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.