DOCTOR WHO REVIEW: THE TIME MEDDLER
Written By: Dennis Spooner
Directed By: Douglas Camfield
Hello All. Welcome to another Doctor Who review.
With the show not coming back for a while, I thought it might be an idea to look back on Doctor Who's past and possibly review my favourite story from each of the twelve doctors.
For the First Doctor, I've chosen "The Time Meddler" by Dennis Spooner on the basis of it being a fun story, with lots of inventive ideas and it one of those pseudo historical stories - a history story with a science fiction element to it. It's also one of these stories that doesn't get your brain in a twist, its all fairly simple, easy to follow and great to watch in general.
Just giving you a little bit of background into the story but not spoiling it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet, The Time Meddler is the ninth and final story of the second season of Doctor Who. It broadcasted in four weekly parts from the 3rd - 24th of July 1965.
It is after the events of The Chase, Ian and Barbra have left the TARDIS. The Doctor and Vicki discover that Steven Taylor has stowed away and the TARDIS lands in the northeastern coast of England, in the late summer of the year 1066. And Introduces a recurring villain and possibly my favourite Doctor Who villain of all time "The Meddling Monk" played to perfection in this story by Peter Butterworth.
The Monk plans to tamper with the events of History, by causing several different types of mischief and the Doctor has to stop him before things get out of hand. That's basically it.
In that you got Vikings and humour and lots of fighting and just good creative story at the heart of it, so that's all there is to it.
I like The Time Meddler for the purpose of the fact that it gets its facts right, and how Dennis Spooner has looked at this extract from history and thought to himself, well what if someone did this and that, and changed the course of history so that a different result would arise instead of the events of what actually occurred. The History books would change. It's always been a rule in Doctor Who, that you should never interfere with the course of history and the Time Meddler himself threatens that rule. He threatens the whole course of the progression of time itself.
The pace of it is pretty good, for four, twenty five minute episodes, it does a very good job at keeping the pace going. Nothing happens, so slowly or too fast you can't keep up. It's all very gradual and everything happens when it is supposed to happen.
William Hartnell is very good in this story, he's grown out of his grumpy old git phase and is now starting to be a bit more fun in the part, I like energetic, happy go lucky Bill better than grumpy old git. This is one of those rare occasions where you see Hartnell in a more relaxed mood in terms of performance. He really shows signs that he is enjoying this story.
Peter Butterworth as I mentioned before excellent villain, and his Meddling Monk is just superb.
Backdrop and production design is excellent, on a budget of peanuts and having to shoot most of this on location, The Time Meddler is a story of family average production merits for something of its time, in that it looks authentic to the time in which it is supposed to be set 1066. The field, the forests, the costumes, the monastery, every detail counts in this which is nice. The thing that does it for me is the everyday objects that appear in the past. That's what I love about this story the most, stuff like the toaster or the machine gun or the record player, I love attention to detail like that. It adds to the creativity of the piece and gives it some edge of different times and places.
Over all, I think this is a good story and you should watch it. 8/10
NEXT WEEK: I shall review my favourite second doctor story "The Enemy of the World" starring Patrick Troughton and... Patrick Troughton?
