The Time Meddler

The Watcher [Episode 1]

Hannah is still mourning the loss of Ian and Barbara.

Hannah: How are they going to cope now?

When the Doctor and Vicki hear a noise coming from the TARDIS living quarters, they jump to the conclusion that it's "obviously a Dalek"; Hannah knows better, of course.

Hannah: "Obviously." I think you'll find it's Peter Purves.

It is indeed Steven, and she's overjoyed to see the stuffed panda again.

Hannah: Told you. I want to cosplay as the panda. So, for some reason they don't actually think he's mental, even though he went back for a cuddly toy?
Me: He's calmed down a bit now.

The TARDIS arrives in Northumbria in the year 1066, closely observed from the clifftop by an ominous monk.

Me: It's been a while since we've had a historical story.
Hannah: Yeah. When I saw the monk I just wondered if it was some kind of space monk.
Me: That's Peter Butterworth from the Carry On films. What's a space monk?
Hannah: I don't know, but they've had them in later episodes.
Me: So where do you think we are?
Hannah: Please be Vikings.

Hannah, who always insists that she never recognises actors, surprises us both when the Doctor goes for a wander and meets one of the local women, Edith.

Hannah: She's been in it before.
Me: Oh, very good!
Hannah: Was she a caveman?
Me: Yes! Right at the very beginning of the series. I'm surprised you recognised her, it feels like a long time ago now.
Hannah: I don't recognise people very often, but I recognised her because she has a distinctive face.

She loves the Doctor's panda joke, but unfortunately she misses the infamous "space helmet for a cow" gag because she's so preoccupied with the Viking helmet.

Hannah: The Vikings never had helmets with horns on; they've never found any. The historical inaccuracies are annoying. But at least it's being balanced with correct and interesting information, so it's not so bad.

There's also a rather curious moment where the Monk checks his wrist before realising he's lost something.

Hannah: For a moment I thought he was going to look at his watch!
Me: Don't be silly.
Hannah: The camera direction in this is really good.
Me: It's directed by Douglas Camfield, one of the more popular directors. He also worked on The Crusade.

She doesn't immediately make the connection when Steven discovers a wristwatch in the forest later, and when the monastic chanting from the monastery suddenly slows down for a second and then gets back up to speed again, Hannah assumes it must be a production error.

Hannah: It sounded like a recording that's wonky.

She begins to catch on when the cliffhanger reveals that a gramophone is responsible for the chanting, although her first reaction is to identify another time meddler from the David Tennant episode "Turn Left".

Hannah: Is it the Trickster?

The Meddling Monk [Episode 2]

Hannah's theory has taken me completely by surprise, and she seems a little dispirited about it.

Hannah: I thought I'd come up with an interesting idea about people meddling with time.
Me: Well, maybe this will turn out to be an even more interesting idea.
Hannah: Yeah, a meddling monk. Maybe if Ian and Barbara had kept their time machine they could have gone travelling to all the places they wanted to go, and then Ian got old and weird and became a monk. Is the Doctor getting breakfast in bed?

Despite the charming sight of an electronic toaster in the late Saxon period she's still missing the teachers, even expecting to see Ian's face instead of Steven at one point.

Hannah: Vicki's got good makeup for roughing it overnight in the woods. Oh! Now I know why the Monk was looking at his watch.

(That splintering crash you can hear is the sound of a penny dropping.)

Me: See, this is the advantage you've got that I never had; I already knew what this story was about before I ever saw it. It's the first historical where the history isn't played completely straight, so you go into it thinking it's just going to be business as usual and then you get wristwatches and gramophones. You get to experience the same surprise plot twist that the contemporary audience would have had, unlike the majority of fans who originally saw these stories out of order.
Hannah: Is the Monk trying to find his watch with a pair of binoculars?
Me: More likely he's scanning the horizon for Viking longboats.

