The Time Warrior

Dear Gary—

The Time Warrior is Doctor Who at its best. Everything works in this manageable four part story: script, cast, sets, costumes. The only quibble I might have is with special effects, but that is incidental.

I’d like to start, Gary, with the introduction of the new companion, Sarah Jane Smith. Sarah Jane is one of the best known and loved companions of early Doctor Who and The Time Warrior is the perfect debut story for her.

“You can make yourself useful; we need somebody around here to make the coffee,” the Doctor says with a smile as he first meets her. Sarah Jane is no coffee maker; neither is she a test tube fetcher; nor a devotee. Not Sarah Jane Smith.

I love Sarah’s character as depicted in this her premier serial. My initial exposure to her had been in the Baker years when her role had settled down into the more typical female companion who wanders off and gets into trouble. I have only first viewed The Time Warrior in the past few years and I am delighted to see her feisty nature given full reign. I always like a bit of friction between the Doctor and his companion (think Ian and Barbara) rather than the near idolatry that many companions exhibit, so The Time Warrior is a refreshing perspective on the Sarah/Doctor relationship.

“This isn’t a rescue, Doctor, it’s a capture.” Finding herself in the midst of a Middle Ages power struggle between the robber baron Irongron and the local nobility, Sarah decides that the Doctor is at fault.

When first confronted with Irongron and his henchmen, Sarah goes through the natural, logical progression of guesses as to what is going on. A village pageant, a film set, a tourist attraction. She considers and rejects each option in turn until she is left with the obvious truth: she is in the Middle Ages. This leads her to the Doctor and the mysterious machine she stowed away on. The Doctor must be responsible; “he’s no magician, just some eccentric scientist,” and he must be stopped.

Like the good investigative journalist she is, though, she does eventually dig down to the truth and converts to the Doctor’s side. “I never lie,” the Doctor tells her, “well, hardly ever.” And that is good enough for Sarah; a new companion is born.

The Time Warrior doesn’t just introduce a new companion, however; it also marks the first appearance of a Sontaran in Doctor Who. Linx is short and compact, but larger than life. Of all the recurring Doctor Who enemies, I have to say that the Sontarans are my favorite. The Daleks and Cybermen are all very well and good, but a bit monosyllabic. Give me a Sontaran any day.

Add Irongron to this mix and you have one whale of a story.

“I’ll pickle that insolent star warrior in boiling water one day.” Faced with a Dalek or Cyberman, Irongron would never be able to rant and rave as he does. He would be exterminated, cyberized, or terrorized. Linx, however, allows Irongron’s braggadocio. A cowed Irongron would be no fun; an Irongron free to futilely spout and fume provides a wealth of entertainment.

 “My race has been at war for millennia,” Linx says. Sontarans are not intent on exterminating anything unlike them, nor are they motivated by the survival instinct. Sontarans are inspired by the glory and honor of war. As such, Linx has a certain respect for Irongron and his fight against the neighboring lords.

However, Irongron’s conflicts are only a momentary diversion for Linx. His main objective is to repair his spaceship so he can return to the unending war against the Rutans. Not finding the required equipment and expertise for such a project available in the Middle Ages, Linx uses his limited resources to devise a way to kidnap scientists from the 20^th Century to conduct the necessary repairs.

It is this rash use of time travel that leads the Doctor to Linx. Linx does not pose an immediate threat to humanity. He has recklessly displaced some scientists out of their own time and is fashioning firearms for Irongron, but he has no malicious intent. He simply wants to escape from this backward time he finds himself stranded in.

“Human beings must be allowed to develop at their own pace,” is the Doctor’s objection to this plan. Providing weaponry to Man before its time will alter the course of history. The Doctor goes on to describe the Time Lords as “galactic ticket inspectors” opposed to “unlicensed time travel.” And for the first time the Doctor reveals the name of his home planet—Gallifrey.

 “Your Time Lord philosophy is egalitarian twaddle; it is a weakness,” Linx tells the Doctor. The Sontaran weakness, we learn, is the probic vent at the back of their necks.

The Time Warrior has just about everything a good Doctor Who story should have.

“Brigadier, a straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting.”

The Time Warrior takes the interesting route.

It is not just the introduction of an ideal new companion, nor the impressive foe, nor the blustering comic relief. It is all of the details; it is the cold stone castle interiors; it is the lush green exteriors; it is Sarah Jane’s Robin Hood and Maid Marian costume changes; it is Bloodaxe hanging adoringly on every inane word out of Irongron’s mouth; it is the absentminded and nearly blind Professor Rubeish wandering at will through the dungeon lab.

