Quite a lot actually. For a start, we missed out on "The Daleks in London" for this hodge-podge of ideas.
Barry Letts and Robert Sloman were basically attempting to get lightning to strike twice, but missed by miles.
For Season 9 discussions had taken place with Terry Nation to bring the Daleks back into Doctor Who after a gap of some 5 years. Robert Sloman began writing a set of scripts provisionally titled "The Daleks in London", which would have involved them messing about with history - with Roundhead soldiers and V2 Doodlebugs appearing in the 20th Century...
However, Letts and Terrance Dicks then decided that the Daleks would make more of a splash as a season opener, and so Sloman was instructed to stop work on his story, and Louis Marx was asked to shoe-horn the Daleks into his time-travelling-guerrilla-assassins story.
Denied Daleks, Sloman was given the next big villain for a replacement end of season story - and at the time this was the Master. He was available again, having escaped from prison earlier in the year.
Letts and Sloman decided to look to The Daemons for inspiration for The Time Monster. The previous season finale had revolved around alien explanations for ancient Earth mysteries.
"Ancient Astronauts" were a big thing in the early 1970's. Erich Von Daniken's Chariot of the Gods had been published in 1968, and in 1970 had formed the basis for a documentary film. Many of the New Age beliefs linked ancient aliens with the lost civilisation of Atlantis.
Despite the fact that the two stories are written by the same people, only 12 months apart, the two season finales contradict each other regarding the destruction of Atlantis. And neither quite match with what we learned about the city in The Underwater Menace.
Whilst The Daemons had focussed on a small group of individuals, in an isolated location, borrowing horror movie imagery, The Time Monster wanders all over the place, as though it can't quite make up its mind what it wants to be.
There's a couple of episodes with the Master running around a scientific research establishment; then an episode of time meddling, with people and objects being brought to the 20th Century from various historical eras; then an episode comprising the Doctor and the Master insulting each other from their respective TARDISes; then finally two episodes set in a very studio-bound ancient Atlantis.
The story begins with the Doctor suffering nightmares. He sees the Master looming over him, volcanic eruptions and a trident-shaped crystal. Realising that the dream is more of a premonition, he decides to seek out the Master. At exactly the same time, a scientist has devised a type of time machine at Wootton - and the Doctor doesn't see the connection. He specifically turns down an invite to go see a demonstration of TOMTIT, thus wasting a whole episode driving around whilst the Master gets on with his nefarious enterprise. What's worse - he has a gizmo for tracing time machines, but doesn't stop to think that TOMTIT might interfere with it - or that TOMTIT might be the very thing he's after.
He's been stuck on Earth for a while now, so why is he using Venusian measurements?
Why is the Doctor not interested in any form of temporal experimentation on Earth at this time? He must at least be reading about projects such as TOMTIT, even if he can't be bothered visiting them. Did he not spot that it was the brainchild of a scientist whose name translates to "I am your mortal enemy, the Master".
Why is the Master messing about with "Interstitial Time" anyway? Kronos and the crystal are in a specific location at a specific time, so why not just use conventional time travel to go and collect them? TOMTIT seems to be an overly complicated way of doing things.
Why is the Master still using such giveaway pseudonyms anyway?
The Brigadier drags Sgt. Benton along to the demonstration, even pulling him off leave, as if someone has to keep him company. Why does he need anyone with him other than the Doctor? A "plus one" is an offer - not a command.
The Master has set up shop in Wootton in order to make a connection with ancient Atlantis. Why? Surely he could have picked somewhere that didn't have any mortal enemies pledged to stop him nearby - somewhere closer to where Atlantis might actually be, like Crete or mainland Greece.
Why does he choose a publicly funded educational establishment for a base, one that comes with government inspections, when he could have set up TOMTIT anywhere in the private sector? He could steal enough money to set the whole thing up himself.
On his first attempt to summon Kronos he yells "Come Kronos! Come!!!" at the top of his voice, but the Brigadier and Benton don't seem to find this terribly suspicious.
Shortly afterwards, UNIT decide it isn't worth searching the building for the Master, allowing him to sit smoking cigars in the director's office. The Brigadier actually claims that there's no reason the Master will know UNIT is on to him - despite them standing there when he tried to summon a monster from Greek mythology.
If the Doodlebug was taken out of time to explode in the 1970's, how come the locals can remember it landing in 1944?
The tractor driver is a particularly horrible country yokel stereotype.
The Master is terribly lucky that so many historical incidents happened on this small stretch of road, for him to bring forward to attack the UNIT convoy...
The Doctor and Jo finally turn up at Wootton after using the hand-held gizmo to trace the temporal disturbance. Later on, the Doctor will plug this into the TARDIS console to take it straight into the Master's TARDIS. Why didn't he do this with it in the first place?
Left alone in the Master's TARDIS, why does the Doctor not sabotage it, if he wants to stop him getting to Atlantis?
The whole Time Ram thing seems a bit confusing. Aren't the two TARDISes occupying the same space / time when they are inside each other?
Why does the Master always change his TARDIS decor at the same time as the Doctor? Does Gallifrey send out a Homes & Gardens style magazine every so often?
The Master's chameleon circuit is perfectly operational - so why does his TARDIS look like a computer when it materialises in ancient Atlantis?
In the city, Hippias is told by King Dalios that the crystal must be protected at all costs. Queen Galleia then asks him to fetch it for her, and he meekly runs off to get it - despite the fact that he has stated he no longer has any feelings for her. He knows that it is guarded by a savage minotaur, so doesn't bother taking any weapons with him. The Doctor follows soon after, and he doesn't bother fetching any help either.
If the Master knows that Atlantis gets destroyed around this time, why does he think it's the best place and time to free Kronos. Surely history must have told him that he would fail.
Some behind the scenes problems:
No-one liked the TARDIS redesign. They likened it to a lot of plastic washing-up bowls stuck to the walls. Barry Letts thought he was going to be stuck with it, so was mighty pleased to learn that the set had warped in storage and couldn't be used again for Season 10.
If the whole wine bottle / cup of tea / time flow analogue sequence feels like pointless padding it's because it is - the episode was under-running.
There's no point playing Episode Four backwards to see what Jon Pertwee is really saying - it's just "backwards-speech" sounding nonsense.
There was an accident during the knight on horseback sequence, when the animal collided with a vehicle due to a driver mistiming the action.
Dave Prowse was hired to play the minotaur, but refused to do any of the action as he wasn't a stunt man. They therefore had to get Terry Walsh to do all that, which is nearly all of the minotaur scenes. It was pointless employing Prowse in the first place.
The lengthy sequences of the Doctor and Jo driving in the opening episode were done with a camera fitted to the car, and they were out on their own. Driving around country lanes, they quickly got lost - Katy Manning's short-sightedness being legendary, so not an ideal map reader.
Barry Letts hated both of the realisations of Kronos - the man flapping his wings whilst dangling from the ceiling, and the big lady face.
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