In the aftermath of a Viking raid on the village, the Doctor's friend Edith lies inert on the ground; as ever, the implication is clear enough.

Hannah: Oh no, don't be dead! Oh, good, she's not dead.
Me: There's a good chance that something else has happened to her, though.

Neither of us really wants to dwell on this for very long, so Hannah deftly changes the subject.

Hannah: I see Hartnell was on holiday for this one.

A Battle of Wits [Episode 3]

Based on the episode title, Hannah is expecting Steven and Vicki to spend the episode evading a series of traps inside the monastery so she's a little underwhelmed when the secret passage brings them straight back outside. Speaking of the outdoor scenery, the landscape around Edith's cottage looks a little irregular when the Monk pays her a visit.

Hannah: Hmmm. That backdrop looks really bad.
Me: I think it's quite well-drawn.
Hannah: It's pretty but the whole perspective is completely wrong.
Me: You can't have everything.

To be honest I'm just spending the whole episode marking time until the cliffhanger and the second plot twist: the Monk doesn't just have a time machine, he has a TARDIS. I make sure to watch Hannah's face during the reveal, and it doesn't disappoint.

Hannah: I see! I'm not saying it. We'll just watch the next one.
Me: What aren't you saying?
Hannah: Nothing.

Checkmate [Episode 4]

Hannah: All TARDISes look the same, apparently.
Me: Why shouldn't they?
Hannah: The Doctor's TARDIS changes.
Me: Yes, but it hasn't yet. Think of it as the default setting.
Hannah: So maybe they're built to standard, and they adapt to the person?
Me: Yeah, you can just change the desktop theme.

The Monk seems to have amassed a collection of trinkets from every period of history, although it looks surprisingly Earth-centric.

Hannah: Why is everyone so obsessed with Earth's history? There are so many other planets.

Incidentally, there's a nice bit of intensity from Hartnell when he declares that the Monk has got to be stopped.

Hannah: His facial expressions are just amazing.

For some reason, Edith (the only woman we've seen in the whole of Northumbria so far) gets to join in with the men who are repelling the Viking incursion.

Hannah: Why does she get to join in? There aren't any other women there.
Me: That's the glass ceiling for you.

Then we come to a particularly violent scene, in which the Monk leaves two Vikings to be brutally killed by the villagers. Twelve seconds are missing, so we can only imagine how much more violent it was on the original transmission, but luckily those twelve seconds have been reconstructed as a DVD extra. When I suggest to Hannah afterwards that we go back and watch twelve seconds of audio and stage directions, she seems genuinely excited at the prospect; I don't know whether to be pleased or slightly worried.

In the meantime, she's more concerned with the Doctor's plan to sabotage the Monk's TARDIS.

Hannah: Is he stealing all the bits to make his own TARDIS work properly? Is he going to fly it away by remote control so that the Monk has to stay there forever?
Me: Better than that.
Hannah: What could be better than that?

In the end, she accepts that shrinking the inside to match the outer dimensions and leaving him stranded in the 11th century is actually pretty nifty.

Hannah: I'm glad I didn't say something stupid when they revealed the Monk's TARDIS.
Me: So you know he's not the Master now?
Hannah: Yes. Well, it could have been, but they don't know each other. And he's not evil, he's just silly.
Me: Yeah, he's a mischief-maker rather than an outright villain. More like a naughty schoolboy who's doing it for fun.

The Score

Hannah: They kept the mystery for a long time and it was a good one, but there were a few annoying historical inaccuracies.
Me: You mean like the gramophone, the toaster, the nuclear missiles...
Hannah: No, like the horned helmets! But everything else looked pretty good. It's interesting that you can have comedy bits in it when you've also got scenes of some vikings being murdered and a woman possibly being raped, but it's a very well-balanced story. I feel like I wanted more. It was well-made, there weren't that many mistakes, it was fun and it still leaves you with loads of questions about the Doctor's race and whether they all have a TARDIS.

9/10