65: The Three Doctors

Before Watching

Do I need to say anything? I mean, everyone knows that this one is an all-time classic, don’t they? Or do they? I’ll tell you why I ask. I don’t know whether you’re aware of this, but it’s a fact that “Doctor Who” has featured on the cover of the Radio Times more times than any other BBC TV series. I can still see in my mind’s eye the cover of the Radio Times the week that the first episode went out – the three Doctors staring moodily out, Jon Pertwee behind, his cloak spreading expansively, William Hartnell not looking well, below and to his right, and Patrick Troughton, wearing a very strange looking wig, to his left. I’d already made my mind up that it was going to be a classic, and to the 9 year old me, it certainly was. After all, the whole point of the exercise was putting together Jon Pertwee together with MY first Doctor, Patrick Troughton, and THE first Doctor, William Hartnell. If we got anything resembling a decent story into the bargain, well, that was all a bonus.

8 years later, when it formed part of the “Five Faces of Doctor Who” season I was surprised to find that it had somehow got a little worse, and rather more childish than it had been in 1973. Of course, it had always been that way, but I had changed and become just a little more discerning in the interim. Watch anything at the age of 9, and then watch it again at 17 and chances are that your opinions will have changed, even though what you are watching remains the same.

I still enjoy it every time that I watch it on cable, but I have to work hard on not letting nostalgia cloud my view of it as a Doctor Who story. So I will force myself to take the opinion that this is not a sacred cow, and try to judge it on its own merits. It’s interesting to speculate why such a prestigious assignment was given to Bob Baker and Dave Martin, nicknamed The Bristol Boys. Over the years they became stalwarts among the stable of regular and reliable Doctor Who writers, and in their time they wrote: -

The Claws of Axos

The Mutants

The Three Doctors

The Sontaran Experiment

The Hand of Fear

The Invisible Enemy

Underworld

The Armageddon Factor

-          while Bob Baker scripted

The Nightmare of Eden on his own.

Now, I don’t wish to be horrible, but it may well strike you, as it has struck me, that what links pretty much all of these stories is that for the most part they are good, honest, watchable Doctor Who stories, but there aren’t any real classics there either. Their track record doesn’t really compare with their contemporary Robert Holmes, for instance. But then Holmes was writing the next story “Carnival of Monsters” anyway. Holmes reputedly liked the Bristol boys’ work, enough to entrust them with his Sontaran creations for “The Sontaran Experiment”, but that, as they say, is in the future. So, anyway, working on what we know about Baker and Martin’s work, it’s reasonable to expect that what we’ll find in “The Three Doctors”, once we strip away the razzmatazz over the alliance of Doctors from different eras, is a decent, watchable, but workmanlike and uninspired script. In the words of Harry Hill, there’s only one way to find out.

After Watching

There’s two ways of assessing “The Three Doctors”, one of which is blatantly unfair. The temptation may well be to say that despite the fact that this is a story which was popular when it was first shown, and has retained a certain amount of affection ever since, and this is solely due to the cameo appearance by William Hartnell, and the 2^nd and 3^rd Doctor tag team pairing – other than that is has very little going for it. That’s the blatantly unfair way of viewing the story. Which is not to say that it does have a huge amount going for it other than the Doctor double act – but that’s the whole point of the story anyway. Saying “The Three Doctors” is a lacklustre story apart from the fact that it has Three Doctors in it is pretty much tantamount to saying that “The Daleks” is a terrible story apart from the fact that it has the Daleks in it. It IS a terrible story apart from the fact that The Daleks are in it (just my opinion and feel free to disagree) but that’s totally irrelevant. The Daleks are the point of “The Daleks”, and the combination of Doctors IS the point of “The Three Doctors”.

