The Two Doctors Part Three

The one where the Doctor murders someone with cyanide...

I think The Two Doctors is where Doctor Who really did go off the rails. There's so much about this story that feels fundamentally ill-judged. I go through so many different emotions while watching it - repugnance, disgust, horror, shock, disbelief - but one emotion I don't seem to experience is joy. I don't find watching The Two Doctors fun, or uplifting in any way. I like Doctor Who to be bright and breezy, fun and adventurous, witty and clever. Occasionally I enjoy its forays into darker territories (The Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Caves of Androzani) but I look for entertainment when I come to Doctor Who, and I don't find much of that in The Two Doctors (or, indeed, in Season 22).

This story in particular, with its theme of cannibalism, leaves me cold. There are so many little moments which make me feel repulsed by what I'm watching, such as John Stratton's "woof woof" when he captures the helpless Peri at the start ("Just in your prime and ripe for the knife!"), or when Chessene succumbs to her Androgum ways and licks the Doctor's spilt blood off the ground. There are so many instances where you have to remind yourself this is Doctor Who, and not some low-rent video nasty.

The Two Doctors Part Two (includes 'A Fix with Sontarans')

The one where the Sixth Doctor is reunited with his old friend Jamie McCrimmon...

What exactly is the savage creature trying to do when it attacks Peri? She claims it's her own fault as it was merely "protecting its nest", but when we subsequently learn that this growling, feral entity is actually Jamie McCrimmon, it's not made clear how or why he's ended up this way. How long has it been since the space station was attacked, leaving all but Jamie massacred by the Sontarans? In the meantime Jamie appears to have undergone a bizarre regression, reverting back to an unconvincing primitivism to survive. Protecting his nest he may have been, but why physically molest Peri? Why is he dressed in grubby overalls? Why has he built a nest in the bowels of the station and surrounded himself with half-eaten animal carcasses?

The whys and wherefores are disappointingly ignored, presumably because it made a good cliffhanger and that's it. When the Doctor sees that the poor creature is actually Jamie, he's barely moved at all to be reunited with his old friend (and one of the most faithful companions he'd ever had). "I seem to remember I was always very fond of Jamie," recalls the Doctor. Well, obviously not fond enough to be pleased to see him, or want to reminisce, even briefly. He does very little to convince Jamie that he is the Doctor, he just tells him that he is a future version without the Scotsman understanding that there can even be different versions of him. Jamie knows nothing of regeneration, but just accepts what he's told without question.

The Two Doctors Part One

The one where the Second Doctor and Jamie get a brand new adventure...

Opening a new story with a different Doctor is a brave but refreshing thing to do. For those viewers finding the Sixth Doctor a little hard to take, it's a welcome side-step to be able to revisit the programme's more palatable past. It's a lovely touch to have the first few seconds in monochrome, reminding us of the Second Doctor's black and white origins, with the gentle fade to colour bringing this figure from the past firmly into the current series. It would have been even braver to have Troughton's face in the titles for one week only, or even to have Troughton's original opening titles, but I understand why that didn't happen! It's also a nice little touch to have the old TARDIS console prop, just to reinforce that this is a different period.

The dialogue tells us that this is taking place during Season 5 for the Doctor and Jamie, as they've dropped Victoria off somewhere to learn graphology (the 1993 novel Birthright adds that Victoria sailed to Vienna to study). There's a whole wad of spin-off adventures featuring just the Doctor and Jamie that fans have slipped between The Ice Warriors and The Enemy of the World, from Big Finish audios like Helicon Prime, to Short Trips such as The Time Eater. And this is where The Two Doctors takes place for the Doctor and Jamie (despite Troughton's greying hair!).

The Mark of the Rani Part Two

The one where people are turned into trees...

Not many people can say their life was saved by George Stephenson, but the Doctor certainly can thanks to the timely intervention of the northern inventor (played by Gawn Grainger, husband of Zoe Wanamaker, don'tcha know?). It's endearing how distracted Stephenson is by the metal alloy used to shackle the Doctor to the trolley, to the point where he forgets to release him!

It's great to have a real historical figure in Doctor Who again. When was the last time a real person from Earth history appeared in the programme? I reckon you'd have to go right back to the 1960s (perhaps even the Hartnell era?), if you overlook the appearance of King John in The King's Demons, who wasn't really King John at all. I might be wrong, but it's certainly been a while.

The Mark of the Rani Part One

The one where the TARDIS is thrown down a mine shaft...