I could use the Doctor’s own words about the TARDIS to describe The Time Warrior: “Well done old girl—absolutely on target.”

I hope this hits on target, Gary, and finds you out there somewhere in the Doctor’s time swirl . . .

The Green Death

Dear Gary—

“So the fledgling flies the coop.” The Green Death is Jo Grant’s last appearance in Doctor Who. Jo was the perfect companion for Jon Pertwee’s Doctor. The Brigadier introduced her as a test tube passer and devotee; Jo quickly moved past that limited role and became a true companion. “You need me to look after you,” she tells him in the Mutants; and that is her strong point—she is a care giver, a mother hen, a nurturer. For an earth bound Doctor this was ideal.

However the Doctor is no longer earth bound: “I can now take the TARDIS wherever and whenever I like; I’ve got absolute control over her.”

Unlike companions of old, Jo Grant does not have wanderlust; neither is she rootless. Jo’s first experience in the TARDIS back in Colony in Space she tells the Doctor, “I want to go back to Earth.” Now that he has the TARDIS in proper working order he offers her “all the time in the world and all the space,” but she is more interested in aiding the cause of a Nobel Prize winning environmentalist she has never met, Professor Clifford Jones.

It is appropriate, therefore, that The Green Death is another UNIT story taking place on Earth despite the TARDIS being back in action. The Doctor does take a brief spin to Metebelis Three on his own while Jo and the Brigadier motor off to South Wales; however the Doctor eventually returns, a little battered and beaten, to help investigate the mysterious goings on at the Global Chemicals plant and the nearby abandoned mine.

The Green Death is a complex tale simply told.

“Doctor, it’s exactly your cup of tea; this fellow’s bright green, apparently . . . and dead.”

Simply put; and yet the trail of green death leads the Doctor, Jo, and the Brigadier through a well-crafted web of plot points.

The Doctor wants to explore the universe; the Brigadier wants to investigate the mysterious dead green miner; Jo wants to protest with her Professor. The Doctor wants an unwilling Jo to accompany him; the Brigadier wants a reluctant Doctor to accompany him; Jo is engrossed in a world of her own and is already mentally separating herself from the Doctor and from UNIT.

All three are led to the maggots.

“Well I never thought I’d fire in anger at a dratted caterpillar.”

The Brigadier wants to blow them up. Jo wants to capture one for her preoccupied Professor. The Doctor wants to get to the bottom of them.

The Brigadier still has not found a foe that yields to bullets. Jo just gets herself cornered in a cave surrounded by maggots with her useless Professor. The Doctor introduces himself to the BOSS (Bimorphic Organisational Systems Supervisor).

“I am the BOSS. I’m all around you. Exactly. I am the computer.”

A megalomaniac computer whose prime directive is “efficiency, productivity and profit for Global Chemicals of course.”

“You’re still nothing but a gigantic adding machine like every other computer,” the Doctor tells the comically insane BOSS.

The BOSS, overseeing this complex of plot threads while humming Wagner to itself.

“Wholesale pollution of the countryside. Devilish creatures spawned by the filthy by-products of your technology. Men . . . men walking around like brainless vegetables. Death. Disease. Destruction.” A simple summing up.

The Green Death is a morality tale against the evils of big business; against technology dependence; against mindless destruction of the environment. The Green Death is an adventure story. The Green Death is a romance. The Green Death is about a deadly green virus. The Green Death is about giant maggots. The Green Death is about a megalomaniac computer. The Green Death is a complex tale simply told.

And in the end The Green Death is a fitting fond farewell for Jo Grant. The romance is rather by the numbers as Jo stumbles and bumbles her way into the affections of Professor Jones, but the scenes at the Nuthatch nicely ground the story in the everyday moments of life, just as Jo is completely grounded on Mother Earth.

Jo adores the Doctor, but Metebelis Three does not call to her. She therefore transfers her affections to the closest thing to the Doctor she can find on her own planet. “In a funny way he reminds me of a sort of . . . younger you,” she tells the Doctor.

 I have to say, Gary, that I am not as impressed with the Professor as Jo is, but of all the twits she has flirted with throughout the series I guess he is as good a twit as any for her to settle down with. He won’t take her to Metebelis Three, but he will take her to the Amazon so I guess she has that.

Goodbye Jo Grant, soon to be Jo Jones. The Doctor gives her the blue crystal from Metebelis Three for a wedding present, and she looks wistfully after him as he departs, but her heart remains in her own familiar world.