Baker and Martin had several obstacles to overcome, several constraints while coming up with this story. For one thing the need to include all three Doctors must have been something of a headache. After all, they had to come up with some rationale to explain why and how the different versions of the Doctor came to inhabit the same time stream for the story. That means some serious transgression of the laws of time, which necessitated the Time Lords being involved. At the end of the story, as well, there was a requirement for the Time Lords to reward the Doctor by ending his exile, which really necessitated some real threat to them and their Society, which the Doctor has to overcome to thus earn their gratitude. After all, they gave him sod all for his good work in “The Colony in Space”, “The Curse of Peladon” and “The Mutants”, so it has to be something on a really cosmic scale. Essentially, a renegade Time Lord, then, and not the Master, since the Time Lords in “Terror of the Autons” made it clear that they considered him to be small fry with whom the Doctor was capable of dealing on his own. So really it needed a super-renegade Time Lord, in the shape of Omega. Now, having come up with the concept of our super renegade, the question has to be asked – what is he doing that necessitates breaking the laws of time to bring the three Doctors together to defeat him? Once again, the solution that Baker and Martin came up with makes sense. Surely, had the Time Lords known that Omega still existed, and was planning action against them, they would have dealt with him somehow before this point. So we have the situation whereby Omega is the great temporal engineer who created the black hole, via supernova, that provides the energy for the Time Lords. They believed that he was killed doing it, while in fact he was exiled to an anti-matter universe, kept in balance solely by the power of his own will. So when he attacks it is totally unexpected, and something they have no idea of how to counter.

Now, ok, I don’t have the scientific knowledge to be able to say whether this is all complete nonsense – I’m guessing that it probably is – but that’s neither here nor there in the context of the story. Am I willing to accept it – of course I am. I was when I was 9, when I was 17, and I still do now I’m 50.

Having thus negotiated all bar one of the plot hurdles they had to overcome, there just remained the not insignificant conundrum of how exactly the Doctors were to overcome Omega, in a world of his own creation. I may well be in a minority here, but I felt the deus ex machine of the recorder, having fallen into the TARDIS field generator and not having been converted from matter to anti matter, worked nicely in the context of the story. This relies on one of the clever bits of the story. This world where Omega rules is a creation of his will. The Doctors have the power to influence it, building a doorway through the power of their mind, but not to recreate it or reshape more than a small part of it. This they are forced to negotiate with Omega, agreeing to take his place in return for the release of Omega’s prisoners, including Jo and the Brigadier. Omega takes off his helmet, and we find that he has no body left – as much as this world is a construct of the fore of his will, his consciousness is only maintained through this world. He can never leave it, and in fact all that the Doctors can do for him is to provide him with an ending to his suffering – which he will get if he touches the recorder.

So if we think that “The Three Doctors” is a less than satisfying piece of work, and I know quite a few people who do think exactly that, it doesn’t seem to be a fault of the story or the script. In which case it is merely a case of how good the execution and realisation of the story is.

The Script

The script is a mixture of the very good, the good, the adequate, and the bad. The very good is every scene between Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee. We’ll never really know exactly what Patrick Troughton thought of his successor, and what Jon Pertwee felt of his predecessor, but Baker and Martin made the eminently sensible decision to play up tension between the two, and every scene between the two of them is absolute gold dust – in all honesty worth the price of admission by itself. Poor old William Hartnell was so ill he could hardly be used in the story at all, but even allowing for that he still gets one of the best lines in the whole script, “So you’re my replacements – a dandy and a clown!” When the third Doctor tries to explain to Jo who the second Doctor is, “ you see – I am him, and he is me” , Jo quotes from the Beatles’ “I am the Walrus”, saying – “- and we are altogether, coo coo coo choo.” Even the Brig, the strait-laced, stiff upper lip Brig, gets a couple of silly old bufferish one-liners. Arriving in Omega’s anti matter world he refuses to accept it as an alien world, maintaining “I’m pretty sure it’s Cromer.” Then also his words of praise at the end of the story, “Splendid chap – both of him”.

Not that everything in the garden’s rosy, of course. My gripe with the script isn’t just a gripe with the script, since the sequence in question isn’t very well realised either.  At one stage the Third Doctor is forced into a battle of minds and wills with Omega, which is realised through what appears to be a dream sequence in which the Doctor wrestles with what appears to be a bloke in a suit with a vaguely oriental looking mask. It’s worth comparing this with the far superior battle of wills between the Doctor and Morbius in Season 13, to which we will come in the fullness of time.

Performances

I’ve already mentioned the Pertwee Troughton double act, but it’s so good it’s well worth mentioning it again. It’s one area where the story far surpasses the enjoyable 20^th anniversary special “The Five Doctors”. In that story the only real interaction between Doctors is between Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor, and Richard Hurndall’s recreation of the First Doctor. Well, we’ll get to that story all in good time.

