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I vohnt a tiger or I vohnt a lion.’ I was thinking, ‘Get a grip.’ I turned round and said, ‘Just fold your coat up.’ She and I bonded at that moment. And she used to come to rehearsal in this vast leopard-skin coat and after a few days she said, ‘I don’t vohnt a cat. But there’s all that business where as the Queen of Atlantis, she has the cat and is stroking it. He thought she and I probably wouldn’t get on very well. “Jon had worked with Ingrid Pitt, you see. It’s deservedly fans’ least favourite Jon Pertwee story – as voted in a 2009 poll – and despite glimpses of glory, The Time Monster lets the side down in an otherwise sturdy season nine. There are two forms of madness in The Time Monster: delightful, almost Lewis Carroll-like absurdity and outright, galloping stupidity, and sadly it tips too often into the latter. Following the Doctor’s famous Gallifreyan reminiscence about his blackest and best day, he says, “I’m sorry I brought you to Atlantis.” With absolute conviction, she replies: “I’m not.” Jo’s devotion to the Doctor has been shown before, but not with the economy of two simple words. Indeed, during their discussion about the Tardis as a living entity, it feels as though we have stumbled on a private joke: Manning looks as though she’s just inhaled nitrous oxide.
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Katy Manning had easily – easily – the most winning smile of any companion (watch episode four again). The interplay between the Doctor and Jo is magical at times.
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Many poor decisions are taken, then, but there is still light amid the gloom. And the actual moment when the Doctor, the Master and Jo could be about to die should be “rammed” home with close-ups of their reactions – not a zoom in on a crummy danger-dial prop. Much more than mere words should suggest to us that the Time Ram manoeuvre is “appallingly dangerous”. There should be pathos when the 25-year-old Stuart becomes decrepit. And there are profoundly serious moments. The barminess has a certain magnificence when, for instance, a medieval jouster forces Unit troops off the road, or in the Escher-esque impossibility of a Tardis within a Tardis. It’s not that The Time Monster is without merit. If that’s not bad enough, we’re told that the reason it doesn’t work is the absence of tea leaves! The Doctor’s balancing of household objects on a bottle to counteract Tomtit is arrant piffle. Is this really the same writing team that gave us The Daemons? It’s not that we haven’t had pseudo-science in the show before, but we almost drown in the stuff here. Ineptitude and unfortunate comedy also abound in the present-day scenes, however: a temporally enmired Brigadier runs on the spot as if auditioning for Play Away, a model Tardis is whisked away on a chokingly visible wire, and a ham-fistedly scripted battle of the sexes elicits ridiculous lines such as “Boadicea here only wants to creep over to the lab and nobble the Master”. It’s almost a relief when the city collapses, to the squeak of falling polystyrene and the wobble of camera. And this is truly exotic territory, with Hammer heroine Ingrid Pitt sitting in a wicker chair stroking a Siamese cat like Emmanuelle essaying Donald Pleasence.īut otherwise the characters’ shoddy delineation renders most of the action in the ancient realm dull and unimportant. Passing over such inattention, as indeed the Doctor Who fan has to occasionally, the early Atlantean scenes in flashback are nicely filmed and Tim Gleeson’s sets are imperious. The legendary kingdom of Atlantis is ripe for Whovian treatment, but the writers seem to have forgotten that its destruction has already been explained twice: in The Underwater Menace and The Daemons. Luckily Persil the parrot isn’t the be-all and end-all of an admittedly eventful six-parter… The Time Monster itself is a squawking annoyance whose design is no better than a Blue Peter Christmas-tree make. Neither Chronovores nor the similarly motivated Reapers of 2005’s Father’s Day work well – in concept or in execution – but at least the latter had a heart-breaking story driving it forward. Time and monsters just don’t go together. Some story titles just don’t inspire confidence, do they? Putting a “monster” in the shop window ought to be a safe bet, but the intangible qualifier ruins the effect. Writer – Robert Sloman (& Barry Letts, uncredited on screen) The Master (Professor Thascales) – Roger Delgado Studio recording: April 1972 in TC3, May 1972 in TC4 and TC3īrigadier Lethbridge Stewart – Nicholas Courtney Location filming: April 1972 at Swallowfield and Mortimer, Berkshire Stratfield Saye, Hampshireįilming: March/April 1972 at Ealing Studios