Doctor Who/The Time Meddler

The Time Meddler
Season 2, Serial 9
Airdate	July 24, 1965
Production Number	S
Written by	Dennis Spooner
Directed by	Douglas Camfield
← 2x08 The Chase	3x01 → Galaxy 4
Doctor Who — Season Two

The Time Meddler is the ninth serial of the second season of Doctor Who, and the seventeenth serial overall.

Guest Stars: Peter Butterworth (The Monk), Alethea Charlton (Edith), Peter Russell (Eldred), Michael Miller (Wulnoth), Norman Hartley (Ulf), David Anderson (Sven), Ronald Rich (Gunnar)

Plot Overview

The Watcher

Aboard the TARDIS Vicki and the Doctor hear a noise from the living quarters. Fearing that a Dalek sneaked aboard on the planet Mechanus, they prepare for a fight. But it is just Steven Taylor. He was not killed in the destruction of the city on Mechanus as they had feared. In the mayhem that accompanied the collapse of the city, he somehow arrived at the TARDIS before the others, stumbled aboard, and collapsed. The Doctor is willing to accept him, but asks that he never call him "Doc".

A monk watches with interest as the TARDIS materialises on a seaside cliff. After the Doctor, Vicki, and Steven step outside, Steven realises that the TARDIS is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. Even so, he still refuses to accept that it is a time machine as they have told him.

Standing beside a large boulder, the Doctor explains that the TARDIS is stuck in the guise of a police box due to a "technical glitch" with the camouflage circuit. This "technical glitch" and the Doctor's inability to give their precise location makes it difficult for Steven to accept that he is in the 11th century. The Doctor feels that Steven will change his mind once they have a chance to explore a bit.

Meanwhile, the monk has listened to all of this from his hiding place on the other side of the boulder. When the Doctor and the others leave, he moves toward the TARDIS to investigate. First he tries the door, but it is locked. He then puts his ear to the door, listening for something. That seems to satisfy his curiosity.

The Doctor discovers a small Saxon village. Seeing no one around, he wanders into a hut. Alarmed by his intrusion, a woman traps him, pinning his neck against the wall with a forked stick. After ascertaining that he is just a harmless traveller, the woman, Edith, begs his forgiveness and offers him a drink.

He learns from her that it is late summer in the year 1066. He also learns that the chanting he can hear is drifting down from the monastery on the hill. He decides to go and have a look.

He enters the monastery uninvited and begins to search. The source of the chanting, as it turns out, is a twentieth-century phonograph player. As he removes the needle from the record, wooden bars slam down from above. It's a trap!

The Meddling Monk

In the morning, the monk prepares breakfast for the Doctor using an electric toaster and an electric skillet. When presented with the meal, the Doctor proves to be a problem prisoner, throwing the food back at his captor.

Elsewhere, Vicki and Steven have spent the night in the forest. They have a modest breakfast of blackberries, before heading back to the TARDIS.

It is not long however before they are captured by Eldred and Wulnoth (Edith's husband) and taken back to the village. Eldred argues that the strangers should be killed. Still unable to convince the villagers that they are just simple travellers, Steven asks about the white-haired man they were travelling with, the Doctor. Edith declares that she has in fact seen him -- he went to the monastery. With that, Vicki and Steven's status as mere travellers is confirmed, and they are released.

After Steven and Vicki leave, a small Viking scout party attacks the village. Wulnoth and Eldred return to find Edith wounded and unconscious. When she wakes they learn from her that it was the Vikings who attacked, not Steven and Vicki as Edlred would have them believe. Eldred is wounded pursing the Vikings.

Vicki and Steven pay a visit to the monastery to question the monk, asking him if he has seen the Doctor. They catch him in a lie when he describes the Doctor, even though Steven never described the Doctor for him. Now they know he is lying, but they conceal this knowledge and pretend to leave.

In the monastery the monk resets his trap, starts the phonograph player, and waits. After a short time he is forced to answer a knock at the door. It is Wulnoth and Eldred (who was wounded pursuing the Vikings). He cannot refuse to help them without exposing himself as a fraud, so he reluctantly admits them.

