Hogan Reviews

Another Blu-Ray Season set release, another review! Season 9 is one I’ve frequently revisited over the years due to my love of the Pertwee era but The Time Monster (and its preceding story The Mutants) are ones I’ve watched less due to them being… quite dull. Well, the Mutants anyway, this at least has plenty of UNIT and Delgado Master in it, that always livens things up which is why it’s funny it’s the one it’s been longest since I last watched. Have I forgotten something I disliked about it? Is the weird silver birdman Kronos just too weird? Let’s find out!

Loved the fact that in this scene Jo had to mention the crummy weather, that’s what you get when you have to film in the UK on a specific day only!

Like so many of the Earth-based UNIT stories The Time Monster opens up with The Brig (Nicholas Courtney) off to see a brand new scientific experiment while The Doctor (Jon Pertwee) stays at UNIT HQ in a huff with Jo (Katy Manning) but the two things end up coinciding. You see the head of TOMTIT (that’s “Transmission of Matter Through Interstitial Time”) is Professor Thascalos, who of course turns out to be The Master (Roger Delgado) and the simple teleporting device is actually his attempt to summon a creature called Kronos from a dimension “outside of time” in order to control its power. In the first few episodes there are some fun scenes with people frozen in place or running in slow motion due to all the time-related high jinks and as The Doctor and Jo head to TOMTIT they do so in Bessie with its new super-fast speed, which was also a fun visual trick (for the early 70s BBC anyway). Sadly what still looks bad even baring in mind the year is Kronos itself, which is just someone is a weird grey bird costume, but fair play to the production team: they knew it as all the scenes with Kronos use quick cuts and a blurry filter to hide it as best they could…

Sadly there are some other bad points even in this more enjoyable first few episodes, especially The Master’s two aides Ruth Ingram (Wanda Moore) and Stuart Hyde (Ian Collier), a.k.a. extreme feminist stereotype and dim-witted man who literally couldn’t look more 70s if he tried. Ruth’s “typical man!” dialogue is extremely cringey and Stuart is just a bit of a knob, frankly. At one point Stuart is turned into an old man by the effects of Kronos and its crystal which is an interesting idea but mostly played for laughs by Stuart before its undone and then not mentioned again, so… oh well. The usual UNIT crew are split between actually doing something for a change and barely doing anything at all as Sgt. Benton (John Levene) actually tricks the Master and holds him at gunpoint before being outsmarted himself, where as Captain Yates (Richard Franklin) gets to ride on a convoy that gets attacked by The Master pulling enemies from Earth’s history, gets hurt and then never appears again. Good for Benton anyway, he even gets the last gag of the episode after having been accidentally turned into a baby when he’s returned to normal he’s completely naked, much to the laughter of the whole cast.

Blimey, even this screenshot is boring.

As the story progresses we start to see ancient Atlantis and the rather dull people who live there. Priest of Kronos Krasis (Donald Eccles) is just a generic evil cult leader who then becomes a bewildered sidekick of The Master, Hippias (Aidan Murphy) is the young fighter who asks all the questions, and leaders Dalios (George Cormack) and Galleia (Ingrid Pitt) are the benevolent King and bored Queen looking for a more exciting ruler respectively. Sadly as we spend more and more time in Atlantis towards the end of the serial it does start getting less and less interesting. The addition of a Minotaur that is the definition of “bloke in a bull mask” didn’t do much to liven up the experience either, though I will admit to finding that fun. Certainly a story that could’ve been trimmed down, which is a shame because a change in locale is normally a good way to extend a six-parter…

The Continuity:

Benton actually does something! Hooray!

The big one here is the destruction of Atlantis, as its something we see in the Second Doctor story “The Underwater Menace” while Azal in a previous Third Doctor TV story “The Daemons” also claimed to have been the cause of it sinking. The Underwater Menace Atlantis is implied to be in the future that’s not too hard to reconcile, but I guess Azal just happened to appear elsewhere in Atlantis at the same time as Kronos and didn’t realise he wasn’t the direct cause? Or maybe he just lied to try and show off? *shrugs*

The Doctor tells a story of visiting a kind hermit in the mountains when he was a kid, this hermit is seen in the Third Doctor’s final outing “Planet of the Spiders”. The Doctor and The Master’s TARDISes also get caught up within each other in Fourth Doctor TV story “Logopolis”. I’ll also mention the official Sixth Doctor novel “The Quantum Archangel” is a direct sequel to this, including The Master being hunted by other Chronovores like Kronos, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get round to reading and reviewing it!

Overall Thoughts:

The Master thinks about abandoning his plan purely because his co-workers are annoying as hell.

The Time Monster starts off as a fun Earth-based UNIT/Master story but an annoying guest cast on Earth and an extremely dull guest cast in Atlantis bring the story down further and further as the story moves on, with only interactions between The Doctor, Jo and The Master bringing any actual joy. Oh well, even Third Doctor UNIT stories with The Master can’t be great every time, I guess.

In the final few episodes The Master heads to Atlantis to get the true crystal of Kronos but The Doctor and Jo follow by putting their TARDIS inside The Master’s TARDIS, leading to some fun jokes where The Doctor leaves his TARDIS and ends up in his own console room again. After The Doctor is seemingly killed by Kronos and Jo asks for The Master to just finish her off The Master leaves her be and lands in Atlantis, but wily Dalios doesn’t believe his tricks, able to withstand his hypnotism. The Doctor returns from the temporal void with Jo’s help and also lands in Atlantis where we get an episode or so of run-around and double crossing before The Master unleashes Kronos, who then proceeds to destroy Atlantis (again!)

Kronos returns to his crystal… I tried really hard to get a picture of the crappy costume itself, but sadly failed. Sorry!

The Master kidnaps Jo and leaves in his TARDIS, The Doctor in hot pursuit and soon threatens to “Time Ram” The Master to save everyone even if it costs himself and Jo their lives. The Doctor can’t do it but Jo does instead, much to The Master and The Doctor’s horror but they’re saved by Kronos, who is now a floating set of female eyes in a weird… dimension, or something. She lets them all go, though she did want to torture the Master for all eternity until she was convinced not to by The Doctor. As you can see I really enjoyed all the Doctor/Jo/Master stuff, it’s just a shame there was a lot of rather dull Atlantis-based stuff as well…