The Time Meddler

Chapter The 180th, which features 1066 and all that (where all that = good direction, charm, quiet innovation, and stock footage).

Plot:

The Doctor and Vicki discover space pilot Steven Taylor in the TARDIS after he's stumbled aboard at the end of their last adventure; Steven is sceptical when the others tell him the ship travels in time, particularly after they've landed, when he finds a modern wristwatch in what the Doctor has told him is 11th century Northumbria. The Doctor splits up from the others, makes some enquiries and finds that a group of monks have recently taken new ownership of a previously abandoned monastery near a Saxon village. Arriving there, the Doctor is trapped in a cell by just the one occupant, disguised as a Monk, who's been regularly playing a gramophone record of plainsong to make it seem like there are multiple monks in residence. The Doctor escapes after finding a secret passage in the cell. Vicki and Steven, trying to catch up with the Doctor, go to the monastery and discover the gramophone, and that the Monk has his own TARDIS. The Monk is one of the Doctor's own race, who likes to meddle in time. It's 1066, and he has a plan to destroy the imminent Viking fleet, meaning King Harold's armies will not be distracted by them, and will therefore win the battle of Hastings later in the year. The Doctor has aroused worry in the Saxons minds about imminent Viking invasion, and they repel a scouting party, then turn on the Monk who appears to be trying to guide the Vikings to land (only so he can destroy them with his laser cannon). The Doctor nobbles the Monk's ship, stranding him; and the new TARDIS team goes off to have further adventures in time and space.

Context:

As the family has been a little reluctant to watch Doctor Who recently, when a black and white 1960s story came up next for the blog I decided to forego any struggle to persuade others, and watched the DVD on my own. I viewed it an episode per evening over four nights, finishing on a Saturday where I accompanied my final watch with a nice gin and tonic. Occasionally, during these four sessions, other members of the family would wander in, but nobody stuck around for long. It's a shame in one way, as the story is light and fun and enjoyable; but, it's light and fun and enjoyable if you sit down and watch it with a modicum of concentration, so in another way perhaps it was a relief. After a few weeks of the UK's Lockdown 3: The Revenge, the children (boys of 14 and 11, girl of 8) are perhaps getting a bit too restless for such a low-key story. The next time one comes up with lots of explosions and action, I might try to get them interested again.

First time round:

By the end of 1991, Doctor Who had been off the air for two whole years. There was still the odd mention in the Gallifrey Guardian (the news pages of the official Doctor Who Magazine) of independent producers pitching to the BBC for the opportunity to make the show again, but fans were not holding out much hope of that happening. Some small consolation came in the form of the VHS range, which had started in the mid-1980s and sporadically released the odd classic story; but, from the start of 1990 when Doctor Who was no longer on the TV, the range became more regular, with a couple of stories being released on tape every couple of months. The tapes covered a wide range of different eras of the show, but there were a lot of 1960s stories, so they must have proved popular. Maybe this was what inspired the series of  BBC2 repeats that started early in January 1992, or maybe it was a coincidence.

Whatever the reason, the powers that Beeb at Two decided to show a series of stories, one for each of the then seven TV Doctors episodically on Friday evenings. The beginning of the season, the first episode of the Time Meddler, went out on the 3rd January preceded by a half hour clips package documentary called Resistance is Useless. Seeing lots of clips was great, though the framing device of a talking anorak to represent the stereotypically knowledgeable Who enthusiast was a little questionable. I had finished my first term at university and was at home for Christmas when the story started, but the latter episodes went out when I was back in college. I would have travelled back to Durham with a blank tape or two in my bag. As I noted in the First Time Round section of my recent Sontaran Experiment post, during that first term I was a bit more reticent about watching Doctor Who, but having to record episodes would have necessitated my persuading my friend Mike, the only person with his own TV and VCR in his room, into letting me take over his equipment weekly.

Reaction:

When The Time Meddler was shown as part of the repeat season in 1992, there were a few fans questioning the choice. This was in the letters pages of Doctor Who publications, you understand, as access to the internet for me and most others was not yet possible at the time. It's not a very showy story, has no new or established monsters, and is tucked away at the end of a season after a more climactic one, The Chase, which had Daleks and the much loved characters Ian and Barbara saying farewell to TARDIS and audience. Unlike for second Doctor Patrick Troughton's poor depleted archive holdings, there were plenty more obvious stories for William Hartnell that existed in full and hadn't been released on VHS as yet (which seemed to be the considerations for inclusion). If they'd gone for a more obvious choice, like The Chase for example, there would have been less surprise registered, but maybe less enjoyment too. The Chase isn't very good for all that. Despite being more action-packed in theory, it would most likely have seemed identical to the Time Meddler in both pace and quality to a 1992 casual viewer at first glance. The Time Meddler though has intrigue and charm, not qualities normally associated with The Chase it's fair to say, and those qualities are much more likely to have kept an inquisitive viewer hooked beyond that first glance.