We’ve already mentioned the Brigadier’s comic turn, which is all part of the fun, and all of the regulars do their bits as well as could be asked for. Omega is played by Stephen Thorn, whom we last saw as Azal, the Daemon in “The Daemons”. He gives a similar performance in this story, but then that’s what was required for this role. There is a subtle difference between his portrayal of Omega and Azal – this time round he makes it clear that Omega is only a wibble away from full blown cluck-cluck –gibber-gibber – my-old-man’s – a-mushroom psychopathic mania. It’s a shame for Stephen Thorn that both of this most famous roles on TV saw his features obscured by a mask. Still we did get the benefit of his sonourous voice, which in this case meant that we had a literal example of an empty vessel making the most noise. Having said all that, I’m not sure that the full extent of which Omega is essentially a Tragic character is actually realised. He is the villain of the piece – no doubt about that – but he is a character for whom it should be possible to have a significant amount of sympathy, bearing in mind the circumstances that put him here, and conspire to prevent him from leaving.

The Design

I thought that this story looked fantastic in 1973 – and I suppose that’s the problem with it. In 1973, this looked just like we expected a weird and alien place to look like. The doorways were strange shapes, and the walls were covered in bubbles in different shades of garish orange, red and brown. Watch it today, and it looks very 70s.

Doctor Who fans are a difficult lot to please. Stick a man in a suit with a mask on to represent an alien and they’ll complain that it looks like a man in a suit with a mask on. Stick a man in a costume designed specifically NOT to look like a man in a suit, and they’ll complain that it looks unrealistic. The blobby, rather amorphous ‘plasma’ creatures that Omega sends to fetch the Doctor, which attack UNIT HQ have not stood the test of time very well.

As for Omega himself, well, his appearance is dominated by the welding mask to end all welding masks. It’s rather impressive actually, and it does make the reveal, when Omega removes the mask to reveal that his body has been worn away by the something or other rays within the anti matter universe, a very good, very dramatic moment.

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As we’ll see when we get to “The Five Doctors”, making an anniversary special where you have to include more than one Doctor, and be fair to them, where you have to make some major additions to the whole Doctor/Time Lords mythos, and where the outcome is settled before you’ve even written one word of the story isn’t easy at all. For me, the Bristol Boys pulled it off. I loved “The Three Doctors” in 1973. I still enjoyed it a lot in 2015. I’m more than happy to settle for that.

What Have We Learned?

It’s Omega that the Time Lords have to thank for all of their power and mastery of time. At least until Robert Holmes invents Rassilon

There are circumstances under which the Time Lords can circumvent the Blinovitch Limitation Effect.

When you life Time Lords out of their time stream, a significant proportion of the time they are going to get stuck in a time eddy. 

58: Colony In Space

Before Watching

“Colony In Space” was novelized as “The Doomsday Machine”. Why I mention that is because I have clearer memories of the Target book than I do of the story itself. It is a significant story in its own right, even if for no better reason that it’s the first time that the third Doctor gets to take a trip in his TARDIS. This is the doing of the Time Lords, who decide to use the Doctor to foil the Master’s plans to obtain aforesaid doomsday weapon. Now, the Master appears in all 5 of the stories of this eighth season, and this is probably the one which has had least acclaim from fans over the years, which is a bit surprising when you consider that the alien setting should at least give the story a bit of novelty value if nothing else. I’m looking forward to seeing how much, if anything, we get to see of the Time Lords. Maybe this doesn’t feature in the story on screen, but in the book I’m pretty sure that it started with the Time Lords discovering that the records concerning the Doomsday weapon had been either tampered with or stolen – can’t remember which myself. Well, if the general consensus, that this isn’t much cop, proves to be correct, then never mind. “The Daemons” is just around the corner.

After Watching

I found that as I watched “Colony in Space” I found myself indulging in one of those prolonged bouts of “this-should-be-better-itis”. Were my expectations so unreasonable? Well, there are reasons for thinking that this was going to be better than it was. Let’s examine them.

