Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Time Monster Episode Six

It's the minotaur! D'aww, he's super-cute!

Lakis warns the Doctor, so he runs straight into the labyrinth to help Jo. Hippias fights with the minotaur until he gets thrown through one of the many mirrors they have about the place for some reason - possibly to try and make the studio look bigger than it is. When the Doctor meets the minotaur he does a komedy bullfight with it until it charges through a wall and goes

The Doctor and Jo reach the crystal of Kronos, but then Krasis comes in with his guards, captures them and takes them to the Master, who has, since we last saw him, usurped the place of King Dalios with the help of Queen Galleia. But there is trouble in paradise for the Master, as after he has sent the Doctor and Jo to the dungeons, he has a row with Galleia over which of them is really in charge:

The Master: "You must learn to obey, my love, to do my will. To carry out my commands without question, like a soldier."

Galleia: "You mean like a servant girl? Then you must learn, my love, that Galleia is a queen."

In the dungeon, the Doctor tells Jo a story about "the daisiest daisy" he ever saw. It would appear at first to be revealing a previously unseen side to the character of the Doctor and his backstory from long before the series began, but when Jo laughs at the story he lets slip that he is only telling her a story he himself "heard" as though it had happened to him - so although it tells us something about the Doctor, it is what makes him the sort of character who would tell that tale to a despairing Jo to lift her spirits, not about what once happened to him in the long past.

The plot resumes when Dalios is thrown in the dungeon with them and is struck by a guard. We saw in part five that the mannys of Atlantis were near to the point of revolution, but the guard expresses such hatred for the recently deposed king that it must have been a powder keg awaiting a spark when the Master and the Doctor arrived. Dalios puts his trust in the Doctor and Jo before he dies in their arms.

The Doctor and Jo are taken to the court where they almost immediately reveal the fact of Dalios's death to Galleia, which turns her against the Master when he is forced to admit it. Before she can have the Master arrested, he gets Krasis to switch on TOMTIT (now upgraded with the larger crystal) to summon Kronos.

Kronos flies about wrecking both the set and the Master's plan. Jo tries to wrestle with the Master, but he takes her and the crystal into his TARDIS and dematerialises. Galleia frees the Doctor so that he can follow in his own TARDIS.

The Doctor threatens to deliberately time ram the Master's TARDIS, an eventuality that was cleverly foreshadowed back in part four when it was something the Doctor wanted to avoid doing by accident. But after only a moment's hesitation the Master dares him to do it, calling the Doctor's bluff and knowing that he might sacrifice himself but never Jo. So it is up to Jo to act, and she saves the day by forcing the time ram from the Master's TARDIS.

Jo and the Master are knocked out, and when Jo wakes up first she goes across a void consisting of some extremely fringing-heavy CSO (making this sequence even more trippy than it would have already been) to the Doctor's TARDIS. She thinks they are both ded and that this is the afterlife, but instead of a waiter played by Jack May it is the giant CSO face of Kronos they meet.

When Jo questions why her appearance now is different from the flappy birdy Kronos of earlier, she replies

"I can be all things. A destroyer. A healer. A creator. I'm beyond good and evil as you know it."

This short speech places Kronos firmly in the category of being one of the most titanic beings in Doctor Who, and this scene is a suitably epic-level climax to the story. The time ram released her, and in gratitude Kronos offers the Doctor and Jo a wish - they are both wise enough to only wish to be able to go home.

Kronos plans to keep the Master here, for

"Torment, of course. The pain he has given so freely will be returned to him, in full."

The Master comes out of his TARDIS and begs for mercy, so the Doctor asks Kronos to release him as well. When she does so, he escapes back to his own TARDIS and leaves. The Doctor had hoped to take him back to Earth with them as a prisoner, but Kronos, in true wish-granting style, says

"You asked for him to be given his freedom: he has it."

We haven't seen anything of the characters left behind on Earth for two whole episodes, but now we go back to see Ruth and Stuart (and baby Benton) still trying to reverse the time-freeze effect on the Brigadier and his soldiers. The Doctor and Jo arrive just in time to see them finally succeed, but then their machine blows up with a disappointingly small explosion - especially coming after Stuart built it up with a dramatic cry of

"Everybody get down, it's going to go up!"

The Brigadier bursts in and demands to know what's going on in this denouement:

Brigadier: "Right, stand quite still, everyone. Er, where's the Master?"

Doctor: "A very good question, Brigadier."

Brigadier: "Doctor, glad to see you're back. Miss Grant, what on Earth are you doing in that extraordinary get-up? And where, for heaven's sake, is Sergeant Benton?"

His question is answered, and the episode, story, and season ends with everyone laughing at the fact that Benton has been restored to normal... but with no clothes on.

What's so good about The Time Monster?

As usual for any story with Roger Delgado in it, he's a large part of what makes it so good, though as with The Dæmons this is an ensemble piece with all of the regulars contributing their part to its success.

