…1066 n' all that, it’s…
The Time Meddler
In which King
Harold takes one in the eye for British history despite a right carry on from an
interfering monk-y monk type with an interest in big bazookas…
- this all just feels so wonderfully, beautifully different.
It’s as if the strong breeze that’s buffeting the coast as the TARDIS crew
leave the ship has blown away all the cobwebs that’ve been gathering on the
series of late, and given it a new lease of life. Doctor Who would appear to be heading off in directions new, and it
feels terribly exciting. Ian and Barbara have gone, and the only anchor tying
the series down to its roots now is the Doctor and his ship. At last, William
Hartnell’s able to creep out from beneath the shadows cast by his two fellow
leads, but is he capable of carrying the show, and if not, is it really worth
carrying on with it? Well…he’s always going to need help, but in this he proves
wholeheartedly that he really is up to the job. The story itself evokes its
late summer setting beautifully. I first saw this during the BBC2 repeat in January 1992, and even in
the depths of a British winter, watching it almost fooled me into believing I could throw the
windows open and bask in the late summer sunshine. This must be the only story
in which the stock footage serves to enhance the story rather than show up its
limitations. It actually feels as though it’s filmed on location, with the sea,
seagulls, rolling moorland, Viking longboats and painted backdrop of a ruined
monastery convincing totally. Even the blow up photograph of the cliff face
manages to look real! I’m sure Douglas Camfield made a pact with the devil. A
story with so much fakery about it has no right looking this fantastic. To top it
all off there’s a moving sky! It’s sumptuous! Verity must’ve found a few quid
down the back of the sofa, coz this all looks as though it’s had money thrown
at it from every angle.
 |
| [voices coming from inside] - Steven: Fantastic buns, Vicki! Vicki: Thanks. You get the butter and I'll spread 'em for you... Little did the Monk know that the TARDIS crew were, in actual fact, preparing a picnic to have on the beach... |
- so, yes, the TARDIS lands on a beach, though thankfully this doesn’t
mean we get to see Billy exit the ship in just a thong and a pair of flip-flops
(the sight of him in a full-length bathing suit in Episode Two of The Space Museum was quite enough,
thank you very much indeed…I’m still having to take half a Paracetamol every other day in an attempt to numb the pain),
although personally I wouldn’t have minded a peek at Steven in a pair of Speedos.
- ‘…but I’m not a mountain goat, and I prefer walking to any
day…and I hate climbing’ - cue a blatantly obvious look to camera from Bill as
he tries to weigh-up whether or not to force a retake by shouting “bollocks”.
Clearly Douggie was standing behind the camera waving his arms like crazy,
begging him to carry on.
- so while Steven and Vicki shin up a sheer cliff face, the
Doctor goes in search of an easier way up. Perhaps he thinks they’ve landed at
Torbay and is hoping to come across its funicular railway.
- there are so many (stock-footage) seagulls flying about! I
almost expected to see Tippi Hedren legging it across the screen attempting to
beat them off with her handbag.
 |
| In an attempt to stop Edith from crying out for help, the Doctor attempts to administer the Vulcan nerve pinch. |
- Edith gives the Doctor the horn…erm…with mead in it I
should add (in other words, it’s a drinking vessel rather than a stiffy).
- the Doctor affecting a doddery old fart routine in order
to get the information he needs to place the date from Edith is lovely - ‘You
must have patience with an old man’ he implores as her suspicion threatens to
get the better of the situation. He thinks it’s a pity that Barbara’s no longer
with him, as he knows she’d love this time. But d’you know, this is all so
lovely I don’t miss her one little bit. And what’s absolutely wonderful is,
just as we think we’re heading for another “boring old historical”, the speed
on the Monk’s “Hooked on Gregorian Chanting” 78 slips, giving away the fact
that something fishy’s going on.
