The Time Meddler (1965) Review

The Time Meddler is a classic example of a William Hartnell story done well. There's actual direction, good humor, easy-to-understand dialogue and a brilliant villain.

The TARDIS lands in England, 1066 and the crew finds another Time Lord, the Meddler manipulating events there in the hopes of 'improving' the timeline.

William Hartnell is having great fun with this, primarily because of the Meddler(Peter Butterworth) is much like his own character. Tricks and treats. Watching the two giggling like schoolkids over the Meddler's masterplan is just priceless. It's also a historical(kind of) so he's not having any science-y dialogue to recite.

Peter Purves is decent as Steven Taylor. His character is relatable and like Sir Ian before him, he plays off the Doctor(I love how he keeps calling him "Doc").

Even Vicki is giving her best. All for the season finale, I suppose. She's not crazy(that ring in the sand story still bugs me) and she's not overblown (REVOLUTION!). She's just a girl traveling in the TARDIS and I'm fine with that.

And then there's the Meddler himself. I love this guy. Considering the fast-paced nature of new Doctor Who, there's no time for something completely pointless, but back in those days... I just feel happy when he tries to ram the cell door open in case the Doctor's hiding behind there. It's completely pointless and completely realistic. As I said before, the Meddler isn't evil. It's hard to define what he is. Sometimes he's just having fun, other times he's preparing to destroy Vikings with neutron bombs(wasn't one of them enough to blow up Skaro?). I loved the "To Do" list he had.

For the most part, the story runs along just fine, but there are a few exceptions. In Episode 2, the Vikings attack the camp and the villagers believe that the TARDIS crew were their spies. What happened to that? Later on, it's completely dropped.
Secondly, more than half of Episode 4 is spent on babbling. Literally, there's a whole scene of the Doctor and the Meddler talking about how good the Meddler's chameleon circuit is.

And it goes on with how the Meddler's TARDIS is better than the Doctor's and how the Doctor intends to stop the Meddler("I wonder what we'll do to stop that monk fellow"). All that takes about half the episode to get through.

However, after we have, it picks up again and races to the finish line and makes it first place.
The ending was just brilliant with the Meddler bellowing at the Doctor like the latter eventually will at the Time Lords. Throughout the story, the Meddler seems to consider the Doctor as a superior of sorts.

And that's it. There's not really much to say about this story. It goes right up there with Marco Polo, The Dalek Invasion Of Earth and The Romans as a William Hartnell classic.

So that's Season 2 finished. It was a big improvement over Season 1, obviously. The bigger studio has done wonders to the show, the persona of the Doctor is a fact, not a variable and there have been some real good stories. I just love William Hartnell's Doctor. That's the problem with the new show... there aren't enough stories. Even though Hartnell was in the business for about as long as David Tennant and Matt Smith, I've seen and grown to know the First much more than the Tenth or Eleventh.

And what I've seen is that he is very underrated as a Doctor, far too low on the list. He always gets branded as "the grumpy one", even though he is as high-spirited and adventerous as any other and the grumpiness is usually reserved for humor or caution. He's immensely clever, brave and defiant.