public actually wanted, dressing the Doctor as a clown and treating him as a supporting character rather than the intelligent and dynamic hero we all know him to be.

As well as reducing the Doctor (and Peri as well – like the obnoxious Tegan before her, why is she even there? She clearly doesn’t even like the Doctor) the whole Doctor Who universe has been reduced. Everybody and their auntie are aware of the Time Lords by now, and the TARDIS’ materialisation on Karfel surprises nobody. They all know who he is already. There’s no power to the Doctor or to the Time Lords any more. There’s no myth to the series by this point. It’s all been frittered away in a series of rehashes and reheated offerings. By this point, John Nathan-Turner thought he was offering the fans what they wanted. This season alone saw return visits by the Cybermen, Lytton, The Master, the Second Doctor, Jamie, the Sontarans and the Daleks. There were virtually no new ideas. The well had been allowed to run dry. The point is that nostalgia is actually a good thing in some cases. After the initial frisson of seeing an enemy from the past shuffle onto the screen, there’s the realisation that they’ve got nothing new to offer, but are simply going through the same motions they did ten or even twenty years before. Therefore they lose that magic that only nostalgia can provide. That’s why Sutekh, the Zygons and Magnus Greel are so revered. They never came back for more. The general audience realised this faster than the producer, so that when the inevitable hiatus actually occurred, only the fans and John Nathan-Turner were surprised.

This obsessive need to link everything to the past means that Timelash finds itself somehow positioned as an unnecessary sequel. Not only that, it’s a sequel to a story we never saw in the first place. That’s a stupid idea in anyone’s book. For it then to make so many errors in referencing the past is utterly unacceptable. The Doctor is asked why he only has one companion with him on this visit, when on no occasion did Jon Pertwee ever travel in the TARDIS with more than a single other person. Equally Peri’s recognition of Jo Grant and her knowledge of Dalek technology just smack of continuity references for the sake of it, when there is no plausible reason why she would know about either. If you’re going to make a story into a sequel, at least be bothered to check the most basic of facts. I’ve stated this before, but it’s worth saying again. This period of Doctor Who treated its past with no regard whatsoever.

This was also a period where creative control seemed to be almost completely absent. The Borad’s sudden emergence after his apparent death at the end of the story is explained away as the first Borad being a clone. This clone was a decoy in case anyone tried to assassinate him, and was exactly the same thing that Davros would do in the very next story. The Borad also falls in love with Peri and wants to alter her appearance, like Sil did in Vengeance on Varos, three stories previous. This repetition of ideas is shoddy to say the least. It seems that Eric Saward was so focused on his own writing that he had no time for anyone else’s. Simply put, he wasn’t fulfilling the role of script editor and JN-T wasn’t supporting him in the slightest in terms of script selection and development. They should have walked away with Peter Davison. A new Doctor, a new start – the way it has always worked best.

However to place Timelash as the second-worst story ever broadcast is distinctly unfair and ignores many of the story’s virtues. I can think of at least ten adventures that are worse just off the top of my head. Unfortunately it’s a story that’s currently fashionable to hate, just as The Gunfighters was in the eighties before people actually realised that it wasn’t half-bad and was actually meant to be a comedy. It’s never going to be a classic, but there are a lot of moments that make it a lot of fun. It also provided a wholly unexpected revelation that has meant I have had to reconsider something I truly believed (see Reason 4 below).

Ten Reasons why Timelash is not an unpleasant journey

1.       The make-up on the Borad is one of the best classic Doctor Who ever managed. He’s kept off screen for a long time, in the tradition of many Doctor Who monsters, and his reveal is quite well-handled. Robert Ashby provides a good performance under the make-up, giving the Borad a sense of yearning loneliness which is quite similar to Sharaz Jek in The Caves of Androzani. His aging ray is also a good effect for the time.

2.       Paul Darrow gives one of the most arch and over-the-top performances ever showcased on Doctor Who. Therefore he is by some margin the most entertaining element of the story. He clearly took one look at the material and the set and decided that going overboard was the only logical approach. Famously he decided to play Tekker as Richard III as played by Laurence Olivier. What he actually ended up doing was playing Avon from Blake’s 7 with slightly longer hair. When his inevitable death comes halfway through episode two, the story is all the weaker from his absence.

3.       The sight of Vena ghosting through the TARDIS after she falls into the Timelash is subtly eerie, helped in part by Jeananne Crowley’s unblinkingly blank stare. It’s a pity this was her default setting. It’s also a pity that by this point in the eighties, every enemy and their aunt had the power to enter the once safe interior of the TARDIS, so Vena’s materialisation doesn’t quite have the power it deserved. That’s no fault of Glen McCoy.

