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TIMELASH

2 episodes. Approx. 90 minutes. Written by: Glen McCoy. Directed by:
Pennant Roberts. Produced by: John Nathan Turner.


THE PLOT

The TARDIS's course is diverted by a Time Corridor, which brings it to
the planet Karfel. The Doctor has visited Karfel before, when his
interventioned saved the planet, and he expects to be greeted as a
welcome visitor.

Things have changed on Karfel. The planet is under the rule of the
Borad (Robert Ashby), a genius scientist who has diverted all the
planet's resources into his time research. The fruit of the research
is the Timelash, an unstable time corridor which acts as an execution
method for any who oppose the Borad's rule.

The Borad has targeted the Doctor to become the Timelash's next
victim. But for Peri, he has another fate in mind. She is to become
his unwilling bride!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: The early TARDIS scenes see Colin Baker at his worst.
Admittedly, these scenes are dreadful on the page. But instead of
trying to act against the Doctor's boorish behavior, Colin embraces it
- making him as unlikable as he's ever been! Once the Doctor and Peri
have reached Karfel, his performance improves tremendously. He shows
his softest and most compassionate side when interacting with Vena,
and is genuinely commanding when he and the rebels take control of the
Timelash in Part Two. Still, while there's no denying his enthusiasm,
this is almost certainly Colin's weakest television performance in the
role.

Peri: In bondage! Seriously - she spends a great deal of this story
being taken captive, tied up, recaptured, yanked around with a bondage
collar, attached by that collar to piping, and being menaced by a
monster that looks like a giant penis. Easily the character's weakest
story, though Nicola Bryant struggles gamely to invest some spark into
her rather pathetic material.


THOUGHTS

Timelash is one of a handful of serials often cited as "the worst
story ever!" It is certainly badly-made. It's glaringly obvious that
this is the season cheapie, as guest actors in cheap quasi-Roman
costumes wander around barely-adorned floodlit white stage sets. The
Timelash itself is, infamously, a bit of tinsel, with the inside of
the Timelash even more howlingly cheap-looking than the outside.
Doctor Who was always a series made on a shoestring, but most stories
worked to look as good possible within those limitations. This one
looks like something that should be accompanied by a Tom Servo/Crow T.
Robot commentary.

The story's single biggest problem isn't production, however. It's
padding. This is another Season 22 story in which the Doctor and Peri
don't get involved until more than halfway through the first 45-minute
episode. The solution? To pad out the first half of Episode One with
TARDIS scenes that are, if possible, even more painful than the ones
in Vengeance on Varos. First the Sixth Doctor acts like more of an ass
to Peri than he ever has before (even when he was insane and
strangling her), then he wrestles with messes of wires and uses safety
belts (but no chairs). Better to have just held the Doctor's
introduction until the point at which the story called for him.

The story structure is actually reasonable enough, with each major
story beat leading to the next. But it's clear early on that there
isn't enough plot here for 90 minutes... and the story runs out
completely a little over halfway through Episode Two. The Doctor
confronts and defeats the Borad at about the 27 minute mark, leaving
almost twenty full minutes to go. We then get an extended "comedy"
scene in which he takes the TARDIS to intercept a missile heading
toward Karfel, followed by a second climax in which the Borad comes
back to life so that the Doctor can defeat him all over again - in a
way that's much less dramatic than the first time around.

Given the shift to 45-minute episodes, I'm at a loss as to why this
wasn't streamlined into a one-parter. Cut the early TARDIS scenes,
make the Borad's first defeat the final one, and tighten some of the
scenes in between, and this would be an ideal single-part story. As it
stands, that last twenty minutes kills what had up to that point been
an entertaining (if badly made) yarn.

There are some bright spots. Paul Darrow, as the evil Tekker, manages
to be wooden and hammy at the same time. It's such a gleefully bad
performance, it gives the serial a considerable shot in the arm for
most of its run. Darrow is having so much fun chomping on the scenery
that it becomes infectious.

His performance is a perfect illustration of why I don't think
Timelash can rank among the series' worst: Namely, while it may be
objectively terrible, it's also rather fun. It's true that some of the
fun comes from laughing at the bad acting, sets, and general
cheapness. But the combination of execution that is bad enough to be
amusing and story structure that is competent enough to maintain
dramatic shape keeps this very watchable, putting it well above such
fare as Underworld, Time-Flight, or Time and the Rani, in my view.

So: Cheap, objectively bad, but kind of fun in spite (and in part
because) of that. If it weren't for the whole thing running out of gas
halfway through Part Two, this would probably be a solid "5." Even
with that dead space that is the last twenty minutes, I still find
Timelash to be a fair notch better than its reputation, even if it
isn't ultimately very good.


Rating: 4/10.

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