Time Streams (game)

Doctor Who Pinball: Time Streams is a Bally Midway Manufacturing Company pinball machine released in September 1992. It has an unusually complex ruleset which made the machine somewhat unpopular amongst casual pinball players, but has since made it more collectible to pinball aficionados.

The machine's video screen refers to the story, outlined in the manual, as Time Streams. Appropriately, each ball is referred to as "Parts" of the story ("Part 1", "Part 2", etc.).

On 30 September 2016, it was emulated for the Pinball Arcade video game.

Publisher's game story[[edit] | [edit source]]

Time is running out, literally...

The Master is back and this time he will not fail! He has recruited Davros and what is left of his desperate Daleks. Since being beaten by the Movellans, this group of Daleks have nothing to lose. And both have one enemy in common...the Doctor!

The Master has found an ancient Gallifrey Laboratory equipped with an everlasting self-regenerating Time Expander. This Time Expander can take any part of time and space, stretch it, then allow all other space and time events to interact with this new time stream. This machine requires two operators to work together (changing time and space is serious business). Of course, this has never stopped the Master, or even Davros.

The problem of finding all seven Doctors and expanding their time streams is easily solved in one word-- Earth! This is the Doctor's favourite planet. All of his regenerations, past, present, and even future, have or will, arrive upon Earth. All that has to be done is to expand Earth's time and push all the Doctors into the final nova of the Earth's Sun. At game start, you can experience the time expansion of Earth by observing the continental drift back to the past (over 300 million years ago!).

But everything has not gone as planned. All of the Doctors, aware of time being expanded, have escaped. However, not everyone is safe.

The First Doctor has escaped to a planet and is being bombarded by the Master's "borrowed and enhanced" Roni spheres.

The Second Doctor is lost in a land mine of black holes in space and is trying to dodge destruction (the black holes are rumoured to power the Time Expander).

The Third Doctor is trapped in the Whomobile.

The Fourth Doctor is stranded somewhere to repair his TARDIS from old unreliable force field projectors.

The Fifth Doctor, transmatted away from Earth is, unfortunately, held prisoner in a never ending transmat web.

The Sixth Doctor was jettisoned to a mountainous Dalek planet, where the time expanded rebirth of the Dalek race is about to begin.

Last but not least, the Seventh Doctor is much more fortunate. He escaped unharmed and has found the Time Expander. Now the challenge is to restore Earth's Time to normal, confront the Master and his traps, the Daleks, and of course Davros (the creator of the Daleks).

When it is time for the ultimate battle with Davros, all the Doctors will be re-united, combining their unique knowledge and experience to defeat Davros and his Daleks.

Gameplay[[edit] | [edit source]]

The basic concept is that the Doctor's first six incarnations have become trapped in some way, and it is up to the Seventh Doctor and Ace to rescue them and defeat Davros. The player decides before beginning a round of play which of the seven Doctors they want to rescue, then attempts to make shots to the particular area of the playing field associated with that incarnation.

When the player does what is required to rescue that Doctor, they must shoot into a particular area for a "video mode", in which that Doctor must outrun a pursing Dalek by jumping over obstacles (one flipper button for small obstacles, both for long obstacles) and get to his TARDIS. Jumping into the Ship also awards a point bonus.

Following three rounds of the video mode, the player gets a particular performance enhancement, such as extra balls (Third Doctor) or faster point accumulation for certain shots (Sixth Doctor). Because of the ways in which the game play can be affected by which Doctors the player rescues, strategy is far more complex than the average pinball machine.

Cast[[edit] | [edit source]]

Characters[[edit] | [edit source]]

On screen[[edit] | [edit source]]

Backglass of the seven Doctors

Console art[[edit] | [edit source]]

Credits[[edit] | [edit source]]

The in game credits are written in uppercase letters only and are accessible on the video screen while not playing.

Doctor Who show[[edit] | [edit source]]

The Doctors[[edit] | [edit source]]

BBC Enterprises[[edit] | [edit source]]

Doctor Who pin[[edit] | [edit source]]

Game design[[edit] | [edit source]]

Artists[[edit] | [edit source]]

Linda Deal

Graphic effects[[edit] | [edit source]]

Scott Slomiany

Game programmer[[edit] | [edit source]]

Pfutz

Music/sounds[[edit] | [edit source]]

Mechanical[[edit] | [edit source]]

Zofia Bil

Engineering[[edit] | [edit source]]

Marketing[[edit] | [edit source]]

Roger Sharpe

Model makers[[edit] | [edit source]]

Tech. support[[edit] | [edit source]]

Publications[[edit] | [edit source]]

Betty Purcell

Special thanks[[edit] | [edit source]]

Key creative talent[[edit] | [edit source]]

Artwork was by Linda Deal, design by Bill Pfutzenreuter and Barry Oursler, and music by Jon Hey.

Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]

The game features an uncredited actor as the Master, with a vocal impression based upon the performance of Anthony Ainley. Although it had originally been planned to have Ainley record lines for the pinball game, due to confusion and slow passing of information from Pfutzenreuter through various individuals to Ainley and vice versa, this did not come to pass.^[1] It would later be discovered that Ainley had soon after sent a letter to one individual involved in the chain of communication to explain that his UK agents had not been helpful in the matter, and that he had not been able to properly consider the project.^[2]
Oddly, despite the replacement performer deriving their performance from Ainley, the Master is credited as being the Roger Delgado incarnation. Although the art on the machine depicts Delgado, the image which appears on-screen depicts the Anthony Ainley incarnation.
The game can be seen in the background of an interview with Sylvester McCoy for More Than Thirty Years in the TARDIS.
New York Magazine filmed an interview with Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, and Arthur Darvill playing a game on the machine while they were in New York City in 2011.

External links[[edit] | [edit source]]

Footnotes[[edit] | [edit source]]

[1] ttp://pfutz.us/UnofficialDoctorWhoPinballHistory/

[2] ttp://pfutz.us/UnofficialDoctorWhoPinballHistory/AnthLtr.jpg

[1]

[2]

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