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 Doctor is on a mission from the Time Lords to visit Space Station Camera to convince Head of Projects Joinson Dastari to call a halt to time experiments being conducted by professors Kartz and Reimer (two characters we never actually meet). These experiments have apparently caused ripples in the time continuum up to 0.4 on the Bocca Scale, which the Doctor says runs the risk of threatening the whole fabric of time. However, 0.4 on the Bocca Scale is nothing compared to the dizzy heights of 1,000 reached in the book The Quantum Archangel!

Dastari refuses to tell the professors to halt their experiments, claiming the Time Lords have no right to make such demands, and then promptly falls asleep under the influence of some kind of drug. The next thing we know, the space station is being invaded by Sontarans (off-screen), who are in cahoots with a character called Chessene, played by the wonderful Jacqueline Pearce (it's weird seeing her with hair!). The scene where the Sontarans reach Dastari's office, and all we see is a clawed hand aiming a gun at the Doctor, is effectively done. By holding back the first appearance of the Sontarans, director Peter Moffatt should be able to make a real spectacle of the Big Reveal... Sadly, he bungles it big time, but more on that later. Meanwhile, I'm not convinced that Jamie would just run off and abandon the Doctor, it seems out of character.

It's depressing that the Second Doctor's TARDIS materialises in a butchery, surrounded by animal corpses and various blades and cutting tools. It infects the innocence of the Second Doctor's era with the graphic gore and violence of the Sixth Doctor's. It seems distasteful to see Troughton amongst the trappings of Season 22.

Here they meet Shockeye, a member of the cannibal Androgum species which act as staff aboard the space station. John Stratton plays the barbarous butcher with obvious relish, but the fact he's a flesh-eating anthropophagist, who dribbles over the prospect of eating Jamie's "succulent" meat, is yet another example of how wrong Doctor Who has gone by this point. It's all well and good trying to undercut the grimness by having the Doctor reach for a cucumber instead of a knife in self-defence, but it doesn't alter the fact the Doctor reached for a knife. This is the Second Doctor, one of the most harmless incarnations of all, being imbued with the more violent aspects of Colin Baker's version. It just doesn't sit right with me.

The inclusion of the Sontarans in this story should be Very Exciting. They haven't been seen since 1978's The Invasion of Time, and as they are writer Robert Holmes's creation, their overdue return feels timely. Sadly, they're introduced really poorly. After some initially impressive shots of spinning Sontaran battle cruisers, when a Sontaran does finally appear, it lacks all style and significance. Sontaran Varl appears roughly halfway through the episode, along with Chessene and Shockeye, but shot from an extreme distance so you can't tell who or what he is. When director Peter Moffatt manages to get closer to the characters, he still forgets to give Varl an introductory shot. There's a moment where you can see Varl starting to remove his helmet, but again it's from a distance, and the impact is lost. The potential to recreate that classic cliffhanger at the end of The Time Warrior part 1 is thrown away. Neither Shockeye or Chessene even refer to the fact Varl is with them. He's just 'there', given about as much relevance as the wrought iron gate behind him. It's one of the most unfulfilling scenes ever to make the final cut of a Doctor Who episode, directed thoughtlessly.

What we do see of Varl later is quite sobering for fans, who are used to seeing Sontarans as short and stocky. That's one of the basic requirements of a Sontaran: they're short. It's always been that way. So why is Varl so tall, why does he tower over the other characters? The actors playing the Sontarans have been miscast, they're simply too tall. The Sontarans are treated as if they're generic 'monsters of the week', and no different to, say, the Ice Warriors. Just as the long-awaited return of the Silurians and Sea Devils was bungled in Warriors of the Deep, the Sontarans are also misrepresented and misunderstood here. Sigh...

It's not until 10 minutes in that the incumbent Doctor and companion make an appearance in their own show, and to be honest, I haven't missed them. I was getting used to seeing the further adventures of the Second Doctor, but we barely see them again for the rest of the episode. Instead we get the traditionally tiresome "bickering in the TARDIS" scenes, with the Sixth Doctor being affected by the torture of the Second Doctor. It's a tricky one, this. If future Doctors were physically affected by the pain their previous selves endured, no Doctor would ever get anything done. He'd be fainting left, right and centre. Why doesn't the Second Doctor collapse in the middle of Fury from the Deep when he feels the First Doctor having his energy drained in The Savages? Why doesn't the Fourth Doctor keel over in the middle of The Horns of Nimon when he feels the Third Doctor being interrogated in Day of the Daleks? And so on...

This physical connection through time between incarnations doesn't work for me, and although Holmes attempts to wriggle out of it by mentioning "temporal tautology" and the fact the Sixth Doctor hasn't "synchronised" yet, it still seems highly unlikely, and merely appropriate for the plot this particular week. Also: why doesn't the Sixth Doctor remember what's happened/ happening to the Second Doctor? ARGH!

