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| The Doctor, Jo, and the Brigadier are pitted against the Master. Again. |
6 episodes. Running Time: Approx. 147 minutes. Written by: Robert Sloman, Barry Letts (uncredited). Directed by: Paul Bernard. Produced by: Barry Letts.
THE PLOT:
The Master is passing himself off as "Professor Thascalos" in order to run experiments at the Newton Institute, located near Cambridge. Using his TARDIS as a power source, and with the aid of the unwitting Dr. Ruth Ingram (Wanda Moore) and her assistant Stuart (Ian Collier), he attempts to summon Kronos, the most powerful of the Chronovores, time creatures who were once worshipped as gods. With Kronos's power, the Master intends to control the universe!
The power from his experiments draws the attention of the Doctor and UNIT. The Doctor tries first to separate the Master from his TARDIS, then engages in tactics meant to delay him. In the end, though, he will have to chase the Master into the ancient past, to the lost civilization of Atlantis - where the Master has already found an ally...
CHARACTERS:
The Doctor: Spends much of the first four episodes fidgeting with gadgets and spouting Technobabble. Fortunately, Jon Pertwee is back on form, his authority and charisma giving a significant lift to what might have been dry material. He also gets a particularly good scene in the final episode. As he and Jo await execution, he reminisces about a day in his youth when he decided that life was pointless, only to have an old man point out "the daisyest daisy (he'd) ever seen." It's a lovely monologue, very well performed by Pertwee.
Jo Grant: Though the Doctor's assistant, she seems to also regard herself as his protector. She insists on accompanying him to Atlantis even when he points out the danger, insisting that it's her job to help him. When the Master seems to have defeated him, she announces that she doesn't care what he does to her.
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart: After a pompous official starts talking about conducting an official inquiry, using that to berate a Cambridge professor, the Brigadier intercedes by declaring the exact law, subsection, and paragraph to compel secrecy. He quickly shuts the official down, and it's clear that the Brig enjoys using his position to squash a bully. Later, when Capt. Yates is endangered, he tries calling for Yates on the radio. When he gets particularly worried (in time for the cliffhanger), he switches from calling him "Captain Yates" to "Mike."
Sgt. Benton: While he's guarding the lab, the Master attempts to lure Benton away by impersonating the Brigadier's voice. The sergeant isn't fooled, using the opportunity to set a trap. It fails, of course, or the story would only be two episodes long, but it shows resourcefulness on his part.
Dr. Ruth Ingram: As the scientist who has assisted "Professor Thascalos" (The Master) with his experiments, actress Wanda Moore has the most prominent guest role for the first four episodes. Sadly, she also gets saddled with a lot of annoying "battle-of-the-sexes" dialogue. She talks about how spineless or patronizing the men around her are - then patronizingly tells Benton to "stand there and look pretty." I'm fairly certain the point was to show male viewers how annoying sexism is by reversing it... but it mostly comes across as forced, and I suspect it did in 1972 as well.
Queen Galleia: Ingrid Pitt, a regular fixture of British horror films of this period, appears in the final two episodes as the queen of Atlantis. She is instantly smitten with The Master, recognizing him as a man who will do anything to achieve power, and she begins plotting with him against her husband, King Dalios (George Cormack). This might have made for an engaging bit of court intrigue, had the serial reached this point at least one episode sooner. As it stands, the entire subplot is rushed, with Galleia's coup occurring offscreen. Still, at least Pitt acts her lines instead of shouting them, which helps her to stand out from most of the other actors in the Atlantis segment.
The Master: Speaking of shouting... This is almost certainly Roger Delgado's weakest performance as The Master. He spends the first two episodes adopting a wildly inconsistent accent while pretending to be a foreign professor. He then spends much of the back half of the story shouting most of his lines. Given how many of the guest cast also adopt this style, I wonder if this was less a case of Delgado having an "off" day and more a case of questionable directing choices.
THOUGHTS:
The Time Monster has not generally been well-regarded. I actually enjoy the story, but I'll admit that there's a lot to criticize.
The story is focused on Atlantis, but the Doctor and the Master spend four episodes marking time in a present-day lab before they manage to get there. When they finally arrive, the Atlantis sets are tacky even by Classic Who standards. Between the costumes and the stagey/shouty performances, I had the distinct impression that I was watching a Greek myth as staged by an underfunded community theatre.
With most of the actual plot reserved for the final episodes, the first four parts consist of... well, padding. A lot of padding. The Doctor turns down the chance to observe the demonstration in order to follow his device that goes "bing," which leads him and Jo to... um, the exact demonstration he decided not to go to. He spends a big chunk of Episode Three building a thing to delay the Master. When he finally succeeds, it causes a delay that lasts... maybe as much as thirty seconds.
Other bits are actually a lot of fun. Characters are aged and de-aged. Others get stuck in time, running slowly in place until they just plain stop. The Master brings soldiers from the past to delay UNIT. The Doctor and the Master find their TARDISes fused, each materialized inside the other.
None of these set pieces do anything to advance the story, but they are amusing and clever. I just finished watching and already barely remember the Atlantis/Kronos plot. But I recalled the TARDIS-in-a-TARDIS and "soldiers plucked out of time" moments from my last viewing of the story, even though that was a good two decades ago!
OVERALL:
At six episodes, The Time Monster is too long for its rather thin narrative. It's also bizarrely structured so that almost all of the story is packed into the final two episodes, leaving the rest extremely padded even by '70s Who standards. It also features guest performances that are uneven at best - and sadly, I include the usually excellent Roger Delgado in that assessment.
What saves it, for me at least, is that a fair amount of the padding is fun. The various time tricks the Doctor and Master pull on each other are often enjoyable to watch, showing a scene-by-scene inventiveness that keeps the whole thing alive. The two worst episodes end up being the last two - the two where the story finally happens.
In the end, while I can't call this a good story, I would call it a fun one. Within this same season, The Curse of Peladon is "better" - but I was more entertained by this.
Overall Rating: 6/10.
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Next Story: The Three Doctors
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