Timelash Part Two

The one where Peri almost becomes the mutant bride of the Loch Ness Monster...

Am I right in thinking Elizabeth Parker is the only woman to score incidental music for Doctor Who? I know Delia Derbyshire's work was used for Inferno, but that wasn't specially composed, whereas Parker's work for Timelash was. Surely it cannot be right that only one woman has scored a Doctor Who story in its entire 59-year history? That needs to change, and hopefully it will as Doctor Who enters its 60th year...

We rejoin Timelash as the Doctor is pushed toward the tinselly cabinet of doom by the blond-haired, blue-faced android (surely influenced by the cover of David Bowie's album Tonight, released a couple of months before Timelash was recorded). Vena and Herbert look on open-mouthed, but fail to protest or try to intervene in any way. Thankfully, the Doctor remembers he snaffled Herbert's hand mirror in part 1 and uses it to confuse the droid. The good guys are then able to seal the room (a base under siege!), although the Borad claims his "time web" is able to disintegrate the door (his time web is actually a big gun, so what it's got to do with time and webs I've no idea).

Peri spends well over half of this episode incarcerated and screaming for help, one of the worst examples of a damsel in distress in a long while. Her imprisonment is obvious padding - there's a lot of padding in part 2 - as she is taken by the guardolier from the caves into the citadel, locked up for a time in a cell, then returned to the caves to await her fate at the fangs of the Morlox. Most of Nicola Bryant's time is spent being dragged about corridors, or tied up and screaming (often both), and reacting to the interminable approach of the wobbly Morlox (it spends all its time snarling and gnashing, but poses very little actual threat).

With Peri safely out of the way plot-wise, the Doctor decides to venture inside the Timelash itself to get some kontron crystals. He doesn't clearly explain why, but Bob Cove's design for the Timelash interior is lamentably poor. He's attempted to build a crystalline structure, but it just looks like a climbing wall with bits of silver tinsel glued on. There's a slight breeze, but virtually no attempt to depict the interior of the Timelash as a dangerous, unstable place. Would it not be full of temporal distortion and time anomalies, the howl of the time vortex a deafening cacophony? We're supposed to think being thrown into the Timelash is a deadly fate, but it's hard to imagine anybody suffering too much in this festive realm.

These scenes do Colin Baker few favours. It's kind of embarrassing watching a 41-year-old man dressed as a clown pretending to abseil down a fibreglass and tinsel precipice, no matter how much we're told he's in danger: "He's dangling on the edge of oblivion!" It's one of those instances where the production fails the script, although it would look much better in grainy black and white.

Securing a handful of kontron crystals (I wonder if they're the same as the Crystal of Kronos seen in The Time Monster?), the Doctor starts tinkering with various tools and gadgets while the multitudinous supporting cast ask endless questions which never get answered. It's 'Doctor Who by numbers', to have the Doctor fiddling with gadgets and refusing to tell people what he's doing, while the companion is tied up and screaming in a cave somewhere. Rising above all this humdrum padding is David Chandler as the wonderful Herbert, a shining beacon of entertainment and a fine example of what a companion should actually be.

Herbert is inquisitive, brave and tenacious, three fine traits for any reputable Doctor Who companion. He asks questions, because he wants to be involved; he's the first to enter the Timelash to rescue the dangling Doctor; he's fiercely protective of Vena from the moment she appears in his cottage; he finds his way into the Borad's domain, and aboard the TARDIS against the Doctor's instructions (twice!); and he's the one who heroically rescues Peri from her perilous encounter with the Morlox. Herbert is a hero, an active supporting character who is basically doing all the things the companion should be doing. Sadly, Peri is one of the weakest Doctor Who companions ever - a backward step after the progress made with Tegan, Nyssa, Romana, Leela and Sarah - and serves no purpose other than to be captured, threatened and generally be a liability.

