Doctor Who: The Time Meddler
(4 episodes, s02e36-e39, 1965)
To start things off, it still really bothers me how little remorse The Doctor shows over Susan’s departure. It has bothered me since The Dalek Invasion of Earth how much better the Doctor interacts with Vicki than he did with his own granddaughter. Did Susan eat the last of his Werthers or forget to record Matlock? Is the Doctor somehow tempering his sorrow with his promise to return?
Regardless, it brings me to the current companions. I still adore Vicki, but Steven’s a bit of an idiot and an ass. He’s very headstrong and rude. I hope becomes a better member of the team, because right now he’s not showing me much promise.
This wasn’t a bad serial, but I didn’t see it as a great one either. It has some good points, and is essentially a detective story.
The Monk is given away by the fault in his recording and the ton of anachronisms that surround him. I did like seeing another Time Lord, and I liked that the Doctor couldn’t defeat the Monk on 11th century terms, where the latter was deeply immersed, but could readily best him as a Time Lord.
The Doctor deceives once again with the “Winchester” in the Monk’s back, and he shows a little violence in this serial, but again only in self-defense.
The Monk’s newer model TARDIS has an “automatic drift control,” which the Doctor must have installed or fixed at some point. He has no trouble sitting in one spot in deep space in later years.
Rating: 3/5 – “Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.”
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I really like the sibling relationship set up between Vicki and Steven and I absolutely adore the Doctor’s dialog when Steven asks him what everything in the Ship does. That being said, it is an interesting change in dynamic for the group. After having the far more mature Ian and Barbara who were supposed to be the stars of the show leave the star mantle moves to the Doctor. So rather than having mature peers he now travels with two younger people. One a headstrong young guy whose good with his fists and a cheeky young girl whose quick with her wit. I cut it a lot of slack knowing how much they were playing with the format at this point and you can’t beat the fun of the monk/doctor interplay. They clearly both enjoy being up against an equal.
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