Malcolm Hulke

If we look at Malcolm Hulke’s Doctor Who pedigree you’ll hopefully agree that he’s been one of the writers whose involvement always holds out promise that you’ll get something of interest. He co-scripted “The Faceless Ones”, which was one of the unexpected treats of season 4, and also the brilliant “The War Games” which I loved. In season 7 he scripted the always enjoyable “The Silurians” and did uncredited work in writing the actual scripts for several of the episodes of “The Ambassadors of Death”.

So what is the essential problem of “Colony in Space”? To an extent with the previous 2 stories there was a feeling of the Master being added to the script at quite a late stage, and that’s true of this story as well. In fact, it does feel like a four parter that has been unnaturally prolonged simply to include him, and the weapon and the alien city too. For most of the first 4 episodes at least what we have is a dour gritty ‘western’ about the plucky settlers being subject to the unscrupulous attempts of the evil mining company to force them off their claims. And the problem with that is that I’m just not really all that interested in cowboys and indians. They were my Dad’s generation’s thing, not mine. It would maybe have worked better had the two stories been more integrated, but they really aren’t. The alien natives, their city and their weapon don’t hardly impinge on the main story about the Colony, and I kind of think that another draft to integrate them more fully with each other might have worked wonders. Just my opinion, and as always, feel free to disagree.

The Actors

You know that I have my list of faves whom I always like to see guesting in a Doctor Who story, and there’s no less than two of them in this one. First of all we have one of the three Bernards, Bernard Kay to be precise. We last saw Bernard Kay in “The Faceless Ones”, and he does his usual excellent job with what is only really a subordinate role. Ideally, if you’re going to go to the trouble of getting Bernard Kay, then you want to make the best use of him. I wouldn’t have minded seeing him given something a little more meaty to do. He plays Caldwell, a mining engineer who is subordinate to Captain Dent, the real villain of the piece, and although he does have to play out the moral dilemma of deciding whether to do what the company, in the person of Dent, orders him to do, or whether to do the things his conscience orders him to do. But truth be told, he is under used here.

We also get John Ringham. John Ringham memorably played Tlotoxl in “The Aztecs”, and was then seen playing a more heroic role in “The Smugglers”. Here he plays Ashe, the leader of the colonists, trying to tread a fine line in sticking up for his people, and at the same time not letting their defence of themselves descend into anarchy and violence. It’s a decent part, and he plays it very well, as you’d expect.

This story is rarely written about without somebody pointing out that this story also featured Helen Worth, who went on to spend the next 40 years playing Gail in “Coronation Street”. Now, I haven’t watched “Coronation Street” for years, but I have always had a soft spot for Gail/Helen, and so I was a bit disappointed to see that her role in the story is pretty much cardboard for the most part. Given a proper chance she could have done a lot more.

So could Tony Caunter. Maybe best known as Roy in Eastenders, Tony Caunter certainly had a fine body of TV work on his CV, but his character in “Colony in Space”, Morgan, is just a one dimensional thug, and there’s little or nothing any actor could do with him without wildly over acting, or ad libbing.

I can’t write a review of a “Master” story without mentioning Roger Delgado. I personally think that this is the weakest of the 4 stories we’ve seen so far which features him, for which I don’t blame the actor. You can see him as a purely functional character in this story though. It has to be a Time Lord who steals the records of the weapon, nobody else would be powerful enough. The records have to be stolen from the Time Lords, or else they wouldn’t have sent the Doctor there. As it is he doesn’t turn up for a lot of the story, and I’m afraid that the dialogue between himself and the Doctor is rather lumpen and uninspiring compared with previous stories. I guess even Delgado and Pertwee couldn’t build bricks without straw.

The Alien World

This is the first time that the Third Doctor gets to take a trip in time and space, and the first time we get to see an alien world in colour. It’s a bit of a shame. We’ve already explored how the story seems to relegate the alien city and its inhabitants to a subsidiary narrative, but it does have the effect that nothing is developed. On the first trip you maybe expect to see an alien civilization, and we really don’t. On his first visit to the alien city ideas are introduced – the idea of a once great race that has fallen from its lofty perch, descending into superstition and barbarism is an interesting one, but it’s not developed. Again, the separate castes or grades of the ‘Primitives’ is an interesting idea, but it’s not developed. I don’t know if it’s deliberate either, but as we go up the brain chain of the Primitives’ society they become less and less impressive. The priests are shorter, more wrinkly and shriveled than the warriors, although they have a more interesting dress sense, and the Guardian of the weapon is sadly the most pathetic of the lot. Now, in a way this is actually clever if it’s deliberate. If you’re trying to put across the message – well, this is what the degenerated race who built the machine had come to and this is why their civilization collapsed, then fair enough. But there’s pathetic, and then there’s too pathetic.