It is a touching scene at the end when Jo and her Professor celebrate their engagement with their UNIT and Nuthatch friends as the Doctor quietly slips away to ride off solo into the sunset.

I have to say, though, that I am looking forward to the new chapter opening up as TARDIS travel has been restored to Doctor Who.

And so I will take my fond farewell, Gary . . .

Planet of the Daleks

Dear Gary—

Planet of the Daleks does not take place on the Dalek planet of Skaro. Planet of the Daleks takes place on Spiridon, a remote planet of an invisible race of Spiridons that the Daleks have conquered, and they are now attempting to master the Spiridon technique of invisibility. This is a truly scary thought—invisible Daleks—but it is not fully developed or explored. It is a simple plot device to explain why the Daleks are on this planet; that is all.

The Doctor and Jo have stumbled out of the treadmill that was Frontier in Space and are now hot on the trail of the Daleks; or rather, the TARDIS is. The Doctor had been grazed by a bullet from the Master’s gun and only had time to send a telepathic message to the Time Lords before passing out. Operating the TARDIS by remote control, the Time Lords send the TARDIS, the Doctor, and Jo to Spiridon.

I have to say, Gary, that fresh off of Frontier in Space I feel rather like Professor Fate at the end of The Great Race—I’ve been cheated. I have come all this long way and have been cheated. The Master, and parenthetically the Ogrons along with the Earth and Draconian Empires, has been left dangling and forgotten. Now I begin a story that claims to be on the planet of the Daleks but it isn’t. The specter of invisible Daleks is raised but never explored. I expect Doctor Who to step up.

Doctor Who does not disappoint.

Skaro aside; the Master aside; invisibility aside; Planet of the Daleks is solid Doctor Who entertainment.

“You come here out of nowhere and then claim to be something out of a legend.”

Materializing out of the mists of the Doctor's time swirl, the legend that is Doctor Who sweeps away all vague disappointments.

Even though Planet of the Daleks does not take place on Skaro it does have some nice echoes of that past initial encounter between the Doctor and his mortal enemies. We have an inhospitable planet with the Daleks holed up in a city while the ineffectual Thals are on the outside unable and unwilling to cope. We have the Doctor arriving to lead the Thals on a several pronged raid on the city where the Daleks have a countdown to unleash a deadly threat to all living creatures on the planet surface. We even have someone getting inside an emptied Dalek casing to maneuver past patrolling guards.

However, while the first Doctor was simply motivated by curiosity and the desire to retrieve his fluid link, this third Doctor traveled to Spiridon with the sole purpose of defeating the Daleks. “For a man who abhors violence, I must say I took great satisfaction in doing that,” the Doctor says of disabling a Dalek. Even the Thals have traveled all this way in pursuit of the Daleks.

In the original, rather over long, Dalek adventure the Daleks were confined to Skaro and only posed a threat to the Thals. The Daleks have since emerged as a danger to the entire universe, and Planet of the Daleks (still a tad long at six episodes) has a greater sense of urgency about it and more than enough action to carry us through.

“When faced with the inevitable, don’t waste precious time by resisting it.”

The Thals have been wasting precious time. They at least had the gumption to man a space flight to track the Daleks, however now that they have landed they are hopelessly inept and not much better than their ancestors from the first story. The lackluster leader Taron attributes his paralysis of mind to caution, and later has the nerve to blame it on the presence of his lover Rebec. His compatriot Vaber, on the other hand, is far too rash.

Enter the Doctor. "Let's take a look in our pockets." The Doctor leaves no pocket unturned; he will always find a way. (Thankfully this time around the Doctor's way does not involve long treks through swamps and caves like the first time.)

As I mentioned before, the Dalek plan to adapt the Spiridon art of invisibility doesn't go very far. They have had only limited success when our story begins, and apparently they abandon all attempts in future as I am unaware of any further mention of invisible Daleks in Doctor Who history.

The second Dalek threat in our story also peters out. The Daleks intend on unleashing deadly bacteria onto the planet surface, but the native Spiridon Wester sacrifices himself by releasing it in a sealed room so that it is contained; the Daleks cannot open the room as they have not yet been immunized. Of course this wouldn’t stop them from completing the immunization process and then letting the bacteria out, or from just whipping up another batch.

These first two Dalek plots, however, do serve to keep the action flowing until the Doctor can uncover the third and real danger--a vast army of Daleks currently in cold storage on the planet.

At this point it turns out to be a good thing that the Thals have squandered their time on Spiridon just moving their stockpile of explosives from one hiding place to another. This at least has served to keep the bombs safe so that the Doctor (with the help of Jo who manages to snag two from the clutches of the Daleks) can utilize them in his plan to bury the Dalek army in a flood of molten ice.

“We have been delayed, not defeated. The Daleks are never defeated.”

That is the wonderful thing about the Daleks. They never kill the Doctor and the Doctor never quite defeats them. They will always be back as the Supreme Dalek proclaims--delayed not defeated.

Before taking his leave of the Thals the Doctor advises them, “Don’t glamorize it; don’t make war sound like an exciting and thrilling game.” Somehow I don’t think the Thals can make anything sound exciting or thrilling. All in all the Thals are rather a dull race and there is a reason that they do not return again and again to Doctor Who.

A few final thoughts, Gary, about the TARDIS before I sign off. The uncomfortable looking curvy lounge beds that the first Doctor used have been abandoned; we now have a bed that emerges from the wall at the push of a button. In fact there is an entire bank of drawers and lockers along one wall of the control room that is something new. The TARDIS interior has gone through several redesigns in recent serials; I wonder when the Doctor finds the time. One more point about the TARDIS; I find it rather hard to believe that the oxygen supply can be so easily depleted in this indestructible, miraculous, bigger (seeming infinitely so) on the inside machine.  But I will set this TARDIS anomaly aside just as I set Frontier in Space aside and let the Doctor Who magic take over.

Until next time, Gary, . . . delayed not defeated . . .

Frontier in Space

Dear Gary—

I feel cheated after watching Frontier in Space. This six episode serial is nothing more than an overlong prologue to the next in the series.

“Well that’s simple then; I mean, all we’ve got to do is find out what’s going on, who’s behind the Ogrons, where they’ve taken the TARDIS, go and get it back, and then we can all go home.”

I wish it had been that simple, Jo; I wish it hadn’t been a six episode long journey, and in the end nobody can go home.

Six meaningless episodes that are all forgotten when the Daleks show up at the end of the final installment. All are forgotten—the Ogrons, the Earth Empire, the Draconian Empire, the Master. They were all red herrings.

The whole of Frontier in Space feels as though it were slapped together because somebody realized they had a six week gap before they could air the real story (Planet of the Daleks) and so they had to hurry up and fill those six timeslots.

The result is we have the Doctor and Jo captured, rescued, captured, rescued, captured on an endless loop almost as if they were back in the Miniscope from our previous story Carnival of Monsters. We have the Doctor explaining over and over that he is not in the employ of the Draconians but rather some sort of mass hypnosis is making Ogrons appear as Draconians to Earthlings and Earthlings to Draconians all in an attempt to start a war between the two empires. Again and again we have the Earth President arguing with her general over whether or not to go to war while television broadcasts in the background describe worldwide protests and demonstrations.

“Jo, will you stop pacing up and down like a perishing panda?” But who can blame her on this treadmill of a story?

Then abruptly the Doctor escapes out of his Miniscope cycle and is shipped off to a penal colony on the moon where he repeats his war conspiracy conjectures, and where the Master suddenly appears. This serves as a brief intermission before we are spun off into another seeming cycle of futility.

Now we have the Doctor trying to convince the Draconians of his mass hypnosis theory—he has reversed the polarity so to speak; instead of Ogron to Draconian it is Ogron to Earthling; instead of the Doctor trying to convince Earth he is now trying to convince Draconia; instead of the Earth President arguing with her general the Draconian Emperor is arguing with his son.

At least the Doctor has an interested ear in the Draconian Emperor, who seems much more composed and self controlled than the Earth President. “An Emperor who does not rule deposes himself,” this wise man states, and he shares the Doctor’s view that “fear is the greatest enemy of them all, for fear leads us to war.”

But Frontier in Space isn’t leading us much of anywhere.

Off we go into yet another recurring cycle of flights on spaceships; space walks to repair/sabotage; hailing vessels that might or might not be what they appear; locked up in cells only to escape from them. I lose track of what ship we’re in, where we’re headed, and who has the upper hand.

Even the individual episode ending cliff hangers seem forced—almost as though they just filmed the whole thing in one go and then chopped it up into six equal parts, never mind at what point the break occurred.

We finally end up on the Ogron planet where the Master has established a base, but it is soon revealed that he is working with the Daleks to mastermind this war between the Draconian and Earth empires. Of course the Master only ever works to his own end, and I do love, Gary, when he sarcastically mocks, “Do not fail the Daleks indeed, you stupid tin boxes.”

“We’ll see who rules the galaxy when this is over,” the ever confident Master states.

The thing is, Gary, we don’t. This (Frontier in Space) is never really over. It just kind of ends. The General and the Prince return to Earth and Draconia respectively with some vague understanding that the truth of the mass hypnosis will be told and war averted. The Ogrons scatter in a panic. The dreaded Daleks take off with their real threat yet to be realized. The Master accidentally shoots the Doctor. The Doctor stumbles into the TARDIS with Jo and dematerializes, leaving the Master behind and sending a desperate message to the Time Lords using the telepathic circuits of the TARDIS.

And we can finally get off of this merry-go-round, a little dizzy and confused.

“Only you could manage to have a traffic accident in space.” That’s what this was; a Doctor Who traffic accident in space.

And what exactly was the point?

I would like this story much better if it had been a manageable four episodes. I would have liked it much better if there was a conclusive end to all of the plot threads. I would have liked it much better if the final few minutes did not make the entirety of the preceding six episodes seem irrelevant.

I feel cheated.

Sadly, this rather unsatisfying ending is the last we will see of Roger Delgado as the Master; he died shortly after Frontier in Space aired.

I hope, Gary, that somewhere out there . . .

Carnival of Monsters

Dear Gary—

Carnival of Monsters is a delightfully refreshing story that reminds me of the first Doctor’s adventure Planet of Giants, both serials dealing with a miniaturized TARDIS and occupants as well as an outside storyline that is independent of the Doctor. It also has certain similarities to the later Tom Baker adventure Nightmare of Eden.

What I love about Carnival of Monsters is that it is pure TARDIS adventure, or misadventure. There is no alien threat to Earth; there is no ominous plot against the galaxy; there is no heinous crime against a defenseless populace; there is no wrong to right. The TARDIS has simply landed the Doctor and Jo in a predicament and he has to first figure out what is going on and then figure out how they can escape.

This is the first Doctor Who story after the Time Lords have returned the secrets of time travel to the Doctor, and he has taken the TARDIS out for a spin.

 “Are you sure you can steer that TARDIS properly?” Jo asks in true skeptical companion form.

“Jo,” the Doctor corrects, “I don’t steer the TARDIS I program it.”

He must be a bit rusty, though, as he misses his destination of Metebelis Three entirely and lands on a ship in the Indian Ocean, or so it would appear.  “There’s something wrong here.”

 The Doctor and Jo soon realize that the passengers of this ship are stuck in a time loop of sorts—destined to live out the same few hours of the same day over and over. This turns out to be a break for the Doctor and Jo; captured as stowaways, the crew and passengers soon forget about their prisoners when the loop comes full circle.

After making their getaway through a strange hatchway, the Doctor realizes that they are inside of a Miniscope, a machine that miniaturizes and entraps creatures and their surroundings within it, a machine that has been banned by the Time Lords as an “offense against the dignity of sentient lifeforms.”

This Miniscope is the property of the flamboyant Vorg, a showman who has arrived on the planet Inter Minor with his colorfully dressed assistant Shirna only to find himself caught up in some political red tape.

The Doctor and Jo running around inside the circuitry of the Miniscope, popping in and out of various entrapped environments, being chased by Drashigs that have escaped out of their own Miniscope quadrant, is interesting enough. However it is the independent storyline unfolding outside of the machine that makes Carnival of Monsters truly memorable.

One has to laugh at the peripheral plotting and wrangling and bickering of the three stooges like tribunal of Kalik, Orum, and Pletrac as they indecisively consider what to do with the suspicious Vorg and his possibly dangerous machine. One gets caught up in the double dealing, treason, and sabotage attempted by these three jesters; even though one knows that these schemes are unconnected with the main narrative of the Doctor and Jo. One can’t help one’s self.

The inept Vorg, meanwhile, is unable to aid the trapped Doctor or stop his machine from shutting down due to the Drashig’s running amok inside of it.

“This is a time for lateral thinking.” Lateral thinking is the Doctor’s specialty, and he finds his way outside of the Miniscope where he is returned to normal size; but not for long. He has yet to save Jo and the other creatures still inside.

Hooking the TARDIS up to the Miniscope, the Doctor reenters the machine leaving careful instructions behind for Vorg as to how to extract him once again when the time is right.

This is where our tribunal of fools fumble themselves into the plot with some half-baked idea on the part of two of them to allow the rampaging Drashigs to exit the machine and wreak havoc on the planet, thus somehow allowing for a rebellion to overthrow the reigning president.

“One has no wish to be devoured by alien monstrosities, even in the cause of political progress.” One should have listened to one’s own fears.

The Drashigs do escape, but Vorg of all people manages to kill them by using the one-time sabotaged Eradicator that he has managed to fix; and he manages to recall the Doctor and Jo from the machine despite the switch having been shot by one of our trio of tricksters. The Miniscope is destroyed in the process, but the creatures inside have been returned to their own time and space by the TARDIS.

Carnival of Monsters is short and sweet at four episodes long. It has just the right amount of comedy (carnival) blended with the perfect amount of peril (monsters). It has some nice Doctor/companion moments (“They not only look like chickens; they are chickens;” cluck, cluck, cluck; “Don’t you ever admit that you’re wrong?” “No; that’s impossible too.”). It has some name dropping by the Doctor (“I took lessons from John L Sullivan himself.”).

 And it has some great support. In particular I want to mention Peter Halliday as Pletrac. All three of the actors portraying the tribunal are exceptional, but I want to single out Peter Halliday on the strength of not only this role but his prior outstanding stint in The Invasion as Packer. It is also nice to see Ian Marter in an early role before his taking on the character of Harry later in the series.

Time travel has been restored to Doctor Who; the TARDIS is back in the picture; I’m looking forward to the rest of the third Doctor’s run.

As ever, Gary . . .

The Three Doctors

Dear Gary—

The Three Doctors—can it get any better than this? Well, it could actually. It would have been much better if William Hartnell had been up to an active part rather than consigned to reading lines while trapped in a time eddy.

How magical it could have all been.

Time is not just relative; time is devastating.

“Oh, so you’re my replacements—a dandy and a clown.”

 “I am he and he is me.” Or so the Doctor says. Or is it the Doctor? Jon Pertwee, meet Patrick Troughton. The First Law of Time be damned.

The Time Lords have breached this First Law of Time (which states that a Time Lord cannot meet his previous selves) due to a force equal and opposite to their own emanating from a black hole that is draining their power.

I have a couple of things to say about this, Gary. First, this view of the Time Lords as little more than air traffic controllers is somewhat disappointing. Secondly, it seems “rather too convenient” (Alpha Centaurie didn’t know how apropos he/she was in this remark) that Absolute Laws of Time can so easily be broken. But then, where would Doctor Who be without the ability to so blithely break the Laws it makes up?

It seems there are no dire consequences for this violation; some minor bickering between the two Doctor selves is all that occurs.

“You’ve got no right to be here,” says Doctor Three to Doctor Two.

“I can see you’ve been doing the TARDIS up a bit; I don’t like it,” says Doctor Two.

In steps Doctor One to mediate: “Stop dilly dallying.”

Taking the first Doctor’s advice to heart, Doctor Three rushes out of the TARDIS and is promptly zapped “over the absolute event horizon” with Jo into the antimatter world of the black hole. The second Doctor, meanwhile, is left at UNIT HQ with Benton and a somewhat befuddled Brigadier to deal with the cleverly named “some kind of powerful organism thing.”

Doctor Two decides the best way to deal with this organism thing is to confuse it with senseless information: “I wonder if I have a television set handy.”

“Seems to be your forte Doctor--confusing people.” But the Brigadier won’t stand for confusion. He deals with what is set before him.

“As long as he does the job, he can wear what face he likes.”

The Three Doctors, however, doesn’t merely present us with three faces of the Doctor; it presents us with three distinct faces of Time Lord. We have the all powerful but detached beings who are content to sit back and watch as events unfold represented by our air traffic controllers; we have the ever curious and adventure seeking renegade who stands up to bullies represented by the Doctor(s); and we have the Time Lord gone wrong, represented in this story not by the Master but by Omega.

“A hero . . . I should have been a god!”

Omega: legendary architect of the Time Lord’s power; Omega: long believed dead, trapped in the black hole of his creation; Omega: a hero, not a god.

“Power is the only freedom that I seek; absolute power is absolute freedom.” Omega is quite literally out of his mind; in fact, he is out of his body. Omega has ceased to exist; only his will makes him so.

Omega is a triumph of a character. The inscrutable mask he wears never changes, yet it manages to project profound sadness, loneliness, bitterness, anger, and insanity in turn as the story progresses. The robes he wears, too, are deep, rich, and luxurious. He commands attention with his presence and his voice demands respect.

All of the Time Lords’ power cannot cope with this equal and opposite force Omega. It takes not one but three (or more accurately two and a fraction) Doctors.

The second Doctor soon joins the third in the black hole, bringing UNIT HQ, the Brigadier, and Benton with him for good measure.