The Time Monster is a very light story which makes for an easy and fun viewing experience. There are probably more komedic moments than is typical for Doctor Who (and certainly for the Jon Pertwee era up to this point) but even the more dramatic moments are played with a lightness of touch that stops them from being so dark they clash with the komedy. Jon Pertwee deserves a lot of the credit here, his central performance as the Doctor walking the line between taking the plot seriously and winking to the audience.

You do get the sense that the cast and crew had fun making the show, from the Doctor speeding up the film to make Bessie go faster, to the Master's irritation at being outwitted by Benton (twice), to the Brigadier's 'oh FFS' face at the Doctor's invention made out of Stuart's odds-and-ends. On top of that, there's a surprising amount of innuendo in this story, enough that it surely can't be coincidence and the show's makers must have been in on it - from the shape of the Doctor's time sensor, to the Master's repeated shouting of "come, Kronos, come!" through to the final shot of Benton, with the implication that the other characters are all looking at his willy.

There's even a cat in episode five - I mean, what more could a viewer ask for? This is a great story.

Pertwee Six-Parter Padding Analysis

Just as was the case with The Sea Devils, the presence of the Master can cover up a lot of plot padding, keeping the show watchable in the knowledge that viewers will find it fun seeing his interactions with the Doctor or, when the Doctor is elsewhere, just watching him going about hypno-eyesing mannys and being generally villainous. 

The difference between this and previous six-part Master stories is that here the padding is highly concentrated - we are treated to almost two entire episodes of continuous padding. From the Master saying to Krasis 'get in, loser, we're going to Atlantis' about halfway through part three, to them actually arriving at Atlantis near the start of part five, the main plot of the story advances not a jot, save that the concept of "time ram" is introduced, so that it is not a complete saturn ex tardisa when suddenly used in part six. 

But we do get some excellent scenes in amongst this padding, including some of the most fun and enjoyable of this whole fun and enjoyable story - the Doctor and the Master one-upping each other from their respective TARDISes, and in front of their respective Companions, is a highlight - and it would have been a shame to miss out on these, as would have undoubtedly been the case if this had been only a four-parter.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Time Monster Episode Five

The Doctor is able to talk to Jo as a voiceover, because

"The TARDIS is relaying my thoughts to you."

The Doctor is thus able to tell Jo to pull a lever on the TARDIS console that makes him reappear inside the TARDIS.

Well, after the dire situation that the Doctor and Jo were left in at the end of part four I'm bound to say that the resolution is a bit of an anticlimax. Then again, it is also quite fitting that a very abstract moment of peril should be solved in an equally abstract way.

The scene now shifts to Atlantis - the main focus of the rest of the story, which maybe explains why it now ceases to be shot in soft-focus? Hippias and Dalios talk to each other in an oldey-timey way, as if they're in some kind of BBC historical costume drama, but I can't find it in me to care about what they're saying because my eyes are being irresistibly drawn to the outstanding physical attributes of the figure seated to their left.

It's a cat!

Why are there so many stories with the Master in them that also have cats? His first and last stories both had cats in them, and there was also a cat at the very start of The Dæmons (which was written by the same writers as wrote this story). I think it is an attempt by the makers of Doctor Who to put an association into the brains of the viewers - because cats are best, therefore the Master is also best! Well if that was their intention, it succeeded, although casting Roger Delgado would probably have been enough on its own.

The Master's TARDIS appears in front of them and he steps out, bringing Krasis with him. He claims to be "an emissary from the gods."

Queen Galleia says

"He has the very bearing of a god himself."

and practically purrs like a cat when she sees him.

The Doctor's TARDIS materialises right next to the Master's. When the Doctor and Jo come out, Krasis orders the guards to capture them and take them to the king - although this is probably where the Doctor would have wanted to go anyway.

The Master tries hypno-eyesing King Dalios, and even turns his music on to reinforce this, but Dalios laughs it off and the music tails away like Orac when his key is removed. Dalios mocks the Master's claim to be from the gods with wit:

"Tell me then, what of great Poseidon? What did he have for breakfast? Fish, I suppose? And what of Zeus and Hera? What is the latest gossip from Olympus? Do tell me."

Mmmmm, fish. Also lol.

The Master leaves Dalios and passes the Doctor and Jo on his way out. He makes an astonished face at seeing them still alive.

They go in to see Dalios. There is a mix of the comic and the serious in their dialogue, as the Doctor introduces Jo to the king as "Jo, Jo Grant" and then Dalios calls her "Jojo Grant," a joke form that would later be used in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy with "Dent Arthur Dent."

Dalios then tests them by calling Jo a goddess, passing it off as "clumsy gallantry" when Jo denies it, but really he was seeing if they were more honest than the Master had been.

The Doctor makes friends with Dalios, but meanwhile the Master is making friends with Queen Galleia (and her cat). Jo finds out that the Master is there and listens to their conversation. The Master knows exactly what Galleia wants, and plays her:

"Lady Queen, you are beautiful."

He's no Jarvik, but the effect is much the same. Galleia starts to tell him exposition about "the guardian" of the crystal. It then cuts to Dalios giving the same exposition to the Doctor. The Doctor realises from Dalios's description of the guardian that it is the minotaur that keeps all mannys away from the crystal.

