aWill Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day 331: The Time Monster, Episode One
Dear diary,
I often think of myself as having experienced a lot of 'classic' Doctor Who. Obviously, I've just done all the 1960s stories in order for the marathon, and I've seen every story from about 1982 onwards. It's this tricky middle period - the 1970s - that I'm not overly familiar with. I did plan here to make a list of all the stories I've seen from this decade, but frankly I can't remember half the Tom Baker tales that I've watched, and I think that several of them probably just ended up as background noise. I can tell you categorically, though, that I've never watched The Time Monster. Nope. Never.
Why, then, did the Doctor's opening nightmare, in which the Master stood as a giant over him ring such a bell? It can't simply be because the Master has a similar vision in The Mind of Evil (in which it's the Doctor stood tall over him), because the whole sequence seemed very familiar. It must have simply been that I've seen a clip of the dream sequence somewhere. There was a Master documentary on one of the recent DVDs I've watched - it must have been included there.
But then… The Master's two assistants in this little escapade seemed very familiar, too. Right down to the awful line about the good ship women's lib (and all who sail in her). Odd. They must have been included somewhere in a clip I've seen, too. And then there's the shot of the building to which I instantly thought 'there's something in this about a window cleaner…'
I'm sure you get the picture. I have seen this story before (or, at least, this episode before), and then completely forgotten about it. If you'd asked me this morning, I would have happily bet an entire year's wages on having not seen any of this story. I've spent the last hour trying two wrack my brain for any nugget of memory, so that I could compare my reaction to the episode this time around to my previous one… but I've got nothing.
And actually, that's a pretty good way of summing it up. This episode isn't particularly special at all. I wondered if it might feel like something of a homecoming - we've got the Brigadier! Mike! Benton! The Master! Bessie! The Doctor's even got another new lab (which is sort of par-for-the-course in the UNIT stories, it would seem). And yet, it just feels like we're getting on with the next story. I'm not surprised to see the Master turning up, and crucially I'm not all that excited, either. Certainly not in the same way that The Sea Devils made me pleased to see him again.
What strikes me is how much this is his story, as well as that of the Doctor or UNIT. We spend the first two-thirds of the episode following both stories in tandem, before they're brought together right at the end. The Master really is a part of the UNIT 'family', and I'm hoping that I'll find myself enjoying him more as The Time Monster goes on, because this is the last time that he'll be sharing the screen with the Brigadier and his men.
For now, it's not as bad as the reputation would suggest (finding out last week that this is generally rated as the worst of the Pertwee stories hasn't exactly thrilled me to be reaching this stage!), but it's not all that great, either. It's all just a bit… average…
