4 episodes
Aired between 3rd July 1965 and 24th July 1965
Written by Dennis Spooner
Produced by Verity Lambert
Directed by Douglas Camfield
Synopsis
Vicki is sighing and moping about the console room, saying how she will miss Ian and Barbara. The Doctor agrees, and comforts her, offering to take Vicki home too if she wants, but she declines.
They hear a noise coming from the living quarters. Vicki assumes one of the Daleks survived, but it turns out to be a bruised and battered Steven Taylor who managed to find the TARDIS whilst it was on Mechanus (see The Chase). Steven enters the console room and passes out.
The Doctor and Vicki nurse Steven back to consciousness and explain to him that he's now on a time machine. Steven is skeptical to say the least, which winds Vicki up, but the Doctor takes it all in his stride, confident that Steven will be shown the truth when they arrive at their next destination.
The TARDIS arrives on a rocky shore, and a local monk observes its arrival with great astonishment.
Steven cleans himself up, and the group exit the TARDIS for a look round. Soon enough, the Doctor finds an old Viking helmet and presents it to Steven, who promptly dismisses it as part of a child's costume.
The group decide to explore a set of nearby cliffs, but the Doctor decides to take the long and easy way around. Vicki reluctantly tackles the heights of the cliffs with Stephen.
Once they're gone, the monk turns up and inspects the TARDIS, trying the door only to find it locked. The monk curiously checks his wrist, to find it bare.
The Doctor finds his way to a nearby village where he starts poking around in the houses only to be pinned to the wall by a quarterstaff.
Meanwhile, the monk makes his way back up the cliff to his monastery, Seconds after he enters the building, Gregorian chants begin to sidle out of the window.
Back on the beach, two of the villagers peer down the cliff face. The first villager explains that he saw a strange box there, but the tide's come in and obviously smashed it apart against the rocks.
The Doctor is sat by a camp fire, where one of the village women gives him some mead and begs apology for assaulting him. The Doctor uses his wits and bluffs information out of the woman, finding out that they've landed in 1066, and they are in Northumbria, where the Vikings have been raiding the local townsfolk, just before Harold and his army turns up to beat them.
As the woman goes off to get more food, the Doctor suddenly hears the singing distort and get slower before it returns to normal. He discovers from the woman that the monks haven't been there long, and no one's seen much of the monks so far. The Doctor gets excited and sets off to the monastery.
Meanwhile, Vicki and Steven have made it to the top of the cliff. They err on the side of caution and hide when they hear someone approaching, but Steven is restless. A man appears in the clearing, and the pair watch him as he finds something shiny on the floor. Against Vicki's wishes, Steven casually steps out into the clearing to ask the man what he's found. The man tries to run and Steven ends up fighting him, but gets a thick lip for his troubles as the man runs away. Vicki is mad with Steven's brashness but Steven happily says he got what the man found and holds up a wrist watch, reassuring his faith that they haven't traveled in time.
At the monastery, the Doctor enters and looks around the place to find a grammar phone playing Gregorian chants. He laughs to himself but his amusement is short lived as bars drop down behind him. The monk arrives, laughing and jeering at the Doctor through the bars.
The monk moves the Doctor to a cell, where he spends the night.
Vicki and Steven have spent the night in the clearing, and as they awake to begin looking for the Doctor, they are ambushed by the men who went to find the TARDIS and are brought back to the village. This seems to finally convince Steven that perhaps they did travel back in time after all.
Once at the village, some of the villagers want to kill Steven and Vicki for being Viking spies, but the woman in the village recounts how she met the Doctor last night. Wulnoth, the headman of the village says they are just traveler's and lets them go. Steven and Vicki are told that the Doctor went to the monastery and so they set off there.
Now morning has arrived, the monk goes back to the cliff side and observe the horizon with a pair of binoculars, watching with glee as a Viking long ship appears. The monk goes off again with a smile to make preparations. As the longship lands, a small party of Vikings scale the cliff and go off to scout the area for food and to gauge the resistance of the populace.
Steven and Vicki arrive at the monastery, and ask the monk if he's seen the Doctor. The monk says he hasn't but to appease Steven, agrees to check with the other members of his order. There are no other members of his order, however.
Steven doesn't believe the monk and when he returns, Steven asks him to keep a lookout for the Doctor, questioning him as to if the monk can remember his description. The monk smiles and recounts what the Doctor looks like before wishing them a good day and closing the door. Steven is proud of himself as he never gave a description, so he's therefore certain the monk has him prisoner. Vicki isn't too sure about it and thinks that it's too easy. Regardless, they vow to sneak into the monastery after dark and rescue the Doctor.
