Alone in the TARDIS now that Ian and Barbara have returned to their own time, the Doctor and Vicki hear a noise. At first they think that it might be a Dalek. Why? Did the Doctor leave the doors open? A silly thing to do when you consider all the potentially hostile animals and plant-life which might infest the jungles of Mechanus. There's the Fungoids for a start. How does he know that every Dalek was destroyed in the battle with the Mechonoids? Some might still have been patrolling the jungle.
Once they know that their interloper is astronaut Steven Taylor, the Doctor goes on to describe the TARDIS to him in terms of a television set - including a horizontal hold. The scanner might have such a thing, if it wasn't digital, but how would the whole ship have such a thing?
The Monk's plan doesn't really bear thinking about. It suggests that a single event will change everything - including things not directly connected to it. A regime change, for instance, does not automatically lead to advances in technology. The Monk talks of averting the numerous wars with France as though this will lead to aircraft and television being invented centuries early. If anything, it's sad to say, wars promote technology. A lot of peace time developments have arisen out of military necessity. Look at the links between the Bletchley code-breakers and modern computing. The rockets which took Mankind to the Moon owe their origins to V2 rockets, and the work of a Nazi scientist, a man who should have been prosecuted for war crimes. The first jet aircraft was a military one. Florence Nightingale's improvements in nursing care came out of the Crimean War. The list goes on and on... The Monk's hoped for centuries of peace could just as easily have led to stagnation in technology.
To keep his plan on track the Monk would have had to make numerous other interventions later on.
One of his earlier schemes - putting a small amount of money in a bank account in 1968 then collecting a fortune in compound interest two hundred years later - shouldn't have gone well, as he would have been looking to collect right in the middle of the Dalek invasion of Earth, when I'm pretty sure the banks were shut. These days banks have a habit of closing small accounts which haven't been touched for a while anyway.
The Monk writes his plan on a parchment scroll. Why does this have to be non-anachronistic, if he has a gramophone, radio, hot plate, wristwatch etc, etc, etc.?
The Monk's TARDIS console room differs from the Doctor's in one significant way - the console itself is raised considerably higher off the floor. This would actually make it harder to operate all the controls, especially for someone as vertically challenged as he is. Was he particularly tall in a previous incarnation and got fed up getting a crick in his neck bending over, and just hasn't got round to changing it back?
Then we have the dimensional control. Relatively easy to remove, wouldn't you say? Why, if it renders the ship practically unusable? A bit of a design flaw there.
Presumably the electrical cable which runs from the altar is so that he can power his cooking equipment. Wouldn't cable-free equipment have been more convenient - solar powered or battery operated? Why not just cook in his TARDIS in the first place? The cable gives away the location of his supposedly disguised ship.
The Monk also appears to have a transistor radio in his kitchen area. What does he plan to pick up on it, in the 11th Century? Was there a "Ye Olde Radio Northumbria" playing the week's top ten madrigals, and late night Gregorian chants?
Talking of music, a wind-up gramophone is surely a bit of a liability, as indeed we see it alert the Doctor to there being something wrong at the monastery and leads to the interruption of his plans.
The one everyone talks about - Viking helmets with horns. The type of horned helmet we see Vicki find on the beach is of the cliched variety. If some Vikings did have horns - or wings - on their helmets then it usually denoted someone of high status, or someone wearing purely ceremonial head gear. It's something you would, quite literally, be seen dead in. Your standard Viking pillager didn't wear this sort of thing. A leather cap would be more likely.
Edith is apparently raped by the Viking scout party. On screen this actually looks like she has been killed, as her eyes are open and unblinking when husband Wulnoth finds her. Next minute she's her old chipper self, the perfect hostess, as though nothing has happened.
Most of the above relates to the script and not to the production itself. That's because we have the excellent Douglas Camfield directing. Considering that his first job on Doctor Who was to direct the Ealing Studio filming of the brutal fight between cavemen Kal and Za in An Unearthly Child, it is a surprise that the fight between the Saxons and the Vikings is so poorly realised. (Actually not a surprise at all, as it shows that external pre-filming could be done properly with a degree of leisure to get it right, whilst studio recording had so many constraints, especially of time).
By the end of the story the Doctor has ensured that history will run its intended course - 1066 and all that. Bad luck for nice Edith and Wulnoth etc. who will have murderous Vikings and traitorous Anglo-Saxon royals descending on their village very soon, then William the Conqueror harrying their northern home a few years later, assuming they've survived. We don't see the Doctor suggesting to those he has befriended that that they might want to think about moving home to a safer region, and perhaps learning Norman French whilst they're at it - "s'il vous plait", "merci" and "une cruche d'hydromel" at the very least.
Hartnell has a great fluff when he is talking to Vicki and Steven about getting up off the beach to the clifftop above:
"I'm not a mountain goat! I prefer walking to anyday, and I hate climbing".
A line to the Monk about "no monkey business" comes out as "no more monkery".
Even Peter Purves has a slip-up in his first proper episode when he talks about the TARDIS landing on the beach. Watching Hartnell dribble pebbles down a rock he talks about the TARDIS landing on pebbles, clearly distracted by what his co-star is doing.
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