Thanks to a clever and creative director at the helm, the story makes the most of its limited setting and characters. The person in question was Douglas Camfield, one of the best of 1960s and 70s Who; The Time Meddler is only his second full story as a director, but he's already showing many signs of greatness. The judicious use of stock footage, including newsreel of a historical recreation society playing at Vikings, opens the story out beyond its Television Centre studio confines. There's other lovely technical flourishes too. The clifftop set, for example, shot from a low angle, with a wind machine tousling our heroes, and clouds back projected on the cyclorama behind them, really sells the illusion that the interior is EXT. The script by Dennis Spooner is amusing without damaging the adventure plot for the younger viewers. The Monk is sending up the Doctor not Doctor Who, and the plot still leaves room for some fisticuffs and bravery here and there, though it's mostly a comic romp. There's lots of farce like to-ing and fro-ing of different characters - be they time travellers, Vikings or Saxons - entering the monastery, trying to avoid each other, getting captured, etc. Camfield handles all this with a light touch, and also carefully teases out the scripts greatest innovation: the mixing of past and future. Doctor Who up to this story has visited history or it has visited futuristic alien worlds, but never before have the twain met. When Steven finds a modern wristwatch in 1066, and the Doctor hears that the monks' song is a gramophone record, the 60s audience must have been suddenly alert that they were witnessing something new. This builds up to the epic episode three cliffhanger where Vicki and Steven make a truly game-changing discovery: "It's a TARDIS; the Monk's got a TARDIS!!!!"

Camfield is not just a technical director; he's adept at getting good performances too. Biggest of the guest turns is Peter Butterworth, who just after filming The Time Meddler would start his long run as a Carry On film regular; he's perfect as the sly but rather jolly antagonist, causing mischief rather than evil. He uses his voice and physicality to create a instantly fully rounded figure, as befits the first villainous member of the Doctor's race, and he gets some of the best lines: "It's getting so that you can't call a monastery your own". The somewhat child-like rivalry dynamic between the Monk and the Doctor created by script, direction and performance is sublime too. William Hartnell seems to relish facing off against a comic performer who is his equal for once, and brings his A-game. Every scene between the two of them is a joy. Even in the scenes without Butterworth, Hartnell's having a good time. Never believe anyone who tells you he's the crotchety Doctor, here he's sweet and - dare I say it - sexy. I'm thinking particularly of his scenes with Alethea Charlton as Edith. Edith is clearly a bit smitten with the Doctor, plying him with mead, and telling everyone how trustworthy he is. Unless my eyes are deceiving me, Hartnell's pitching his performance in the scenes with Charlton to suggest the Doctor is flirting with Edith a little, and is a touch enamoured of her in return.

This story also features a new regular character. Peter Purves appeared briefly in the final episode of the preceding story, but his character wasn't really feeling himself. Here Purves'  Steven Taylor is showcased properly, and makes a great impression. A little more cheeky and flip than Ian, the previous male companion of the early years, and with his day job as a space pilot, Steven is more like the prototype for the Captain Jack role later. He gets some good lines too, and establishes great interplay with the Doctor and Vicki. By the end of the final episode, which completed the season with some close-up portraits of each of the three regulars against a starry backdrop, the new TARDIS team is firmly established. As well as all these other great elements, there are lots of other nice touches and moments in the story: the Monk's tick-list scroll for keeping a track of the progress of his scheme, the historically inaccurate but nonetheless funny comment about a horned Viking helmet being for a space-travelling cow, the conversation between Steven and Vicki about how their memories will change if the Monk changes history, and many more I'm sure I could list. "That is the dematerialising control and that, over yonder, is the horizontal hold. Up there is the scanner, those are the doors, that is a chair with a panda on it. Sheer poetry, dear boy."    

Connectivity: 

Following The Mark of the Rani, The Time Meddler is the second story in a row which features a naughty Time Lord trying to change history in N.E. England. It's also the third story in a row to feature more than one TARDIS.

