Doctor Who: The Time Monster - Episode 64

The Good:
Classic sci-fi concepts - Nice tie in with Atlantis
Great restoration work for the epsiodes (except parts of episode 6)
UNIT is involved, but they're there more for comedic value (Benton reverted to a baby, then back to an adult) and filler.

The Bad:
Picture quality is poor for some parts of episode 6 (not poor as in unwatchable, just slightly distracting).

The acronym TOMTIT (Transfer Of Matter Through Interstitial Time) is silly, but the concept is really neat and the tie in with Atlantis was well done. I also enjoyed the concept of Chronos and his race that exits outside time. UNIT is well used in this story and their presence gave me a sense of the family feel that existed between UNIT on Jon Pertwee's Doctor.

The acting was well done, the sets were really nice and the script was well written. The Atlantian costumes and the Chronos Monster were great ... for Doctor Who. The story was great - I like stories like these where you really don't need cgi effects to help tell the story.

The extras were okay. There really wasn't any "Making of" featurette - just an explanation of the science behind the "Transfer Of Matter Through Interstitial Time" device and real physics (24 minutes) interspersed with interviews with Katy Manning and Richard Franklin. I watched this before I watched the full episode and found it really helped me get into the story.

The featurette on the restoration of parts of this movie really gives you a sense of the amount of work involved. Hats off to the people who worked on this - they did a great job (excluding two parts of episode 6 of course where you can see lines bleeding to the right of the actors such as the Doctor and the Atlantian Queen).

Overall, a great addition to Doctor Who.

Yes, I know it's as corny as a tin of bully beef, but there is an odd aspect to this one. I did a course in relativity a year or two back, and it was notable that it started with the historical background, Newtonian physics, and some propositions about space and time. One of these was the continuity of space, and the isotropy of space. Only then did it go onto the usual stuff about electrodynamics, and Lorentz and so forth. It has to be said that these are "a priori" assumptions that undergird an awful lot of subsequent mathematics, and I did think while reading that material that this story was a direct challenge to these assumptions. Granular, or interstitial time? Maybe not so crazy, who knows. I am still fascinated by the geometric paradoxes of box (a) inside box (b), inside box (a), and so forth. I remember reading through a heap of books on Homotopy and Homology at Uni, just because way back when I was 8 or so, this story came along. Still don't know if there isn't something in all this that might stand up. And it's maybe true, that in spite of all the horrible stage work, and cak handed acting, these ideas are actually the main grip here, and are the things that back up the story. Because you just can't write the whole thing off... not quite...

Basically a decent story with some great performances maybe this story goes on too long. Additionally the "Monster: suffers as many of the 70's stories. The monster is as scary as a man in a sheet and too many of the early scenes repeat similar themes indicating padding. However basically a good story, the Master is in great form and I'm always happy to see Ingrid Pitt.