I'm not exactly going to sit here telling you all that The Time Monster is a great story, but this is far from the worst Doctor Who story I've watched so far! Sloman clearly had tons of fun ideas he brought to the table here, plus a few notable contributions from Barry Letts. It's the way that these ideas play out on screen, however, where this story starts to have teething troubles.
Once I got my giggles about "TOMTIT" out of the way, I otherwise found myself waiting for the inevitable transition to Atlantis. There were some nice moments along the way, like Benton pretending the follow the Master's misdirection, or (some of) the banter between Stuart and Dr. Ingram. By and large, however, I felt that this part of the story was just a bit too drawn out, especially given that we don't arrive fully in Atlantis until Episode Five, by which point there's very little time left to develop that location and its characters. And Atlantis does end up being somewhat interesting, but with so little room to breathe, it sadly never comes across all that well.
Kronos is realized in a fashion that's frankly kind of risible, although I do like how it appears as a glammed-up woman at the very end. I thought the minotaur was pretty good, too, if underused. There seems to be a concerted effort on Sloman's part to introduce some more high-concept ideas relating to time travel into the show's mythos. This is the first time we hear about Chronovores, telepathic circuits, or the Time Vortex. At least I think so in the last case, but either way it's featured more prominently here than it has been before. The sequence in the Time Vortex with the Doctor's and Master's TARDISes grappling is quite interesting, though on the whole the ideas are a bit of a jumble.
Pride of place in this serial probably goes to the moment in the dungeons of Atlantis, where the Doctor tells Jo his story:
JO: Makes it seem so pointless really, doesn't it.
DOCTOR: I felt like that once when I was young. It was the blackest day of my life.
JO: Why?
DOCTOR: Ah, well, that's another story. I'll tell you about it one day. The point is, that day was not only my blackest, it was also my best.
JO: Well, what do you mean?
DOCTOR: Well, when I was a little boy, we used to live in a house that was perched halfway up the top of a mountain. And behind our house, there sat under a tree an old man, a hermit, a monk. He'd lived under this tree for half his lifetime, so they said, and he'd learned the secret of life. So, when my black day came, I went and asked him to help me.
JO: And he told you the secret? Well, what was it?
DOCTOR: Well, I'm coming to that, Jo, in my own time. Ah, I'll never forget what it was like up there. All bleak and cold, it was. A few bare rocks with some weeds sprouting from them and some pathetic little patches of sludgy snow. It was just grey. Grey, grey, grey. Well, the tree the old man sat under, that was ancient and twisted and the old man himself was, he was as brittle and as dry as a leaf in the autumn.
JO: But what did he say?
DOCTOR: Nothing, not a word. He just sat there, silently, expressionless, and he listened whilst I poured out my troubles to him. I was too unhappy even for tears, I remember. And when I'd finished, he lifted a skeletal hand and he pointed. Do you know what he pointed at?
JO: No.
DOCTOR: A flower. One of those little weeds. Just like a daisy, it was. Well, I looked at it for a moment and suddenly I saw it through his eyes. It was simply glowing with life, like a perfectly cut jewel. And the colours? Well, the colours were deeper and richer than you could possibly imagine. Yes, that was the daisiest daisy I'd ever seen.
JO: And that was the secret of life? A daisy? Honestly, Doctor.
DOCTOR: Yes, I laughed too when I first heard it. So, later, I got up and I ran down that mountain and I found that the rocks weren't grey at all, but they were red, brown and purple and gold. And those pathetic little patches of sludgy snow, they were shining white. Shining white in the sunlight.
This is so nice, not just because it teases us some more about the Doctor's background, but because it explains so wonderfully why the Doctor travels and why he finds such joy in the new sights the universe has to offer. There's a delightful note of ambiguity, too, in the way that the Doctor tells it in first person, but then says he "laughed when he first heard it". It definitely leaves one wondering.
The Time Monster is a curious way to end Season Nine, and I have to note that we've arrived at the first story of the Pertwee era that doesn't really work. It's a good mark that it took three seasons to get here though! And for all the flaws of this story, I was nevertheless thoroughly entertained all the way through.
We'll have our annual season round-up next. See you then.
(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 3 April 2021.)
No comments:
Post a Comment