Checkmate (The Time Meddler Episode 4)

The one where the Doctor makes the Monk's TARDIS smaller on the inside...

The Monk is impossibly likeable, isn't he? I mean, if you set aside his outrageously irresponsible plan to change the course of human history, he's essentially a rather sweet, fun person to be around. He'd be a real hoot to travel through time and space with, even if some of his "adventures" involved some rather naughty outcomes. Perhaps he needs a travelling companion, someone to stop him...?

The Monk's plan - the repeated references to his "master plan" are retrospectively meta - is as catastrophic as it is reasoned, and Dennis Spooner manages to summarise both sides of the argument in dialogue given to the Monk and Steven.

A Battle of Wits (The Time Meddler Episode 3)

The one where we discover the Monk has his own TARDIS...

While I like the new energy Peter Purves has brought to the show in his exuberant performance as Steven, I do take issue with his merciless cynicism. He's a space pilot from the future, but takes an inordinate amount of time to process the fact that time travel is possible, and that he's in the 11th century. At the start of this episode, Vicki decides to look for a secret passage through which the Doctor might have escaped the locked room, but he immediately pooh-poohs the idea. While Vicki is being practical and resourceful, Steven prefers to take a somewhat defeatist point of view. How long that lasts I don't know, but Maureen O'Brien has brought little Vicki on so far since her debut in The Rescue just six months earlier. Vicki is no longer the lost and frightened little orphan of Desperate Measures; now she is a seasoned adventurer who thinks outside the box and knows what's what. She's grown up.

Which is why the supposed "loss" of the TARDIS to the tide affects Vicki so much. Again, Steven doesn't seem too bothered - he takes the pragmatic approach of accepting the TARDIS is gone and moving on - but if he just stopped and processed it, he'd surely realise the pickle they're in. O'Brien gives Vicki a wistful sadness as she considers the loss of the Ship. "You don't know what the TARDIS meant," she tells Steven. To Vicki, that police box was her world - her home, her shelter - and the Doctor is the only family she has. She has to face up to losing the only sure things in her life, and I'm glad writer Dennis Spooner gave space and time to this moment.

The Meddling Monk (The Time Meddler Episode 2)

The one which features drunkenness, murder, rape... and snuff!

To be honest, there's not much I can say about this episode. It's not that it's rubbish - far from it - it's just that not very much happens. More than any other Hartnell story, The Time Meddler takes its time in doing anything (it takes the Monk three long minutes to make and serve the Doctor's unwanted breakfast!) and this refusal to be dynamic and action-packed can sometimes lead to moments of tedium. There's always something happening, it's just that often it's not very interesting.

The main thing that happens in this episode which moves the plot forward is the arrival of the Vikings, who the Monk seems to be expecting. He waits on the cliffs looking out to sea, awaiting the first glimpse of their sailing boats, and seems buoyed by their appearance. He's obviously planning something, but the viewer is going to have to be terribly patient in order to find out what. I was quite surprised to see the Monk snorting snuff during this scene, however. Although taking snuff was a perfectly normal activity among the older generation in the 1960s, from a 21st century perspective he could just as easily be snorting a line of cocaine. And do you know what? We don't know that he isn't!

The Watcher (The Time Meddler Episode 1)

The one where the TARDIS crew gains a new recruit...

The crew of the TARDIS is the smallest it's been since the very first episode, with just the Doctor and Vicki left to continue their adventures in time and space. The departure of Ian and Barbara in The Planet of Decision is not forgotten about or glossed over, and writer Dennis Spooner wisely spends a little time addressing this monumental change in the show's regular cast.

The Doctor and Vicki talk about how much they'll miss the schoolteachers, and there's a lovely, tender scene between William Hartnell and Maureen O'Brien which is framed by director Douglas Camfield in as reassuring a way as one can imagine. The Doctor beckons Vicki over to speak to her, and she kneels dutifully by his side on the floor and listens to his thoughts. It's like watching a grandfather read a bedtime story to his granddaughter beside a log fire, reassuring her that all will be well, and even going so far as to ask if Vicki might want to leave too. It's beautifully done, and Hartnell seems to be using his natural speaking voice at times too, rather than his "Doctor voice" (if you watch his Points West interview from 1967, or listen to his Desert Island Discs from 1965, you can plainly tell there was a difference).