David Chandler's Herbert makes me realise something: in almost every Sixth Doctor story there's been one guest actor who's stood out for me, giving that extra something to their performance often missing elsewhere (including the regulars, I'm afraid). I see it in Brian Glover in Attack of the Cybermen, Nabil Shaban in Vengeance on Varos, Kate O'Mara in The Mark of the Rani and James Saxon in The Two Doctors, and here with David Chandler.

With all this padding going on, it's a mystery why more couldn't be made of the all-too-brief pairing of Tekker and Kendron, who start to feel a bit like a Holmesian double act. Paul Darrow and David Ashton work well together, with Kendron the obsequious coward to Tekker's grandiloquent schemer. There's a nice bit of characterisation when Tekker tells Kendron he is the ideal candidate to be Deputy Maylin, as he has "the perfect attitude" - that is, someone who never says no and never asks questions. But just as we think the duo are to become part 2's dastardly double act, Tekker betrays Kendron by telling the Borad he's a traitor, and the cowardly councillor is promptly aged to death (his skeleton falling to the floor with a comical clunk).

It's a real shame, and it marks the beginning of a tragic waste of Darrow. Tekker just becomes a pointless lackey to the Borad, someone to hold the Doctor at gunpoint, until the moment he discovers the Borad plans to wipe out the organic population of Karfel, at which point he too is aged to death (falling to the floor with a clunk). What a waste of a great actor making the most - perhaps too much - of an interesting part.

The Doctor's meeting with the true face of the Borad is nicely done, lit with a queasy viridescence by lighting director Henry Barber (he pulled similarly aqueous tricks in The Visitation and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, and was a revelation in Ghost Light). Vanessa Poulton's make-up job on Robert Ashby for the Borad is splendid, and very convincing. His half-Karfelon half-Morlox disfigurement is suitably repugnant, but not grotesque, and the story behind his mutilation adds another veiled reference to the works of H G Wells (this time, The Island of Dr Moreau).

The Borad was once a brilliant scientist called Megelen whom the Third Doctor knew on his previous visit. Megelen was conducting unethical tissue amalgamation experiments with the Morlox, but an accident with the gas Mustakozene-80 caused Megelen to become disfigured, genetically half-Morlox. While this turned Megelen into a physical aberration, it perversely improved his intellect and longevity (even though it's stated the Morlox are not a very clever species). The Borad's ultimate plan is to incite a war with the Bandrils, who will attack Karfel with a bendalypse warhead, wiping out all living matter with a central nervous system. This would seem to discount the Morlox and the Borad himself, and how they survive without a central nervous system is not elaborated on. They just can, OK?

After all that, the Borad will repopulate Karfel with half-Morlox creatures like himself, and plans to do this by exposing Peri to the Morlox and Mustakozene-80, turning her into a female version of him, and then, presumably, breeding with her. Big time YUK! Why the Borad had to wait for Peri to come along rather than use a Karfelon female isn't clear, and as it stands he's set to create a race of non-Karfelon half-human half-Morlox creatures instead. My head hurts...

The Doctor uses his kontron time pendant to shift 10 seconds into the future, principally to baffle the Borad (and the viewer) enough to buy the time to turn his death ray back on him. The Borad is apparently aged to death just over halfway through the episode, leaving very little mopping up to do. This becomes patently obvious when so much time is then spent aboard the TARDIS, first between the Doctor and Peri as he tries to convince her not to come with him, and then between Herbert and the Doctor as he tries, unsuccessfully, to do the same. The best part of 10 minutes is wasted with unnecessary dialogue between Baker, Bryant and Chandler, when we're supposed to believe that time is of the essence because the Bandrils' missile is on its way.

Even when it seems the Doctor has managed to deflect the warhead and save Karfel (unconvincingly sacrificing himself, Herbert and the TARDIS in the process), there's still one last lurch towards the end of the episode left to go. Writer Glen McCoy pulls out his trusty Padding Pen to write a last-minute twist in which the Borad isn't dead at all (the Doctor killed a clone - who knew?) and grabs Peri. The Doctor emerges from nowhere, with no explanation as to how he survived, and proceeds to lecture the Borad about how ugly he is, and how Peri will not fancy him as her husband if she sees his real face.

