Day 330 — November 26th 2021
Timelash Part One
Timelash — Part One
I’m fascinated by the stories that are considered to be the worst of the worst. Timelash absolutely fits that category, placing at number 238 in the 2014 Doctor Who Magazine poll. Often you can point to specific areas of the production which make the story fall apart. Sometimes it’s the script. Or the direction. The sets could be poor, or the lead monster a dodgy creation. Occasionally it’s a combination of elements which drag things down. On some occasions everything else can be good enough that you can overlook something poor — The Caves of Androzani is considered a classic in spite of a particularly awful monster, for example.
Timelash is particularly interesting because I don’t think there is anything in here that particularly stands out as awful. That might sound like a controversial statement but I don’t think it is. There’s lots of things in here which don’t work, but I don’t think any of them is particularly terrible. It’s just that the combination of so many vaguely poor elements drags the whole thing down.
Take the sets, for example. I was planning to say how dreadful they looked (and was even going to quote Peri, who describes Karfel not unfittingly as ‘[lacking] sparkle. There’s no reflection. All so matt and lifeless…’) but the more I watched the more I decided that they’re actually not bad. Many of the walls have been covered with a subtle pattern of triangles which actually looks quite nice up close. I think you’d get away with that as wallpaper now, if you pair it with a feature wall. And that’s the problem these sets have — they’re too subtle and plain. That could work if the costumes were bold and bright, so they draw your attention, but instead we get beige rags for most of the characters, and even the ones who do wear something different (really only Peri and Vena) are in vague muted burgandies. So the sets and costumes aren’t awful in themselves, but when put together they fall a bit flat.
Then there’s the performances. There’s one or two which stand out as being pretty bad, but on the whole there’s some alright ones among the cast. Robert Ashby stands out as being particularly good, and he’s having to do a lot of work with his voice alone, so that’s an even more impressive feat.
The direction’s nothing to write home about, but it’s not especially poor quality, it’s just not up to the standard that we know the show can achieve when it’s firing on all cylinders. I think the point I’m trying to make is that there’s no one thing in here dragging the entire story down, it’s just a combination of vaguely naff things combining.
I think the worst crime this episode commits is that it’s boring. For me, that’s the biggest crime an episode of Doctor Who can commit. In this format you can go anywhere and do anything, so there’s never an excuse for being dull. And when a story is as dull as this it gives me very little to talk about, so I’m going to give it a 3/10 and move swiftly on…
