The War Games Episode Ten

The one where the Doctor is put on trial and exiled to Earth (with a new face)...

And so here we are, the last episode of the last Doctor Who story of the 1960s. The last Patrick Troughton episode, the last black and white episode, the last time we'll see a Quark! But the Second Doctor isn't going to give all these things up to the impending decade without a fight, and it's wonderful to share his determination to outrun the Time Lords, however fruitless it may be.

David Maloney directs this episode so well, from the beautiful dematerialisation of the TARDIS shot from low down, to the shots of the trial room from up above. He adds both grandeur and heart to the piece whenever it's needed. In the hands of a more workmanlike director, The War Games could never have been as successful.

The early scenes in the TARDIS (and a high-shot of the console room shows just how hotch-potch that set had become) give us some juicy background for the Doctor, who says he ran away from his home planet because he was bored. The Time Lords, despite their power and might, are content to merely observe the universe, rather than experience it, but that was never enough for our Doctor. He couldn't observe, he had to see: "With a whole galaxy to explore, millions of planets, aeons of time, countless civilisations to meet?" It's the perfect modus operandi for our hero, a mad man in a rickety old TARDIS who just wants to see amazing things and meet amazing people.

But the Time Lords have caught up with him and are determined to put him on trial for his transgression of their laws of non-interference in the affairs of others. But it sure is exhilarating when Zoe asks the Doctor what he's going to do, and he says: "We're going to run away!"

This episode serves as a prototype for all those end-of-era finales yet to come, with a lovely little summary of the Troughton era by slipping in some old clips (from Fury from the Deep and The Web of Fear), name-checking the biggest monsters (and a Quark), and even recreating the corridor set from The Wheel in Space and asking actor Clare Jenkins back to reprise her Tanya Lernov! The End of Time may have been bigger, but The War Games got there first.

We finally meet the merciless Time Lords, three rather average looking men in flowing robes, but they do have a certain gravitas and grandiosity to match their reputation. Well, Bernard Horsfall and Trevor Martin do; Clyde Pollitt lacks their screen presence somewhat, coming over as more of a kindly old codger than a fearsome lord of time. The other two are great though, with Horsfall's rich voice and Martin's scary eyes. It's interesting to note that all three of these actors would return to play Time Lords again - Horsfall as Chancellor Goth in The Deadly Assassin, Pollitt as an unnamed Time Lord in The Three Doctors, and Martin as the Doctor himself in the stage play Doctor Who and the Daleks in The Seven Keys to Doomsday. And who's to say Horsfall and Pollitt weren't playing the same characters?

The fact the War Lord gets to be placed on trial first is rather rewarding, although I have to agree with him when he questions the Time Lords' authority over him and his people. Who do they think they are? His brief escape is mere padding, but it's great to see him and his gimpy guards inside the TARDIS. His final sentence is unforgiving. A force field is placed around his home planet, which is to remain a prisoner forever, while the War Lord himself is dematerialised: "It will be as though you never existed". That's pretty harsh, but it begs the question that if the War Lord is removed from time and never existed, how do the events of The War Games episodes 1-9 take place at all? Without him, there would be no war games, calling into question whether he would ever get to appear on trial at all. Argh, my brain hurts!

And so we reach the trial of the Doctor, in which our hero admits to fighting evil rather than just observing it. His defense is that it is better to oppose the evils of the universe than to merely observe, which goes against the law of the Time Lords. But it's interesting that the Time Lords appear to change their mind (and so their law) by accepting that some evil in the universe must be fought, and that the Doctor has a "part to play" in that fight. From hereon in, the Time Lords get more and more involved in the universe (Colony in Space, The Curse of Peladon, The Mutants etc) until their full-blown meddling gets out of hand in stories such as The Five Doctors and The Trial of a Time Lord. In a way the Doctor only has himself to blame for convincing his people that the universe is worth getting involved in!

It's a lovely bookend to what is often cited as the definitive Second Doctor moment in The Moonbase, where he states: "There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things that act against everything we believe in. They must be fought." And after showing the Time Lord tribunal some of the enemies he has defeated in this incarnation, he says: "All these evils I have fought while you have done nothing but observe." It's a damning indictment of Time Lord society, and perfect evidence for why he chose to run away in the first place.

