Doctor Who - Time-Flight [1982] / Arc of Infinity [1983] [DVD]

I shall not dwell too much on these stories as much has already been said, however Time-Flight is a particular disappointment, it seemed to be going so well with the continuity of Adric's death and them landing at an airport, but from then on it goes downhill (, although I did enjoy the Doctor climbing into a sideways Tardis.
Arc of Infinity was a good story and also sees Colin Baker, a future Doctor, as a Gallifreyan guard. It sees the return of Omega and much was filmed in Amsterdam. However, I would not rate it as the best of Peter Davison's era.

3/5 stars; Time-Flight had a good story but was poorly realised whereas Arc of Infinity was an improvement and I would recommend this collection, but only if you can buy it for under £8 otherwise it is a rip-off.

These are 2 stories that are unlikely to be at the top of anyone's wish list. They are at best also-rans.
"Timeflight" is the 1st and the weaker of the 2. the Doctor tries to take Nyssa and Tegan to the 1951 Festival of Britain and it goes wrong, landing them in Heathrow Aiport in the midst of "The Mystery of the Missing Concorde". The Doctor tracks it down to prehistoric Earth where The Master has (disguised as a strange oriental figure) been nicking the craft and people in the hope of gaining power from a race of malevolent aliens. Needless to say the Doc sorts it out.
There is a decent story there somewhere but it's got lost under the weight of its own fuzzy logic.
Why does The Master need to dress up as an oriental pantomime villain?
What does he really want the Concorde for?
There are never any statisfactory answers to what is going on.
Davison and the companions are good and Nyssa gets a few brief moments of something to do other than look sympathetic. Janet Fielding is particularly good when Tegan gets to finally play at Air Hostess, calming hysterical passengers and in a beautifully underplayed farewell as the Tardis leaves her behind. This is of course undercut by her return in the next story.We also get a quick cameo from a couple of old monsters, including Adric!
Anthony Ainley well, he comes on and does his Master bit and that's fine if nothing special , but before the reveal his performance as the Master's disguise character Khalid is pure Spike Milligan! It truly belongs in a lost Goon Show somewhere.
Aliens the Xeraphas make no lasting impression and the "Plasmaton" monsters are truly pathetic, apparently made from papier mache and washing up foam. methinks the budget was biting.
Undemanding fun, if you turn your brain off.

The extras lack a documentary but there is some production footage and the commentary to tell us about the story's troubled production. Fiedling and Davison are on top form and especially funny about working on Concorde and supporting actor now turned politician Michael Cashman.
There is a good interview with Janet Fielding about her whole Dr Who experience & a brief bit of interview footage with story writer Peter Grimwade.
"The Arc of Infinity" is a better effort, starting the next season after the 1 that Timeflight ended. The Doctor returns to Gallifrey to be executed for having allowed an invader to link with his body. The alien saves him and turns out to be the daddy of all renegade timelords Omega, trying to find a way back to the real world.
Omega's plan fails and he becomes a walking timebomb that the Doctor must stop.
It's a bit of a mess but there is still lots to enjoy. The Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan are all good as the actors playing them deliver the goods. Obvious to say but Colin Baker playing the tough guard Maxil makes quite an impression, and it's not hard to see why he got the top job later.
Micheal Gough is okay but uninspired and Leonard Sachs gives a rather duff performance. The pair of them matched with lacklustre turns by Eslpet Gray and Max Hastings make the Timelords home look like a retirment village in Eastbourne. Paul Jericho at least is good as an untrustworthy Castellan.

Ian Collier gives a good performance as Omega playing villain and victim alternately and his costume is good. As for the Ergon, at least as bad as the Plasmatons, a terrible 80's monster.

There is too much reliance on continuity for impact. Even casual viewers are meant to know who Borusa is, and more to the point who Omega is. there is too little information for those who never saw the characters to understand their significance. The revelation that Omega from the Three Doctors has returned after 10 years is not actually used as the climax for episode 3, but is so close to it that the revelation he cnotrols the matrix (itself never properly explained) was probably met with head scratching.
When the story is good though, it is very good. The callous way the Doctor is scapegoated and marked for execution (although when he next confronted those who condemned him he might have reacted more) and Nyssa's reaction to his apparanet death. Omega's reaction at being "alive again" and the Doctor's reunion with Tegan.

The extras include a proper documentary (and a good one too), a thumping good commentary as Colin Baker joins Davison and Fielding (watch for Colin's hilarious story of being mistaken for a runner by Mr. Jericho!)optional upgraded effects (which are good but not very striking) and a featurette on the character of Omega. Like most of the short featurettes it isn't given enough time to go anywhere.

