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“Save your breath for the Timelash, Doctor. Most people depart with a scream!”

“On Karfel the Borad rules but all is far from OK.” That line is how part 1 of “Timelash” was promoted in the Radio Times (Britain’s equivalent to TV Guide) in March 1985, and it matches the story perfectly: a single, badly-composed line which would never induce anyone to actually watch the program. Perhaps, in some small way, the listings writer for Radio Times was trying to give viewers a break and spare them from a stilted 45 minutes of drama. On Karfel, the Borad rules...but everything about “Timelash” is as far from “OK” as it gets.

The obvious culprit is the script. First-time writer Glen McCoy’s story might work in the hands of a more experienced talent, but it’s a negligible point; at its best, the plot and its various details are no more than base-level traditional Who. The TARDIS is drawn off-course, and the Doctor (Colin Baker) and his companion Peri (Nicola Bryant) find themselves on the planet Karfel. The Doctor is welcomed as an old friend, having visited in his third incarnation, but they quickly discover all is not well: the egotistical leader of the Karfelons, the Maylin (Paul Darrow), is working to quell a rebellion under instructions from his master, the enigmatic, largely unseen Borad. To this end, rebels are thrown into a “Timelash,” a one-way time corridor to...who knows where? As the Doctor discovers first-hand, the Timelash ends in Earth’s past (highly convenient), and when he goes to investigate he inadvertently takes on a new and inquistive passenger in the form of Herbert, a young man from 1885. Together, they return to Karfel to take on the evil Borad...who is far more than he seems.

Actually, strike that. He’s less than he seems. He’s an insane scientist who has managed, thanks to experiments with the indigenous Morlox reptiles, to make himself into a deranged, half-man, half-lizard creature. Now he wants to take Peri as his mate and release his mutated progeny on a war-torn and devestated Karfel. So...clearly lost a few marbles, there.

I’ve gone to the trouble of “spoiling” one of “Timelash“‘s big secrets, not just because it’s laughably stupid, but because the disc menus will do it for you the moment you start the disc. In fact, someone on the disc production staff has been kind enough to reveal the entire story through the clips selected for the main and special features menus, which I think makes for some rather good comedy, actually. (They’ve done this once before: the menus on “The Web Planet” seemed designed to point out how outrageous the whole thing was, but even those were done in a giddily loving way. I dare you to count the number of variations on the statement “I am the Borad!” within the menu clips and not think someone was trying to warn us.) I won’t bother to spell out the other big reveal, but suffice to say, it involves time travel, invisibility, war between planets, the Morlox, half-man/half-animal experiments, and a young writer named Herbert. Take a moment, work it out, feel free to groan aloud.

At this point, it is received fan knowledge that “Timelash” is one of the worst Doctor Who stories ever. Memorably, the letters of the title can be rearranged to make a two-word descriptive beginning with “lame.” The truth, however, isn’t actually so giggle-worthy; “Timelash” may be one of the weakest Doctor Whos, structurally, but it lacks that extra zing of crazy-go-nuts to place it amongst the absolute worst. As Maylin Tekker, Blake’s 7‘s Paul Darrow takes an admirable stab at chewing all the scenery in sight, but he succeeds only in being the sole entertaining figure on the screen. No, in point of fact, “Timelash” is merely badly-conceived and intensely boring...and, frankly, that makes it almost impossible to sit through. I can think of three or four stories that are more entertainingly terrible, and I’d rather be laughing along with those.

Doctor Who: Timelash is released to DVD - much like a laboratory animal gone rabid - by 2entertain and BBC Video (through Warner). As with most of the Doctor Who releases representing 1980s stories, the quality of the restored video is crisp and clear. The entire story was shot on video, so there are no pesky film sequences to worry about; everything is cheap, cheerful, and overly bright, as befits a second-rate production from 1985! Sound is provided in the original mono, with English subtitles available for the entire disc’s contents.

Information subtitles are also provided as a separate track, compiled by Richard Molesworth. Focusing on actor CVs and shooting dates, these are largely forgettable, but one or two gems are to be found: I got a certain glee from knowing that “a BAFTA award-nominated actress” (almost certainly Geraldine James) turned down the two-dimensional role of rebel Vena after appearing in the seminal miniseries The Jewel in the Crown, and Molesworth dryly notes how many of the actors in “Timelash” later left their acting careers to become writers (if Glen McCoy could do it, they could do it, perhaps?).

The first of the two main special features is the commentary track with stars Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant and guest star Paul Darrow. None of them seems to have too much love for “Timelash,” but they gamely attempt to be as positive as possible, occasionally getting a jab in at the story and revealing the behind-the-scene tensions of the time (both Baker and Bryant were working double-time by playing the leads in a Cinderella pantomime for then-producer John Nathan-Turner). Darrow tries to get the others to go along with his interpretation of Maylin Tekker as a “sort of Richard III,” but occasionally falls quiet when he seems unsure of whether the others are joking or being truly critical. It’s not a bad track, but you won’t learn all that much, and it’s not exactly a laugh-a-minute Mystery Science Theater 3000 send-up.

The other big special feature, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (25 mins.), examines the making of “Timelash” through interviews with Baker, Bryant, Darrow, fellow actors Robert Ashby and David Chandler, writer Glen McCoy, script editor Eric Saward and Doctor Who Adventures kids’ magazine designer Paul Lang. In a real first for a DVD making-of featurette, the general tone here is one of resigned acceptance that the subject of discussion is actually not very good. As a result, it’s a little bit of a slog to get through - and it doesn’t help that a lot of the information is duplicated from the commentary and information track. Late producer John Nathan-Turner comes in for more than his share of blame, which is perhaps a bit unfortunate when he isn’t here to tell his side, but it’s hard to disagree with what gets said, either.

Photo Gallery (9 mins.) includes color and black-and-white publicity and production photographs set to Elizabeth Parker’s incidental music score, including a few Polaroids of the Borad makeup process. Additionally, for fans with a DVD-Rom drive, the disc includes a PDF of the two Radio Times listings. And there’s a very easy-to-find easter egg that highlights another element of the story’s original broadcast (think about it).

(For those wondering, the “Time-Flight"/"Arc of Infinity” coming soon trailer that featured on the R2 release is nowhere to be seen here...because those two releases came out in Region 1 last November.)

The disc opens with the standard trailer for Doctor Who: The Complete Third Series. Since it’s seen on a bunch of recent titles, however, that’s really not so exciting. Fairly good trailer, though.

In Britain, this is one of the budget releases of the Doctor Who line, and carries a reduced price tag to complement the reduced special features platter. But not so here! Warner seems to determine the price of a Doctor Who DVD by the length of the story, so while the similarly budget release of “The Sontaran Experiment” - with only two half-hour episodes - received an SRP of $14.98, “Timelash” - at a traditional 90-minute length - is rewarded with the traditional SRP of $24.98. That, my friends, is called a bad joke. Unless you’re a completist, avoid this one; it’s not “so bad it’s good,” it’s just dull. Now, thanks to Warner’s pricing guidelines, it’s also overpriced - and no, the special features don’t make it any more worthwhile. 

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