Episode #64 : The Time Monster

"One moment you're talking about the entire universe blowing up

and the next you're going on about tea."

 

 

Episode 64:    The Time Monster.
Companions:  The 3rd Doctor and Jo Grant.
Air Date:        Six episodes. 20th May to 24th June 1972.

 

The Master, in the guise of Professor Thascalos, has constructed at the Newton Institute in Wootton a device known as TOMTIT - Transmission Of Matter Through Interstitial Time - to gain control over Kronos, a creature from outside time. The creature is summoned but proves to be uncontrollable.

 

Despite a reasonable start, The Time Monster unfortunately is one of the more uninteresting stories of the Jon Pertwee era. The effects, especially those of the bird-form Kronos, are just laughable and the acting is fairly poor, though I put that down more to the script than to the actors themselves. They can only work with what they have after all.

 

The story starts off just outside of Cambridge and deals with the Master trying to access the power of the chronovore Kronos. When the Doctor dreams of disaster, though never explained, he an UNIT descend on a small university to deal with the threat. From there, the story travels back three thousand or more years to the last days of Atlantis, whose destruction is caused by the Master releasing Kronos. Ultimately the Master escapes yet again and everything goes back to normal.

 

In the past we have had mention of the destruction of Atlantis, in The Underwater Menace and referenced in The Daemons. In the latter story, Azal claims to have been the one to destroy the greatest civilisation of the ancient world but we now know that story to be a lie. We never see the actual destruction but seems more of a whimper than a bang.

 

There have been a lot of stories featuring the Master of late and I think the ideas for plots involving him have begun to wind down. Sometimes less is more and in this case, I think he has been used to much. Roger Delgardo was a great actor and it is his acting that at least keeps you interested when pondering why he keeps returning to UNIT's backyard all the time.