A fun package, but for diehard fans only.

"Time-Flight" - 2/5; "Arc of Infinity" - 3/5; Special Features - 4/5.

This boxed set contains two consecutive Doctor Who serials, linked by companion Tegan's departure from and subsequent return to the TARDIS crew (D'oh! Why'd she have to come back?).

"Time-Flight", by occasional "Doctor Who" director Peter Gimwade, brings the series' nineteenth season to a rather shambolic and cheapskate end. Full of ideas and ambitiously written, "Time-Flight" could have been fantastic with a movie budget and a more carefully edited script, but, filmed at the end of a long season by a tired cast and a crew who had run out of money, sadly that was not to be.
"Time-Flight" suffers significantly from its set design. Those parts of "Time-Flight" that were filmed on location at Heathrow Airport are definitely its most convincing. The same cannot, unfortunately, be said for the scenes set on Prehistoric Earth, filmed in studio on a perspective set with an obvious painted sky that robs the scenes of much of their credibility. Further location filming on a blasted heath somewhere would surely have been more convincing.
On the other hand, "Time-Flight" manages to convey the two Concordes' journeys between the present day and prehistoric Earth remarkably well using a combination of stock footage and modelwork, given the technological constraints and special effects budget available to the series at the time of "Time-Flight"'s production.
"Time-Flight" is slightly over-cluttered with a large number of supporting characters who seem remarkably un-fazed by the whole affair, in particular the eager Captain Stapley (Richard Easton), his slightly camp crewmates Andrew Bilton and Roger Scobie, and academic aircraft passenger Professor Hayter (Nigel Stock), plus a few other minor characters who don't really bear mentioning. The villain of the piece, the mysterious Kalid, who has lured the Doctor to prehistoric earth in the hope of gaining control of his TARDIS, is slightly tiresome with his unintelligible chanting, but his makeup is surprisingly good despite the budget (and, later on, as the story's main twist is revealed, we find out why).
Unfortunately these shortcomings are not compensated for by the story's highly contrived and nebulous plot. Indeed, the only part of the whole affair that really rings true is the decision that Tegan, who has travelled under duress with the Doctor for some time, is faced with at the end of the story: having been returned to present-day Heathrow, will she now continue to travel with the Doctor and explore new worlds, or will she return to the normal life that she had thought she so much wanted?

"Arc of Infinity", by Johnny Byrne, opened the twentieth season of "Doctor Who", in which producer John Nathan-Turner sought to bring back an enemy from the series' past in each serial. For "Arc of Infinity", he brought back the original Time Lord, Omega, coincidentally last seen in the series' tenth anniversary story, "The Three Doctors". It was also a stipulation of producer John Nathan-Turner that part of the story be filmed in Amsterdam, hence the rather odd juxtaposition of scenes filmed on the streets of Amsterdam (the B-story, revolving around former companion Tegan), with studio-bound scenes set on the Doctor's home planet of Gallifrey (the A-story, revolving around the Doctor, Nyssa and the Time Lords).
The Tegan B-story is of marginal relevance to begin with, and does not come together with the main story until the end of the serial, allowing the Doctor to have most of a televised story with just Nyssa as the companion. This is beneficial to both the Doctor, who was usually surrounded by multiple squabbling companions, and the likeable but quiet Nyssa, normally marginalised during the "crowded TARDIS" stories of her time on the show. Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton make the most of the opportunity that the unique scenario presents to develop their relationship (and Nyssa gets to kick some Gallifreyan butt).
However, the rest of the story is a bit of a mess. The means of Omega's return are poorly explained, although Ian Collier is good in the role, particularly during the final confrontation in Amsterdam. The Gallifrey sets are conceptually bland and don't really speak of the grace and affluence that the Time Lords supposedly possess (even if they are rotten to the core). The best thing in the story is probably Colin Baker as the officious Commander Maxil of the Gallifreyan guards: he actually gets to shoot Peter Davison, in a scene rather ironic given his future casting as Davison's successor in the title role. On the other hand, the less that is said about the acting of Tegan's cousin and his backpacker friend, probably, the better! Given the potential offered by the foreign location shoot and the return of Omega, it seems that "Arc", whilst enjoyable enough, could have delivered a lot more than it actually did.

Despite the relatively shambolic nature of the stories, they get a deluxe treatment on DVD as usual, digitally remastered and equipped with entertaining (although often critical) cast commentaries (including both Peter Davison and Colin Baker on the "Arc" commentary), documentaries on the making of the stories and various extracts from the archives. A good set for established and loyal fans, although not, perhaps, the best release for classic series newbies!