I can't remember the last time I wrote a wholly negative review. It might have been years ago, so I am going to start by trying to say five nice things about The Time Monster:

1. The regular cast outstripped the quality of the script, we are unbelievably fortunate to have Pertwee, Manning, Delgardo and the UNIT team holding the whole show together. The Master faking the The Brigadier's voice was especially good. Sergeant Benton was very well served in this story.
2. I enjoyed the additions to Doctor Who lore this story presented, I am happy that the TARDIS is now considered a telepathic machine, more than "just" a time machine.
3. The scale of this story was glorious, we got to go back in time to a creatively represented culture and in contrast to this elements of it are brought into contemporary 1970s surroundings. This was not a story content with resting on its laurels.
4. The aging/getting younger element of the story was not original, but it was well handled and looked great.
5. The sets and costumes were excellent.

Episode one of The Time Monster was the first episode of Jon Pertwee's tenure which I have found entirely painful to watch. It makes me appreciative of quite how high quality most Doctor Who scripts are. Dr Ruth Ingram is an especially terribly written character, a feminist written by someone who clearly has no idea what feminism is, or worse is deliberately written as a "man hating" female character to serve a generally acknowledged, negative stereotype. I get that its the 1970s and we cannot judge this show by today's standards - but my God it must have been a nightmare being a feminist in this era. Liz Shaw's character suffered from a lesser version of this same treatment. I simply do not believe that a woman would ever write a female character to behave in this way. Some of Pertwee's writing team seem to struggle with the idea that a woman can be intelligent without being fusty!

It would be less frustrating if she wasn't one of the very few female guest stars in a show full to the brim with men. It would be less frustrating if Katy Manning wasn't given the shortest skirt you could possibly imagine, told to sit on a table and then filmed by a camera directed up straight up her legs. The Queen of Atlantis was also dressed in a needlessly sexual way.

It would be better if Dr Ingram's colleague (who is supposed to be a great friend and partner) wasn't consistently delivering poorly written, out of character quips made to arm viewers with a defense against women. There are few mitigating factors here. It is brutal. I don't quite understand how 1960s Doctor Who was so much better at representing women, there is even a fantastically interesting female scientist in The Web of Fear! What happened? Was there a backlash? I simply don't believe any of it, I can't invest in these guest characters.

The story meanders from one idea to another, at no point do you feel like one idea is fully explored, so it's all a bit of a mess. It was only when sitting down to write the review that I remembered that there was a Minotaur in this story - where did they go with that?! There are so many questions. Was the name TOMTIT supposed to be hilarious across all six parts?

They succeeded in making elements such as the bird God weird and the TARDIS inside a TARDIS different and weird which could have worked - but it needed to be grounded by a more successful story. It's annoying to have to lay into such a creative and different story - but this is terrible Doctor Who.

Pertwee's third season has not been nearly as good as his first or second - I am very much looking forward to getting on with season 10 of Doctor Who and leaving season 9 behind!