The Highlanders Episode 3

The one where Polly masquerades as a prostitute...

Similar to episode 2 (the only Doctor Who episode shown on Christmas Eve to date), this third installment is the only edition of the show to go out on New Year's Eve, so it's fitting that it begins with the unmistakable cry of the bagpipes. Hogmanay! Incidentally, later the same evening, the TARDIS randomly materialises during New Year's Eve celebrations at Trafalgar Square. Well, according to The Daleks' Master Plan episode 8, anyway...!

Generally, everything's just as it has been for the previous two episodes, which is to say generally humdrum but diverting enough. I can't help wondering why writers Gerry Davis and Elwyn Jones didn't set the story just a few days earlier, during the actual Battle of Culloden, as it would have been far more exciting and interesting. As it is, everybody's just stumbling around getting locked up or escaping, which doesn't make for very engrossing drama. The most interesting part of the story is Solicitor Grey's plot to ship the Scottish rebels to the West Indies to become plantation slaves, but even that's taking it's time.

Jamie and Ben being sold into slavery has echoes of the same happening to Ian and Barbara in The Romans, but somehow that earlier instance felt more urgent and real. In The Highlanders, there's a lot of talking in dark cells and it's hard to believe that the journey to Barbados will ever actually happen!

Consistent with this story, it is Polly who shines brightest. She and a slightly less pathetic Kirsty masquerade as orange sellers to try and get close to their old friend Algernon ffinch and find out where their friends are being held. Active, resourceful, effective, the perfect companion! Kirsty turns her nose up at pretending to be an orange seller, as it is a job for the "low-born", but Polly knows her history (very well, it seems) and knows that pretty, witty Nell Gwyn started out selling fruit to higher society in London's theatres. What isn't made explicit here, but is there between the lines, is that Polly and Kirsty are essentially dressing up as prostitutes to inveigle themselves into the right environment.

That environment is the Sea Eagle inn, the latest in a long line of boozers to appear in Doctor Who (The Reign of Terror, The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, The Gunfighters, The War Machines, The Smugglers), but with the axing of the historical stories, the last until (I think) The Daemons. Prozzy Polly and Kinky Kirsty locate their "old friend" (a phrase with more than one connotation!) Algernon f-finch here, and drape themselves all over him like the good time girls they're purporting to be. I don't blame them: Michael Elwyn was a handsome man!

It's at the inn that the girls are reunited with the Doctor, who's still bumbling about in the shadows dressed as a washerwoman. With a gun. It might not be loaded, but he still has no problem terrorising poor old Cedric Perkins with it, for no real reason. The Doctor, Polly and Kirsty then make for the safety of a local barn where the Doctor continues to be pretty un-Doctorly. Despite appearances, he doesn't rescue Polly and Kirsty, because they don't need rescuing, and as soon as he's in the barn, all he seems to want to do is sleep. This is despite them knowing that Ben is in imminent danger of being shipped 4,000 miles across the Atlantic to the West Indies to be sold into slavery. The Doctor is magnificently unconcerned about his travelling companion, which is not the sort of Doctor that sits well in the show (fandom has always had its issues with emotionally disconnected Doctors - see Six and Twelve).

I don't know... I was beginning to warm to the Second Doctor by the end of The Power of the Daleks because he was being clever and resourceful and witty. In The Highlanders, he's just a bit of a knob. I'm much more interested in the companions, and actively starting to dislike the Doctor. That can't be right, can it? I mean, when he is pressed for a plan of some kind, the best he can come up with (to buy lots of weapons to smuggle aboard the Annabelle to arm the prisoners) requires a good amount of money, which he must automatically assume they don't have until Polly conveniently pipes up that they have ffinch's. The Doctor is disappointingly ineffective in this story, which is only his second. Surely he should be at the forefront of the action, trying to endear this new incarnation to the probably quite puzzled viewers.

The cliffhanger is a corker, involving the apparent dunking and drowning of Ben off the end of a plank on the Annabelle. As bubbles rise from the watery depths, the end titles roll and we are to assume that our Cockney action man has perished. It's an effective cliffhanger because I assume (not being able to watch it) that we do see Ben go in the water, so there's no doubt it's him. Just 12 months earlier, the Doctor lost two companion figures in Katarina and Sara, so viewers might have believed this gruesome cliffhanger that little bit more.

First broadcast: December 31st, 1966

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: I like the idea of Polly dressing up as an orange-selling "loose woman" to get her way with the soldiers. She's a resourceful girl, and it's a shame this Polly isn't shown more often.
The Bad: The Doctor... I kind of wish he wasn't in it at all!
Overall score for episode: ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆

NEXT TIME: Episode 4...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode 1; Episode 2; Episode 4

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-highlanders.html

The Highlanders soundtrack is available on BBC CD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Highlanders-Television-Soundtrack/dp/0563477555