Deeper Thoughts:

Repeats, repeats, repeats (part 1). Doctor Who fans of the 20th century were perhaps the only group of TV viewers in that time that not only did not object to but positively looked forward to repeats. The show was traditionally first encountered by young children, it had endured a longer time and gone through more radical changes than most series, it inspired a lot of devotion in the right kind of viewer, and - in the years before video recording became affordable - the one time an episode went out might be the only opportunity to see it. Any repeat therefore provided one of three boons. It could be an opportunity to relive the enjoyment of something one had already seen before; it could be a chance to catch up on something that had been missed because of an ill-timed family visit or birthday party clashing with Doctor Who's broadcast; finally, and most preciously, it could be the opportunity to see a small part of what the show had been like from before one started watching, or perhaps before one was even born, in a different era with a different Doctor to the current one. That third boon was the rarest of all. There were specific rules made with unions about repeat broadcasts which meant more effort and expense was required to show archive repeats, rather than just reshowing something that had been on within the last year to 18 months. It would take a specially curated season of archive repeats like the one in which The Time Meddler was shown in the early 1990s, and they didn't come along very often.

In the show's opening decade of the 1960s, any repeat at all didn't come along that often. Doctor Who was on all year round with only a few weeks break in the Summer, similar to an almost soap continuing drama like the BBC's Casualty or Holby City now; this left little scope for rerunning anything. Between 1963 and 1970 it only happened twice. The very first episode An Unearthly Child was first broadcast on 23rd November 1963 when the UK, and the world, was still reeling from the impact of JFK's assassination the day before. As it was felt that the launch was overshadowed, An Unearthly Child was shown again the following Saturday, the 30th, immediately before the second episode of caveman action. The second time was in 1968, bridging the Summer gap between the penultimate and final series of the 1960s. Here a whole story, The Evil of the Daleks, was shown week on week. It was nicely integrated into the ongoing storyline: the Doctor was airing his own memories of that adventure to his new companion Zoe, to give her a flavour - or warning - of what travelling with him would be like. The following Saturday after the Dalek story completed, season 6 of Doctor Who began with The Dominators, where a line was added to link back to the Doctor's feat of mental projection. Doctor Who had for one time only been shown pretty much all year round; but this would be the last time the series was so ubiquitous.

Starting from the episodes broadcast in 1970s, Doctor Who was only on for half the year approximately, with a much longer gap between seasons. In 1971, a tradition started of showing recently aired stories - either episodically, or as omnibus editions - in that gap. Generally, this would mean at least one story on BBC1 in summer and one shown around Christmas, showing stories first broadcast in that year's season or at most the one before. There was even one extra special treat in May 1974 - still reminisced about by fans of the time - where an unscheduled omnibus version of The Sea Devils was shown in place of abandoned live coverage of a cricket match. That must have felt like a gift from the BBC gods at the time. The Christmas repeats lasted until 1975, though there were a couple of re-showings at other times in winter for the next couple of years after that. From then on, the BBC1 repeats were restricted to the summer months. That tradition kept going without a break until 1984, with the final one being The Five Doctors (a de-omnibus, if you will, the 90 minute special being broken into four episodes for a run stripped across weekdays from the 14th to the 17th of August). From 1985 onwards, when - perhaps because video recording was becoming more commonplace, but probably more likely because Who wasn't the ratings draw it had recently been - yearly repeats on BBC1 stopped.

The final broadcast of classic Who on the mother channel to date was a 1993 showing of Planet of the Daleks to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Doctor Who (see the First Time Round section of that story's blog post for more details). BBC1 wasn't the only channel where Doctor Who could find a home of course. During that period of regular repeats on BBC1, BBC2 was once host to the Five Faces of Doctor Who, a season in Autumn 1981 that showed five stories, one each from the first three Doctors, plus the one where those three teamed up, The Three Doctors, and finished with the most recently broadcast story Logopolis, where Tom Baker turned into Peter Davison. The idea of this season was 1980s producer John Nathan-Turner's; it was intended to remind people who had only started watching Doctor Who within the previous 7 years that there were Doctors before Tom. It might have done that, but it had a separate fringe benefit: it was the first chance many of the fans of the time who knew full well there were Doctors before Tom got to see those Doctors in action. As such, it is warmly remembered by a lot of people to this day. For me, it was this repeat season that got me hooked on Doctor Who for the first time, which I detail in the Carnival of Monsters blog post that I wrote in 2016. The Five Faces season was the first of three specially curated runs in the 1980s and 90s showcasing Doctor Who's broad history by including older episodes, which would then usher in a later era of such repeats on BBC2, and more recently on BBC4. But that's for another day. This tale of Doctor Who's second chances to see is, I'm afraid, episodic and not an omnibus edition. I'll talk more about repeats on the sibling channels in a part two next post...

In Summary:

Like a fine wine, or mead, this one goes down smoothly and enjoyably.