A word too about the Primitive warriors. At least the temptation to give them dark skins was resisted. Even then though, maybe it’s just me, but their masks seemed to bear some resemblance to some African tribal art that I’ve seen.

The Time Lords

I was intrigued to see the prologue with the Time Lords at the start, but I did feel that there were a couple of problems with it while I was watching. They’re almost in this story like a halfway house between the all powerful super-monks of the last episode of “The War Games”, and the quasi military quasi air traffic controllers of “The Three Doctors” Their appearance does pose a few questions to me.

If the Doomsday weapon is so powerful, and they are so scared of the Master getting his hands on it, then why don’t they get it themselves? Since the Master is the one who’s after it, surely this is a Time Lord matter, and their interfering can be permitted? Since as it is they are interfering anyway by sending the Doctor. Likewise, if it’s so important, then why leave it to the Doctor to find out what his mission actually is? Why not at least give him a clue or two, even if you can’t be bothered to give him proper instructions.

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Well, at least dear old Jo is a ‘real’ companion now, having taken her first trip in the TARDIS.  Also, and I know I often say this, but even with a story like this, where you can’t say that it is particularly gripping, at least you can say that in the main story, the ‘plucky if sometimes misguided colonists v. evil big business’ if it is a little facile then at least its heart is in the right place.

What Have We Learned?

The Time Lords trust the Doctor enough to send him on a mission they should sort out themselves, even without telling him what he’s supposed to do for them. 

50: The War Games - Parts 6 - 10

Before Watching

The Bottom Line: I don’t have to watch all five of these episodes in one go like I watched the first five. On the other hand, I’ve been looking forward to this all day. There’s so many goodies which still have to be in store with this story that I can’t see that it won’t be at least as good as the first five episodes. There’s the revelation that the Doctor is a Time Lord, there’s got to be a meeting between The Doctor and the War Chief, and then there’s the entry of Philip Madoc into the story, and the way that the Time Lords get called to come and save the day. Oh and then the final episode with the Doctor’s trial. My memory of the story is of it essentially being a 9 parter, followed by a one parter, this final episode with the trial, which was very different to everything that had gone before. Oh, stuff this for a game of soldiers, I can’t wait to watch it any longer, and I’m not going to.

After Watching

Patrick Troughton deserved a truly great story to finish his era, and boy, did he get one. He started with an absolute corker in “The Power of the Daleks”, and now he’s finished with one too. There is a line of argument that holds that his first and last were his two greatest stories, but I’m not sure that I could completely go along with that. After all, there is always “The Mind Robber” to be considered.

Ok, well I ended my review of the first five parts with the observation that nobody yet had mentioned the words Time Lord. That happened at last early on in episode 6, when the extremely uptight Security Chief casually drops it into the conversation that this is what the War Chief is. Alert viewers would have been immediately thinking – the Doctor recognized him, and so there is a chance that the Doctor is one too. Full marks to anyone who worked that one out the first time round. Now, mid-story of a multi parter is always something of a padding magnet. In this case, the padding takes the shape of the relationship between the War Chief and the Security Chief, played with almost neurotic tension by James Bree. In fact watching the two of them it’s almost like the sparring between two people who fancy each other despite themselves, but are both too scared to make the first move in case the other one laughs. There’s also a little scene between one of the resistance soldiers – private Moor, and David Garfield, the war lord posing as the German commander Von Weich. I thought I recognized the actor playing Private Moor, but couldn’t quite put my finger on it. When I checked the credits, it turned out that this was none other than David Troughton. Nepotism? Oh, come on, be fair. David Troughton is a terrific actor in his own right, who has a great track record, and Moor was the kind of role where you would cast a promising young actor. Oh, and the star of the show was his dad too. At least he got a few lines to say. Frazer Hines’ brother Ian had to make do with clinking around in a tin soldier costume and he got to say nowt in “The Mind Robber”.  Wrapping up episode 6, respect for the cliffhanger ending again. The Doctor, Jamie and Carstairs manage to get into a SIDRAT, but can’t get away because the War Chief is at the controls outside. They know they can’t be attacked from outside, so prepare to wait it out while the Doctor overrides the remote control. Only outside, the War Chief starts fiddling with the dimension control, and the SIDRAT rapidly begins to shrink in, threatening to crush them to death. Magic.