Galleia plans to send Hippias with a sword to try and kill the minotaur, but says if he died trying then his "death would be of little account." This turns her servant Lakis, who is in love with Hippias, against her, so Lakis teams up with Jo to try to help Hippias. But they are too slow, because suddenly the lesiurely pace of the episode speeds up and Hippias is already on his way with Krasis.

Jo tries to shout a warning, but Krasis grabs her, throws her in the room, and then locks the door behind her. There is a "rar!" from off-screen and Jo sees something in there with her. Crash-zoom to her face - cliffhanger!

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Time Monster Episode Four

Mike Yates survives, but one of his soldiers suffers a fate worse than death when he has to listen to a komedy yokel tell him all about the original bomb and explosion that the Master brought through time.

The Master takes Krasis and the crystal into his TARDIS. I love the way Krasis exclaims the traditional "it's bigger on the inside" reaction in an old-timey way:

"So vast a space inside so small a box!"

And, for all his evil, it's nice to know that the Master still takes a responsible attitude towards environmental issues:

"Just a few minutes recycling and we shall be ready to leave."

The time sensor detects the Master's TARDIS activating so the Doctor and Jo go into the Doctor's TARDIS. The Doctor's plan is to land his TARDIS inside the Master's, and he explains the difficulty of this to Jo:

"This is the time setting. Now it's critical to a billionth part of a nanosecond, do you see?"

"Yeah."

"Now hold this. If it's infinitesimally low, we'll miss it entirely and goes whistling off to heaven knows where. But if it's too high, even by a fraction of a moment: time ram!"

"Time ram?"

"Yes. You see, the atoms making up this TARDIS would occupy precisely the same space and time as the atoms making up the Master's TARDIS."

For all that this is a risky and dramatic moment for our heroes, there's still time for some komedy, as the yokel witnesses the TARDIS's dematerialisation and is unimpressed by it. He says

"Pft, Londoners!"

Benton, Ruth and Stuart run about on location as they stealthily approach the building TOMTIT is in. This could almost be a send-up of the similar scene of the three guerillas from the future approaching Auderly House in Dave the Daleks, at the other end of the season.

The TARDIS landing doesn't go as planned, and the Master's TARDIS appears inside the Doctor's TARDIS. But it's worse than that - when the Doctor and Jo leave the TARDIS, they find they are inside the Master's TARDIS. So the TARDISes are inside each other.

"Well, it's perfectly simple, Jo. My TARDIS is inside the Master's."

"Yes, but his is inside yours."

"Exactly. They're both inside each other."

I just explained all that, mew. The Doctor's explanation has ended up inside mine!

The Brigadier arrives at the institute with his UNIT reinforcements, but the Master just sends them all into slow motion using TOMTIT. Ruth and Stuart enter the lab, and Ruth says

"Take a look behind you."

"Oh, come on, really."

says the Master, knowing this is exactly the trick he pulled on Benton back in part two. But Benton really is behind him, so the Master has been tricked by Benton twice in the spacetime of a single story.

The Master looks even more pissed off, but he manages to escape into his own TARDIS and dematerialises, taking the Doctor's TARDIS with him.

The Master soon appears on the scanner of the Doctor's TARDIS (with perfect timing to have a quick perv at Jo, the Naughty Master!) and begins a dialogue exchange between the two Time Lords (and Jo and, I suppose, Krasis) that makes for one of the most enjoyable of all the Doctor-Master scenes in the whole series. I would quote some highlights, but that would just end up being the script for most of the rest of the episode.

Meanwhile Benton, Ruth and Stuart are left with the run of the TOMTIT lab and try to turn it off so that they can free the Brigadier and soldiers from the slow-mo. But all that happens is that Benton gets turned into a tiny manny by mistaik, lol.

The Doctor is forced to leave the safety of his TARDIS to talk to the Master in person.

"You're risking the total destruction of the entire cosmos."

"Of course I am. All or nothing, literally! What a glorious alternative!"

"You're mad! Paranoid!"

"Who isn't? The only difference is that I'm a little more honest than the rest. Goodbye, Doctor!"

The Master summon Kronos to nom the Doctor:

"Behold, Kronos, a rare and delicate feast for you. A Time Lord! Devour him!"

Kronos flaps around and the Doctor disappears. Jo asks the Master

"You mean that thing, that... that creature really swallowed him up?"

"Ah, that's a nice point. Yes and no. Yes, it engulfed him. No, it didn't actually eat him up. He's out there in the time vortex, and there he's going to stay."

"Then he is alive?"

"Well, if you can call it that. Alive forever in an eternity of nothingness. To coin a phrase: a living death."

"That that's the most cruel, the most wicked thing I ever heard."

"Thank you, my dear."

