Timelash [Doctor Who, Story 141]

 Timelash by Glen McCoy
9 - 16 March 1985​

I was pretty prepared to offer Timelash the same open-minded reappraisal that I did for The Twin Dilemma on an assumption which has generally served me well so far: that most episodes reviled by the fandom are not quite as bad as their reputations would suggest. Even the worst episodes tend to have at least a little kernel worth redeeming, tarnished though the gems in the rough might be.

With Timelash I sifted, and sifted, and was rewarded only with more dirt. There's genuinely nothing here really worth praising. It's a complete cock-up.

The sad part is that I can sort of see how and why it happened. Glen McCoy was new to writing for television at the time and got thrown into the deep end on a season that was already having some major production issues. Eric Saward ended up needing to do extensive rewrites on this script, and the end product still looked like this. It's honestly kind of astonishing this made it to television at all; I can't imagine that we're better for it.

The script is obviously the biggest issue. Lines like "with the power of a great ocean!" or "you microcephalic apostate!" or "a Morlox with a slinky walk" put anything Pip and Jane conjured up to shame. The concept of a past Third Doctor visit is shoehorned in so painfully that the cracks around it show. Tekker (played by Paul Darrow, who is absolutely wasted on this) looks like a total idiot for not twigging that the Borad is a baddie earlier. And the Borad himself, while looking kind of cool, is just a Great Value Sharaz Jek with nothing interesting going on.

The actors seem painfully aware of all this, and are either subdued in their performance or hamming it up, depending on the case. Colin and Nicola seem particularly distracted and disinterested in the material. (I know the feeling.) With the leads checked out, everything else falls to pieces around them.

The production design is uninteresting, the ideas that aren't just crap from the beginning (the singing androids? seriously?) end up as merely wasted potential. Like, we got a celebrity historical with H. G. Wells and the chance was blown on this? If there's any one serial in the show that's grounds for cancellation, it's not The Twin Dilemma, it's Timelash. Its only saving grace is that it's over and I won't have to watch it ever again.

I dislike making negative reviews. Fortunately, Davros is next.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 17 May 2024.)