 |
| Steven's discovery of a native with a wristwatch proves, if nothing else, that Argos has been around a lot longer than any of us could ever have imagined. |
- PHWOAR Watch - I’m not even going to attempt to hide the fact that I love StevenTaylor. For one thing Peter Purves looks lush. And for another he’s got a bit
of an edge to his character that Ian didn’t have that’s proving to be just that
little bit more exciting. He’s wonderfully acerbic throughout much of this
(throughout much of his stay on the show now I come to think of it…which can get a bit
wearing after a while, but here, at the very beginning of his tenure,
it works very much in his favour). You can tell he’s not been out much during
the past couple of years. His social skills are appalling. Wrestling the
peasant to the ground to see what he’s found in the undergrowth instead of
attempting to reason with the poor sod is a classic example of how he barges in
fists first, as if he’s trying to get rid of some of that pent up aggression
he’s been bottling up for so long. He’s also sarcastic and doubting - a sort of
male Tegan, but without an accent that’s capable of cracking dried paint. It’s
a wonderful moment when he’s brought down a peg or two by Edith’s act of
kindness after she gives him and Vicki some food to take with them despite
his bull in a china shop behaviour. ‘God be with you’ is the moment when it
begins to dawn on him that he needs to modify his behaviour if he wants to re-adapt to the wider world…behaviour which has been shaped by his long spell in
captivity. It’s a beautifully sincere moment. He’s deeply flawed, and therein
lies the real difference between him and Ian, who was always presented as being
Mr Perfect all the bloody time. Steven’s a troubled soul, and we like a bit of
that. Apart from anything else he scrubs up quite well, doesn’t he. The space
pilot of the future could fiddle with my joystick any time he wanted.
 |
| Steven's social skills still needed a certain amount of refinement... |
- the Monk coats the eggs in the fat they've been frying in after he's plated them up. My mother used to do that. No wonder I was a
morbidly obese child.
- Steven and Vicki spend the night sleeping rough. I bet
they huddled together. That’s another thing about Steven…he’s much more
believably sexual than Ian. He comes across as someone who would not only be
happy to take up an offer from any female who happened to pass by, but is
actively seeking such a liaison. Basically, he’s not had his end away for two
years and if he dropped his trousers he’d probably be in danger of taking someone's eye out!
- Edith’s raped! Blimey (I bet mum and dads across the land
went completely tight lipped as their kids started asking awkward questions)! And
probably by all three Viking’s. Yet no Vincent
and the Doctor style ‘If you have been affected by the subject of this
storyline…’ announcement from the BBC
afterwards (I suspect). It’s an incredibly powerful moment, somewhat dampened in
Episode Three when the signs of her ordeal come down to her holding a damp
flannel to her cheek (which makes it look more like she’s got toothache).
 |
| Northumberland is invaded by the stars of WWF SmackDown! |
- ‘He’s gone’ says Vicki of the Doctor as she and Steven
break into his cell at the cliffhanger to The Meddling Monk. Well, either that
or he’s transformed into a pile of manky old fur pelts that even Vasor would’ve
turned his nose up at.
- Episode Three - A Battle of Wits. Of course, there's probably a soft porn version of this called A Battle of Tits featuring the *ahem* highly talented likes of Katie
Price and Jodie Marsh *shudders*.
- now Barbara’s gone, it means Vicki’s been promoted
to lead female companion, though she’s never going to entirely break away from
the role of “Doctor’s granddaughter substitute” I fear. Still, it’s nice to see
she’s got the “escaping from a locked room” routine down pat - she instantly
realises there must be a secret way out. Just recently I’ve been re-reading
some of the old CMS/In.Vision publications and it amazes me
why everyone seemed to have such a bee in their bonnet about Vicki back then.
Had they actually ever seen any of these old stories? I think I was probably
just as guilty but there again, before seeing this the only other story I’d
watched her in was The Web Planet,
and on shaky old early Nineties, pre-restoration video it was an even more
unbearable experience than on pristine, vid-FIRE’d DVD. Mind you, she does have
to deliver the extraordinarily painful ‘We haven’t got a time machine any more’
line in Checkmate. Still, credit where it’s due. Maureen O’Brien always
gives it 100%.
 |
| As Vicki frets over the apparent loss of the TARDIS, Steven tries to slip one in from behind! |
- Sven is perfect casting looks wise. He could’ve stepped
straight out of ABBA (or with that
moustache a bar frequented by Peter Wyngarde).
- The Monk - well, it
goes without saying that Peter Butterworth is fantastic in the role. As for
the character itself, well...it’s hard to think of him as being “evil”. Amoral, certainly.
On the one hand he says he’d like to give the injured Eldred a blood
transfusion, yet on the other he’s willing to destroy a fleet of Viking
longboats resulting in a large loss of life. He’s rather childlike in many
ways. Excitable and impulsive, without necessarily stopping to think of the
wider consequences (to either the lives of those around him or the timeline).
