"A crew member? You’ll be lucky! He’s the crew - we’re just the passengers."
TECHNICAL SPECS: Part 4 of The Time Meddler. While like the other episodes, it is available on DVD, a 12-second sequence showing Ulf and Sven being stabbed to death remains lost. It is featured as audio on the DVD's extras. First aired Jul.24 1965.
IN THIS ONE... The Monk's plans fail as the villagers turn on him and the Doctor sabotages his TARDIS.
REVIEW: The Time Meddler, in its final episode, continues to be rather thin on plot (each episode is even shorter than the norm), but I'm starting to think of it in the same terms I do another Spooner story - The Rescue. In both tales, the plot isn't meant to be examined too closely (here, don't ask what happened to all the anachronisms the Monk had left in the countryside, for example), it's all just set dressing for the introduction of a new character. In The Rescue, it was Vicki. Here, it's the Monk, or rather, another member of the Doctor's race, opening up the show to the possibility of more, and of finding out about his origins. So not only do we meet the first other Time Lord (though that word won't be used for years yet) and first other TARDIS (with an elevated console, but is basically identical), but we also get the first instance of someone manipulating the ship's interior dimensions (an amusing sabotage), we learn TARDISes have "Types" and other hints of things future writers will build on (see Theories). In effect, in the same way Spooner gave us the first "new companion" story, he' also given us the first "renegade Time Lord" story and the first "pseudo-historical".
Faced with a man from his own world who crosses the line by meddling with history, the Doctor's innate heroism is triggered. In many ways, this is also the story in which the temporal vagabond, letting his curiosity get him into trouble, finally becomes the active hero-savior we know him to be today. The Time Lords don't want to participate in history, so what's the point of keeping it safe? So he sets forth to explore all of space-time, but the immutability of history remains a core belief. Note also how the Doctor pretends to be sleeping while he thinks of an escape plan, sharp and awake as soon as his companions ask him a question. That's the kind of eccentric alien behavior we associate with the Doctor today. Spooner - perhaps under the direction of new producer John Wiles and new script editor Donald Tosh - has given Doctor Who a lease on life, broadened its universe and confirmed a paradigm change in the show's premise that had been brewing for a while. As a season finale, it doesn't feel particularly epic (it's too comical for that), but it does change the formula, so subtly you might not even notice it.
I wouldn't want to move on before highlighting a number of moments that didn't fit the above discussions. Like Peter Butterworth's excellent performance culminating into hopelessness when he is marooned in 1066, so well executed from a directorial point of view as well. Or the Doctor finding Edith quite charming, perhaps seeing something of Cameca in her (she's MARRIED, Doc!). Or how tight-lipped he becomes when ask what type of TARDIS he pilots, as if such information might lead Time Lord authorities back to him. Or Steven showing he's not very good with history, putting da Vinci in the Middle Ages rather than the Renaissance. And of course, the final curtain call in the credits sequence, with the crew's faces superimposed on a starfield, an echo to the previous season finale's end credits.
THEORIES: So did the Doctor and the Monk already know each other? The tone of their conversation in episode 3 is probably where fans of this theory got the idea. They seem to immediately recognize each other as Time Lords at least, and start playing verbal chess almost immediately. Nothing in that dialog contradicts the idea that they know each of old, and does the Monk perhaps call the Doctor "Doctor" without being formally introduced? (He overheard the name when Vicki and Steven were talking, or the Doctor introduced himself offscreen.) In episode 4, the Doctor asks what the Monk's getting up to "this time", like there have been others, though what kind of trouble the Monk used to get into must not have been time meddling, since that seems to be the Doctor's realization here. There's a cryptic line about the Doctor being "fifty years earlier". He's basing his estimate on how advanced the Monk's TARDIS is, perhaps, but the best way to interpret the line, especially in the wake of how canon would later show Time Lords all being "synchronized" (i.e., if 50 years pass for the Doctor, 50 years have passed on Gallifrey and for every Time Lord in space-time), is that the Doctor left his home world 50 years before the Monk did. If they really do know each other, they would be contemporaries. Some have decided that this means the Monk is on at least a second regeneration because he looks younger than the Doctor, but "contemporaries" for a people who live for centuries would not exclude a 200-year-old man to hang with a 400-year-old one. That did not prevent Gary Russell - the man responsible for sometimes horrendous attempts at a Unifying Theory of the Whoniverse in extracanonical material - from putting the Monk (real name: Mortimus) in the Academy with the Doctor, and in fact, every renegade Time Lord in the canon, in the novel Divided Loyalties. Their identical rings could be seen as being from the same class, or house, or simply that they both have a TARDIS. INCONCLUSIVE!
