The Time Monster | Sophisticated Idiots

The tactic of scattergunning pays off occasionally.

The Time Monster has all the ingredients to be another Pertwee slog-fest: it’s overly long – an ontological absurdity? – with the Master, UNIT action aplenty, and the Brigadier berating bespectacled suits.

Yet at the same time, writers have lobbed umpteen more ideas at the screen in the hope that enough of them stick to make it entertaining.

And somehow, their haphazard approach works.

By our scientific reckoning, the hits in The Time Monster outweigh the misses by about two to one, which is a ratio later Doctors would kill for.

Right, there’s SO much to get our teeth into, we’d better wade straight in. Much like this serial does - as we’re plunged into the Doctor’s subconscious the moment the opening credits end.

The frilly-shirted one is having a filthy dream about his hunky foe, the Master, and entirely non-euphemistic volcano eruptions.

This dubious set-up triggers us to hot-foot it to an English rolling pile (because don’t forget that in 1972, Britain consists exclusively of £4million mansions).

Stunning setting secured, all the Doctor Who production team need now is a plot.

But good news! Someone hunts about in a drawer and pulls out a manuscript entitled Generic Third Doctor Story Template. Within its hallowed pages is a pearl of originality in which the Master pretends to be someone else in a bid to conjure an evil he can’t control.

What more do viewers want in the 70s, eh? Apart from three-day weeks, of course.

Thankfully, producers garnish this stodgy meat and onions with so much seasoning that it turns out to be surprisingly tasty.

For starters, fans of Who lore are in for a real treat: The Time Monster generates more new content for TARDIS Wiki than anything since The War Games.

Not only is it the first story that characterises the TARDIS as a living (female) entity – boy, does New Who flog this concept to death – we thoroughly enjoy the Doctor’s thoughts chuntering away as separate voices. And the fact he’s not all that proud of them is tantalising to the max.

Meanwhile, this story also boasts the delightful TARDIS-inside-a-TARDIS gimmick, which is so awesome they have another go in Logopolis.

But most importantly, there’s the scene that's even more mesmerising than the whites of Delgado’s eyes: when the Doctor pours out his heart about his childhood hermit pal.

In what might just be Pertwee’s finest moment in the show, he gets to do some proper acting, while Katy Manning proves to be his perfect foil as she teases him into elaborating on his trip down memory lane.

It’s a lovely pause for calm amid the scattergun mayhem, and has the added spice of teeing up Jon’s regeneration (spoiler alert!) in a couple of years.

Oh, and to top it all off, we learn that the meaning of life is daisies. Not 42 after all. Boo-sucks to you, future showrunner.

As if all this lore porn isn’t exciting enough, this masterful scene is followed by the A-star sequences in which the Doctor, Jo Jo and the Master are festering in a time void – a nothing-scape that evokes the blankness of The Mind Robber. Which is always a great look.

On the subject of great looks, Jo Jo Grant appears to have stepped straight off a catwalk for the new Jaeger collection. We’re no style experts – shocking, we know – but Jo Jo steals every scene featuring her brown and yellow number. It’s just a shame about her bruised coccyx.

Jo Jo also has a particular knack in this story for making her worried whinge (“You must be somewhere”) sound like Betty from that other 70s TV highlight, Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em.

Mind you, Jo Jo can hold her head high in the vocal department. Whenever the Master’s on screen, the subtitles (yes, a necessity to understand an iota of the scientific gobbledegook) declare MANIACAL LAUGHTER. Yeah, no sh*t.

But as ever, Roger Delgado expertly strikes the right balance between slapstick and serious, as does, ridiculously, The Time Monster as a whole.

It’s helped no end by its knack for subverting the norm on numerous Pertwee era tropes.

For example, instead of Benton falling for the fake phone call, we have fun with the idea. It’s a shame he’s then bested by the ‘look behind you’ ruse but hey-ho.

Also, Stuart the paid-up member of the cowardly party who gets aged and de-aged, is bursting with charisma – which is unusual for a supporting character, but he’s overshadowed by his female colleague, Dr Ruth Ingram, who’s equally brilliant in turning the show’s rampant sexism on its head by frequently bullying the boys.

Even wooden Krasis gets in on the act, mocking the Master’s ineffectiveness with which the audience are so familiar, goading him, “You are as a child trying to control a rogue elephant. A puny child.”

But let’s not get carried away (unlike the poor chap dressed as a gull who’s unceremoniously yanked around the studio) – because for all the scatter shots that hit the target in The Time Monster, plenty lodge themselves in the surrounding plasterboard:

MISS! The sped-up Bessie malarkey in Part One
MISS! The Doctor yelling at a guy who hasn’t quite come round yet isn’t great optics
MISS! The quality of the external film footage
MISS! The short-lived TARDIS redesign with fisheye roundels

MISS! As much as we applaud the Doctor being trapped in the time vortex, it’s over before you can say “Jon, do you fancy a cuppa?” By our count it lasts two minutes. Reliant on your frontman or what?
MISS! The guff with the Minotaur
MISS! The Atlantis scenes are nothing more than padding. And an excuse for Ingrid Pitt to show off her, ahem, remarkable talents.
MISS! Jo Jo acts as the audience surrogate when she sighs, “Here we go again” as the Master skedaddles at the end.

It’s worth remembering that Who bosses, having been dumped back down to earth by the dirge of The Mutants after the high of The Sea Devils, are desperate to end this season on a positive as we enter the show’s tenth anniversary.

And what’s the lasting image they choose as the closing credits arrive? The (scatter) shot that bids adieu to the first nine years of Doctor Who tremendousness and welcomes its second decade?

Sgt Benton. Naked. Grinning like he’s just done a whoopsie.

It’s so perfect there doesn’t even seem any need for us to make a juvenile quip about the name TOMTIT.

Other stories referenced here we've reviewed: