God Bless the Good Ship Atlantis and all who sink in her!

The (waste of) Time Monster 

Nietzsche said "life is a choice between suffering and boredom." He obviously never watched the Time Monster...

Back in the 1980s, Doctor Who was not as good as it used to be. At least, not according to the older generation of fandom. Season 24 in particular was subject to a barrel of abuse from "the usual suspects" who opined that the series had gone downhill since 1970s. The Pertwee era in particular was held in an almost unassailable high, in comparison to Tom Baker's reign, which was three years of Hinchcliffe highs and three years of wallowing in the Williams era plus one year of him looking miserable in maroon with John Nathan Turner... 

JNT came up with the infamous phrase, "The memory cheats" which did very little to quell the argument. In fact it just fed the flames of their hatred and was definitely a case of biting the hands that feed, another cliche JNT used, if memory serves me correctly. 

I recently listened to James H's episode of Si Hart's Library of Impossible Things podcast and he mentioned about the received fan wisdom in books and magazines in the 1980s of "good stories, bad stories and the Gunfighters." So my generation was almost indoctrinated into believing everything up to 1977 was uniformly excellent (apart from the Gunfighters and possibly Invasion of the Dinosaurs!) And everything after that time was rubbish...

What's this got to do with the Time Monster, i hear you ask? Well, here's my answer...

It's Christmas 2001, I've become the grateful owner of that wonderful tin with Roger Delgado on it, with Colony in Space and the Time Monster on VHS. 

After about 10 minutes of Jo wittering on about "a pippin of dream" and a lot of talk about TOMTIT, I felt cheated. I felt I'd been lied to. All those older fans who were declaring Time and the Rani as the biggest crime committed in the name of Doctor Who had conveniently forgotten that earlier eras had some stinkers too. 

And, in my opinion, The Time Monster pongs terribly...

Cos frankly, the Time Monster is bloody awful. I've only ever heard the word nadir used by Doctor Who fans, so I'm not going to be left out. This for me is the absolute nadir of classic Who. Yes, some stories are dull like Underworld (although part one is actually quite good!) or the ideas have exceeded the budget and should never have been attempted (Time Flight, anyone?) 

However the Time Monster manages to be dull and yet embarrassingly silly at the same time. The Discontiuity Guide describes it as like watching paint dry whilst being whipped by barbed wire...

But The Time Monster commits the ultimate sin of being lazy. It feels as though the production team have seen the ten million viewers they're getting for Day of the Daleks and thinking "Ah sod it, we'll phone it in!" For me, Doctor Who won't feel this lazy until Steven Moffat accidentally sits on his laptop and produces the script for the Magician's Apprentice and the Witch's Familiar. 

One thing I find annoying is that this story gets excused for faults other stories get lambasted for. I get told this is funny but the jokes are unfunny and clichéd. This thinks it's funny, but it isn't. If the Time Monster was a person, it would be Ricky Gervais. 

I mentioned Jo, who throughout this season has seen a nice bit of character development, showing loyalty, bravery and confidence. Even when she's required to be a bit thick, Katy Manning's performance is strong enough to keep her likeable. Over the last few stories we've seen her standing up to Ice Warriors, Peladon royalty, Parliamentary secretaries and bombastic Marshalls. 

Unfortunately it appears she's had a lobotomy since she came back from Solos, because she's written here as a dizzy stock companion who's just there to scream, ask questions and make the Doctor look clever. Mind you when the Doctor starts wittering on about thraskin and plinge and spouting nonsense backwards in the TARDIS, neither of them (or the script writer or editor!) look particularly intelligent... 

There's a mock article in the Licence Revoked book about fanzines detailing ab experiment on how Katy Manning sours milk. It was meant as a joke and I did not write the article but frankly her delivery of "I know I'm exceedingly dim!" and "it's a gloomy old day!" is enough to put United Dairies out of business. And when she says "Curses, foiled again!" in episode five, I have an unsavoury urge to look for Pamela Nash's phone number. But that could also be down to the toe-curling "wah wah..." motif Dudley Simpson inflicts on us!

Problem is, that is the tone of the acting throughout. There's a have a feeling of "it's only Doctor Who, let's ham it up!" There's a line from Dr Percival "I've never seen such an inept performance" and to be honest, you're spoilt for choice of inept performances in this, including Dr Percival himself. 

Wanda Moore and Ian Collier are terribly served with turgid humour-free dialogue about women's lib. Donald Eccles, looking like a sinister Charles Hawtrey, is camp and clichéd as Krasis and apart from his appearance at the cliffhanger of episode two, has little to do. Even Roger Delgado hams it up when pleading for his life. Aidan Murphy as Hippias is as wet as a lettuce and nowhere near as interesting. His speech to Queen Galleia would look bad in a primary school play. 

