Target: Time-flight

A Peter Grimwade adaptation for us next. The Doctor tells the story of Full Circle to Nyssa and Tegan as a way of remembering Adric. Then he says they should have a treat, not a holiday, at the Great Exhibition. When Tegan and Nyssa go along with this idea, they're putting on a brave face. (Tegan thinks that Queen Victoria would not be amused. Neither am I.) When she asks if the TARDIS has hit turbulence, she's thinking of her father's light aircraft (as mentioned in the Logopolis Target).

Tegan and Nyssa are often referred to as 'the girls'. Nyssa perhaps, but Tegan's supposed to be in her twenties isn't she?

The airport security suit is taken aback by the mention of UNIT. He knows it will damage his career if he upsets a UNIT agent. The seeds of Torchwood are right here, unfortunately. I preferred it when UNIT just drove around in army lorries, jumping out to shoot ineffectually at aliens. This idea of them as an all-powerful, sinister group turns me off completely.

We're told that Sir John Sudbury is very pleased to hear the Doctor's turned up, as the disappearing Concorde issue has been troubling him.

Tegan's uniform is an Air Australia one. When the airport controller greets her with 'A stewardess?' this has undertones of contempt (not just surprise) which are picked up and resented by Tegs.

The Golf Alpha Charlie crew are much the same except that Bilton is more assertive, and Scobie more sarcastic. The latter several times refers to passengers as 'punters'.

The two aircraft land safely in prehistory because the ground there happens to be a dried mudflat. The cold climate is made much more of - the ground is frosty, for example. (The Pleistocene stuff is nonsense though, as that was the second most recent epoch, a bare 3 million years ago. The entire Cretaceous and Tertiary periods intervene between the Jurassic and the Pleistocene, so it is in no sense 'not far off').

The voices the Doctor hears while enveloped by the Plasmatons are asking for help against the renegade Xeraphin.

Professor Hayter is not a sympathetic figure in the book - variously described as narrow-minded, contemptuous, sour-faced, sneering and spiteful. He has a senior common-room manner which doesn't really work for someone from the University of Darlington. Darlington College Oxford perhaps. Several times the Doctor and Captain Stapley are written as being united against him, particularly at the point where the Doctor accuses him of wanting to abandon his fellow passengers.

Two of those passengers, by the way, are 'a pop star and his manager'.

Although we are privy to Kalid's thoughts from the first time we see him, we are not told that he's the Master until he unmasks. Perhaps he wasn't thinking about being the Master. The Doctor thinks of Kalid as an 'inflated poseur'.

When Captain Stapley comes out of his hallucination in the sanctum, he perceives reality 'like a change of shot in a film'. Nice. It's specifically Stapley's mention of Tegan - 'the pretty Australian stewardess' - that brings Bilton out of his trance.

The Doctor feels a chill in the room when Kalid starts chanting - 'as if a door had been opened'.

When the Master's holding the Doctor at gunpoint for the TARDIS key, Hayter can't comprehend the idea of two grown men playing out a 'hysterical charade' for possession of a phone box. An excellent glimpse of what a DW adventure might look like to someone who'd got caught up in one.

The thing in the sarcophagus resembles a giant brain. The Doctor explains that when Nyssa threw the crystal, a massive burst of energy held it back, and dispersed Kalid's serpent creature, and the semblance of Kalid himself.

There's a bit more method in Captain Stapley's madness when he tries to 'fly' the TARDIS - he's hoping to do a lateral movement first, to get his confidence up. Bilton, meanwhile, is thinking of that song about strawberry jam on the runway (Fred Was A Member Of The RAF, I believe).

Among the passengers entering the Master's TARDIS, Scobie sees the whole flight crew of Victor Foxtrot (presumably including the enigmatic Captain Urquhart).

When the discussions about how to get Alpha Charlie into the air begin, Bilton is has more to say about the 'runway'. He says it can't be rougher than the one at Kennedy Airport (which is indeed how it was always referred to in the UK in those days).

Standing under Concorde, Nyssa sees it as an artifact of an alien, mechanistic technology. She's described, wonderfully, as looking up like a tourist in a mediaeval cathedral.

Trundling the tyre gives Tegan deja vu - she realises it's just like her doomed attempts to repair Aunty Vanessa's sports car. (Is it deja vu if you can place it?)

I can't stop myself interjecting that aircraft really do use 400Hz power, because transformers for a higher frequency are lighter and take up less space.

Nyssa is terrified by the idea of getting Alpha Charlie off the ground. And indeed the takeoff is described with extra tension.

Back at Heathrow, the Master's TARDIS very topically shines in the sky like 'Haley's' (sic) Comet. Two coppers perceive it variously as the Day of Judgement and a few too many at lunchtime (ah for the carefree 80s days of lunchtime drinking).

Scobie's remark about the overtime is a dismayed response to the news that they've only been gone ten minutes (not 24 hours).

As always, my purpose has been to compare, not review, but on both occasions that I've read this Target, I've enjoyed it more than I expected to. Peter Grimwade conveys all the good bits of the story and successfully hides the bad bits, as well as adding two or three very good descriptive touches.