Here's the thing about Time-Flight. I will always defend the idea that the central idea is absolutely fantastic. A Concord flight goes missing, sent back along a time corridor millions of years in the past? Actual pilots trying to work the TARDIS while the Doctor is helped by a professor of hypnotism? The villain appearing to use magic, which turns out to be technology and he gets 'defeated' after only two episodes only to be revealed as a disguise (for literally no reason at all)? Great stuff.

But then things fall off a cliff. People overcome the hypnotism, then fall victim to it again, then overcome it. Characters need to get through a wall, then make it through, then need to get through the wall, then make it through, then need to get through the wall. TARDIS circuit boards get exchanged with other TARDIS circuit boards, which then get exchanged for other TARDIS circuit boards. TARDISes dematerialising then immediately rematerialising, then dematerialising, then rematerialising. Grey blobs appear then disappear then appear then disappear then appear again. It's not a time corridor we're stuck in, it's clearly a time loop.

There are still really lovely moments. Tegan working as an actual flight attendant, and experiencing Heathrow Airport, before unexpectedly getting left behind. The gradual shift in the pilots' attitudes as they come to appreciate the Doctor, his companions and the TARDIS. Any interaction with Professor Hayter.

But this can't overcome just how tedious most of the serial is. And the most irritating part of the whole serial? I'll explain later...

Time-Flight starts out very strong as we finally get to Heathrow Airport.  The whole energy at the terminal is a lot of fun and would be a very cool, original moment for Doctor Who were it not for the fact we are following very similar story beats to The Faceless Ones.

Nevertheless, Time-Flight eventually distinguishes itself by flinging our heroes and a few other characters far into the past.  From here, it's all pretty disappointing.  We never really see anything cool or particularly noteworthy while exploring Primordial Earth.  Mostly, we just meet other humans stranded here.  It's super disappointing and the Master's weird and likely racist disguise makes for a very underwhelming affair.  Pretty quickly our characters lose purpose and the whole thing becomes a very disappointing story.  There's cool moments like when Teagan and Nyssa are attacked by past monsters, and even hints of Nyssa's psychic potential that could have been used in a more interesting way, but sadly the larger narrative around psychic aliens the Master is messing with just did not engage me much at all.  A promising serial completely laid waste by a bunch of meandering nonsense.

I also loathe how little Adric is even mentioned in this story.  It really feels like the show is brushing aside any potential character development in what should have been one of the more significant moments in Who history.

This is definitely the weakest story of Season 19. There’s some great continuity and character development with the TARDIS crew trying to deal with the loss of Adric, but for the most part the story just feels like it was written around Concorde, rather than Concorde supplementing the story.

The script kind of feels like it needed a few more drafts to me. There are a few odd moments that probably wouldn’t have made it to a final screenplay, like the Master’s Kalid disguise serving no purpose within the narrative, and the Doctor just straight up abandoning Tegan at Heathrow at the end of the serial. I mean, seriously: what the hell, Doctor? The least you could have done is said goodbye to her!

I do like the scenes with Tegan and Nyssa though. Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton have so much chemistry together. You can tell also that Anthony Ainley is having such a great time. He clearly relishes playing the Master. And there is a great story in here waiting to emerge. They just don’t fully realise it here.

This is part of a series of reviews of Doctor Who in chronological timeline order.

Previous Story: Earthshock

I don't think this story is quite as bad as most people think it is. The first episode especially is really good and the mystery of a disappearing Concorde is very intriguing. The location footage at Heathrow is brilliant even if it is basically one large advert for Concorde.

I saw a lot of complaints about how they gloss over Adric's death in this story, but I don't really see that. They had a heartfelt moment at the beginning and then didn't really have any time to mourn considering they were busy wrapped up in the plot. The only genuine complaint I have was the Master in this story. He had no reason to be disguised, he wasn't hiding himself from anyone and his disguise feels oddly racist.

That's basically it though, the rest of this is a fun story with a lot of ambition that it can't live up to due to the budget. I was expecting Tegan's departure to be a little bit different, but we'll see how that plays out in the next season

Next Story: The Land of the Dead

i like how this is paced a lot, with kalid being the villain for part 1 and 2 and then the master for part 3 and 4, makes the story flow quick and not be boring! 5s era makes use of the tardis so much it is very interesting. much better at short hops! i love seeing interior shots as well they're very common. crying cause i can never go aboard. i should build a replica in real life or the sims or something and do all the companion bedrooms, that'd be cute. do you think they ever move into a past companion's room? anyway the side characters of the pilot and crew were super super fun guys. it was crazyyy to just leave tegan at heathrow?? we'll see how that develops. also a pretty fun master story in general. i wonder why the master's tardis so often appears as a column?

Time-flight has the rare accolade of being a Doctor Who story which very gradually gets worse and worse the further it gets into its running time. Two episodes in I was rather enjoying myself, The Master’s reveal at the end of part two was particularly welcome and surprising. But after that it’s like they just give up.

Things kick off nicely with the team honouring Adric, rather than skating over his death like I thought they would - the show has grown up and matured. There is then some hi-jinks at Heathrow airport which gives us some nice shots of contemporary 1980s London - this is appreciated after a long time away from the modern day. It’s a nice way of grounding the show in our reality.

I love the timeslip idea, planes passing through a portal from one time to the next, this too is a modern concept. Something the show would not have tried 10 years earlier, a rare story about time travel. How The Master’s plan fits into this is pretty neat. Its entertaining watching a pilot, one of The Master’s victims, almost succumb to the same hypnosis as the majority of the flight passengers - but *just* about resisting it. Adric’s ghostly cameo was a nice touch.

Annoyingly things get a bit silly during part three with lots of high concepts coming out from nowhere. You’re expected to all of a sudden invest in a slew of random concepts. Technical gobbledygook spoken over images that would not be self-explanatory on its own.

There’s some really cheesy dialogue. Exactly the kind of thing you don’t want people to associate with Doctor Who. The ending limp and threat free. The Doctor literally swapping TARDIS spares with The Master is mundane and comes across like a time wasting exercise, like they’re just trying to use up the running time. It doesn’t help that Ainley is an embarrassing actor. Easily the worst Master. Whoever hired him did the series a great disservice.

The Master not being able to land his TARDIS due to The Doctor using the same coordinates is an extremely weak way to wrap up the story. He could have just landed next to The Doctor. He is meant to be a genius!

I know Tegan is in future stories, but I suppose her seemingly being left behind at the end of the story makes for a shock ending for the season… does anyone think season 19 should have ended with Earthshock?