Just when you thought it wasn’t going to get that much better – Philip Madoc turns up! He’s got a lot to live up to by not appearing until episode 7, when a lot of strong characters have already been established, but remarkably he manages to do so. His character, the War Lord (capital letters) manages to be the most frightening thing in the episode, well, the whole story, by doing nothing more than speaking rather quietly, and adding the odd pause in the right place. If that wasn’t enough, we also got a scene between the War Chief and the Doctor. I knew, well, I hoped, that there was a bit more to the War Chief than a motiveless megalomaniac, and there was a bit. The War Chief, it seems, has a thing about order. He doesn’t care that much for the fighting in the war zone, but sees it, and the war lords’ plans, as a means to an end, a way of bringing order to a chaotic galaxy. Alright, it’s a little extreme, but at least it makes some sense. It might have been nice to have been given just a little bit more. For example, in “The Time Meddler” we learn that the Monk left Gallifrey about 50 years after the Doctor did. We don’t know anything like this about the War Chief – we don’t even know if he and the Doctor have ever met each other before. The War Chief suggests that they have met when he passes the comment that the Doctor has changed his appearance, but that’s the only hint. As for recognizing the Doctor, well it wouldn’t be the first time that Time Lords recognize each other having regenerated since the last time they met. Now, a slight negative note, if I might. The Doctor escapes and starts coordinating resistance, but is recaptured, and that proves the cliffhanger ending. It’s fine, but nowhere near up to the standard of the shows so far.

Now, I’ll be honest, of all the episodes so far, I thought that episode 8 was the most padded. Which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it, but it smacked at times of having the action held up so that we don’t reach the climax too soon. So, what have we got? The Doctor is taken in for interrogation. The War Chief takes this over so that he can explain the plot to all of us at home, and try to recruit the Doctor for his own nefarious purposes. The war lords’ plan has been to sort out the wheat from the chaff amongst the various Earth armies to build a super army from the survivors. The rationale behind it being that human beings have an unparalleled ability at and appetite for killing their own kind. Hmm, yeah well, I’m not sure that this would cut a lot of ice against the Daleks for instance. And while we’re on the subject, a roman legion with spears and swords, versus a small platoon of tommies with machine guns, and my money’s on the machine guns, I’m sorry. It maybe doesn’t do to well to over analyse this particular aspect of the story.  It does though throw the Time Lords’ edict against interfering into some perspective. It is aimed at preventing amoral chancers like the War Chief aiding psychopathic nutjobs like the War Lord.

By the start of episode 9 I’m starting to think that there’s a lot of legwork going to be needed to end off the story AND have time for the Doctor’s trial. Early doors the Doctor and the War Chief had a little discussion about TARDIS and SIDRATs. It runs out that the war Chief is only after the Doctor for his TARDIS, the minx. Now, when I’ve read synopses of the story I’m sure I’ve seen it stated clearly that the War Chief has cannibalized his own TARDIS to construct the SIDRATs, the time machines that the war lords have been using to bring soldiers from Earth’s history, but this is not stated clearly in the show itself. What is stated clearly is that the SIDRATs are remote controlled AND have remarkable directional stability. This allows the Doctor to info dump all over the War Chief that these two features hugely reduce a time machine’s lifespan. This is an important plot point. When it transpires that only 2 SIDRATs have any juice left in them the Doctor realizes that he cannot get all the soldiers back to their own time. Now, I can only think he’s thinking that he can’t control the TARDIS well enough, for the inside is huge, and he could probably fit an army in there. So this is what finally decides him to call in the Time Lords. I loved the gimmick of constructing a little white box from cards, and this presumably is the kind of Time Lord box that Matt Smith found in “The Doctor’s Wife”. The ending of the episode was terrific too, since it looked as if the Doctor was in as much danger from the Time Lords as the rest of them were, and also hinted at their awesome powers with the way that they slowed time as the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe were trying to reach the TARDIS.

