The War Games Episode Eight

The one where the Doctor seems to have betrayed his friends...

I don't know what material the alien guards' gimp suit costumes are made of, but they must be impregnable to bullets. In the cliffhanger reprise the guards seem impervious to the rebels' gunfire just feet away, and a little later, when the guards return to have another go, the rebel machine gun does no harm whatsoever.

The return raid makes me chuckle actually, because it just seems so silly! The SIDRAT arrives, a guard comes out, gets shot at by a machine gun but miraculously survives, and his Plan B is to poke his ray gun out of the SIDRAT door and zap the gunmen! And the crazy thing is, it works, although the two supporting actors need to brush up on their "reacting to being shot at" skills (especially the one on the right, who looks like he's sleepwalking through his scenes).

The rebel alliance gathers in force with the arrival of the outrageously un-PC but terribly fun Arturo Villar, and their plan to systematically weaken the aliens' control centre by coaxing all their guards into the time zones is great. The Security Chief really doesn't think outside the box, does he? He falls for the rebels' plan with ease, and his ultimate answer to defeating the resistance is to blow them all up with a neutron bomb! As the War Lord says, subtlety is not his strong point!

In the aliens' control centre (why are the aliens and their "home planet" never given names?) the Security Chief is riding the crest of his success after abducting the Doctor by attempting to interrogate our hero with his truth machine. The Security Chief is feeling a little too trigger-happy though, threatening: "You will answer me now or I will destroy your mind... TOTALLY!" Rather amusingly, the Doctor sits impassively throughout the interrogation, meditatively resisting the truth machine's searing power!

It's in this episode that we finally get it confirmed that the Doctor is a Time Lord, as the Security Chief states that the Doctor and the War Chief are of the same race. This is followed by a fantastic scene between Patrick Troughton and Edward Brayshaw in the war room where the two size each other up and speak some home truths. We learn a little more about the Doctor's background, that he stole his TARDIS and ran away from the Time Lords ("I had every right to leave"). The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end when the War Chief calmly said: "You may have changed your appearance, but I know who you are..." Evidently the War Chief is more familiar with the First Doctor, perhaps from their home planet rather than any encounter in time and space since.

There's plenty packed into this little exchange between the two Time Lords (such as the fact the War Chief says they were both Time Lords, before they ran away), but I've always wondered if the War Chief is another incarnation of the Master. Of course, we've yet to properly meet the Master, but the two Time Lords know each other of old, and he certainly looks the part. It's obvious that the War Chief isn't called by that name all the time, that's just his title while aiding the War Lord and his people. Spin-off fiction has contributed to this fan theory too, and the writers have helped join the dots themselves, in Hulke's novelisation of Colony in Space, and Dicks's novelisation of Terror of the Autons (in which the name "Master" is apparently a new title). In other fiction the War Chief is named as Magnus, and the end of Dicks' book Timewyrm: Exodus has the War Chief regenerating into a very Delgado-sounding body: "Young, tall, dark and satanically handsome".

The War Chief claims that humans are the "most vicious species of all", which is a bit of a stretch when you consider there are plenty of other more war-like races in the galaxy, such as the Sontarans. The War Chief aims to be Supreme Galactic Ruler, and invites the Doctor, as one of his own people, to rule by his side.

At the end of the episode we are to wonder whether the Doctor really has accepted this invitation, as he appears to betray his rebel friends, but a cursory understanding of both the Doctor and his reaction to the War Chief's plans in this episode alone should tell us not to worry. He's obviously bluffing just to secure the confidence of his enemies so that he can scupper their plans from the inside, and to be honest, Jamie and Zoe really should know better than to think the Doctor has betrayed them and turned bad.

First broadcast: June 7th, 1969

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The confrontation between the Doctor and the War Chief is charged.
The Bad: Some of the extras in this episode are really poor at the most basic human reactions!
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

NEXT TIME: Episode Nine...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode One; Episode Two; Episode Three; Episode Four; Episode Five; Episode Six; Episode Seven; Episode Nine; Episode Ten

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.com/2014/03/the-war-games.html

The War Games is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-War-Games-DVD/dp/B002ATVD8W.