Doctor Who: Series 19, Episodes 23-26 – “Time-Flight” (1982)

*Spoilers for the previous serial, “Earthshock.”*

This is an interesting story. It’s no stretch to say that “Earthshock,” which immediately precedes it, is flashier and packs a bigger punch. If this had happened in the new Who era, “Earthshock” probably would’ve been a season finale. But as it is, I like that we end with “Time-Flight” instead, which gives the characters a little time to process what’s happened.

At the end of “Earthshock,” Adric is killed—now, the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, and Tegan are doing what they can to carry on. The Doctor finally manages to get to Heathrow, only by accident this time, but it’s not just a simple return home for Tegan. Instead, they’re drawn into a mystery involving a missing aircraft.

Understandably, the Weeping Angels have a scarier rep, but when you think about it, time contours are pretty freaky too. The thought of stumbling onto a point of space that pulls you back in time, with no apparent way back, is creepy. And this episode ups the creepiness with other ways as well: messing with the characters’ perceptions, Nyssa getting psychically seized by mysterious aliens, and seeing “ghosts” from the past. It makes for a solid scare factor alongside a creative story.

With the loss of any character on Doctor Who, it seems there’s rarely time for the remaining characters to genuinely process their feelings about it (except in the instances where we discover that the Doctor has gone semi-reclusive for an undisclosed number of years after losing a companion.) For the most part, they’re thrown right into their next adventure and have to keep their wits about them, so there just isn’t time to fall apart. Here, we of course see the strongest reactions at the start of the serial, which comes immediately on the heels of the final moments of “Earthshock.” Tegan is distraught and searching for solutions, but the Doctor, as broken up as he is, knows he can’t break the laws of time for the sake of his friend. That’s the most overt discussion we get of Adric’s death, but his absence kind of hangs in the air throughout the serial and comes up again at other points in the story.

Word of warning, though: classic Who gonna classic Who, and we get an egregious racist stereotype in here. The character is question is meant to be an alien, not an actual Asian person, but that isn’t exactly an improvement (hello, Phantom Menace and the Nemoidians!) It’s gross, and I won’t begrudge anyone who doesn’t mess with “Time-Flight” on account of it.