Then, with Jo still in it, the Master ejects the Doctor's TARDIS from his own. It's an odd point to put the cliffhanger - several seconds after the Doctor has seemingly been killed off - but it succeeds mostly because the Master's explanation to Jo of what happened to the Doctor makes the situation seem even worse than if the episode had ended with the Doctor being attacked by Kronos or just after he disappeared.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Time Monster Episode Three

The pope of Atlantis introduces himself to the Master:

"I am Krasis, high priest of the temple of Poseidon in Atlantis."

The Master introduces himself in turn, and lays out his deal to Krasis, ending with "together we shall become masters of the universe."

The Master learns what he can from Krasis's seal, which has on it knowledge about Kronos that Krasis didn't even know he had, then he switches the machine back on.

"Come, Kronos, come!"

he says again, presumably because he enjoys it. Benton escapes back to tell the Doctor and the Brigadier about what the Master has done.

Kronos appears and noms Dr Percival (who, now that Krasis is here to be the Master's henchmanny, is superfluous to the plot), and then flaps about scaring the Master until he realises that he can use the seal to control Kronos. Krasis disagrees:

Krasis: "For all your sorcery, you are as a child trying to control a rogue elephant. A puny child."

The Master: "But I have the crystal?"

Krasis: "That crystal is but a part of the true crystal of Kronos. A small fraction."

The Master: "Fraction? And the rest is in Atlantis?"

Krasis: "Deep in the vaults of the temple of Poseidon, guarded by night and by day from such thieves as you. You may command the slave but never shall you command the mighty one himself."

A lucky side effect of Kronos's return is that Stuart gets returned to his real age. Less luckily, the Doctor sees the Brigadier, Benton and Ruth all running in slow motion, so he rescues them from the field of slowed time by running in at normal speed and pulling them out.

Back in soft-focus Atlantis, Hippias is talking to King Dalios. I know he's called "Dalios" from the credits, but it always sounds to me like they're saying 'Darius' due to the echoey effect and the incidental music. Dalios claims to be over 500 years old and takes Hippias to see the "true crystal" and hints about how he also has a minotaur down there. Well, he says it is

"A creature too horrible to imagine. Half man, half beast."

but I have a suspicion the BBC budget will not be doing that description justice any time soon.

The Master wants to go to Atlantis to get his paws on the "true crystal," but the story would be way too short if he managed that immediately so it's time for some padding or, as the Doctor calls it "delaying tactics" (I suspect the series Producer called it that as well). Stuart offers to make tea and sandwiches for everybody, which annoys the Brigadier.

"This isn't a picnic!"

he says, having gone from being a competent commanding officer last episode to a komedy sidekick in double-quick time.

Despite giving every impression that he's trolling the Brigadier on purpose, the Doctor makes a gadget out of the odds and ends in Stuart's room.

Doctor: "It's a time flow analogue."

Stuart: "Of course it is, Ruth. You should have seen that at a glance."

Doctor: "The relationships between the different molecular bonds and the actual shapes form a crystalline structure of ratios."

Brigadier: "Does this make any sort of sense, Dr Ingram?"

Ruth: "None whatsoever."

Brigadier: "Just as I thought. Doctor, please stop this silly game at once."

Only once he gets it going does the Doctor deign to explain what he's doing:

"Well, it's just like jamming a radio signal, Jo. We used to make them at school to spoil each other's time experiments."

The Master soon overloads it using TOMTIT. 

"Ah, well. It was fun while it lasted."

says the Doctor, and I have to agree with him. This whole bit was padding, but it was fun padding.

The Master sees that Mike Yates is on his way with the Doctor's TARDIS using his wrist-mounted, CSO-powered TV, a different model from the one we saw in Colony in Space - he's obviously upgraded from a csoPhone to a csoWatch in the meantime. He uses TOMTIT to summon a knight on a horsey to charge at Yates's convoy. When Yates reports this to the Brigadier, the Brigadier replies

"Are you suffering from hallucinations, Captain Yates, or have you been drinking?"

Lol.

Next the Master summons up some historical reenactors to exchange fire with the UNIT soldiers.

"Oh get on with it, you 17th century poltroons."

he says when they're not very effective, lol.

The Doctor and Jo head towards the TARDIS in Bessie. The Brigadier drives his own jeep, expecting it will be faster than the Doctor's car, but is swiftly overtaken - another komedy moment.

As his "grand finale" the Master summons a V1 "buzzbomb" to try to blow up the convoy with. The Brigadier, suddenly serious again, tries to call Yates to warn him:

"Yates, get out of it, man! It's a bomb! It's a bomb! Get out of it, Yates!"

but the reception is poor and it is not clear if he heard the warning in time. We see things from the Doctor, Jo and the Brigadier's point of view as the bomb explodes in the distance, and the episode ends with Yates's fate unclear - and we can only hope he has been blown to bits.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Time Monster Episode Two

The Master runs off to hide just before the Doctor runs in and tells Ruth to "reverse the polarity," which allows her to turn off TOMTIT. But it has already turned Stuart into an old manny. Ruth starts to tell the Doctor about Professor Thascales when he says

Doctor: "Thascales? Really the arrogance of that man is beyond belief..."

Brigadier: "Whose arrogance? Doctor, I wish you wouldn't talk in riddles."