One of the paradigm changes that occurs in the Time Meddler is what will eventually lead us to terms like "fixed points in history". Prior to this, History had always been sacred. It was hard to know if you COULDN'T change an event, or if you just SHOULDN'T. From onscreen evidence, the Doctor seemed to make efforts so that his companions didn't change History, but it also seemed like History could take care of herself, and historical manipulations just didn't work as intended. In The Time Meddler, we have someone breaking the "golden rule" and actively trying to change history. One of his past successes is talking with da Vinci about flying machines, but the Doctor's always claiming he inspired this or that, an example of which was the burning of Rome by Nero. Clearly, that's just a case of ensuring something that would happen anyway, or else IS a change, but not one that changes the course of History (da Vinci never made them work). The Monk's plan to have the Saxons win the Battle of Hastings, ingratiate himself with King Harold and start introducing technology to the Middle Ages is completely bonkers of course, but the WAY he does it is, I think, coherent with the theory of Fixed Points. he's not trying to change the course of the Battle itself (surely a fixed point), but of events on the sidelines that might roundaboutedly change the course of the Battle. So he attacks anonymous Viking raids to influence troop movements, tricking History into a new shape where the fixed point just doesn't happen. Brilliant, in its way. (Note that Vicki is wrong about her theory that her memories will change when the Monk changes history, though it's a nice image. Time travelers have usually proven resistant to that kind of thing. Usually.)
VERSIONS: The novelization features the off-screen sequence in which Steven stumbles through the jungles of Mechanus to get to the TARDIS. Adapter Nigel Robinson also pushes the balance more towards drama than comedy.
REWATCHABILITY: Medium - A thin plot, but who you can't help but lean in as the details about the Doctor's people start spooling out. A perfectly pleasant season finale, but don't look at the details too closely.
STORY REWATCHABILITY: Medium-High - Better as the sum of its parts, The Time Meddler bounces along merrily, has very good production values, and makes some truly important contributions to the Doctor Who mythos. We'll even forgive its lack of Doctor in the second episode.
TECHNICAL SPECS: Part 4 of The Time Meddler. While like the other episodes, it is available on DVD, a 12-second sequence showing Ulf and Sven being stabbed to death remains lost. It is featured as audio on the DVD's extras. First aired Jul.24 1965.IN THIS ONE... The Monk's plans fail as the villagers turn on him and the Doctor sabotages his TARDIS.
REVIEW: The Time Meddler, in its final episode, continues to be rather thin on plot (each episode is even shorter than the norm), but I'm starting to think of it in the same terms I do another Spooner story - The Rescue. In both tales, the plot isn't meant to be examined too closely (here, don't ask what happened to all the anachronisms the Monk had left in the countryside, for example), it's all just set dressing for the introduction of a new character. In The Rescue, it was Vicki. Here, it's the Monk, or rather, another member of the Doctor's race, opening up the show to the possibility of more, and of finding out about his origins. So not only do we meet the first other Time Lord (though that word won't be used for years yet) and first other TARDIS (with an elevated console, but is basically identical), but we also get the first instance of someone manipulating the ship's interior dimensions (an amusing sabotage), we learn TARDISes have "Types" and other hints of things future writers will build on (see Theories). In effect, in the same way Spooner gave us the first "new companion" story, he' also given us the first "renegade Time Lord" story and the first "pseudo-historical".
Faced with a man from his own world who crosses the line by meddling with history, the Doctor's innate heroism is triggered. In many ways, this is also the story in which the temporal vagabond, letting his curiosity get him into trouble, finally becomes the active hero-savior we know him to be today. The Time Lords don't want to participate in history, so what's the point of keeping it safe? So he sets forth to explore all of space-time, but the immutability of history remains a core belief. Note also how the Doctor pretends to be sleeping while he thinks of an escape plan, sharp and awake as soon as his companions ask him a question. That's the kind of eccentric alien behavior we associate with the Doctor today. Spooner - perhaps under the direction of new producer John Wiles and new script editor Donald Tosh - has given Doctor Who a lease on life, broadened its universe and confirmed a paradigm change in the show's premise that had been brewing for a while. As a season finale, it doesn't feel particularly epic (it's too comical for that), but it does change the formula, so subtly you might not even notice it.