“Now see here, Doctor, you have finally gone too far.”

The first Doctor is still confined to the TARDIS screen and can only offer counsel to the other two.  “I always had a great respect for his advice,” the second Doctor says of the first; even confined as he is in this limited role, William Hartnell still manages to exude wisdom.

Patrick Troughton, on the other hand, disarms with his childlike fervor: “Are you sure that you and he are of the same intelligence?”

Meanwhile Jon Pertwee impresses with his elegance and athletic prowess.

“Three of them; I didn’t know when I was well off.”

Three of them.

The Time Lords, for all of their might, can only sit back helplessly; Omega, for all of his might, is trapped in the world of his own creation; the Doctor, with his intelligence, enthusiasm, and flourish finds the way out of this impasse.

“Care for a Jelly Baby?”

No, Jelly Babies are not the solution, it is the recorder actually (both courtesy of Doctor Two), but it is that type of sideways thinking that suits the Doctor(s) so well and allows him to defeat the Daleks, the Cybermen, and any alien the universe throws at him, including Omega (“Mind over antimatter”).

The Brigadier, on the other hand, doesn’t think outside the box, he confronts problems head on, military style: “First we do a reccy; then we mount a surprise attack.”

Never mind that the ‘we’ he is referring to consists of simply himself and Ollis, the unsuspecting game warden who was the first to be whisked up into this world of black hole antimatter. The Brig makes his plans just as if he were commanding a troop of armed and trained soldiers.

The Three Doctors might be what this serial is all about, but the Brigadier is the stand out star.

Having the three (or two and a fraction) Doctors together is a treat; Omega is a triumph; but the rest of the story is rather hit or miss and would have been an overall disappointment if it had not been for the Brig’s priceless commentary throughout.

“It’s quite obvious to me what’s happened; you’ve been monkeying around with that infernal machine of yours.”

Everything is obvious to the Brigadier, and if it is not he makes it so.

And so I will give the last word to the Brig: “As far as I’m concerned, Doctor, one of you is enough—more than enough.”

Three is fine for the odd serial or two, but one will do for the every day. At least the current Doctor has now been given back the secret of time travel by the grateful Time Lords.

And so I send this out, Gary, looking forward to more of Doctor Three and saying a fond last farewell to Doctor One and a ‘till next time’ to Doctor Two . . .

The Time Monster

Dear Gary—

“Having picked us all up by the scruff of the neck and bundled us all in here, what do you propose to do with us?” I feel rather like the Brigadier in watching The Time Monster, bundled up and set down in a story with no real purpose or direction.

The Time Monster feels like a story that was made up as they went along, with one actor providing a starting scene and each actor in turn picking up the thread of the story where the previous actor left off, taking the plot in whatever direction their whim fancied.

Jon Pertwee: The Doctor has a dream that the Master is causing global devastation and warns the Brigadier to issue a worldwide alert.

Nicholas Courtney: “A dream—really Doctor, you’ll be consulting the entrails of a sheep next.”

Roger Delgado: The Master has disguised himself as a professor and is working on a TOMTIT (Transmission of Matter Through Interstitial Time) experiment.

Katy Manning: “I know I’m exceedingly dim, but would you mind explaining?”

John Levene: The Brigadier and Benton decide to observe the TOMTIT demonstration.

Pertwee: The Doctor devises a ‘TARDIS sniffer outer’ to locate the Master.

Delgado: The Master has hypnotized the Director of the Institute and proceeds with his time experiments to recall a mysterious creature that seems to be trapped in a crystal.

Courtney: “That’s a fearsome looking load of electronic nonsense you’ve got together.  . . .How does it all work, in words of one syllable?”

Pertwee: The Doctor uses Bessie’s Super Drive to catch the Master before he can complete his TOMTIT experiment.

Levene: The Master’s time experiments go wrong and age his assistant past 80 years.

Pertwee: The Doctor rushes in just in time: “Reverse the polarity!”

Courtney: “Doctor I wish you wouldn’t talk in riddles.”

Delgado: The Master slips out in the confusion.

Courtney: The Brigadier calls for UNIT reinforcements; “I feel as naked as a baby in its bath.”

Pertwee: The Master’s creature is Kronos who comes from a place outside of time, “a place that is no place; a dangerous place where creatures live beyond your wildest imagination.” Kronos poses a danger “to the entire created universe.”

Manning: “And a Merry Michaelmas to you too.”

Delgado: The Master calculates why his experiment has gone wrong and returns to the lab to correct TOMTIT.