What wonderful scene-setting from director Sarah Hellings at the start of this story, coupled with some gorgeous, contemplative music from Jonathan Gibbs (so different to his work on Warriors of the Deep and Vengeance on Varos). It feels so mellow and laidback, and we're given the time to work out where we are, when we are, and what's going on. It feels like a Catherine Cookson adaptation, and the location filming at Blists Hill open air museum gives it vital authenticity. It's a gentle opening which capitalises on the BBC's famous expertise when it comes to period drama. This episode feels good already.

We watch a bunch of tired miners eschew a pint at the local inn for a good bath, making their way to the local bath-house for a scrub. They don't quite manage to get fully undressed before a mysterious gas floods the room and they're rendered unconscious. There's an immediate assumption that these men are dead, but it's not long until they're back on their feet, only rather more active than before. Whatever's been done to them has made them more violent, ready for a fight, and they rampage through the village, kicking over baked potato stalls, shoving little kids to the ground, and accosting a cart transporting some kind of machinery.

Vengeance on Varos Part Two

The one where Peri is turned into a bird...

"Here comes the acid bath."

"I hate this bit."

There's an attempt at the top of this episode to explain why the Doctor is apparently dead from heat exhaustion when there's no physical reason to cause it. I struggled with the sense of it in my review last episode, and here writer Philip Martin tries - and, in my opinion, fails - to explain. "His mind thought he was dying of thirst," says the Governor. Sil continues: "His body agreed, so die they did."

Sorry, but no. It still doesn't work for me. "His body agreed"? Where does science come into this? I truly struggle with the idea that convincing the mind of something results in a physical, and deadly, effect on the body. You can convince the mind of things through suggestion, hypnosis, or simple lies, but the body can only respond to a physical cause, surely? The Doctor feels thirsty and hot, but he's not really either of those things, so why would his body respond accordingly?

Vengeance on Varos Part One

The one where the Doctor visits a planet where torture and death are entertainment...

After a good-looking model shot of the planet Varos (spoilt by the fact it's on videotape and looks precisely like a model), the next scene is of a handsome bare-chested young man being tortured by a beam of light, sorry a heat ray. Shackled to the wall and subjected to a 'laseriser', this is the rebel Jondar, played by none other than Sean Connery's son, Jason. More of him later (although there's plenty of him here too).

Watching Jondar's misfortunes on TV are bickering married couple Arak and Etta (the latter played by Sheila Reid, who'd go on to play Clara's gran during the Steven Moffat era). The torture and killing of rebels, criminals and miscreants on Varos is televised to entertain the general population in a twisted form of Big Brother that would make George Orwell proud. This is Doctor Who doing Nineteen Eighty-Four, complete with snappy contractions such as ComDiv and ComTec. At last, a script with a bit of depth and intelligence behind it, perhaps?

Attack of the Cybermen Part Two

The one where Lytton undergoes Cyber-conversion...

When you take a step back - which isn't hard to do during this era - it becomes plain just how ridiculous Attack of the Cybermen is. It's all show, and no depth. There's so much going on, entire subplots appear from nowhere and are dropped into the mix in an effort to raise the stakes. But all they really do is confuse and annoy. There are so many ideas thrown into this hotch-potch of a script that it begins to feel like I'm watching tangled wool (now there's a simile for you!).

Part 1 didn't exactly feel straightforward, but for the most part I did feel that I understood what was going on. With part 2 comes a wealth of extra elements which might have felt quite neat individually, but collectively they destroy any sense the story may have had to start with. I'm really not sure how anyone could adequately summarise the plot of this story in one or two sentences.

Attack of the Cybermen Part One

The one where the Cybermen invade the TARDIS...

It's January 5th, 1985. Doctor Who's 22nd season bursts onto the screen on a Saturday teatime for the first time since Tom Baker regenerated in 1981. It feels like Doctor Who was back where it belonged, back home where it all began on that fateful November evening in '63. Fittingly, this episode would see the Doctor return to the place where it did all begin - a junkyard at 76 Totter's Lane. There would also be a policeman wandering about, as there was in An Unearthly Child. What delightful symmetry!

Something is different though, and that's the length of the episodes. For 22 years an episode of Doctor Who had been 25 minutes, with a handful of exceptions, but Season 22 would see each episode almost twice the length at 45 minutes. Previously, an average story would consist of four 25 minute episodes, but now they'd mostly be made up of two 45 minute episodes. It was a gamble with the format, perhaps to make it more commercial overseas, but you can't just stitch together two 25 minute episodes and get away with it. There's an entirely different ebb and flow to a 45 minute drama, so let's hope the requisite adjustments were allowed for...