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).

Timelash Part One

The one where the Doctor meets a young H G Wells...

It takes more than 20 minutes for the TARDIS to arrive in the story this week, which must be something of a record. In that time there's the usual arguing and sniping between the belligerent Doctor and whining Peri, with the Time Lord threatening to set the coordinates for 1985 to take her back home (even though Peri's from 1984).

These interminable TARDIS scenes are torture to watch, mostly because of Colin Baker's appalling overacting. Why deliver lines with any panache or pathos when YOU CAN JUST SHOUT THEM?! I know the Sixth Doctor is a loud, brash, short-tempered grouch, but in the first half of this episode Baker takes the character to even crabbier territory than normal (his cacophonous repetition of the word "BAD" is irredeemable). This is his sixth story and I'm still not warming to him. He's a bit better than he was in The Twin Dilemma - and very slightly less homicidal - but still not the charming travelling companion of yore. Boy, do I miss Peter Davison.