Levene: Benton is on guard in the lab and foils the Master’s attempts to lure him away. “It’s the oldest trick in the book.”

Delgado: “You’re wrong Sergeant Benton, that is the oldest trick in the book.” The Master knocks out Benton, and transports High Priest Krasis from Atlantis using his TOMTIT and seizes the priest’s Seal of Kronos that will control Kronos so that he can obtain complete power over the Earth.

Levene: Benton wakes up and escapes to warn the Doctor.

Delgado: The Master calls forth Kronos.

Pertwee: The Master can’t control Kronos; he only has a partial crystal. The other half of the crystal is located in ancient Atlantis.

Levene: Benton would love a spot of tea and a marmalade sandwich.

Courtney: “This isn’t a picnic.”

Pertwee: The Doctor devises an instrument using bottles and corks and forks to interfere with the Master’s time experiments.

Courtney: “Doctor, I must insist, what are you up to?”

Manning: “You just wait and see.”

Courtney: “Doctor, please stop this silly game at once.”

Pertwee: “It was fun while it lasted.”

Courtney: UNIT forces are on the way; “Get your skates on, will you.”

Delgado: The Master calls forth historical soldiers through time to fight the UNIT forces and blows up the convoy escorting the TARDIS.

Pertwee: The TARDIS cannot be destroyed; it just needs to be up righted.

Delgado: The Master and Krasis escape in his TARDIS: “My power is greater than your imagination can encompass.”

Pertwee: The Doctor chases the Master in his TARDIS and lands inside the Master’s TARDIS so that “wherever it goes, I’ll go with it.”

Manning: “The TARDIS looks different.”

Delgado: “Good, now I’ve got him really trapped.”

Manning:”Oh, I think I’ve bruised my tailbone.”

Pertwee: “Sorry about your coccyx, Jo, but these little things are set to try us.”

Delgado: “Oh dear, what a bore the fellow is.” The Master tunes out the Doctor.

Pertwee: Old Venusian proverb: “If the Thraskin puts his fingers in his ears it is polite to shout.”  

Manning: “I just don’t get it.”

Levene: TOMTIT turns Benton into a baby and traps the Brigadier in a slow motion time bubble.

Delgado: The Master flings the Doctor out into the time vortex.

Manning: Jo saves the Doctor.

Delgado: The Master lands in ancient Atlantis and seduces Queen Galleia.

Pertwee: The Doctor and Jo arrive in Atlantis and ally with King Dalios.

Manning: Jo gets an Atlantian makeover and buddies up to the Queen’s handmaid.

Delgado: The Master sends a patsy in to retrieve the second half of the crystal that is guarded by a Minotaur.

Manning: Jo follows the patsy.

Pertwee: The Doctor fights the Minotaur thus saving both Jo and the ancient crystal that controls Kronos. “That’s what all the fuss has been about.”

Manning: “Gives me a funny feeling.”

Delgado: The Master has the Doctor and Jo imprisoned with the dying king.

Pertwee: The Doctor shares a tender Zen moment with Jo in which he describes a boyhood memory of a wise old man and “the daisiest daisy I’d ever seen.”

Delgado: The Queen introduces the Master as King to the Atlantian council.

Pertwee: The Queen turns on the Master when she learns Dalios is dead.

Delgado: The Master calls forth Kronos.

Pertwee: “He’s uncontrollable” and Kronos destroys Atlantis.

Delgado: The Master escapes in his TARDIS.

Pertwee: The Doctor chases the Master in his own TARDIS and threatens a Time Ram to destroy them all.

Delgado: “Do you think I’m going to dance to the Doctor’s tune like some performing poodle?” The Master calls the Doctor’s bluff; the Doctor can’t bring himself to destroy Jo Grant.

Manning: Jo puts an end to it all by flipping the switch.

Pertwee: The Time Ram frees Kronos who gratefully spares their lives and seeks revenge on the Master.

Delgado: The Doctor pleads for mercy for the Master and Kronos lets him go.

Levene: TOMTIT is activated and Benton reverts to his normal age still in his nappy.

The End.

Or so I imagine it going.

It’s an entertaining enough story, this strange little “gap between the now and the now;” this “hiatus in time;” this “ontological absurdity.” “The whole of creation is very delicately balanced in cosmic terms,” and it seems that a little bit of Kronos’ chaos has seeped through, sweeping order and structure away in terms of The Time Monster.  But it results in great fun.

I hope  a little bit of that fun seeps through the Doctor’s time swirl to reach you, Dear Gary . . .