Doctor Who: Timelash
When this sixth Doctor story was announced as an upcoming DVD release, many a fan doubtless scratched their heads and asked “Why!?” After all, even as early as its original broadcast, Timelash had acquired a stellar reputation…for being one of the first volleys in what some fans considered the nadir of ’80s Doctor Who, a period encompassing The Trial Of A Time Lord, the firing of Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy’s uneven first season. As it turns out, BBC Video knew exactly what it was doing in giving this story a DVD release, for all of that makes for meaty bonus features.
The central featurette on this relatively “light” release is appropriately titled “The Good, The Bad And The Ugly”, and it pulls very few punches in analyzing Timelash’s successes (using young H.G. Wells as a character) and failures (some of Doctor Who’s lowest production values of the Colin Baker era, an occasionally incoherent script, and an admittedly hammy guest shot by Paul Darrow of Blake’s 7 fame). Timelash scribe Glen McCoy, for whom the two-part episode was a major breakout in screenwriting after he decided he didn’t want to be an ambulance driver anymore, speaks candidly and frequently about his ideas and owns up to his inexperience, while script editor Eric Saward wastes few opportunities to rake the late producer John Nathan-Turner over the coals. This is one case where I wished 
the documentary producers had found some relevant interview footage from Myth Makers or some other previous factual material, but for all I know, JN-T just didn’t talk Timelash to anybody. I’m an oddball fan in that I was never lobbying for JN-T’s dismissal/disenfranchisement/dismemberment during the 1980s and ’90s, as it seemed the rest of fandom seemed to be trying to do, so I rankled a bit at how much of the blame was laid at his doorstep in absentia. Darrow, too, owns up to some of his leftover ham - and it pains me to say that, because I love the man’s work on Blake’s 7, but his portrayal of a ruthless dictator here is just subpar - but other members of the cast and crew take him to task for it quite readily!
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Timelash on DVD is the wealth of information about the story that emerges from three different sources that are handled differently. The documentary is tightly packed at half an hour, the commentary featuring Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant and Paul Darrow is more free-flowing and off-the-cuff, and the production notes subtitle track is very concise - and yet you don’t get the whole picture until taking them all in. In the documentary, Eric Saward spends much of his screen time blaming John Nathan-Turner for how Timelash turned out; in the subtitles, however, it turns out that Saward had distractions of his own at the time the story was being written and produced, and by the time one gets to the end of the show, a whole new level of information has been absorbed. The conclusion? There’s blame aplenty to lay at just about everyone’s doorstep behind the scenes.
In the end, that interesting “triangulation of information” alone makes Timelash a worthy effort on DVD, and I’m glad it got this treatment now rather than being relegated to one of the last releases many years from now, just because it isn’t the fans’ favorite. BBC Video made a bold choice here, and the Restoration Team rose to the occasion to produce fascinating extras that, while they may not make the two-parter more enjoyable, do offer a heap of insight into why it isn’t. The chutzpah involved in putting this on the market ahead of, say, the Key to Time stories, is considerable - and commendable.
One minor grievance - no isolated music score! Though in listening carefully to the program as broadcast, one gets the impression that there wasn’t a lot of music composed for Timelash, and what there was, the editors reused relentlessly. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been worth the effort (and in any case, a suite of music survives on the CD 30 Years At The BBC Radiophonic Workshop). Still, it shows the level of great content that goes into the classic Doctor Who DVDs when I’ve gotten spoiled by having an isolated music track for ’80s stories.