Steven and Vicki return to the monastery and climb through a window to have a look inside. When they discover that a phonograph player is the source of the chanting, they are surprised; but they are not trapped as the Doctor was, because the monk is away answering the door. Searching a bit further, they find the Doctor's cloak in a cell, but the Doctor is gone!

A Battle of Wits

Since the Doctor's cell was locked, he couldn't have gotten out that way. So Steven and Vicki search for and find a secret passage. They follow the lengthy tunnel, pushing roots aside as they go; and eventually emerge in the woods.

The Doctor has already escaped and is back in the village, where he lets slip that a full Viking invasion force is on its way. He seems concerned about Edith's wellbeing, and assures her that the Viking invasion force will land well south of here and will be defeated by King Harold. He also learns that his friends went up to the monastery to look for him.

At the monastery the monk treats Eldred's wounds with medicine from a twentieth century first aid kit. The monk, hearing a knock at the door, opens it only to find that no one is there. A moment later there is another knock. Again, no one is there. Irritated, he steps outside to have a look, but this time the Doctor steps out of the shadows and pokes a stick into his back, pretending that it is a gun.

The deceitful monk leads the Doctor in circles through the monastery as they talk. A moment later there is another knock at the door. The monk must answer it or his cover will be blown. He convinces the Doctor to dress in a monk's habit to play the part. When the Doctor answers the door, the Vikings, Sven and Ulf, burst in. The monk is nowhere to be seen. Sven and Ulf, the only two survivors of the Viking scouting party, have decided that they will hide in the monastery and use the monks as hostages.

The monk has fled to the crypt. When Ulf enters, the monk clubs him unconscious and ties him up. Then the monk goes to the village and asks the villagers to light signal fires at the beach. He claims he is waiting on a shipment and the fires will help guide the ship.

Meanwhile Steven and Vicki have made their way into the crypt. They follow an electrical cable that is curiously out of place in an 11th century monastery. It leads into a stone sarcophagus. Opening the two doors on the side, they see that it is wide enough that they can enter. Inside they are amazed at what they find: a TARDIS!

Checkmate

Vicki and Steven go inside to have a look. The central control console looks similar to that of the Doctor's TARDIS, but one side of the room, is a museum-like collection of historical artifacts and riches.

Steven and Vicki decide to go back to the Doctor's TARIDS, hoping that the Doctor has returned there as well. But when they get there, they find that the tide has risen. Only foamy water can be seen where the TARDIS used to be. Hidden at the top of the cliff, they find a strange looking cannon and ammunition, which both Vicki and Steven recognise as a neutron grenades. They presume that the monk is behind this.

The Doctor knows that the monk has a TARDIS somewhere. The monk leads the way into the crypt where his TARDIS is perfectly disguised as a stone sarcophagus. Together they go inside, and the Doctor is briefly reunited with Steven and Vicki.

The Doctor learns from the monk that he plans to accelerate human history in order to improve things in his time. A brief moment of inattention on the Doctor's part, allows the monk to escape. He finds Sven and Ulf, and gets them to capture the Doctor, Steven, and Vicki.

The Doctor and his friends are freed when the Saxons from the village attack the monastery. To put a stop to the monk's meddling, the Doctor removes a vital component from the monk's TARDIS, rendering its interior one fifth of its original size, effectively stranding the monk in the 11th century.

Arc Advancement

Happenings

• We learn that the Doctor's TARDIS is not unique. Indeed, it is an earlier model of the TARDIS used by the monk in this episode (by about 50 years).

Characters

• Vicki is offered the chance to go home just as Ian and Barbara did, but she says there is nothing at home for her. She wants to stay with the Doctor.

• Steven Taylor joins Vicki and the Doctor on their adventures through space and time.

Referbacks

• The Chase: Vicki is offered the chance to go home just as Ian and Barbara did.

Trivia

The Show

• This story takes place in late summer of the year 1066 in England.

Allusions and References

• The Doctor learns from Edith that King Harold has just taken the throne in January.

• A Viking expeditionary force invades the Saxon village.

• The monk plans to decimate the Viking fleet of King Hardrada in an effort to change the outcome of the Battle of Hastings.

• The monk tries to convince the Doctor that accelerating human history is a good thing, telling him that humanity could have television in Shakespeare's time.

Quotes

• The Doctor: (to an inquisitive Steven Taylor) 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.