In a poor man's spin on the Phantom of the Opera, the Doctor manages to demoralise Megelen so much that he becomes a gibbering, self-conscious emotional cripple, ashamed of his disfigurement and appalled that Peri doesn't think he's Brad Pitt. The Doctor pushes the mournful Megelen into the Timelash, estimating that he'll live out the rest of his years as the oft-sighted Loch Ness Monster (the time corridor taking him to Inverness in 1179, rather than 1885). It's a very tacked-on ending to an episode packed with padding, which is a shame because the basic elements of an interesting, though not revolutionary, story were all there.

Quickies:

• I like the fact the android seems to have a soft spot for Peri. In part 1 it wistfully agrees that Peri was attractive ("Yes indeed she was"), and in part 2 the camera catches a little smile from Dean Hollingsworth when the Borad insists she is kept alive. It doesn't go anywhere, but feels all the nicer for that.
• The pointless reveal of a mural of the Third Doctor wielding a pocket watch gives Colin Baker the chance to have a swipe at yet another of his predecessors (he's changed "immeasurably for the better"). That just leaves the First and Fourth Doctors for him to denigrate.
• When the Borad reveals his plan to populate Karfel with more mutations like him, the Doctor wonders how. "Don't tell me you've got a fat female Morlox with a slinky walk," he says!
• The funniest moment perhaps in all of Doctor Who ever is when the Doctor is trying to convince the Bandril ambassador to terminate the warhead, and the Bandril turns to a friend off-camera and consults him in a muffled squeak. It cracks me up every time!
• Despite being padding, the scene between the Doctor and Herbert in the TARDIS is nicely played, and a great glimpse into a parallel world where Herbert became the Doctor's companion. Chandler gives Herbert so much energy and vitality ("At least I can experience the adventure!") and is loveable in the part. He's far better written than Peri usually is, and endearing with it. When the Doctor tells him the TARDIS has no lifeboats, Herbert replies: "That's a bit remiss..." He's hilarious!
• How did the Doctor escape the destructive blast of the bendalypse warhead? "I'll explain one day, it's a neat trick," says the Doctor, and that's supposed to satisfy us. Too often the Doctor tells people he'll explain later, but usually he does, and seeing as his miraculous escape was a pretty major part of the story, the audience deserves an explanation. If you're going to try and convince us a situation is deadly dangerous, at least respect the viewer enough to explain how the hero gets out of it. Unforgivably remiss of script editor Eric Saward.

At the end of the episode Herbert asks if he can stay on Karfel, but the Doctor suspects that cannot be allowed to happen. He pulls out a calling card Herbert dropped, which (rather blandly) reads: HERBERT GEORGE WELLS. It's a nice twist for those who didn't see it coming, and confirmation for those who did. Luckily, there's enough of a gap between Timelash and the next story to imagine a series of adventures featuring the Sixth Doctor, Peri and H G Wells. Sadly, no one's ever capitalised on that.

Timelash is an old-fashioned story with few surprises, but it's littered with evidence of a creative imagination. It's clear Timelash was written by someone with little experience (McCoy was only 30), but plenty of enthusiasm, which is why we have additional elements which add fun and colour, such as the presence and characterisation of Wells. Perhaps McCoy saw himself personified as the ebullient young Wells? While Timelash has things wrong with it, it's far from bad, and is at all times entertaining and creative, if not particularly innovative.

It's nowhere near the Sixth Doctor's worst story. In fact, I'd place it closer to the top of the pile.

First broadcast: March 16th, 1985

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The make-up for the Borad strikes the right balance between ugly and grotesque.
The Bad: All the padding.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ (story average: 5 out of 10)

Word repetition: 7.5 - we get half an example when the Doctor exclaims "Men? MEN?"... but is interrupted by Herbert's calmer "Men!"

NEXT TIME: Revelation of the Daleks...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site.

Timelash is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Timelash-Colin-Baker/dp/B000NVI2G0