Back in the village, the woman is assaulted by the Viking scout party and they make their getaway with food, leaving the woman catatonic. When they find her, the villagers are in outrage, accusing Steven and Vicki of the crime. The woman tells Wulnoth that it was the Vikings, and the men set off with swords in their hands to track them down. It isn't long before they do indeed find the Vikings and they break out into a fight. Most of the Vikings are killed, with a couple escaping, and only Wulnoth and one of the accusatory villagers surviving the attack, the latter sustaining a deep wound.
Wulnoth carries his fellow villager towards the monastery for help.
At the monastery, the monk prepares his Grammar phone and cell trap for the pair, and lies in hiding, but as Steven and Vicki enter, Wulnoth arrives and begins pounding on the door.
The monk is forced to answer the door and isn't there to spring the trap when Vicki and Steven find the Grammar phone. The pair advance through the monastery until they find the Doctor's cell. Steven picks the lock, but they soon find that the Doctor is gone, managing to escape through a secret passage, which they follow.
The monk manages to occupy Wulnoth long enough to check for the intruders, but finds that the cell is empty and that Steven and Vicki are gone. He looks worried, but is forced to tend to the aid of the villagers with some penicillin. Wulnoth insists that the injured villager stays at the monastery. The monk doesn't like it, but he relents.
The Doctor makes his way back to the village, where the woman tells him about their encounter with Steven, Vicki and the Vikings. The Doctor believes that the arrival of the vikings is somehow linked to the monk and decides that he needs to confront him again.
Despite following the secret passage, Steven and Vicki fail to find the Doctor. They return to the TARDIS, thinking that he might have done the same.
Elsewhere in the woods, the remaining two Vikings argue about their next course of action, but eventually agree to lie low in the monastery until the invasion fleet arrives.
The monk studies his plans, which seem to include using an atomic cannon to blow up the Viking fleet. All seems to be on schedule, but his work is interrupted once more by a knock at his door. When the monk answers it, he is surprised by the Doctor who points a stick in his back and pretends it's a rifle. The Doctor says he wants some answers and leads the monk back inside the monastery.
Steven and Vicki arrive at the edge of the cliff to see the TARDIS has gone, and the tide is in. Vicki is distraught at this, believing that either the Doctor has left without them, or that the TARDIS has been swept away. Steven encourages her to take action by going back to the monastery to see if the Doctor hung around. On their way, the pair find the monks atomic cannon in a nearby bush.
There's yet another knock at the monastery door just as the Doctor begins to interrogate the monk. The Doctor insists that they answer the door together, but demands a set of robes so he cannot be shown as a bad guy by the monk. As they get to the door, the Doctor commands the monk to stay back so he can do the talking, but as soon as he answers the door, Sven the Viking puts a sword under his nose.
The two Vikings order him to be quiet and take them in, which the Doctor has no choice but to do, whilst the monk escapes.
The Doctor is taken to his old cell and locked in, whilst Ulf the Viking goes to threaten the other monks. He comes across an altar where he is knocked unconscious by the monk who pops out of hiding with a plank of wood.
The monk ties Ulf up and pops off to the village, convincing Wulnoth and the woman to get the villagers to light beacons on the cliffside in the next two or three days. As he leaves, Wulnoth and the woman decide that it has something to do with a possible invasion.
Back at the monastery, Sven discovers a secret passageway lying open in the cell. He checks it out, and the Doctor cleverly approaches from behind and knocks Sven unconscious (also with a bit of wood). Satisfied, the Doctor goes off to find the monk once more.
Steven and Vicki return to the monastery via the secret door and find the unconscious Sven. They continue until they reach a large room containing a Saxon Sarcophagus, and see a large power cable sticking out from behind it. Sure enough, there are two doors that open up and when Steven and Vicki climb inside, they find that it's another TARDIS!
The monk returns to the monastey and gloats to Ulf, saying that the beacons will attract the Vikings, but is confronted by a sword wielding Doctor once more.
Under the Doctor's urging, the monk reveals that his plan was to draw the Vikings in close and then destroy them with the atomic cannon so that Harold would win the battle of Hastings.
The Doctor insists that the monk takes him to his time machine, which is disguised as the Sarcophagus, where they meet up with Vicki and Steven. They ask the monk why he'd want to meddle with history, and he makes it obvious that he's doing it for fun, wanting to help get jet aircraft by the 1300's and keep Harold on the throne because he thinks he'd be a good king.
The Doctor admits that the monk comes from the same planet as him, but fifty years into the future. They compare the monks "Mark 4" machine to the Doctors and joke about how at least the chameleon circuit works in this one. All this talk of the TARDIS reminds Vicki about the fate of their own and she tells the Doctor that theirs has washed out to sea. The Doctor laughs and says that it won't be moved by the tide, it's simply submerged.
