Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day Eighty-Five: The Meddling Monk (The Time Meddler, Episode Two)

Dear diary,

I panicked, after yesterday. The pattern lately seems to be of having a very strong opening episode, and then watching as it slowly goes to pot across the rest of the story. Or, at the very least, watching it revert to just being mediocre. Having come from such a strong episode yesterday (It's not the first '9' I've given to the marathon, but I spent a while debating wether or not to give it a full-on '10'…), I really didn't want to watch this one fall from favour so quick.

Thankfully, it hasn't. Weyhey! A large portion of the credit really must be given to the style and direction of the whole thing. These are - quite simply - the very best sets we've had in the series to date. All of them look fantastic, and the whole thing still has a real filmic quality to it.

The direction is first-rate, with the sad exception of the fight sequence toward the end, which just ends up falling a little flat. The problem with it, though, is that it looks like a fight from early 1960s Doctor Who, when everything around it looks like something far more polished than that.

The thing that struck me most has to be the absence of Hartnell. Not because it's badly covered (quite the opposite, in fact. The tape player just about gets away with it), but because it's only been a few episodes since we last saw him dip out for a week - during The Space Museum. It's not often you get two weeks of in such quick succession!

Perhaps the best thing about his holiday, though, has to be the cliffhanger itself. Coming as soon as it does after his last week away, Steven peering into the cell and suggesting that he thinks the Doctor is asleep, and then Vicki simply staring off-camera while she says the Doctor's name are all very reminiscent of Ian's surprised 'Doctor!' in The Space Museum.

Whereas there, though, we don't get to see what he's looking at (until the following episode, and Hartnell's return to work), here it's revealed that the lack of reply is indeed a lack of the Doctor - he's gone missing! It's a great subversion of my expectations, which helped to really make good use of the Doctor being missing for a bit.

Another subversion of my expectations came in the form of the Saxon who doesn't trust Vicki and Steven. As soon as he started to predict that they would regret letting the pair walk free, I knew they'd end up being framed for something. It was a bit of an eye-rolling moment, then, when Vikings came to assert themselves against the woman of the group (The implication seems to be rape, though that's perhaps a little strong for a Saturday tea-time!), and we're quickly being told that it was the work of 'the travellers'.

So it's fantastic that within a few minutes, they've been cleared of the crime by the woman herself, who comes round long enough to murmur 'Vikings'. I'm never much of a fan of 'the Doctor and his friends have to prove their innocence' in these historical stories, so it's great to see that idea being given a new spin here, too…

Next Episode: A Battle of Wits

Next Episode: A Battle of Wits