The morning after leaving to pick up Col. Lake at the airport, Commander Straker suddenly appears at SHADO HQ disheveled and apparently stark raving mad and taking it out on the machinery. Taking the show out to the Harlington/Straker sets, he leaves in his wake a hefty damages bill and questions: how did he get back into the building, why is he holding dangerous drugs to increase metabolism, why is Lake unconscious on the roof, and why is one of the lesser technicians dead in a go-cart, riddled with bullets?
Lake isn't much help when she comes to. She's diagnosed as having sustained a blow to the back of the neck that has caused a two-hour amnesic gap. I don't know what's more impressive, knowing to tap a neck to produce a two-hour amnesia (top that, Spock) or diagnosing that it's been done.
The answers will have to come from Straker, who also inhabits a recovery bed. Not coming around fast enough for Henderson who declares that a SHADO without Straker is a dire emergency and promptly orders Dr. Jackson to administer a drug that might kill Straker instead of hastening his recovery. Makes sense. You wouldn't want to just give the man a day or so to get his wits back. Might be a rough job of it, from his ravings. "They murdered time!"
Here begins the flashback. Returning from the airport the night before, Straker and Lake are first tracked by a UFO, then attacked as they near HQ. We know something happens as the screen image turns negative for a moment, but just what it is will take unraveling. I've seen the episode some four or five times over my life, and I'm still trying to work it out. Hurrying on to the studio lot, night suddenly turns to day and time has stood still - people frozen mid-stride, birds aflight, tossed objects that remain in the air. Straker grabs a piece of wood and strikes at a stool doing bullet-time and can't make it move, failing to realize that he should have been unable to pick up the wood...or open doors for that matter. Apparently only objects that were under the influence of kinetic energy are paralyzed while those at rest can still be manipulated. Probably a neat conundrum in there somewhere, make for a cool sci-fi novel. There's no time to explore it here, but we do pause for some brief exposition that clears up nothing.
Let me see if I have this close to right...at first it appears that SHADO has been caught in a bubble of frozen time. We have to guess why Straker and lake are immune, perhaps because they were caught at the edge of the affect area. Their watches no longer work. Straker has a better theory: the aliens have projected in which they themselves move at a highly accelerated rate, making everything around them appear to stand still. This explains how they could get past moonbase, an incoming UFO is travelling in such a bubble, and because its path brings it right to HQ the forward edge is now affecting Harlington/Straker studios. SHADO is shielded by heavy lead within its walls, so another field generator has been placed inside HQ, thus necessitating a traitor to plant the device. They wouldn't have to do that to blow the place sky-high, so the idea must be to take it over entirely. An ambitious scheme on all fronts!
Wait, that doesn't sound right either...if the wave is hitting the studio, then everything there should speed up too. My brain hurts, it'll have to come out.
Frozen time, sped-up movement...either way it presents us some problems that haven't been worked out. For instance, if the world is still moving at normal speed then things like elevators, guns, and electronic security panels should not be moving at his speed. Nor go-carts. Nor should the laws of physics bend to his will - gravity and others. So, we have to wonder. Like Straker, we're guessing. Best leave it at that.
Like I said, not a lot of time (heh!) to discuss it because - let's all shout it angrily together - "TRAITOR!!!" One of our lesser techs, Turner, is an agent for the aliens and it didn't take mind control to turn him. Looks like Straker's not a hit with everyone after all. Turner is one of those with a hate-on for humanity and how he's been treated, and sells us out with the promise of a chance to whip out his psyche and wave it at Straker.
The rest of the episode, a good half maybe, is a game of cat and mouse with Lake & Straker hunting Turner while an unhinged Turner tries to kill them. Somewhere on the base is a bit of equipment that the tech rewired into a transmitter for the alien time wave. Again, I'm too slow to follow what does what here. The signal is being sent from a UFO outside the time envelope, and though it is on it's way it has to come slowly because it is operating at a different temporal level and must adjust as it passes the threshold. I think. I wonder if that shouldn't affect the oscillation of the signal as well (ala sound and light waves). Meanwhile, Turner is able to play with time in ways a Gallifreyan would envy, projecting himself backwards or forwards, pulling Straker out of incidents to witness them again. So what kind of time manipulation are we talking about here? A world slowed down or people sped up? if there's an explanation for this it could only be pulled from Jackson's backside. It's wicked fun and doesn't make a lick of sense. Seems to me the aliens have endowed Turner with more power than they've allowed themselves, a rather foolhardy move. You can tell from the childishness of his taunts that his cogs have slipped big-time. He's been promised a high place in the new regime. Aren't they all?
I'm also not clear how Straker and Lake made it into the affected field and whether they were meant to. I doubt it, as they were attacked before arriving...and why do they not need to adjust at the same rate the UFO does once they're through the envelope? Really, there are all sorts of things that you're not meant to think about here. Timelash was written by Terence Feely, who also contributed scripts to Space: 1999 and The New Avengers. I enjoyed those as well, but this is easily the better piece aided by terrific direction and fx work.
I don't care. It's a brisk episode that grabs your attention right away and never lets up, nor is it straightforward enough to easily guess where it's going. If sense must cede to sensibility, this is a good way to go. with many wondrous little touches and a little skewed humor. This is among the best of what UFO could be when it comes to sheer exuberant strangeness. So, I'll give it 9 magic machine guns that never need reloading.
Asides:
It's good to see Henderson again, and Jackson! I'm gonna miss these guys.
ep concludes with Straker coming to his senses. Jackson explains to Henderson that Straker has experienced...ah, I can't remember what he caled it, but it sums up what we just saw. But how the hell does he know that??
One of these episodes, either this one or Mindbend, has a glimpse of the Interceptor cockpit sets. Between the swift pace and looking away to take notes, I failed to spot them.
Give Harlington/Straker a hand, ladies and gentlemen! That prop gets a lot of use. maybe they're filming a sequel to whatever movie used it last time.
Catch the funky wind machine effect on Straker's face as he tries to target the UFO? To quote MST3K, "That's quite a tic ya got there, son."
Turner fumes that Straker is "the guy all the girls admire". There's no evidence from the series to support that. I can buy that Turner believes it, though, it's clearly a sore spot and I can see him endowing Straker with every trait he feels a failure at.
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