Whilst they are discussing all this, the monk seizes his chance to escape, but as soon as he leaves the TARDIS, he is captured by Ulf and Sven who have been revived. The monk tells them that they should be attacking the Doctor and his friends, putting the blame on them. The Vikings take no chances and tie up the Doctor, Vicki and Steven.
The injured villager witnesses the monks treachery and rushes back to the village to warn them. The villagers are already up in arms about the beacons and this just makes them certain that the monk is a Viking spy.
The villagers run off towards the monastery to take care of the threat.
The Vikings agree to help the monk set beacon fires for the invasion and start carrying a box of fireworks with them to the cliff. They are met by the angry mob of villagers who begin chasing them around the monastery Benny Hill style.
Lucky for the TARDIS crew, the woman from the village turns up and frees them. The Doctor thanks her and proceeds to disable the monk's TARDIS by removing the dimensional stabilizer.
He leaves a note for the monk and together he, Steven and Vicki head off back to their own TARDIS.
The monk meanwhile deceives the Vikings, leaving them to be killed whilst he gets away. He rushes back to the monastery, giving up on his plan and intending to leave. He finds the Doctor's note which says that he's stranded the monk there, and that he may decide to come back at some point and return the dimensional stabilizer. Sure enough, when the monk looks inside the Sarcophagus, he finds that the TARDIS' internal dimensions have shrunk to be in line with its outside dimensions.
The once arrogant monk sits in despair, for now, he's stranded in 1066.
Trivia
- If you don't count the Doctor himself, this is the first story where an alien or anachronistic presence is the cause behind historical events, or the changing of them. By the end of the first Doctor's reign, this type of story will be very much the standard for historical's.
- Once again, William Hartnell takes a holiday. This time missing episode 2 by being in a prison cell.
- This is one of the first occasions where we get true continuity issues. Whilst David Whittaker was script editor, the rule was that no amount of meddling could change history. This fit with Sidney Newman's format that historical episodes should be educational. Once Dennis Spooner took over, all that changed. In this story, not only can history be changed, but we also see that the TARDIS is more than something the Doctor made up in his shed.
What worked
- When pointing to the Viking helmet, in response to Stephens dismissal of it. "What do you think it is, a space helmet for a cow?" Priceless!
- When the Doctor is exploring the monastery, it does give you a bit of an eerie feeling.
- To say that this was all studio work, the woodland sets were pretty darn good
- The big reveal at the end of episode 3.
- It's great to see that a lot of the Time Lord history wasn't contradicted here. Things are ellusive and questions go unanswered, like who it is that came up with the law about changing history, or whether the monks TARDIS is a better model than the Doctor's.
- The bit where the monk sells out the Vikings to the angry mob is a bit ruthless and shows there's more to this bumbling monk than meets the eye
What didn't work
- The prison the Doctor finds himself in at the end of episode 1 - what, the monk just happens to place bars over all his doorways in case people enter uninvited?
- Why is there a cell in a monastery. It could have been another room, but why is there a bed in it and a lock on the door?
- Sven the viking sounds like he may as well come from Kensington
- The only way Steven can know what's going off is for Vicki to give all the exposition, but unless she's been taught off screen, how does she know all about dematerialisation and the such?
- Who do Steven and Vicki search for a secret door in a cell that's already unlocked?
- Even if the monk is stranded, the Doctor never did anything with the Atomic Cannon. He could still change history.
Overall Feelings
On the surface of it, the Time Meddler is tedious. There's lots of hanging around and making conversation with villagers, and astonishingly quick day and night sequences that progress for no reason at all. Indeed, until the end of episode 3, we're forced to watch all the shenanigan's that were present in stories like the Reign of Terror, but with the disadvantage of not having anyone of historical importance to hook us in. Until that moment, you would be forgiven in saying that it's quite boring. But if you feel that way, you may not have been listening to what's been said before.
To get the most out of this story, you have to go back to the advice I gave you in the Unearthly Child. You have to watch this as if only two years of Doctor Who are in existence. If you do, then the allure and mystery of why a grammar phone is in a monastery in 1066 becomes more interesting, and the monks TARDIS becomes a really big deal, just like it was for people back in 1965.
Having said all of that, this isn't the most intellectual story out there. It explores things that we as a viewer would no doubt consider if we had access to a time machine, e.g. using compound interest to make a fortune. It takes the concept of the Space museum showing off all sorts of Artifacts and pondering the effects of messing about with time, and combines it with the farcical nature of the Romans, who better then than Peter Butterworth to play the main bad guy?
Rating
6 out of 10
Interesting concepts and a good introduction to the Time Lord element, but it takes a while for the story to get into gear.
Rewatchability Factor
4 out of 10
The story is a bit slow, made tedious by having to explain everything to Steven, who doesn't believe it anyway!
Watch this if you liked
- Mark of the Rani
Consulting the Matrix
If you could introduce one piece of technology to an ancient race, what would it be?
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