Doctor: "Perhaps a classical education would have helped you, Brigadier? 'Thascales' is a Greek word."

Jo: "Thascales? I get it. 'Thascales' is Greek for 'Master.'"

Continuing what we saw in part one of Jo "learning," this is a neat reversal of the similar situation in The Dæmons.

The Doctor hears Stuart say "Kronos" and he says

"Kronos? Yes, of course, I should have known."

The Brigadier takes over the place and sends for Mike Yates to come with reinforcements for him and the TARDIS for the Doctor, showing a level of competence scarcely seen from him since season seven, although when ordering Dr Percival to evacuate the mannys from the institute he doesn't perceive that Percival has already been hypno-eyesed by the Master.

When Ruth shows the Doctor (and Benton) the crystal, the Doctor recognises it as "the crystal of Kronos" and tells Ruth - and us - what he knows about it:

"Well, luckily you are already familiar with the idea of stepping outside of space-time."

"I've lived with the concept for months."

"And I've lived with it for many long years. I've been there."

"You have?"

"Yes, I have. Strange place it is, too. A place that is no place. A dangerous place where creatures live beyond your wildest imagination. Chronovores: time eaters. They swallow a life as quickly as a boa constrictor can swallow a rabbit, fur and all."

"Are you saying that Kronos is one of these creatures?"

"I am. The most fearsome of the lot."

The incidental music playing under the Doctor's speech helps sell this dump of exposition as being more dramatic. The Doctor continues:

"Kronos, a living creature, was drawn into time by the priests of Atlantis, using that crystal as its centre."

"You mean, that that crystal is the original? The actual crystal from Atlantis?"

"It is, and your friend the Professor is trying to use that crystal, as it was used four thousand years ago, to capture the Chronovore."

The incidental music segues into the Master's theme as the scene cuts to him and Percival, who also have some great lines:

The Master: "E = mc cubed."

Percival: "Squared."

The Master: "What?"

Percival: "E = mc squared, not cubed."

The Master: "Not in the extra-temporal physics of the time vortex! Oh dear, now you've made me lose my place. You're an interfering dolt, Percival!"

Back with the Doctor, Ruth and Benton, and Benton can't pick up the crystal because, as the Doctor explains, it "isn't really here at all." The writers then get a bit too clever for their own good with their next bit of technobabble, with the result that it seems like they couldn't make up their minds about what the crystal is:

Doctor: "It must to be linked to that other crystal all those thousands of years ago. Or rather it is the other crystal."

Ruth: "But then where is the original one?"

Doctor: "Where do you think? In Atlantis, of course."

A zoom in to the crystal is followed by a fade to the crystal in ancient Atlantis, where soft-focus was the order of the day and the pope* of Atlantis says

"At last! At last, Kronos, the time is come, and I await your call!"

He is being observed by some other manny, but what this all means is left mysterious for now so that we can go back to watch Benton answer the telephone.

Stuart wakes up and doesn't recognise himself in the mirror. Poor old manny, but it can happen to the best of us.

The Master wants to get back to the lab, but it is being guarded by Benton, so he impersonates the Brigadier's voice on the telephone and orders him to leave the lab unattended. But although the vocal impression is so good that they had to get Nicholas Courtney to dub it on, the Master makes a silly mistaik that tips Benton off.

The Master and Percival go into the lab where Benton is waiting for them with a gun. This is a wonderful scene with great dialogue, which kicks off with the Master ironically getting captured just after saying

"I tell you that nobody and nothing can stop me now."

(That sort of dialogue must be obligatory in Doctor Who stories featuring Atlantis.)

This is followed by Benton saying

"You didn't really think you could fool me with a fake telephone call, did you? It's the oldest trick in the book."

The Master looks genuinely horrified to have been outwitted by Benton.

"I underestimated you, Sergeant. How did you know?"

"Simple. The Brigadier's not in the habit of calling Sergeants 'my dear fellow.'"

But Benton's victory is short-lived, because the Master distracts him and then knocks him out, while saying

"You're wrong, Sergeant Benton. That is the oldest trick in the book!"

The Master turns TOMTIT back on and we go back to Atlantis, where the pope is still ranting and raving - or possibly praying - to Kronos. There are flashes of lightning SFX (which are quite scary, I will admit) and he disappears, leaving the other manny looking at the empty space where the pope disappeared from.

The scene fades back to the lab, where the pope appears and surprises Percival, who just has time to make a surprised face before there is a crash-zoom to the pope's face - cliffhanger!

* He's addressed as "holiness" and his name isn't spoken on screen in this episode, so I think it is fair to call him that for now.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Time Monster Episode One

The Time Monster is the fifth and final story of season nine of Doctor Who, and was first broadcast in 1972. It stars Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Katy Manning as Jo Grant, Richard Franklin as Captain Mike Yates, John Levene as Sergeant Benton, and Roger Delgado as the Master, which makes it the last story to feature the entire 'UNIT Family.'

