carmen_lj | Time Monster

Oh, oh, so despite its rather obvious brilliance, last week's Whoness was a bit hrrm for self as the Doctor was mean. Really, really mean. And then there was meta and sometimes I shouldn't read it because it was good meta and it said things that made sense and such and I agreed with the logic but it made me very sad as that's not what My Doctor Who is about and, um, sometimes I really hate the way that bits of New Who ~~crush my childhood into tiny pieces~~ make the Doctor not very Doctor-ish at all. Even Six only shoved those people in the acid bath by accident. Probably.

Anyways, to cheer self up I done watching of The Time Monster. For anyone not familiar with this astonishing piece of television, it's usually held up as the worst of the Pertwee stories (which is Wrong because that's Monster of Peladon for Death By Boredom) if not one of the worst of the series ever. I Do Not Know Why This Is. (Yes, that's a lie, it's blatantly obvious how awful it is, anyway...) But I love it. Madly and Unreasonably. And here is why you should too, yes:

Ruth and Stu. Oh, god, they are the Double Act of Dreadful and must be adored for the sheer gall of having the nerve to say the lines they're given with straight faces. "Simmer down, Stu," says Ruth when he's late for work. "Men! It's their conceit that bugs me," she exclaims when the Master patronises her, then apologises and goes away to annoy someone else. "God save the good ship women's lib and all who sail in her," says Stuart supportively. Well, quite.

"Men! Why are you all so spineless?" she asks a little later. To which Stuart replies, "I'm not men. I'm Stuart Hyde, registered, card-carrying paid-up coward."
Benton. Ah, Benton, The Time Monster contains both your finest moment and your most embarassing, within thirty seconds of each other. First, he fails to be fooled by a trick phonecall from the Master, then grabs a ladder and sneaks into a first floor lab to catch him. Then the Master says, "Look behind you!" and Benton, poor sod, does so and gets clobbered for his trouble. Oh dear.

Also, he gets turned into a baby and is very naked at the end when he gets turned back and John Levene is on the verge of corpsing and it is quite wonderful.
Episode 4. An episode that takes place almost entirely within the Doctor's TARDIS and (exact same set, not even dressed differently) the Master's TARDIS, with them ~~flirting outrageously~~ snarking at each other the whole time. It's a six-parter, there's going to be padding, but An Entire Episode Of The Stuff? Marvellous! (For, y'see, I adore padding, when it's good paddding - a pox to the plot! I want people to bumble around talking to each other for episodes on end.)
Jo, bless her heart, is perfectly adorable throughout. And the Doctor and her are very in love. And she gets a "groovy" dress and the most astonishing wig to wear and she knows Greek.
"Mike! Get out of there Mike!" Oh, the Brig shows how much he loves Captain Yates by calling him Mike when he is about to get bombed and it is quite marvellous. And, actually, a proper smashing cliffhanger.
TOMTIT. Oh, why? Just, why? Why would you make up that acronym? What good reason could you possibly have? CHEAP LAUGHS, MAN. Very cheap. And they keep saying it, all the bloody time, cause that's the time of the Magic Skience Project the story's about, yes.
"Nothing and nobody can stop me now!" Always a winner, yes.
Ingrid Pitt. For she is win, and wearing pretty dresses that appear to have been designed purely to show off her cleavage. And she's got more mascara on than Rose Tyler. Then she sort of gets her island destroyed casue she's a bit vain, heh.
"If the Thrascan puts his fingers in his ears, it is polite to shout. Old Venusian proverb." "What's a Thrascan?" "Oh, it's an old Venusina term, seldom used since the fifth dynasty. The modern term's Plingh." "What's a Plingh?" "Oh, for heaven's sake, Jo, I've just told you, it means Thrascan." Yes, I'm that easily amused. Shutup.
Hand!pr0n. Just like the New School stuff where they do the ultra close-ups cause they can't show teh sex.
"Brigadier! Do fuck up!" Seriously. That's what the Doctor shouts to the Brig and you can hear it quite clearly when they're grabbing their cars to race to Captain Yates, yes.
The oven. Which is the Magic Skience Project. It is an oven turned on its side. This pleases me greatly.
Man in a bird suit! Oh, the best ever monster on Doctor Who ('part fae the Giant Clams, of course) is a Highly Unconvincing Bird Man With Big Flappy Wings. The lesson: never underestimate how little money the production team have.
"That creature really swallowed him up?" "Ah, it's a nice point: yes and no. Yes, it engulfed him, no, it didn't actually eat him up." Jo and the Master and it's the delivery that is quite prefectly awesome, yes.
"Can't think of anything to say?" "How about curses, foiled again?" Oh, Doctor & Jo, very mean at the Master, yes. Just because he completely failed to kill them. Again.
The awesome levels of OTT acting in Atlantis, the astonishingly unconvincing wigs and the terrifying amounts of eyeliner. Then ~~Darth Vader~~ David Prowse shows up with a bull's head mask and the director, in a truly remarkable decision of daftness, decides that stark lighting is the best way to tackle the problem of a godawful Minotaur costume.
And Jo saves the universe! The entire whole blinkin' universe! All by herself! The Doctor can't do it, because he can't bring himself to kill he, but Jo's all for dying and saving creation, so well done her, yes. Last year she accidently saved the world, this year she saves everything and knows exactly what she's doing. Hurrah!