Monday, February 1, 2010

6C2 - Time-Flight 2



The Master's disguise as a strange green mystic named Kalid who controls all from his bunker through the power of bizarre incantations is possibly the first example of how far producer John Nathan-Turner was willing to go to throw the fans of the show crowd-pleasing gestures, and how these growing tendencies to appease fandom would threaten to bring down the very show which those fans adored.

The Master is stuck on Earth some 140 million years in the past. He's managed to create a time corridor that extends to about 1982 and has managed to suck a Concorde or two back to the time period he's trapped in. No one there knows who he is, and he captures The Doctor purely by chance. So why is he disguised? Why does he even keep up the pretext of this disguise when he's alone in the room? Why? Because otherwise the viewers will recognize him as The Master. Time-Flight would actually be much more believable if there really was some mystic called Kalid who was confiscating Concordes. But instead, it's a story used as the first of many attempts to cram in The Doctor's arch-nemesis to satisfy JNT's desire to have The Master in at least one story, preferably two stories, a year.

To cap it off, Anthony Ainley is billed under the absurd pseudonym Leon Ny Taiy to try and conceal the mystery for another week. Utterly ridiculous, like much in this episode - the cheap sets, the sock puppet two-headed monster, and the snot that streams from Kalid's nose as he's melting (again, why?).

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