The Time Museum by: James Goss directed by: Lisa Bowerman: Welcome to the Chesterton Exhibition

The Time Museum is performed by William Russell as Ian Chesterton with Philp Pope as Pendoolin.  It was written by James Goss, directed by Lisa Bowerman, and was released in July 2012.

 

Memory is a funny thing.  It usually retains the impressions of times gone by, but rarely ever is the perfection required for most to get an accurate representation of one’s own life.  So what if we took the memories and turned them into a museum.  That is the inspiration for the setting of The Time Museum, a museum where time travelers are collected from all points in history and their experiences are put on display for the public to see.  While it is very similar to the main premise of The Space Museum, James Goss crafts an excellent setting as his story is an excuse to mix together elements from An Unearthly Child, Marco Polo, and The Crusade into one story then The Daleks, The Web Planet, and The Sensorites.  There is also much reference made to Lost Stories and Companion Chronicles, Farewell, Great Macedon and The Rocket Men, both get extended periods of though dedicated to them and all through this abstract setting of a museum dedicated to Ian Chesterton.

 

The plot itself is much darker than it could be as Ian wakes up to find himself in the museum with Pendolin, a guide helping him through the exhibition while whispering ghosts come to eat his memories.  The first episode involves Ian and Pendolin trying to run away from these ghosts until the darker elements of the story rear their head.  Pendolin is the creature who created the museum and used the guests who came to the museum as food.  He feeds off their memories, stories give him substance you see, but it kills them and people started noticing so they stopped coming.  Pendolin was unable to control his hunger for memories and started to eat the exhibits which turned them into ghosts and now Ian is the only one left.  Ian’s memories are Pendolin’s finest experience as he has had the most travel in his life, travel with a Time Lord, changing history.  The first episode is already very tense as you have an old man trying to escape the museum himself and you have these exhibits changing as Ian begins to misremember events so you have Daleks fighting Zarbi, the Saracen Horde against the forces of Alexander the Great.  There are random cavepeople fighting around and the first episode plays out very much like the greatest hits of the first two seasons of the show all in an hour.

 

The second episode really is what seals the deal making this story a great one as it ends in a climax where Ian shows what the Doctor was like in An Unearthly Child.  He was about to commit murder and it was Ian’s challenging of his morals that changed his ways.  This is enough to get under Pendolin’s skin and defeat the creature, returning Ian back to his own time having an adventure where the Doctor doesn’t appear at all.  This is really William Russell’s time to shine as Ian Chesterton.  He doesn’t really have to play the younger version of Ian that we would normally be seeing as this story is only taking place in the “present”.  Russell acts the part as an old man telling a story.  Ian obviously loved his wife Barbara, had great respect for the Doctor, and looks back on that period of his life with nostalgia for it.  He also is the sole reason the climax of the story works with Russell making himself out as angry.  Philip Pope is interesting as Pendolin is a multi-faceted character.  One moment there’s a child-like glee while the next moment Pendolin is a monster, ready to kill.  He’s almost the First Doctor for the story in a way and his fate at the end of the story is quite interesting as it is something that really fits the character.  Lisa Bowerman once again is on the top of her game as a director for the duration of the story.  She has the sound team really have the story feel like it is in a deserted environment.

 

To summarize, The Time Museum is one of Goss’s best efforts as a writer giving us the perfect story of a man who is near the end of his life and is looking back.  It could almost be seen as a death of the character and really gets things going.  Russell and Pope are excellent in the story and the tone is something that really doesn’t go for anything less than perfection.  100/100