‘ONLY A MATTER OF TIME’

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Arcturians with the Second Doctor, Polly and Ben

This ‘Doctor Who Annual’ story is better than ‘The Sons of the Crab’. 😀 ‘Only a Matter of Time’ features the Second Doctor, Polly and Ben, and is read by Anneke Wills. The story is taken from the 1968 ‘Doctor Who Annual’. In this story, Ben is alarmed when he spots an oncoming fleet of ships. 😐

They happen to be on their way to invade the Earth. The aliens happen to be the Arcturians. Not to be confused with the Arcturan that was seen in ‘The Curse of Peladon’. 😀 These Arcturians are actually avian/bird-like, which did put me in mind of those avian/bird-like people from ‘Circular Time: Spring’.

Like in ‘The King of Golden Death’, the mannerisms of the Second Doctor echo from how the First Doctor spoke during his era of the the TV series. This is especially when he refers to Ben and Polly as ‘my children’ or ‘my boy’ or ‘my girl’. There’s one point where the Doctor tells Ben to ‘shut up’ in the story. 😐

It’s also interesting how the Second Doctor refers to his recent transformation as ‘rejuvenation’ and ‘reincarnation’, but not ‘regeneration’. I felt the talking scenes between the Second Doctor and the Arcturians didn’t go anywhere, despite the Doctor persuading the Arcturians not to invade the Earth.

It’s also strange when the Doctor seems to infer that he’s human and the TARDIS is from Earth. Anneke Wills does well in reading this story, especially when voicing Patrick Troughton’s Doctor as well as Ben and Polly. Polly is portrayed as being sensible and generally smarter than Ben in the story.

After the story, there’s ‘Secrets of the TARDIS’, read by Dan Starkey from the 1982 ‘Doctor Who Annual’. This feature mainly details what the TARDIS exterior and interior is like. It also hints on the things left unknown about the TARDIS. This happens to be a one-page feature in the 1982 annual.

‘Only a Matter of Time’ rating – 5/10