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The latest serial I've watched: The Time Monster, which is another Third Doctor/Master extravaganza. It doesn't top The Sea Devils, which wins for sheer playfulness and narrative pace, but it's the good crack. I mean, how can you not love a story where...

....we get bickering and bitching at each other, tweir two TARDISes interlocking (this is not a euphemism!), the Doctor fondly reminscencing about their experiments back at school while sabotaging the Master, the Master annoying the Doctor by turning off the sound, predicting correctly the Doctor will go to radical measures to have the last word, and the Doctor begging Time herself for the Master's life in order to save him?

Early on I thought the Doctor was unusually condescending to Jo and the Brig in this story, but as it turns out the early condescension had thematic relevance (and was balanced by later moments of openness and sharing). There is an interesting red thread throughout where sexism and looking-down-at-the-natives is addressed and refuted. The Master, who is paralleled to the Doctor, of course (as in Sea Devils, there is a scene where they come to the same conclusion about a scientific problem at the same time, using nearly identical phrases, which is pointed out via cross cutting), condescends to and patronizes three women in this story, his feminist assistant, Jo, and the Queen of Atlantis, and in all three cases, the fact that he underestimates them comes back to bite him and ruin his plans. (Similarly, his automatic assumption that he can just use the primitive locals falls flat when Seargeant Benton doesn't fall for his imitation-of-the-Brig routine or the king of Atlantis sees through him and reacts with withering sarcasm.) I did love the feminist assistant, who was allowed to remain competent and crafty throughout the story, and annoyed by the Brig's old fashioned "females to the sidelines" attitude as much as by her fellow assistant's and the Master's.The Queen of Atlantis - played by that not so stellar actress, Ingrid Pitt - is in a way a predecessor to Lucy, both because of her first falling for the Master and for turning against him in the end. (And as with the First Doctor and Cameca, I wonder where the asexual Time Lords idea came from...) But the best woman-versus-Master exchange has to be handed to Jo, who when she and the Doctor show up after having eluded yet another trap quips to the Master: "How about a 'curses, foiled again'?"

Speaking of Jo, I notice this early we have a safety-of-universe-versus-sacrificing-Companion situation, and the Doctor can't bring himself to do the later, though this annoys me less than when Nine does it - or Four in "Genesis of the Daleks" - because the story lets Jo take the matter into her own hands and go for the switch while the Doctor and the Master are still busy glaring at each other.

The Minotaur - played by a pre-Darth-Vader David Prowse - is as ridiculous a monster as they come in DW, and Kronos the Chronovore isn't that much better as long as Kronos is a white birdlike shape and referred to as "he", but the pay-off is great, with Kronos being female when free (that thematic thing again), an avatar for Time rather than ye olde Titan of Greek myth who is the god of time but decidedly male and eating his children, and amusedly granting the Doctor the Master's life instead of tormenting the Master for eternity. (Though with the benefit of decades of hindsight and future canon, I have do wonder - Kronos, did you sneakily have it both ways, seeing that the Master would soon be in for a stint in a living corpse, then for bodysnatching, then for the Cheeta virus and then for the drums?)

A lot of interesting canon gets introduced here - this appears to be the first episode in which the TARDIS telepathically linking and translating is established, and her sentience is referred to in dialogue as Jo asks, and notices the Doctor consistently refers to the TARDIS as "she" . (BTW, as far as I recall Ten does this consistently, too, but Nine said "it" a few times.) Then we have the two scenes in which the Doctor tells something about his youth, first the fond reminscence about how the Master and he used to mess up each other's experiments at school while he whips up a device to mess up the Master's current experiment (and btw, it cracked me up that the ultimate ingredient for this is tea leaves - Doctor Who: advertising tea as essential for saving the world since the 1960s!), and later the more serious story about meeting the hermit, which is both a very tender moment between the Doctor and Jo - as he tells her this to cheer her up - and character gold, because it shows that the Doctor's eternal optimism is that doesn't come automatically but he has to work for. (It's also a neat use of a Buddhist story by the scriptwriter.)

Lastly: someone ought to make a screencap of the Brigadier's expression when the Doctor tells him he dreamt of the Master. I can't decide whether he's thinking "Too much information!" or "'and this is news why?".

YouTube is ever so useful. If you, dear reader of these ramblings, are a New Whovian without access to the old serials, or maybe without the patience to watch their more leisurely narration, allow me to link some examples of scenes that had an obvious influence on the current show.

Firstly, from Sea Devils: The Master watching The Clangers, which RTD paid homage to by letting him watch the Teletubbies in Sound of Drums:

Secondly, also from Sea Devils, the funnest sword fighting scene in the old show, which the creators also thought because they put it at the end of one episode and completely repeated it in the next. What kills me is the sandwich eating in between and the Doctor giving the Master his sword back for no other reason than he doesn't want the fight to end just yet. Also useful as an answer to the question "were they this slashy in the old days?":

Next we have a music vid using footage from the episode that inspired the, err, song of this vid, Mind of Evil. This is an earlier story in which the MacGuffin of the day is able to confront someone with his greatest fear. Enjoy.

And then, for everyone who like Gwen Cooper on Torchwood asks "which organization is UNIT again?", there is a tongue-in-cheek UNIT recruitment vid, summing up the history of that organization in Old Who.

Lastly, two links: the Brigadier, the only only Doctor Who character to appear in 11 different seasons, 9 consecutive seasons, 23 serials, and appear in all 3 decades of the classic series, of course has been vidded. Recently I found a documantary in which someone from the production team states that if the Master is the Doctor's Moriarty, the Brigadier is his Watson. I'm not entirely sure about that - Holmes never worked for Watson, after all - but there is some resemblance, yes. Here's hoping the Brig will show up one more time!

The Third Doctor had three Companions during his time on the show - Liz Shaw, Jo Grant and Sarah Jane Smith. Jo is the one often dismissed as a ditz, but really, the more I see of her, the more delightful I find her. Have a Jo vid portrait!

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