I wouldn't want to move on before highlighting a number of moments that didn't fit the above discussions. Like Peter Butterworth's excellent performance culminating into hopelessness when he is marooned in 1066, so well executed from a directorial point of view as well. Or the Doctor finding Edith quite charming, perhaps seeing something of Cameca in her (she's MARRIED, Doc!). Or how tight-lipped he becomes when ask what type of TARDIS he pilots, as if such information might lead Time Lord authorities back to him. Or Steven showing he's not very good with history, putting da Vinci in the Middle Ages rather than the Renaissance. And of course, the final curtain call in the credits sequence, with the crew's faces superimposed on a starfield, an echo to the previous season finale's end credits.
THEORIES: So did the Doctor and the Monk already know each other? The tone of their conversation in episode 3 is probably where fans of this theory got the idea. They seem to immediately recognize each other as Time Lords at least, and start playing verbal chess almost immediately. Nothing in that dialog contradicts the idea that they know each of old, and does the Monk perhaps call the Doctor "Doctor" without being formally introduced? (He overheard the name when Vicki and Steven were talking, or the Doctor introduced himself offscreen.) In episode 4, the Doctor asks what the Monk's getting up to "this time", like there have been others, though what kind of trouble the Monk used to get into must not have been time meddling, since that seems to be the Doctor's realization here. There's a cryptic line about the Doctor being "fifty years earlier". He's basing his estimate on how advanced the Monk's TARDIS is, perhaps, but the best way to interpret the line, especially in the wake of how canon would later show Time Lords all being "synchronized" (i.e., if 50 years pass for the Doctor, 50 years have passed on Gallifrey and for every Time Lord in space-time), is that the Doctor left his home world 50 years before the Monk did. If they really do know each other, they would be contemporaries. Some have decided that this means the Monk is on at least a second regeneration because he looks younger than the Doctor, but "contemporaries" for a people who live for centuries would not exclude a 200-year-old man to hang with a 400-year-old one. That did not prevent Gary Russell - the man responsible for sometimes horrendous attempts at a Unifying Theory of the Whoniverse in extracanonical material - from putting the Monk (real name: Mortimus) in the Academy with the Doctor, and in fact, every renegade Time Lord in the canon, in the novel Divided Loyalties. Their identical rings could be seen as being from the same class, or house, or simply that they both have a TARDIS. INCONCLUSIVE!
One of the paradigm changes that occurs in the Time Meddler is what will eventually lead us to terms like "fixed points in history". Prior to this, History had always been sacred. It was hard to know if you COULDN'T change an event, or if you just SHOULDN'T. From onscreen evidence, the Doctor seemed to make efforts so that his companions didn't change History, but it also seemed like History could take care of herself, and historical manipulations just didn't work as intended. In The Time Meddler, we have someone breaking the "golden rule" and actively trying to change history. One of his past successes is talking with da Vinci about flying machines, but the Doctor's always claiming he inspired this or that, an example of which was the burning of Rome by Nero. Clearly, that's just a case of ensuring something that would happen anyway, or else IS a change, but not one that changes the course of History (da Vinci never made them work). The Monk's plan to have the Saxons win the Battle of Hastings, ingratiate himself with King Harold and start introducing technology to the Middle Ages is completely bonkers of course, but the WAY he does it is, I think, coherent with the theory of Fixed Points. he's not trying to change the course of the Battle itself (surely a fixed point), but of events on the sidelines that might roundaboutedly change the course of the Battle. So he attacks anonymous Viking raids to influence troop movements, tricking History into a new shape where the fixed point just doesn't happen. Brilliant, in its way. (Note that Vicki is wrong about her theory that her memories will change when the Monk changes history, though it's a nice image. Time travelers have usually proven resistant to that kind of thing. Usually.)
VERSIONS: The novelization features the off-screen sequence in which Steven stumbles through the jungles of Mechanus to get to the TARDIS. Adapter Nigel Robinson also pushes the balance more towards drama than comedy.
REWATCHABILITY: Medium - A thin plot, but who you can't help but lean in as the details about the Doctor's people start spooling out. A perfectly pleasant season finale, but don't look at the details too closely.
STORY REWATCHABILITY: Medium-High - Better as the sum of its parts, The Time Meddler bounces along merrily, has very good production values, and makes some truly important contributions to the Doctor Who mythos. We'll even forgive its lack of Doctor in the second episode.
Comments
(I think it was the FASA one. One of the early RPGs, at least.)