The Sixth Doctor coincidentally decides to visit his friend Dastari, but arrives on Camera after the Sontarans have attacked the station. The scenes of the Doctor and Peri exploring the dark, dingy, battle-scarred space station are nicely done, and composer Peter Howell adds a moody, spooky edge in the score (congrats too to lighting designer Don Babbage). It's a shame there's so much talk about the stench of death and decaying corpses, described with graphic vividness by the Doctor ("Fruit-soft flesh peeling from white bones"), who responds to Peri's nauseated reaction with: "I think you'll feel a good deal sicker before we've finished here." Yep, we're definitely back in the Sixth Doctor's era. There's even a blood-soaked lab coat for good measure.

The Sixth Doctor and Peri's exploration of the station is enjoyably old school, even if at the end of the day it boils down to a series of rather mundane door openings. Once they go "below decks" into the station's infrastructure, things perk up. It's a beautifully simple yet atmospheric set by Tony Burrough, consisting of a simple scaffold framework which has both size and depth. The black voids beyond and below add real scale, there's some nifty camera moves from Moffatt, and Babbage's creative lighting enhances the murky atmosphere. Yes, the Doctor and Peri continue to bicker and snipe, but at least it's slightly better written bickering and sniping.

What is it that stalks them in the bowels of the space station? We glimpse and hear a gurgling, snarling creature, one that seems to have its own nest of sacking and carcasses. Whatever it is must be a savage beast, perhaps something to do with the cannibalistic Androgums? The cliffhanger gives nothing away, but what we do see is terribly unpleasant as the unknown creature physically attacks Peri in a way that also looks disturbingly sexual. I know that wasn't anybody's intention (I hope!), but it does seem a bit too physical.

Elsewhere, the Doctor swings unconscious on a cable by his armpits after being knocked out by a spurt of gas. This in itself is ludicrous because if he was unconscious, his arms would be too limp to support him, but whatever... This is not an era recognised for making much sense.

A few other things:

• The first scene between Chessene and Shockeye is a really badly written jumble. It's a very "explainy" scene which drops in all manner of plot points, but at a stage when none of it means anything. Chessene mentions the Kartz-Reimer module, a Grand Marshal, and someone called Stike, none of which are relevant yet. It's an info-dump which doesn't actually explain anything!
• Dastari says the Doctor attended the inauguration of Space Station Camera as a representative of the Time Lords. This took place before the Doctor's exile, so we must assume it was the First Doctor who went along.
• When Jamie says Dastari's "got his head doon", the Doctor refers to his words as "that appalling mongrel dialect". This is such an out of character thing for the Second Doctor to say that I'm quite offended by it! It's borderline racist! I can't point the finger at script editor Eric Saward on this occasion, as the line remains in Robert Holmes's novelisation.
• There's some nifty nods to the past when Shockeye mentions a "cold collation" (The Talons of Weng-Chiang), and the Doctor remembers jelly babies and his recorder. Best of all is Peri asking if the Doctor needs celery, which she knows had a restorative effect for the Fifth Doctor.
• The Doctor reads Dastari's last diary entry, which refers to events prior to the Sontaran assault, when the Second Doctor visited him. But when did Dastari have the opportunity to write this diary entry, seeing as he was drugged?
• It's great when Peri snaps and gives the Doctor a verbal pasting. When he says she should feel privileged to be with him, Peri says how she feels: "I can't tell you how privileged I feel, having been half-frozen, and asphyxiated, and cooked, and then forced to clamber through miles of pipe!" Sadly, the Doctor barely notices her consternation, reinforcing the fact he just doesn't give a fig how she feels.
• Peter Howell's Spanish score for the Andalucian scenes is gorgeous, adding a bit of Iberian colour as if Carlos Santana himself had been given the gig!

Late in the story we're introduced to two new characters, Oscar and Anita, who are roaming the wastes of Andalucia in search of moths. It feels like an attempt at a traditional Holmesian double act, but while James Saxon is more than up to the job as the florid lepidopterist Oscar Botcherby (great name!), the part of Anita is sadly underwritten, giving Carmen Gomez very little to work with. Still, it's nice to have Holmes write for a female character for once, because there are precious few in most of his previous Doctor Who work.

"I can't stand the sight of gory entrails," bemoans Oscar. Sorry mate, but you really are in the wrong story then...

First broadcast: February 16th, 1985

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The unsung stars are lighting designer Don Babbage and composer Peter Howell, who add much to an otherwise flatly directed episode.
The Bad: The way director Peter Moffatt directs the first proper appearance of a Sontaran is unforgivably inept.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

Word repetition: 5

NEXT TIME: Part Two (and something particularly monstrous and revolting)...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part Two; Part Three

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.

The Two Doctors is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Two-Doctors-1984-86/dp/B0000AISJA