The final part of this story is by far the best one because it’s
where the problems of the story are sort of forgotten because the main action
takes my attention. This is where Mawdryn’s plan comes to fruition. Things
start off in quite a fun way because Mawdryn allows the Doctor to leave in the
TARDIS, its clear that this is a plan by Mawdryn to show the Doctor that he has
no other choice than to help. This leads to a great couple of minutes where the
Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and 1983 Brigadier are involved in quite a grim turn of events
where Nyssa and Tegan become quite old and then moments later become young with
Nyssa turning into Lucy Benjamin who appeared in Eastenders.
After a few minutes they are back and the Doctor reluctantly
decides to help them. This is where the episode starts to build up to the
moment but another thing that seems to take up a fair amount of time is trying
to stop the two brigadiers from meeting. I still don’t see why this would be a
problem because the Doctor seems to do it without too much trouble. I seemed to
be more interested in this than I realised because I was happy when 1977
Brigadier threw back Turlough to burst into the main chamber. The effect of the
two Brigadier’s touching hands isn’t quite as good as I would have liked because
they could have had both Brigadier’s faces on screen at the same time. They did
it with the two Peter Davison’s back in Arc of Infinity so it makes sense that
they could have done it in this story.
This story picked up in the second half with episode three
being much better than parts one and two. I don’t think that at the time
appreciated just how well the idea of time travel was used. I think that
despite Peter Grimwade’s best efforts, the plot holes distract from what is a
good idea. As the beginning of a story arc its ok but the main thing about it
being that Turlough is still trying to kill the Doctor is something that is
going to strangle the next two stories. I don’t mind the introduction of
Turlough because there is something quite fun to watch in Mark Strickson but I
think that more effort could have been put into introducing the character
instead of a rather inplusable idea of the Black Guardian killing the Doctor.
Oh well as a Peter Grimwade story, its his best story but compared to
Timeflight that’s not really a compliment.
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