OOO3 - The Time Monster 3

Seasons 7 and 8 of Doctor Who were made up of 25 episodes each, but producer Barry Letts managed to convince his superiors to up the total by one to 26. This 24-minute episode is the result of that. Letts fought tooth and nail for that extra episode, and this is it. What a ridiculous episode populated by ridiculous events that don't add anything to the story whatsoever. Ridiculous.

There's the scene that takes forever to set up, forever to execute, then ends as quickly as it should have been chucked in the bin - the one where The Doctor constructs some bizarre contraption out of a wine bottle, a cork, a pair of forks, some keychains, and a tea cup. It apparently is supposed to interfere with The Master's machinations, which it does, but for about six seconds before The Master flicks a switch and ruins The Doctor's little game. Well, that killed about seven minutes.

Then there's the soon-to-be-convenient time bubble that freezes time all around the TOMTIT lab. You can see where this one is going to go. It's like purgatory for needless characters. Any characters you don't want to write lines for, you can just chuck in the time bubble and pull them out again by the end of Episode Six. Don't worry - you can still cut back to this scene if you need to by putting a couple of caretakers in charge (Ruth and Stuart) who are trying to dismantle the time bubble.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the horribly stagey scenes in Atlantis, or the equally pointless scenes of UNIT battling Roundheads and V2 bombers, but what would be the point? We're halfway through this story, and we're barely better off, story wise, than when it started.