It is also the fifth of the Pertwee Six-Parters, and the third six-parter in a row. I previously watched this story as part of Doctor Who Night 2018, but the experience of watching a Doctor Who story in one go is quite different from watching it episodically (as it would originally have been broadcast), and this is especially true of stories longer than four parts, which end up being longer than most films.

The Time Monster starts with the Doctor's dreaming about the Master. Not that kind of dream, naughty reader! It is a nightmare with the Master looming over the Doctor, in a reversal of the Master's vision of the Doctor in The Mind of Evil. The dream also contains stock footage of a volcano erupting, as previously seen at the start of episodes of Inferno.

When he wakes up, the Doctor asks Jo lots of questions, but doesn't actually tell her about the dream so Jo says

"Look, I know I'm exceedingly dim, but would you mind explaining?"

Self-awareness! It would seem Jo is on the path to enlightenment.

The Master is in disguise as Professor Thascales, which involves wearing a labcoat and putting on a slight accent (when he remembers to). He has the crystal from the Doctor's dream in his laboratory, as well as two assistants of his own - Dr Ruth Ingram and Stuart Hyde (both, I have to assume, named after characters in The Strange Case of Dr Ingram and Mr Hyde, mew). This following on from a scene set in the Doctor's UNIT lab makes it clear the Master is the dark reflection of the Doctor. You can't trust those cats in the mirror, they always seem to know which way you're going to pounce. They are very handsome though, purr.

Back in the Doctor's lab he is on the verge of dismissing his dream until Jo mentions "Atlantis." Mike Yates is there, and it is Jo's turn to give exposition to him:

"Atlantis? I thought that was supposed to be in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?"

"You're a bit out of date. Apparently it was part of the Minoan civilisation. Oh, you know, the minotaur and all that Cretan jazz."

So if Jo is "exceedingly dim" what exactly does that make Mike Yates? Although I must (grudgingly) admit he's made an understandable mistaik in connecting the words "Atlantic" and "Atlantis." It's hardly as if there is no similarity between them whatsoever, mew.

The Brigadier's face when the Doctor tells him he saw the Master "in a dream" is priceless.

"A dream? Really, Doctor, you'll be consulting the entrails of a sheep next."

The Brigadier and Benton are about to visit the Newton Institute to see a demonstration of TOMTIT "Transmission Of Matter Through Interstitial Time."

"Apparently it can break down solid objects into light-waves or whatever, and transmit them from one place to another."

says the Brigadier, since it is now his turn to be giving exposition. I'm sure there's another word for that, isn't there Vila?

The Master meets with the manny in charge of the Newton Institute, Dr Percival. He has been clever enough to discover the Master is an impostor, but is not clever enough to not get hypno-eyesed by the Master into obeying him, especially when backed up by the Master's familiar theme music.

The Doctor and Jo have a komedy moment where Jo correctly deduces what the Doctor's latest invention does just from the name:

"It, er... detects disturbances in a time field."

"Well done, Jo, you're learning."

This little scene succeeds by being not only charming but also showing us Jo's character growth - not so "exceedingly dim" after all.

Ruth and Stuart decide to test TOMTIT while the Master is away, and the Doctor's invention immediately detects it. The Master is also able to detect the test because - in accordance with narrative laws regarding experimental time machines - of the effect it has on nearby clocks.

A window cleaner is so surprised by what he sees (given this was the 1970s, he must have been awfully disappointed it was only a scientific experiment) that he falls off his ladder in slow motion.

When the Master learns that the Brigadier and Benton are coming to see TOMTIT's demonstration, he sends Ruth to meet them in his place, so he obviously wasn't expecting them to be on to him so soon. The Brigadier and Benton are distracted by finding the window cleaner.

That looks a bit rude, doesn't it? The Doctor and Jo are driving around in Bessie trying to use the time sensor to get "a bearing" on what they think is the Master's TARDIS until they realise it is centred on the Newton Institute "where the Brigadier and Sergeant Benton are."

The explanation of TOMTIT is worth quoting in full because it contains several great lines, starting with the Brigadier's:

Brigadier: "That's a fearsome looking load of electronic nonsense you've got there, Dr Ingram. How does it all work? In words of one syllable?"

Ruth: "I'll do my best. Well, gentlemen, to begin with: time isn't smooth. It's made up of little bits."

Stuart: "A series of minute present moments."

(That's 'mine-yoot' not 'min-ut' that Stuart says there. We all know that time is made up of minutes.)

Ruth: "That's it. Temporal atoms, so to speak. So, if one could push something through the interstices between them, it would be outside our space-time continuum altogether."

Brigadier: "Where would it be then?"

Ruth: "Well, nowhere at all, in ordinary terms."

Brigadier: "You've lost me, Dr Ingram."

Dr Cook, a pompous civil servant: "And me. I've never heard such a farrago of unscientific rubbish in all my life. It's an impossible situation."

Stuart: "But we've done it. We shoved that vase through and brought it back, in there."

Brigadier: "But shoved it through where, for goodness sake?"

Benton: "Sort of through the crack between 'now' and 'now' sir."

Stuart: "Right, you've got it."