And then we have Ingrid Pitt. Let's be honest, there are two reasons she was cast and neither of them are her acting. Actually that's a little bit unfair, as she's not bad in her scenes with Delgado which are probably the best in the whole story. But when she introduces the Lord Master, she's as wooden as the set.

Oh well, never mind Ingrid, maybe you'll have better luck with your next story? Just keep up those karate lessons...

Still, Doctor Who is littered with stories full of bad or camp acting, which are covered by a strong script and effective monster. But again, we have neither of those in the Time Monster. The conceit of the Master setting up shop down the road from UNIT, undermines the integrity of the organisation and makes them look idiots. And haven't we seen this already in the Daemons with the Master trying to summon up a powerful entity from the yawn, sorry dawn of time? Its true what they say: history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce...

Time monster apologists, bless them, will tell me, "But it's fun, it's so bad, it's good."

No, it's just bad.

"But I hear you cry, it's the UNIT family. We love the UNIT family."

Yes, but here they're superfluous to the plot. When we have the nonsense scene with the wine bottle, it's clear Robert Sloman can't think of anything to do with the Brigadier or Benton so they're just stood in the background. 

"Oh but it's Benton's finest hour?"

Well, apart from being easily tricked by the Master and then turned into a baby... yeah, terrific! (Actually, Benton's finest hour is Invasion of the Dinosaurs IMO!) 

This is the start of the rot in the character of the Brigadier who spends much of his time in the story as the Doctor's stoodge, looking exasperated. Is this really the same military man who was competently dealing with a peace conference to stop a World War at the start of the season? 

And then we have Kronos, the titular time Monster of legend; one of a race of creatures [that] live beyond your wildest imagination... They swallow a life as quickly as a boa constrictor can swallow a rabbit, fur and all! (They don't write dialogue like that anymore... thank goodness)

Unfortunately this fearful creature sounds like a chicken.

Not an eagle, or a hawk or even a vulture, but a chicken!

Chickens are not scary. 

We have chickens, four of them in fact. Chickens are dumb and cute and cluck around, they do not sound like a time-eating Monster of legend for goodness sake! 

And it's realisation as a flapping monstrosity is awful.

To be fair, Paul Bernard, in a rare moment of directorial ambition, tries to make it look better than it actually is when it materialises in the Master's laboratory with a harsh white light and quick cutting, but when it hangs limply over Atlantis, it brings back fond memories of Frank Spencer's Christmas angel. However by then my will to live has not only expired, it's been well and truly buried.

And I know what you're going to say; what about the daisiest daisy scene? Had the Doctor and Jo had this conversation during part five of Planet of the Daleks where it's the two of them, four Thals and one bomb, versus ten thousand Daleks, because that's a much darker day with little hope than this fiasco!

But this doesn't feel like the Doctor's darkest hour. Nothing in this lacklustre production, be it the script, acting, direction that makes this feel like the stakes are high and it's the end of the universe! The scene is padding; sugary padding that makes little sense in the context of this story. And Pertwee's delivery of what will happen if the Master succeeds in his plan with Kronos is so dry and insipid, I really just don't buy it. 

By the final episode, Atlantis is sunk, and there's a last showdown between the Doctor and Master, with Jo attempting yet another act of self-sacrifice (honestly that woman must have a death wish!) But it comes to nothing. Jo escapes by simply walking out of the Master's TARDIS (did he forget to close the doors or is this just bad direction?) She also vanishes in a hideous CSO glare which shouldve been cut! Then Kronos appears as a woman in garish 70s eyeliner reading her lines with no emotion whatsoever. The Master conveniently escapes after a hideous display of overacting on Delgado's part. And he has the cheek to say he can't bear it! What about the poor audience?

The final scene of Benton returning to his adult self wearing a nappy results in forced laughter from the cast, apart from Nicholas Courtney who looks how I feel after having to sit through this sh...ocking piece of television!

Sorry to all Time Monster apologists but this is as bad as Doctor Who gets. Any potential charm is bulldozered by terrible acting, dialogue and direction. Contemporary audience reports declared the episode tired and that the series was in need of a rest, reviews over the years have been damning and its remained the least popular story of the Pertwee era in every single DWM poll. 

I think the best review of this story comes from the Completely Useless Encyclopedia which states that while "Timelash is an anagram of lame sh*t, the Time Monster is an anagram of total b*ll*cks!

Well it isn't, but it should be!