In any list of the greatest and most important individual episode of classic Doctor Who, the last episode of “The War Games” would have to be a serious contender for top slot. Boiled down to its essentials, the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe try to escape in the TARDIS. All their attempts fail, and the TARDIS is brought in by the Time Lords. Presumably this is Gallifrey, but it is neither stated that this is Gallifrey (the name won’t be coined until The Time Warrior)nor that it is the Time Lords’ home planet. In fact it looks a lot like the war lords’ HQ, especially the TARDIS garage where they first arrive. The War Lord stands awaiting trial, and when this begins he refuses to answer questions. The Time Lord’s eyes begin to glow and he starts to scream, and then starts to talk. Even so he still retains his arrogance. There is an abortive attempt by the War Lord’s guards to rescue him, but the Time Lords are too powerful. They put a forcefield permanently around the War Lords’s home planet, and then wipe the War Lord and his guards out of existence, as if they had never lived at all.  Jamie and Zoe get a touching leaving scene – “Now Zoe, you and I both know that all Time is relative”. That’s a very good line at exactly the right time. Finally the Doctor is condemned, although he is treated with a lot more leniency than he was in the court martial in the first episode. He is exiled to Earth indefinitely, with a new face, and no knowledge of how to work the TARDIS. Epic.

A lot has been written and spoken about the three Time Lords who try the Doctor. The tallest one is played by Bernard Horsfall. He went on to play Chancellor Goth in my favourite Doctor Who story, “The Deadly Assassin”. Therefore it is certainly not impossible that it may actually be future Chancellor Goth. These Time Lords seem far more mysterious and powerful than they will ever seem again. There may be an explanation for this which we can work out from future stories. In the Pertween era, several times references are made to the Celestial Intervention Agency (CIA), who are the Time Lord Agency that the Doctor blames for sending him off on errands during his exile. The CIA are sometimes alluded to as an entity which acts outside of normal Time Lord government, ethics and procedure. So it’s not impossible that these Time Lords are acting for the CIA, and therefore would seem far more mysterious and powerful than the ordinary levels of Time Lord society that we get to see in later stories. It’s not impossible.

What Have We Learned?

When they want to use them, the Time Lords have remarkable powers and can really kick bottom.

Unless they get themselves into silly accidents the Time Lords can live forever. (The 12^th regeneration law has yet to be expressed)

In some circumstances the Time Lords can impose a specific appearance on one of their number. 

50: The War Games Parts 1 - 5

Before Watching

Well, this is going to provide us with some true watershed moments, I’m quite sure of that. First Terrace Dicks scripted story – he co-wrote it with The Faceless Ones’ Malcolm Hulke. The two of them had some great things in store over the next couple of years after this. Last Troughton story (sob). Last story for Jamie and Zoe. Last story in black and white. Last story in which we embarked upon it knowing virtually nothing about the Doctor’s race and his people. Last story before the Doctor’s exile to Earth.

I did say in my review of “The Space Pirates” that I’m sure that the story is going to live up to its generally very high reputation amongst the fans who have actually watched it. Partly this is based on 45 year old memories of watching it first time round. Partly it’s based on the Target novelization, and partly it’s based on what I’ve been told.  It has Philip Madoc and Bernard Horsfall among its guest cast as well, and both of those always seem to raise the quality of the stories in which they appear. I only approach this story with a slight trepidation about the length of it. We’ve already seen “The Invasion” get away with 8 episodes without a huge dip in quality in the middle this season, and so this one smacks of tempting fate. If we compare it with an even longer story, “The Daleks’ Master Plan”, that story had some episodes which were considerably weaker than others, and it could be even argued that it’s not one 12 part story, but a 5 parter, followed by a 6 parter, with a pantomime in the break. Well, coming back to “The War Games”, the only way to find out how successfully the story is carried out is to watch it. So for the last time in black and white, let’s do just that. As has become traditional with these epic length stories, I shall split my review into two installments.

After Watching

You know, I’m tempted to start off in neutral tones, and leave you wondering for a while just how much I liked or loathed the story. But I can’t. Remembering that I’m only talking about the first five episodes, I still thought that this was absolutely great. The World War I milieu for the setting of the first episode was a really good choice. Even now I’m sure that it’s instantly recognizable to all but the youngest viewers, and remember that the First World War was still in living memory when the story was first broadcast 46 years ago.  It’s important to remember that the original audience wouldn’t have had any more idea about what was actually going on in episode one than the Doctor has. For me the first few episodes are beautifully paced, as there are little hints that all is not what it seems to be, before the massive clue of the SIDRAT and the video screen in General Smythe’s room.