The Master then arrives in a proper disguise so that he isn't recognised by the Brigadier and Benton straight away.

While this is going on the Doctor and Jo are still on their way, despite the Doctor's cheatily speeding up the film to make Bessie go even faster.

The Master and his assistants start the demonstration, which involves a lot of shouting technobabble at each other and counting up, which is normally a lot less dramatic than something counting down so after a while Stuart starts counting down from 10 to 1. But then he says

"I'm getting too much power. I can't hold it. Switch off!"

Too much Power? Oh noes! No wonder Stuart wants them to switch the TV off. But the Master wants even more power, and shouts

"Come, Kronos, come!"

Cliffhanger!

Five TV shows Patrick Stewart was in before Star Trek: The Next Generation

So synonymous has Patrick Stewart become with his baldy-headed English-French captain of the Starship Enterprise, who he played from 1987 until 2002 (and then recently brought out of retirement again for one last job), that it is easy to forget that he already had a long and distinguished list of film and TV credits to his name before he ever made it so.

Here are five of my personal favourites from British TV shows.

#1. Civilisation (1969)

 

Civilisation, if you’re unfamiliar with it, was Kenneth Clark (Not That One)’s 13-part BBC documentary series about the history of western civilisation from the Dark Ages to the 20th century, as seen through the lens of its art. It recently got a sequel series, almost 50 years after the original, but is probably best known today for inspiring the long-running series of computer strategy games of the same name… if not the same spelling.

By episode six, Protest and Communication, Clark’s chronological approach has reached the time of Shakespeare, and he illustrates the Swan of Avon (Not That One)’s contribution to civilisation with three scenes from his plays: King Lear, Macbeth, and Hamlet, with actors brought in specially to perform the scenes.

In the excerpt from Hamlet (act 5 scene 1), Patrick Stewart is Horatio to Ian “House of Cards” Richardson’s Hamlet and Ronald “Avon’s friend” Lacey as the Gravedigger. Horatio has by far the least lines of the three, and with the benefit of hindsight it seems a waste to get Patrick Stewart in just to say lines like

“E’en so, my lord.”

but nevertheless it is umistaikably him, and it is amazing to see how little he has physically changed over the years from how he looks in this very early TV appearance.

#2. Fall of Eagles (1974)

 

I have already discussed Fall of Eagles extensively on this blog. Here Patrick Stewart is playing Lenin, and as such is in one of the five(ish) most important roles in the series. For all that, he’s only in three of the 13 episodes, with the second of these, Absolute Beginners being one of the very best of the series largely thanks to Stewart’s amazing, powerful performance.

#3. I Claudius (1976)

 

The next time Patrick Stewart would turn up in a BBC historical costume drama it would be in a bad wig as Lucius Sejanus, the ruthlessly ambitious captain of Tiberius’s praetorian guards, in four episodes of I Claudius. He makes his first appearance in the scene after the one where Augustus dies, and helps to fill the hole left by the departure of BRIAN BLESSED’s larger-than-life character. In the following episodes we see Sejanus’s scheming gradually come to the fore, as he plans to marry his way into the imperial family and remove all those standing in the way of his rise to absolute power.

Even acting alongside the likes of George Baker, Derek “Shakespeare-denier” Jacobi, and of course Sian Phillips as Livia, Stewart makes his portrayal memorable as we see his two-faced machiavel rise and rise and then, eventually, fall. It is with Caligula’s help that Sejanus is finally brought down, paving the way for the unforgettable performance by John Hurt to dominate the next phase of the series.

#4. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) and Smiley’s People (1982)

When the BBC adapted the first and last parts of John le Carré’s ‘Karla trilogy’ they were obviously going to need somebody to play Karla, head of the Soviet Union’s “13th Directorate” and the hidden antagonist behind Gerald the mole and all the plots against George Smiley’s secret service “Circus.” Well, I wouldn’t be mentioning it in this article if they hadn’t chosen Patrick Stewart for the part.

Because Karla is seldom encountered directly, for all that his long shadow is cast over everything that occurs in both stories, the part is much smaller than you might expect for what is essentially the main baddy. (Exactly how small? Well, if you’ve seen it you’ll already know what I mean. And if you haven’t…) But that just makes it all the more remarkable how much Stewart does with so little. Alec Guinness is rarely challenged in the acting stakes throughout either series, but when he’s on screen with Patrick Stewart, it is Stewart that you have to watch – partly that’s because we see so little of Karla that his scenes stand out the more, but it’s also because Patrick Stewart steals those scenes out from under him.

#5. Playing Shakespeare (1982)

Well I began with Shakespeare, and this final entry brings us full circle. In 1982 a nine-part documentary series was shown on ITV about theatre director John Barton, with help from a bunch of actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company, giving a ‘masterclass’ with examples of how they go about preparing to put on Shakespeare plays. The list of actors involved include some very well known names, including Ben Kingsley, David Suchet, Donald Sinden, Jane Lapotaire, Judi Dench, Serena McKellen, and (of course) Patrick Stewart.

