June 12: The Time Monster Episodes One & Two

In an intriguing parallel with The Mind of Evil, this episode starts with the Doctor having a dream where the Master is literally towering over him, laughing evilly all the while, along with volcanic eruptions (yes, that same footage as from earlier stories), four-headed labryses, and a large crystal appearing.  It's an unusual beginning, to be sure, but it seems the Doctor is right to be worried about his dream (despite the Brigadier's understandable reaction when he hears about it): a volcanic eruption has recently occurred in the Thera group of islands, "'believed by many modern historians to be all that remains of Plato's metropolis of Atlantis'" (as Jo reads from the newspaper).  And how does this tie in with the Master?  Well, as we soon learn, the Master is working on a project called TOMTIT ("What on earth does that stand for?" Yates bizarrely asks, as if there's no way that could be anything but an acronym -- he's right, as it turns out, but it's probably named after the New Zealand bird and the words slotted in afterwards, à la WOTAN from The War Machines), which is designed to transport things through gaps in time ("Sort of through the crack between now and... now," Benton helpfully explains).

And this is where things start to get wrong-footed in this story, because Barry Letts and Robert Sloman have decided to do some stuff on Women's Lib (even though two years earlier they had incredibly smart and qualified Dr. Elizabeth Shaw as the Doctor's assistant/partner on the show (and the year before they had independent genius Zoe Heriot) and no one batted an eyelid).  The result is cringingly awful, as Dr Ruth Ingram complains about male superiority and attitudes but still lets the Master and student assistant Stuart Hyde be condescending and patronizing towards her (except when the script remembers to have her complain about it) -- and worse, easily manipulable by them ("Course, if you need a man in charge..." Stuart says, egging her on into doing a trial run on TOMTIT, which is apparently the last straw for her).  In a word, ugh.

Still, that aside, most of the first episode is decent (even if there's the self-indulgent stuff with Bessie and her super drive and inertia brakes) -- although, as the Master (in disguise not only as Professor Thascalos but in a radiation suit as well) demonstrates TOMTIT to the Grants Committee and UNIT, he shouts "Come, Kronos!" when everything is going wrong (it seems), as if no one will notice that.  And yet no one does, so...

Episode two involves the Doctor properly with the TOMTIT stuff (and therefore, the Master's scheme).  An unforeseen side effect of TOMTIT's running out of control is that it's aged Stuart about sixty years, to a man in his 80s.  He's raving deliriously about Kronos as well, which concerns the Doctor.  He knows that Kronos is a name for a very powerful being called a chronovore which could threaten the entire universe.  There's a conscious effort here to make The Time Monster feels like a real epic, an impressive season finale from a time before such things really existed.  This is slightly thwarted by the fact that episode two feels like a lot of padding.  Learning about Kronos is one of the key moments.  There's some technobabble with the Master (E=MC³ in the extra-temporal physics of the time vortex, doncha know), and some stuff with Benton being lured away by the Master (which is actually the most entertaining thing in this episode, as Benton is wise to the Master's plan and sneaks back into the room with TOMTIT that he's been sent away from, in order to get the drop on the Master -- which works, but only for about a minute) that's clearly there primarily to make the episode the right length. 

Oh, and we get a couple views of the Crystal of Kronos in ancient Atlantis (since it's the same crystal as in TOMTIT, linked across interstitial time (I think -- this bit is rather hard to follow)), which are mainly important because the Master, at the end of the episode, uses TOMTIT to bring a priest of Kronos (Krasis, according to the end credits) from ancient Atlantis into the present day.  It's not the most exciting cliffhanger ever, but I guess you take what you can get.  And that's really about it for episode two.  It tries hard to impart a sense of epicness to the proceedings; it's a shame that doesn't really translate to what we actually see.  But maybe things will improve in the next few episodes.