He’s someone who actually has the wherewithal to do what Barbara dreamt of doing in The Aztecs. It's interesting that his outward appearance mimics that of the Doctor's people in general when we see them for the first time, four years from now in The War Games. They too wear ecclesiastical looking robes and would appear to lead a reclusive, well-ordered, male dominated life, shrouded in secrecy. And the power exerted by the church in the period this story is set is as all pervasive as that wielded by the Time Lords within their own sphere of influence. The Monk may don a habit out of necessity here because his current surroundings dictate he wears one, but, it also ties is nicely to the idea that Time Lord society is dull and restrictive, stagnant even, which perhaps, on reflection, unwittingly gives us the first clue as to the real reason why the Doctor took off on his travels in the first place.
- it’s nice to see the Monk has
a sensible, well thought out, eight point strategy to success. How different the Master’s plan would’ve been…1.
Buy new black suit (preferably one with a nice high collar); 2. Polish Tissue
Compression Eliminator; 3. Land at destination and hypnotise someone; 4. Adopt
ludicrous disguise for no apparent reason whatsoever and ham it up a bit; 5.
Lay out plans for global/galactic/universal* (*delete as applicable)
domination to the powers that be; 6. Gloat; 7. Gloat a bit more; and 8. Lose!
- interesting that both the Monk and the Doctor have the same
idea of how to rid themselves of the Viking nuisance within the monastery - hit
‘em over the head with a plank.
 |
| Steven's initial guess that the Monk was planning to deluge the Middle Ages with "straight from Amsterdam" sex toys thankfully proved to be ill-founded. |
- I wish Wulnoth had got dressed before leaving his hut to greet the Monk. The sight quite put me off my cheesy puffs. At least Edith
had the decency to put her top on before answering the front door.
- ‘It’s a TARDIS…the Monk’s got a TARDIS’. Yes he has, but
why is the console on bricks. You’d need an orange box to stand on to operate
it. Of course, the answer is because it’s the Doctor’s TARDIS re-jigged to make
it look like the Monk’s. It’s the equivalent of them painting the control room
black in the Eighties in an attempt to pass it off as the Master’s.
- so, it turns out the Monk is one of the Doctor’s own people
also visiting this time zone…and for ‘one of his own people’ read “no bugger’s
thought of the title Time Lord yet”.
- ‘But you can’t rewrite history - not one line!’ insisted
the Doctor in The Temple of Evil.
Well, from what’s said here it would appear that the real meaning of his words
to Barbara was not that history can’t
be changed, but that it mustn’t be
changed. That’s that cleared up then.
- ‘A crew member? You’ll be lucky! He’s the crew - we’re just
the passengers’ Vicki tells Steven. Sorry, but that sentence doesn’t scan quite
right for me. It should be ‘A crew member? You’ll be lucky! He’s the crew -
we’re just the members’, but I suppose that would’ve been too much even for
Dennis Spooner.
- Death-O-Meter: 126. Gunnar the Giant - slain by
also has a stab at him, but he only
manages to stick his sword in the attacker's hiking boot by the looks of it. Hardly a
killing blow; 127 & 128. Villagers
- killed by the Vikings, who start to plunder, rape and
murder as soon as they set foot on Northumbrian soil. You have to admire their
professionalism when it comes to living up to their reputation; 129. Sven -
slaughtered by a load of northern villagers. It is indeed, as they say, rough
up north; 130. Ulf - ditto…yup, rough as a badger’s arse.
- erm…the Doctor seems to have forgotten that he’s stranded
the Monk in Earth’s history with a bloody great stash of deadly weapons
complete with the means of launching them! Surely the Monk could still see his
plan through even though his TARDIS now resembles a Wendy House. Doh!
- Cry Watch - the end
shot of all three regulars' faces superimposed over the star-scape is just punch
the air brilliant and unexpectedly moving. It’s a gorgeous end to the second season
and it gives you a real sense of excitement and hope for the third. In fact, if
the series had ended at this point, it would’ve been the perfect final shot.
Score on the
TARDIS Doors - 10 - I just can’t fault
this. I fell in love with it the very first time I saw it, and for the first time in this marathon since 100,000 BC I’ve
been completely mesmerised by a story. Maybe I just have a thing for men in
tatty old bits of sheepskin and ropey facial hair.
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