Patrick Stewart appears in five of the nine parts, but he is mainly featured in one episode in particular, Exploring a Character, which sees Barton discussing with him and David “Purrot” Suchet the similarities and differences in how they each played Shylock in The Mov. Now you might think that 50 minutes of that would be boring but, on the contrary, I found it anything but, and could happily have watched them continue for twice as long or more. Especially interesting were the bits where Stewart and Suchet would perform a scene together, then afterwards swap roles and do the same scene again in a different – sometimes only subtly different – way.

The series has moments of pretentiousness and can slip into jargon at times – it was deservedly mocked for such by Nigel Planer in his Nicholas Craig The Naked Actor series – but Barton is aware of this and so does not take himself too seriously (at one point referencing an early sketch by Fry & Laurie in which they sent up exactly this type of luvvie pretentiousness), which helps make the series fun. Shakespearean language has a reputation of being dull and difficult among mannys who were bored rigid when taught it badly in their schools, but this series makes the subject not only fascinating, but approachable and comprehensible.

The Cleopatras

BBC historical costume dramas stumbled in the 1980s. The '70s triumphs of Fall of Eagles, I Claudius, and The Devil's Crown were followed by the legendarily bad The Borgias (1981) and then this series in 1983. Telling the story of the decline and fall of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, it blatantly wants to be another I Claudius so very badly. And in this it succeeds... in doing it very badly.

At only eight episodes (as opposed to the more usual 13) I wonder if the series had a much more limited budget than its predecessors - the minimalist sets and bare studio floors could be a stylistic choice, I suppose, but I suspect one that comes from the production trying to make a virtue out of necessity.

Written by Philip Mackie, who had previously been responsible for the excellent The Caesars (1968), you could be forgiven for expecting better. The basic plot structure is quite good and there was obviously lot of potential there for another scandalous story full of intrigue and incest (the end of part four is the first time in the series when we see a pharaoh on the throne whose parents aren't closely related), but the script is full of clumsy, exposition-laden dialogue and flat, characterless characters.

We don't spend enough time with any of the main characters (except perhaps the last Cleopatra, i.e. the famous one) to see any of their hidden depths or what makes them behave the way they do. Even the last Cleopatra, who appears in the framing device for parts one to five and then the main plot for the final episodes, has nothing like the depth of motivation compared with, say, Livia or Agrippina in I Claudius. 

Once you get past the first episode or two and get used to the idiosyncratic style you can enjoy the series to a point, but only in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way. The riveting drama of I Claudius it is not, because here it is all surface.

Part of the issue lies in the names. In I Claudius, Caligula was almost always called Caligula even though it was his nickname "Little Boots" because there were at least two other characters called Gaius who appeared in the series before him, and there were several other major characters in a similar situation. I Claudius went out of its way to make these relationships easy on the audience, whereas this series seems determined to make it needlessly complicated to follow who is who and how they are all related - here we have multiple Cleopatras (hence the series title), across several generations, but they're all referred to as "Cleopatra." 

For example, in episode three there are no fewer than six characters called Cleopatra, credited respectively as:

1. Cleopatra, the queen
2. Cleopatra, the young girl
3. Cleopatra, the eldest daughter
4. Cleopatra Tryphaena
5. Cleopatra Selene
6. Cleopatra Berenike

This is far from The Cleopatras' biggest problem though. For that we must turn from the writer to the director, John Frankau. The pacing and editing of the series are all over the place and distinctly uneven, with every scene change using electronic transitions like you might have seen in that era's Top of the Pops. This is a gimmick that massively outstays its welcome because it is so obtrusive - it seemed to me that some scenes were split up just so that there could be extra transitions to another event and then back to the first.

The other thing the director liked spending time on instead of, say, directing the actors, was the topless or near-naked dancers, who appear in any and every scene they can possibly be shoehorned into. You could argue it makes the point that Egypt is a debauched and decadent civilisation when every other scene is a drunken feast where dignitaries are entertained by such, but not when it is so frequently on screen as to take time away from all other aspects of the drama.

The directorial problems don't stop there. Normally reliable character actors such as Richard Griffiths, Stephen "Travis" Greif, and Ian "Harcourt" McNeice delivered their lines as though either badly under-rehearsed or else just trying to get through them as quickly as possible so they can get away from this dreadful series.

In episodes five through seven we see Robert Hardy playing Julius Caesar. He, at least, looks like he's having fun as the civilised Roman who has had enough of the degenerate Egyptians and all of their bullshit. As a veteran of BBC historical costume dramas, not least Elizabeth R, he is the only actor in the series truly able to rise above the quality of the material he's being served.

For a brief moment we get maybe a glimmer of what the series could have been like, but after the assassination of Caesar, there isn't much to look forward to in the final episode unless you enjoy seeing Mark Antony's bare arse (as played by Christopher Neame's bare arse). Purr... er, I mean... Mew; Shakespeare's Antony and the Cleopatras this is not.

In conclusion: cats were supposed to have been worshiped in Ancient Egypt, but there is no sign of that here!

Avoid this series like the plague(s of Egypt), mew.