It is possible to see some rather biting satire on the way that the commanding officers acted during the First World War. Smythe’s eagerness to condemn the Doctor to the firing squad on the flimsiest of evidence – in fact pretty much no evidence at all, is a bitter echo on the travesty of a court martial many men in the British Army received. General Smythe’s excuse is that he really is inhuman, a member of the race of the war lords. Field Marshal Douglas Haig’s excuses for refusing to grant clemency in so many cases, thus condemning so many men to a firing squad are far more difficult to accept. On a lighter note, we’re also reminded how so many officers in the British Army during World War I were not really soldiers at all, just men with the right educational or social background who were doing their duty, through the way Captain Ransom is distracted into a discussion of paperwork by Zoe while the Doctor is searching General Smythe’s room.

For a multi parter the pacing of the first five episodes seems really well worked out to. In episode one you get time to get used to the World War I setting, and just the clue that Smythe is more than he seems with the whole hypno glasses thing. Then in episode 2 you see the first SIDRAT and learn that something very strange is going on, and the cliffhanger reveals even more as the Doctor drives an ambulance through some fog, and meets the Roman Army charging him head on. If it’s your first ever exposure to the story, then this will be the first time that you see that the World War I war zone is just one of several.

Then the third episode takes us into the war lords’ control room for the first time, and introduces the War Chief. I have to give full marks to the late Edward Brayshaw who plays the War Chief, here. Like most people who were kids in the mid to late 70s I remember him as Mr. Meaker in the comedy series “Rentaghost”. Here, despite being encumbered by a late entrant to the ‘most ridiculous eyebrows in Doctor Who’ stakes, and a medallion so large he would have been laughed out of a late 70s disco for wearing it, he gives a terrific and sustained performance. We’re only on episode 3! This upping the ante with each episode is most appealing. Even knowing the story I find it’s working effectively on me. It would have seemed even more amazing in the 60s, first time round.

In episode 4 the Doctor and Zoe travel inside a SIDRAT to HQ, and posing as students they attend a lecture on the processing machines. At the end, the War Chief enters, and he and the Doctor clearly recognize each other. BUT – and this was a stroke of genius on Hulke and Dicks’ part – having made this fact perfectly clear, they then make sure that the two don’t actually meet or speak to each other. Then in episode 5 we get to see a lot more of the hub, while the Doctor evades capture, and rescues Zoe, while Jamie gets pally with the resistance back in the war zones, and they hi jack a SIDRAT and come into the hub. It’s all go, I tell you.

I mentioned cliffhangers in the previous paragraph, and I think I want to make a special mention of the cliffhangers in the first half of this story. They’re really a rather good set, it must be said. Episode 1 ends with the Doctor seemingly being executed by firing squad. Episode two has the roman army bearing down on the ambulance with the Doctor and friends, while they try in vain to get the engine started. Episode three ends with the Doctor and Zoe’s SIDRAT dematerializing, leaving Jamie to face the confederate soldiers who are firing indiscriminately into the barn where he waits. Episode 4 has Zoe facing the newly reconditioned Lieutenant Carstairs who is holding a gun to her head, about to pull the trigger. Then episode 5 shows Jamie and his resistance friends walking out of a SIDRAT into an ambush which apparently leaves them dead on the floor.

Classic Doctor Who stories (other than Mission to the Unknown) were never written or made to be watched in one sitting. Despite this, though, I do tend to think that the acid test of a classic Doctor who story is if you watch two episodes consecutively, and then you still want to watch the next straightaway. I wouldn’t attempt to watch all 10 episodes of “The War Games” in 1 sitting – partly because I don’t think it would be fair to the story if I did. Once fatigue sets in I can’t be sure of giving any story a fair hearing. But I did watch the first five episodes consecutively, and let me tell you that they slipped down like butter, one after another. And nobody has even said the words “Time Lord” yet.

What Have We Learned?

Remember those thick bottle lensed glasses that you always thought looked slightly sinister? Now you know why.