Format: DVD
Warts & All: Jerky Robot Knight
Quote: Is this Doctor a long shank rascal with a mighty nose?
Review: For a while I used to believe that any Doctor Who story with the word ‘Time’ in the title was A Bit Crap™ – it was like the odd-numbered Star Trek movie rule. Trial Of A Time Lord, Time And The Rani, Invasion Of Time… Then I obtained The Time Meddler plus this one on DVD at around the same time and treated myself to a double bill.
Both were a treat (both featuring anachronistic travellers equipping primitives with advanced weapons) and this is just as much fun this time round. Not least because it is of course the debut of Sarah Jane Smith. It’s a fab intro for her and she doesn’t put a foot wrong, stowing away aboard the TARDIS and navigating her own course to a large extent through the first half of proceedings, even suspecting the Doctor’s involvement and masterminding his capture before becoming his assistant/companion by story’s end. It’s such a great escapade, absolutely tailor-made for Pertwee’s Doctor, replete with swashes and buckles and derring-do, liberally salted and peppered with Robert Holmes’ colourful dialogue as brilliant as Irongron’s star.
We’re introduced to the Sontarans, in the form of Linx, perhaps never realised or portrayed better than here with an exceptional piece of design and a top quality performance by Kevin Lindsay. While the mask gives him a fantastically animate face for what is essentially a large potato, he invests that ‘monster’ with character, such that he’s an actual credible individual within a race of cloned warriors. It’s a helluvan achievement. And he’s chucked into this scenario like A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, in amongst these medieval characters who are so far removed from Game Of Thrones, they’re actually very like the pageant that Sarah Jane believes herself to be caught up in.
The acting among the pageanteers isn’t always Academy Award standard, but honestly on this occasion it couldn’t matter less. It’s a romp and a half and with the likes of David Daker as grizzled warmonger Irongron and June Brown (Dot Cotton to most of the UK) enlivening the main supporting cast, there’s more than enough charisma around to make up for a few guards sleep-acting their way through. John J Carney is comical as Bloodaxe, about as bloodthirsty as a Wurzel, and let’s not forget there’s also Boba Fett! as Hal the Archer, a character who would’ve been right at home in Robin Hood serials at the time if Robin Of Locksley could stomach the competition. Each of the four episodes dashes by, with their nicely judged helpings of perils and laughs and great use of location in and around the castle.
One of the cliffhangers is one of those slight cheats, with the following recap revealing action previously withheld but that’s just another element that confirms this as Saturday serial material. Some of the fights and action – such as the almost gratuitous chandelier swing – is on the stagey side, but there’s nothing to actively dampen the general enjoyment. I find myself not even caring about the logistics of getting Linx’s spaceship into that pokey castle chamber he’s using as his lab. I think the only thing about it I don’t like is the stiff-jointed robot knight as I’ve never been a fan of futuristic robots that move so mechanically and this one is supposed to be a warrior made for Irongron, but all it does is walk like a mechanical mime artist and make chopping motions with its sword which wouldn’t trouble a slow-moving turnip. It’s a bit Rubeish, if you’ll forgive the pun.
Talking of whom, the Doctor packs all the kidnapped scientists off home at the end while he and Sarah depart in the TARDIS, leaving us to speculate on the scene from the poor Brigadier’s viewpoint back in the 20th century, with the mystery solved but nobody but a batty short-sighted Professor left to explain what the hell’s been going on. Maybe somebody will write that scene one day, as a Time Warrior cutaway. But for the time being, what we have on screen is thoroughly entertaining wizardry.