4.       And so to my moment of epiphany. Throughout all my years of being a fan of Doctor Who, I’ve always believed Colin Baker to be the weakest of all the actors to play the Doctor. I find him too bombastic and prone to speechifying for my tastes. I think that his Doctor was too hard to identify with and his lack of charm was a major factor in the series being put on hiatus and why he was eventually sacked. I also think that I was wrong in my opinion of Colin. My thoughts on the Sixth Doctor and Colin Baker had merged together, which means I have done a massive disservice to Colin. The Sixth Doctor is a mess of a character, and I stick by my opinion that he is the poorest Doctor, but that is the fault of JN-T and Eric Saward in not developing a consistent personality or plotting his growth through Season 22. Colin, though, gives everything in his performance, not helped by some weak scripts and certainly not helped by his bosses. The man shines in Timelash, adding something to every scene he is in. You can’t take your eyes off him, and that’s not the effect of his ill-judged costume. He is the first true madman with a box in this story. You can see the mind working at a hundred mile an hour. You can see that he is the smartest man in the room. You can see the beginnings of Matt Smith’s incarnation. Colin was a victim of circumstance. He was the Doctor in the wrong era, asked to close the stable door after the horse had bolted. Watching Colin Baker in Timelash, I was reminded of something the writer Gareth Roberts once said: ‘The Doctor has never been miscast. If any Doctor has stumbled it was always the fault of the people behind the cameras.’ And he’s right, you know. Colin was a good choice for the Doctor, but he was never allowed to be the Time Lord he should have been. He was stifled by a series of poor creative decisions, starting with his costume. I seriously need to download some Big Finish audios to give him another chance.

Colin Baker, I apologise. I was wrong about you.

5.       Dean Hollingsworth gives his strange blue-faced android staccato movements and strange vocal inflections which go a long way towards convincing us that this is a robot rather than a person. He conveys a huge amount through his body language, but I particularly like the scene when the Borad gives the robot instructions to attack the rebels but to keep Peri alive. The previously impassive robot twitches its mouth into a little smile of understanding. It’s a really creepy moment from what is actually one of Doctor Who’s finest androids.

6.       Good old earnest Mykros, the latest in a long line of Doctor Who rebels, fighting for his rights and battling against a system he knows is corrupt. Eric Deacon adds a great deal to what is a slimly written and clichéd character. Mykros’ love for Vena is mystifying though – perhaps he supplies her with drugs and pimps her out to Bandril Ambassadors. He gets a slightly odd scene at the end of the story where he appears to have unilaterally declared himself the new Maylin leader. Perhaps Karfel isn’t freed from dictatorship after all.

7.       The use of H.G. Wells almost pays off. You can see Glen McCoy’s efforts to link elements of Timelash with Wells’ stories; War of the Worlds, The Time Machine and The Island of Dr Moreau are all referenced quite overtly, with The Invisible Man evoked in the Doctor’s otherwise pointless time-altering crystal. However, it seems to show a lack of regard for Wells’ pioneering fiction by implying that he was merely writing from experience rather than his imagination. That said, David Chandler is endearing and engaging as Herbert, and his interactions with the Doctor give Colin Baker a chance to show a different facet to his character. The two work so well together that it’s a shame that Herbert didn’t stay on as a companion. We never see him returned home and having a famous historical figure on board the TARDIS would have provided an interesting new dynamic that the series has never explored on TV.

8.       Unlike Janet Fielding as Tegan, Nicola Bryant’s Peri somehow manages to stay likeable amongst the constant arguments and whinging. Although this story is a retrograde step for Peri, who seems to spend the majority of both episodes tied up in some way, Bryant never allows her to become weak. Peri’s escape from a guard, when she thrusts an acid-squirting plant into his face, having already been told that it causes blindness, is pushing at the limit, and the effects of her actions are never explored. For even a caring and humane companion such as to resort to casual consequence-free violence sums up where Doctor Who was getting it so wrong in Season 22.

9.       The scenes set in 1885 are a cut above the rest of the story, both in terms of set and idea. The Ouija board spells out Vena before she arrives and Herbert attempts to ward off the Doctor with a crucifix. There’s a wit here that is missing from most of Timelash. It’s a shame no more of the story was set there, although it’s amusing to think that the victims of the Timelash were simply deposited in Scotland in the past. I can think of a good many worse punishments than that.

10.   The Sixth Doctor is a grouchy old man at heart. He’s quick to irritation and doesn’t suffer fools gladly. So when he is stuck in the TARDIS with Herbert and his incessant questioning, it’s no wonder his temper frays and finally snaps. What we get is Colin Baker finally allowed to be comedically and likeably grumpy with some magnificent facial expressions. There's a nice Frank Herbert joke snuck in there too.

It’s difficult to see why Timelash is so hated. Negative reviews tend to point to the run-around scenes in the corridors as being the very worst of Doctor Who and ammunition for comedy sketches about the programme. While there is an element of that, there are no more corridor scenes than any other story and little basis for Timelash to be singled out for criticism. It’s more to do with the era in which it was produced and the attitude towards the programme at the time. Timelash is a scapegoat for the failings of a production team that had lost its way. A story should never be vilified for external issues, so give Timelash another go – there’s so much more to this tale than its reputation allows.

Next Time: The Smugglers