Last updated 30 March 2023

Doctor Who: The Time Meddler

The Time Meddler

Story Number: 17 (S)
No of Episodes: 4




Writer: Dennis Spooner
Director: Douglas Camfield
Producer: Verity Lambert

Starring: William Hartnell, Maureen O'Brien, Peter Purves, Peter Butterworth, Alethea Charlton


BBC One (United Kingdom):
First Broadcast: Saturday 3rd July 1965 - Saturday 24th July 1965
Running Time: 1 hour, 37 minutes, 32 seconds

Average Audience: 8.43 Million   Average AI: 53




The Doctor and Vicki discover that Steven Taylor has stumbled on board the TARDIS prior to its departure from Mechanus. Steven is sceptical of Vicki's explanation that the ship is a time machine, but the Doctor assures her that they will soon show him the truth of the matter.

The TARDIS lands on the Northumbrian coastline in the year 1066. Here, the three travellers meet the Saxon villagers Wulnoth (Michael Miller), Edith (Alethea Charlton) and Eldred (Peter Russell) and come into conflict with the Viking raiders Sven (David Anderson), Ulf (Norman Hartley) and Gunnar the Giant (Ronald Rich), who are on a reconnaissance mission for their King, Harald Hardrada, prior to a planned invasion of England.

Also present in this time is the Monk (Peter Butterworth), a mischievous rogue from the same planet as the Doctor who travels from place to place in his time machine endeavouring to 'improve' things - for example, enabling the ancient Britons to build Stonehenge with the aid of his anti-gravitational lift. Currently he is engaged in his 'master plan': trying to engineer events so as to reverse the outcome of the Battle of Hastings. Appalled at such frivolous interference with the course of history, the Doctor determines to put a stop to it - an aim he eventually achieves by removing the dimensional control from the Monk's TARDIS, reducing its interior to miniature proportions.

Synopsis from Doctor Who: The First Doctor Handbook by David J. Howe, Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker, reprinted with permission; further reproduction is not permitted. Available from Telos

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