Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17078 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-08-06
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Full Screen, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 180 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Two stories based around the character of Tegan, this union of Time-Flight and Arc of Infinity is an interesting double header for any Doctor Who enthusiast. Both stories see Peter Davison in the title role.

Time-Flight's big selling point is neither Davison's Doctor nor Janet Fielding's Tegan. Instead, it's Concorde, as the Doctor gets Tegan to Heathrow Airport, only to discover that the infamous supersonic jet is caught in a muddle with a time corridor. And while truthfully the story wrapping round this concept isn't top of the range Who, it's still both entertaining and easy to watch, and good fun all round.

Arc of Infinity, meanwhile, takes the Doctor back into the midst of the Time Lords, only to discover that one of them has chosen him to be the victim of a strange creature. This creature can only survive by bonding with a Time Lord, and when the High Council of Time Lords rules that the Doctor has to be killed, the scene is set for an interesting mystery, that also sees Tegan fall into dangerous hands too.

The two stories in this Doctor Who boxset are, to be fair, fairly loosely linked, but while neither comes from a particularly classic era of the show, both have plenty to make them worth watching. Of the two, Arc of Infinity is the better, but backed up with the usual top notch extras, this is a boxset that few Doctor Who fans will want to be without. --Jon Foster

Synopsis
Two classic Doctor Who adventures. Includes ‘Time Flight’ in wich the Doctor plans a trip back to the year 1851 to visit the Great Exhibition in London but he and his friends end up in Terminal One at Heathrow Airport in the present day. ‘Arc Of Infinity’ finds the Doctor comes under attack and the Tardis is recalled to Gallifrey.

Customer Reviews

A few good moments, but mainly pretty uninspiring.
Box-sets seem to be becoming the in thing, so here we have two (very vaguely-connected) stories. The linking theme is that they centre around Tegan leaving the Tardis and then re-joining it again. The first story, Timeflight, is quite frankly an example of how imagination can be undone by budget restrictions. The shots of two Concordes crashing in prehistoric Britain look completely fake, which is a shame as the early scenes of this story are great and show real promise. The Master soon appears (having been in disguise for no apparent reason. Why wear a disguise when no-one can actually see you?) and we are introduced to daft-looking monsters. The second story, Arc of Infinity, is only marginally better. The Time Lords and Gallifrey are well-presented, Colin Baker is a strong villain and Peter Davison is effective in his dual role. What bogs the story down, however, is another silly-looking monster, an uninteresting plot and the descent into relying on the series' past for inspiration. My worry is that younger fans, who may not have ever seen the original Dr Who run, will buy the likes of these two adventures, think this kind of thing is all there ever was to the old series and avoid DVD releases of the original Dr Who series from then on. There are still plenty of good stories awaiting DVD release, and I can think of plenty of much better ideas for two-story box-sets (Curse of Peladon/Monster of Peladon and Kinda/Snakedance) to name two. Even the unreleased lesser stories of Tom Baker's era such as Nightmare of Eden and Horns of Nimon are better than this yawn-a-rama.

"B Movie Double Bill!"
These are 2 stories that are unlikely to be at the top of anyone's wish list. They are at best also-rans.
"Timeflight" is the 1st and the weaker of the 2. the Doctor tries to take Nyssa and Tegan to the 1951 Festival of Britain and it goes wrong, landing them in Heathrow Aiport in the midst of "The Mystery of the Missing Concorde". The Doctor tracks it down to prehistoric Earth where The Master has (disguised as a strange oriental figure) been nicking the craft and people in the hope of gaining power from a race of malevolent aliens. Needless to say the Doc sorts it out.
There is a decent story there somewhere but it's got lost under the weight of its own fuzzy logic.
Why does The Master need to dress up as an oriental pantomime villain?
What does he really want the Concorde for?
There are never any statisfactory answers to what is going on.
Davison and the companions are good and Nyssa gets a few brief moments of something to do other than look sympathetic. Janet Fielding is particularly good when Tegan gets to finally play at Air Hostess, calming hysterical passengers and in a beautifully underplayed farewell as the Tardis leaves her behind. This is of course undercut by her return in the next story.We also get a quick cameo from a couple of old monsters, including Adric!
Anthony Ainley well, he comes on and does his Master bit and that's fine if nothing special , but before the reveal his performance as the Master's disguise character Khalid is pure Spike Milligan! It truly belongs in a lost Goon Show somewhere.
Aliens the Xeraphas make no lasting impression and the "Plasmaton" monsters are truly pathetic, apparently made from papier mache and washing up foam. methinks the budget was biting.
Undemanding fun, if you turn your brain off.

The extras lack a documentary but there is some production footage and the commentary to tell us about the story's troubled production. Fiedling and Davison are on top form and especially funny about working on Concorde and supporting actor now turned politician Michael Cashman.
There is a good interview with Janet Fielding about her whole Dr Who experience & a brief bit of interview footage with story writer Peter Grimwade.
"The Arc of Infinity" is a better effort, starting the next season after the 1 that Timeflight ended. The Doctor returns to Gallifrey to be executed for having allowed an invader to link with his body. The alien saves him and turns out to be the daddy of all renegade timelords Omega, trying to find a way back to the real world.
Omega's plan fails and he becomes a walking timebomb that the Doctor must stop.
It's a bit of a mess but there is still lots to enjoy. The Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan are all good as the actors playing them deliver the goods. Obvious to say but Colin Baker playing the tough guard Maxil makes quite an impression, and it's not hard to see why he got the top job later.
Micheal Gough is okay but uninspired and Leonard Sachs gives a rather duff performance. The pair of them matched with lacklustre turns by Eslpet Gray and Max Hastings make the Timelords home look like a retirment village in Eastbourne. Paul Jericho at least is good as an untrustworthy Castellan.