Then comes the heartrending moment where the Doctor must say farewell to his friends, Jamie and Zoe, who are to be returned to their own places and times. It's an emotionally-charged scene, and you can't help feeling a lump in the throat when Jamie says: "I won't forget you, you know..." I think you can actually feel what it was like on set for that scene, for Troughton, Hines and Padbury, because it's all very sincere and honest. It's as if the actors are saying goodbye, as well as the characters.

"Will we ever meet again?" asks Zoe, and the truth is they never will. Doctor Who fans will see both Jamie and Zoe as ghosts in the Death Zone, and we'll also see Jamie reunited with the Doctor in The Two Doctors, but sadly, this is the last time Jamie and Zoe will see their Doctor. Cruelly, the Time Lords erase their memories of their time spent with the Doctor, apart from their first encounters (The Highlanders and The Wheel in Space), which is as unjust and heartbreaking as what happened to Donna Noble in Journey's End. It also means that Zoe will remember Jamie, but Jamie will have no memories of Zoe. We see Zoe back on the Wheel with Tanya Lernov, and it's a crushing moment when she says: "I thought I'd forgotten something important, but it's nothing..." Blub!

And as for the bit where the Doctor calmly asks the Time Lord: "They'll forget me, won't they?" Well, I'm not sure my heart can take this kind of hammering...

I have to wonder why the Time Lords only erase the memories of Jamie and Zoe though. Why don't they erase Victoria, Ben and Polly's memories of their time spent aboard the TARDIS too? Their involvement in the Doctor's meddling is just as valid, and if you think about it, if their memories aren't erased, then they're the only people who can remember the Doctor travelling with Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot. Their adventures survive in the minds of others, although pockets are lost forever, including most of The Evil of the Daleks and everything since Fury from the Deep. Luckily, we've got plenty of DVDs of Season 6 to remind ourselves!

And so the Time Lords pass sentence by exiling the Doctor to Earth in the 20th century, and changing his appearance once more (note they don't "regenerate" him). After various line drawings of possible future bodies are presented and rejected (including one that looks remarkably like Peter Davison), the Doctor is sent into a black void which puts me in mind of the regeneration from the Fifth to the Sixth Doctor, with the heads spinning round. The last we see of the Second Doctor (for now) is him spinning off into the inky nothingness of the void, protesting every second of the way, just as you'd expect.

Farewell Doctor, you were magnificent!

The War Games remains one of my very favourite stories ever. It probably is a couple of episodes too long, but unlike many six-parters, it doesn't seem to drag or droop as much. Dicks and Hulke keep it going at a fair old pace, peppering it with enough twists and revelations to keep the viewer intrigued and interested. There's a fantastic cast, some strong design and direction, but the true stars really are the writers for managing to make what could have been a huge bore-fest actually very compelling and iconic.

I'll miss the Second Doctor, but you know what? I'm ready for a third. I felt more sorry to say goodbye to the First Doctor than I am to the Second, perhaps because I know I'll see Patrick Troughton plenty of times again. But also because I think in his third year, Troughton sometimes let his disillusionment/ frustration/ exhaustion show, and the impish but brooding gravitas of Seasons 4 and 5 is largely absent from Season 6, too often replaced with clowning and slapstick. Troughton was a magnificent Doctor - one of the very best - but by the end he was ready to go, and I think I'm ready to let him go.

Later the same night that The War Games ended, BBC1 showed an edition of The Ken Dodd Show which coincidentally featured actor Talfryn Thomas, who would appear in the very next Doctor Who episode as Mullins the hospital porter. Three weeks later, on July 12th, 1969, Doctor Who's teatime slot would be taken by a new science-fiction series, this time from the United States. It's name was Star Trek.

First broadcast: June 21st, 1969

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The Doctor's heartfelt farewell to Jamie and Zoe, and the loving recreations of The Wheel in Space and The Highlanders.
The Bad: I don't understand why the Time Lords erase the War Lord from existence, because that completely erases The War Games, surely? And why do they only wipe the memories of Jamie and Zoe, and not the Doctor's other travelling companions? Ooh, the inconsistency of these guys!
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★★ (story average: 8.7 out of 10)

LOOKING BACK: For my appraisal of Doctor Who in the 1960s, click here.

NEXT TIME: Spearhead from Space... and colour!

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

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.