Doctor Who A-Z #17 – The Time Meddler (1965)

The Time Meddler is an important story, to the extent that you probably know why before you watch it. It’s the first story where the Doctor investigates an alien threat in Earth’s past, inventing the “pseudo-historical” subgenre. Even more importantly, that alien threat turns out to be a member of the Doctor’s own, still-unnamed species. Given how vague the Doctor’s back-story is at this point, and given that this is the first story without any of the show’s original companions, it’s possible that the show could have decided to quietly shuffle this issue to the back of the pack. Without Susan to tether him to outer space, the Doctor might have been retconned as a human inventor, similar to the “Dr. Who” cinema audiences would see Peter Cushing play just a month after this serial began.

Instead, we got this: one of the show’s all-time game-changers of a cliffhanger, as Vicki and Steven follow an anachronistic cable into a stone altar and realise – all together now – “The Monk has a TARDIS!” I’d remembered this as the story’s midway point, but actually it’s the lead-in to the final episode, which takes us back to the other commonly cited reason why this is an important story. Viewed retrospectively, The Time Meddler is the serial which “solves” the problem of the pure historicals, giving the Doctor and his companions greater agency than they’ve previously enjoyed in Earth’s past by including a science-fiction element for them to interact with. The slow build-up, though, allows you plenty of chances to explore eleventh-century Northumberland before it becomes a battle between two Time Lords.

This matters, because it reminds you that a contemporary audience will have expected this to basically be Doctor Who and the Vikings. The more you bear this in mind, the more power it has when Steven discovers a wristwatch, or the Doctor realises the local monastery’s chants are being played on a gramophone. Those two anachronisms point up another quality of Dennis Spooner’s script: like his last one, The Romans, it is extremely funny. The watch is perhaps inspired by the urban myth about an extra in William Wyler’s Ben-Hur wearing a visible Rolex, the gramophone is the kind of self-mocking fourth-wall break you can imagine turning up in one of Ernie Wise’s plays what I wrote. When our other renegade Time Lord appears, he’s played by Carry On regular Peter Butterworth, and the series wastes no time in inaugurating one of its golden rules: whenever two or more Gallifreyans are gathered in this show, they’ll start bickering with each other.

The serial’s slow pace is only disappointing if you judge it by the standard of future pseudo-historicals. In something like Robot of Sherwood, the Twelfth Doctor and Clara start looking for aliens as soon as they realise they’re in the past, but The Time Meddler is deliberately playing by the rules of previous historical serials. And the operative word is “rules”. When the Doctor realises he’s arrived in 1066, he immediately reels off a long, giggly monologue about why this year is important. This is an odd scene, justified in-universe by the fact that the Doctor has just drank some strong mead, and justified out-of-universe by the fact Hartnell ad-libbed it. But it reminds you that, at this stage, the Doctor’s priority upon entering a period of Earth’s history is to remember what happened and not change anything.

This is a rule that was laid down back when the series was conceived as an educational show about a wanderer who definitely, definitely did not fight bug-eyed monsters. By the end of season two, that situation has changed somewhat, but the series still hasn’t got that element out of its system. Here’s the most underrated reason why The Time Meddler is an important story: it represents as significant a milestone in the First Doctor’s hero’s journey as The Daleks, albeit for the opposite reason. If the Daleks represented an evil so absolute that the Doctor was forced to take up arms against them, the Monk is a villain with a moral argument so strong the Doctor can’t counter it – at least, not without changing how he behaves.

One of the Saxon villagers we meet during the build-up to that epochal cliffhanger is called Edith. Edith is friendly and forthcoming, striking up an immediate, mead-assisted, rapport with the Doctor. During the times when he’s separated from Vicki and Steven, she essentially plays the companion’s role. She is also played by Alethea Charlton, who appeared in An Unearthly Child, strengthening the sense that The Time Meddler is a spiritual restart for the show. In episode two, there is a Viking raid which leaves her traumatised. We don’t know what’s happened to her during the raid, but we know there are two activities Vikings are associated with. It could have been the pillaging. But it’s probably be the other one.

This is, for sure, a remarkably tasteful treatment of sexual violence compared with all the lusting and groping Barbara used to get. If you pick up on it at all – and you may not – it’s because you’re aware of the regrettable way historical adventure serials of this vintage did use sexual threat as a genre element. In pure plot terms, it motivates the villagers to fight back against the Vikings, but it also adds some weight to the Monk’s critique of the Doctor’s non-interventionism. Why shouldn’t poor Edith and her people be given weapons that could instantly end the Vikings’ assaults? In the first season, the Doctor’s answer would have been simple: you can’t rewrite history, not one line. But this year we’ve seen the Doctor play an extremely Monkish role as the accelerant of change on Vortis, on Xeros and on a Dalek-occupied future Earth. Who is he to declare that the Saxons should resign themselves to the horrors of their time? The Doctor can’t really answer this, and looking at how his future selves behave you can’t help but wonder if he accepted the validity of the Monk’s critique. These people do deserve a protector – just one that’s better than the Monk.

The Monk’s plan to give the Saxons nuclear weapons might be seen as a way of weighting the scales: without this one unconscionable act, this week’s villain would be straightforwardly in the right. Either way, and despite the above-mentioned subplot with Edith, the serial doesn’t feel like a heavy exploration of the Doctor’s morality. It feels light and breezy, benefitting from the fact that, before every serial had to involve the threat of planetary destruction, Hartnell-era Doctor Who could easily be whimsical and slight if it wanted to. Hartnell himself has clearly enjoyed developing the Doctor’s comic persona – the tour he gives Steven of the TARDIS console room might be Doctor Who‘s funniest moment yet at this stage – and the Monk’s storyline is resolved not in a life-or-death struggle but with an amusing prank.

In the end, this is the reason why The Time Meddler is not just an important story but a great one. It sets out the course for the next six decades of Doctor Who, but it does it in a way that shines a light on what is unique and delightful about this particular version of the show. We cherish it for being the first pseudo-historical, but maybe we should cherish it more as the last time the series could be quite like this.

Next: Galaxy 4 (1965)

Graham’s Archive – The Time Meddler

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