Ian Collier gives a good performance as Omega playing villain and victim alternately and his costume is good. As for the Ergon, at least as bad as the Plasmatons, a terrible 80's monster.

There is too much reliance on continuity for impact. Even casual viewers are meant to know who Borusa is, and more to the point who Omega is. there is too little information for those who never saw the characters to understand their significance. The revelation that Omega from the Three Doctors has returned after 10 years is not actually used as the climax for episode 3, but is so close to it that the revelation he cnotrols the matrix (itself never properly explained) was probably met with head scratching.
When the story is good though, it is very good. The callous way the Doctor is scapegoated and marked for execution (although when he next confronted those who condemned him he might have reacted more) and Nyssa's reaction to his apparanet death. Omega's reaction at being "alive again" and the Doctor's reunion with Tegan.

The extras include a proper documentary (and a good one too), a thumping good commentary as Colin Baker joins Davison and Fielding (watch for Colin's hilarious story of being mistaken for a runner by Mr. Jericho!)optional upgraded effects (which are good but not very striking) and a featurette on the character of Omega. Like most of the short featurettes it isn't given enough time to go anywhere.

A fun package, but for diehard fans only.

Flight back in time
The release of Time-Flight and Arc of Infinity offers a welcome opportunity for the re-evaluation of two of Peter Davison's less popular stories. Time Flight was one of the very last stories to be released on VHS, and it is interesting that has been released on DVD with so many Doctor Who serials yet to come out, not least the majority of Davison's second season. It seems that the distributors are quite wisely varying their releases between highly regarded and not so popular adventures, thereby ensuring that all the perceived weaker stories do not come out at the end of the range, as did happen with the video releases.
Following the events of Earthshock, Time Flight begins with the regular cast discussing what has happened recently. Nevertheless, they soon appear to get over events and become involved in the disappearance on modern day Earth, of a Concorde plane that literally vanished, whilst on its way to Heathrow airport. The Doctor, emphasising his past involvement with the security organisation Unit, is sent on a second concorde flight to see if it can be determined what happened. It transpires that the original plane entered a timewarp, being sent back millions of years to a prehistoric time before there was any life on Earth. The second plane does likewise although at first the crew are convinced that they have returned to Heathrow airport, until their illusion is shattered, as the mock airport gives way to rocks and barren landscapes. The instigator of the kidnapping of the crew and passengers of the concorde flights, is a strange alien conjurer named Kalid. But what are his motives and where does a race of long extinct aliens, with immense mental powers fit into events?
Episode 1, is easily the best of the 4 episodes in the serial. The airport
setting is interesting, and although the air traffic control room appears to be very undermanned the disappearance of the concorde plane at the start of the episode and the panicked reactions of the airport staff, makes for an interesting start. With the exception of a very poor performance by the actress playing the air hostess, the acting in the serial is fine. What really lets the story down is a confused central storyline, unimaginative direction, and some very poor effects. This was the last story to be made in Davison's debut series, and it is clear that the money had run out by this stage. Rather than attempting to make a fairly ambitious story on a shoestring budget, perhaps the production team could have instead made an alternative serial that required limited special effects and budget.
The serials writer was Peter Grimwade, who was also the best director to be employed by Dr Who in the early 80s, with credits including Earthshock. Unfortunately his writing is not nearly as effective. No real explanation is given for the individual motivation of Kaled, why does he kidnap a Concorde crew. It is also lucky that when the planes land they do not crash into the rocks of the prehistoric Earth, nor does one of the planes need a runway when it takes off at the end of the serial.
The special effects are also very weak. When the planes take off, buildings can be observed even though it is meant to be millions of years ago and a bird clearly flies in front of the plane. The landscape looks about as realistic as one which would appear in an episode of the original Star Trek series. The direction is also very weak, with too many characters appearing in certain sequences, resulting in them standing round wondering what to do. It is clearly obvious in one sequence that actor Michael Cashman is trying not to laugh.
The commentary is as always entertaining, with Janet Fielding making her dislike of the story obvious.
Thankfully Arc of Infinity is a vast improvement on Time-Flight. The opening episode features a two man Tardis crew of The Doctor and Nyssa, and this works very well indeed. The Timelords are also back, including amongst their numbers, one Colin Baker, who has been employed to terminate The Doctor. The return of the Timelord Omega, is an opportunity for the character to be reassessed after his one dimensional appearance in The Three Doctors in 1973. As usual there is also a traitor figure in Timelord society, although it is pretty obvious who this is from the start. The Amsterdam location is refreshing, although as with The Two Doctors, it serves little purpose in times of the storylines. The highly level of coincidence in the story, not least that Tegan's cousin conveniently becomes involved in events, thereby necessitating her return to the programme, is contrived, although it could be argued that this was a consequence of Omega's influence. Nevertheless this serial is ok, and not a bad opener to season 20. There are also several good extras on the DVD, including future companion Sophie Aldred travelling around the Amsterdam locations