Commentary Highlights:

Probably Sarah Sutton’s plaintive "I need chocolate" at the end of the proceedings.

I had no idea that one of the reasons why British Airways were so keen to garner some good PR for Concorde was that the Thatcher government (does the Ben Elton "ooh, bit of politics" gesture) was giving serious thought to scrapping the project.

-Mouth on Legs, which nobody will be surprised to find involves Janet Fielding talking about the experience of playing everybody’s favourite stroppy Australian, Mark Bosnich Tegan Jovanka

-Deleted Scenes, because the one thing everybody says about ‘Time-Flight’ is that there isn’t enough of it.

-Jurassic Larks, a wealth of behind-the-scenes footage from the making of the story

-Out-takes, being a selection of things that were taken out

-Peter Grimwade Interview, a few minutes of footage from an interview with the writer.

Commentary Highlights: Almost certainly the interplay between Colin Baker and Peter Davison

I Didn’t Know That Until I Read The Information Text: The militant lesbian graffito in Part Four would almost certainly have passed me by otherwise.

-Anti-Matter from Amsterdam A making-of documentary recorded partly on location in Amsterdam, with bonus Sophie Aldred.

-The Omega Factor looking at the characterisation of Omega himself

-Deleted Scenes, nearly three minutes of additional material

-Under Arc Lights, a compilation of behind-the-scenes material from the recording

-CGI Effects, in other words a reworking of some of the original effects.

-Continuities (but not the one I remember seeing at lunchtime between Christmas 1982 and New Year 1983

-Photo Gallery

"How do we make ‘Timelash’ look good?", asked the BBC Worldwide minion at the meeting to discuss 2007’s release schedule.

"Easy," said another minion. "Release ‘Time-Flight’ and ‘Arc of Infinity’ as a pair the following month and nobody’ll think twice".

The first in what would become an occasional series of releases foregrounding particular companions, the pairing of ‘Time-Flight’ and ‘Arc of Infinity’ also shows BBC Worldwide beginning to grasp the twin nettles of managing both the number of stories still to be released in a sensible space of time- particularly with DVD seemingly on the verge of peaking as a format- and also what to do with the less popular tales. It’s not the first pairing one would think of when it comes to Tegan’s character- that’s reserved for the surely-inevitable Mara set- but it does have the ongoing story of Tegan being abandoned by the Doctor at Heathrow and finding her again in Amsterdam, so it’s not as if the stories are completely unconnected. It’s also an interesting exercise in comparison and contrast, because the flaws which mean that the stories aren’t regarded too favourably in fan circles are of a different order and quality; while both rely for a lot of their impact on their location filming, ‘Time-Flight’ has some fairly interesting ideas which it doesn’t get to develop but ‘Arc’ is a waste of overseas filming and an impressive cast list.

To begin with the Flight, then, it has to be said that the package of extras assembled for this release is above-average, with Peter Davison, Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton joined by Eric Saward for the commentary. As one might expect, although the participants solemnly promise to look for the positives in what they’re watching, the promise is broken before long, and although it’s usually entertaining in tone, it’s also comparatively rare to have Eric Saward quite so humbled on a DVD as the weaknesses of one of his first script editing assignments become clear. Janet Fielding is also given a bit more room to expand in the ‘Mouth on Legs’ item, where she discusses her background, casting and approach to playing Tegan; although her opinions are strong, they’re not put across humourlessly and it would have been interesting to have more than a couple of sentences on her work with Women in Film and Television. The deleted scenes don’t add all that much to one’s appreciation of the story, beginning as they do with some footage of Heathrow’s emergency tenders and including a lot of the office-based exposition from the first episode. ‘Jurassic Larks’ and the out-takes have a bit more to show- it’s always a surprise in these days of post-production to see CSO work being done as part of the recording, while Kalid’s demise is something else that it’s interesting to see being put together. On the evidence of the photo gallery and some of the behind the scenes footage, it seems clear that ‘Time-Flight’ was a happy production if nothing else; Richard Easton seems to be having a whale of a time in particular, so it’s curious to then see Peter Grimwade being interviewed a few years ago (and using some of the same interview put on ‘Earthshock’) going on about being focused and not setting out to have a good time. There aren’t any real revelations in the Photo Gallery and the Radio Times listings are on the short side, although one of the short stories in the 1983 annual involves the Master using an aeroplane to kidnap VIPs in a plot which combines elements of ‘Time-Flight’ and ‘Resurrection of the Daleks’.

Moving swiftly on to ‘Arc of Infinity’, it has to be said that the addition of Colin Baker to the commentary team is an inspired touch and gives the commentary a certain sparkle which ‘Time-Flight’ lacks and the story really needs. There’s the traditional inter-Doctor sparring but also a good humour present and it lifts the commentary just when it’s needed. ‘Anti-Matter from Amsterdam’ gives some of the performers (as well as Eric Saward and Johnny Byrne) the opportunity to elaborate on their experiences, although it’s probably most notable for the location footage featuring Sophie Aldred on the streets of Amsterdam (now there’s a thought...) with Johnny Byrne lurking in the background. I have a vague feeling that this came in for some flak at the time of its release, but as far as I can see it’s a nice directorial touch which means that the end result is just that bit different. What emerges from the documentary is an impression of a story written to order by a reliable writer after one of John Nathan-Turner’s brainwaves (although as it’s pointed out at various points that the BBC at the time had Dutch connections which it used several times for high-profile programmes, it’s just as easy to envisage a circular passing round the BBC encouraging them to make use of the facilities). In contrast to ‘Time-Flight’, the cast seem not to have a bad word to say about the story (Ergon apart), probably because it was a working holiday for them, although Colin Baker is at pains to point out that this wasn’t extended to Maxil.

It’s particularly fortunate that the extras for the DVD release should have been recorded while Ian Collier was still with us, as he turns out to have had a lot to say about the experience of playing Omega which adds to both ‘Anti-Matter from Amsterdam’ and ‘The Omega Factor’, a symposium of both actors to have taken the role and three of the four writers to have written for the character. The key to Omega is probably, as Johnny Byrne suggests, the sensory deprivation of his imprisonment in the anti-matter universe, culminating at the end of ‘The Three Doctors’ with being deprived of even the illusion of a physical body; without this, Omega can become just so much bluster and bellowing. The deleted scenes unfortunately don’t add much to the story, being about three minutes’ worth of timing cuts and mostly the tops and tails of scenes, while the highlight of ‘Under Arc Lights’ is undoubtedly the recording of the split screen dialogue with Peter Davison playing both the Doctor and Omega- again, the mixes were done live and it’s particularly odd to see the tape of Davison’s performance as the Doctor rewound on the left hand side of the screen so he can lip-synch Ian Collier’s lines on the right. The CGI effects add a bit of life to some of the scenes, particularly Omega’s destruction in Amsterdam as you get a bit more than half a dozen flash charges to represent somebody being prevented from annihilating the universe, although that said, on a 1983 story we’re not exactly talking about amateur visual effects to begin with. I don’t think there’s as much nostalgia in the continuities as can be found on other releases, and the Photo Gallery doesn’t have that many revelations - we’ve all seen the location publicity photos from Amsterdam before now and most of the other pictures are of the main cast and supporting characters. Similarly, the Radio Times listings are somewhat perfunctory for the first episodes of a series celebrating its twentieth anniversary. I don’t really think that ‘Arc of Infinity’ is one of those stories which commands a loyal body of fans wanting to know every last detail (although more on the Amsterdam locations might have been nice), but then again it’s tempting to wonder whether both the discs in this double release aren’t guilty of giving the buyer rather more for their money than they could ever really want.