Writer Dennis Spooner
Broadcast 3rd – 24th
July 1965
Season 2
“That
is the dematerializing control, and that over yonder is the horizontal hold, up
there is the scanner, those are the doors, and that is a chair with a panda on
it. Sheer poetry, dear boy. Now please stop bothering me.”
It’s
1066 and The Doctor and Vicki are trying to convince new companion Steven that
they have indeed traveled back in time. They
even show him a Vikings helmet to prove their point but when they come up
across a wristwatch from modern times they are starting to doubt they are in
1066. The Doctor wanders off to the
monastery where he finds tons of anachronistic stuff that should not be in
1066. But there is someone else lurking in the shadows. It’s The Meddling Monk
who is someone with a sinister plan to change history and who the Doctor also
knows from his own planet.
The
Time Meddler is one of those stories that fits into the get captured escape and
do it all again. Not that there is
anything wrong with that but it did seem that happened a lot in 60’s Doctor
Who. But The Time Meddler is a good
story in that it gives The Doctor an equal in a way. The Monk as it turns out is from the Doctor’s
home planet and therefore has a TARDIS of his own. This is the first time we have met another
Timelord and predates The Master by several years. The scenes of the bickering
Timelords are pretty good and really well done as it is fun watching them
trying to get the upper hand on each other.
Of course The Doctor does and what he does to The Monks TARDIS is, in itself,
quite comical.
While
the part of the story with The Doctor and the Monk was quite entertaining
Steven and Vicki were just wandering around getting captured and escaping. It felt like they were an afterthought in
this story. In fact the whole Viking
raiders and villagers story was pretty weak but did set up the story of what
the Monk wanted to do. At times the
story got dull. At one point The Doctor wasn’t even in the second episode. William Hartnell probably had that week off
and so we were treated to Steven and Vicki walking around and well pretty much
doing nothing.
While
The Time Meddler isn’t the greatest story of all time it isn’t the worst of the
lot either. In fact it is pretty
entertaining in parts and plus it does have a big historical aspect to it as
it’s the first time we meet another Timelord.
Plus you can tell that William Hartnell is really enjoying himself as
The Doctor now. He seems more at ease
and he sure puts in a wonderful performance in The Time Meddler. The Time
Meddler is yet another of those stories that has a historical nugget for Doctor
Who and not a bad one to watch from time to time.
Grade
C
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