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.

Shockeye is intent on cooking and eating a human, first of all sharpening his blades over the unconscious Peri (a scene kids could easily copy), and later tenderising the meat on Jamie's legs and chest (which looks painful, and probably would be seeing as the process is marbling his skin and separating his fatty tissue). Everywhere you look there's a gruesome means of dispatch, whether it be Shockeye's scimitar, Jamie's dirk, or a restaurant carving knife. It's like watching Doctor Who's version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but the truth is there should never be a Doctor Who version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

After being captured by Stike and Varl, the Doctor and Jamie manage to escape when the hairy-legged highlander stabs Stike in the leg (Stike overreacts to this considerably!). Soon after, the Second and Sixth Doctors finally come face to face, but their meeting lacks wit or weight. There's barely any exchange between them apart from some childish attempt to say "snap" at the same time (which Colin Baker and Patrick Troughton fail to do). I know the antagonism between the Second and Third Doctors could get a little wearing, but there seems to be no basis for a relationship at all between the Second and Sixth.

Out of nowhere - perhaps because Robert Holmes is struggling to to fill three 45-minute episodes - Chessene asks Dastari to delay isolating the Doctor's symbiotic nuclei, and instead create an Androgum/ Time Lord mutation, to act as her consort. Dastari uses Shockeye's Androgum DNA to turn the Second Doctor 50% Androgum, but before the second operation can be performed which will stabilise this "Androgum inheritance", the mutated Doctor and Shockeye escape, hunting for food.

The transformation of the Second Doctor into an Androgum is meant to be fun (I think). Instead, I find it repugnant, ill-considered and grossly disrespectful to Patrick Troughton, who's barely been allowed to reprise his Doctor properly at all. He was the Doctor for about 10 minutes in part 1, was tied to a trolley for all of part 2, and is now playing an Androgum.

"Capercaillies in brandy sauce!" are the mutated Doctor's first words. "With a stuffing of black pudding made of live pigs' blood, herbs and pepper. And the breasts of the birds should be slit and studded with truffles." I find all of this utterly distasteful, tarnishing the memory and legacy of a great Doctor and a treasured programme. Soon Troughton and Stratton are waddling through the Spanish countryside dreaming of all manner of culinary delights ("Pate du foie gras de Strasbourg en croute... or a serving of Belon oysters. A slight salad with artichoke hearts and country ham"), until they spy a passing truck which can get them to Seville much faster. Shockeye clubs the handsome driver (to death, it seems) and they make off in the truck, leaving the pursuant Sixth Doctor, Peri and Jamie behind. Disappointingly, not one of them bothers to go over to the driver's prone body to see if he's still alive, they just assume he's dead. "I can't believe that was my Doctor just standing there and letting a man get killed," says Jamie, as he stands there and watches a man die.

The episode spirals into a bland travelogue which becomes less and less to do with the plot, and more to do with showing off that Doctor Who went to film in Seville. There are endless scenes of Baker, Bryant and Hines running along curiously empty streets, occasionally stopping to admire the culinary possibilities of a stray cat, while Jacqueline Pearce and Laurence Payne hop on a horse and carriage and go sightseeing. I remember City of Death fell into a similar trap, giving us far too much "look, this is Paris" and not enough "look, Doctor Who is fighting evil in Paris".

When Shockeye and the Second Doctor decide to dine at Las Cadenas, the restaurant Oscar Botcherby is looking after for a friend, things get even sillier. The hungry gourmands devour so much food that they rack up a bill of 81,600 pesetas ("a gargantuan repast"), which Shockeye tries to pay for with a 20 narg note. When Oscar declines the alien currency, Shockeye resorts to violence, and stabs him in the chest. The death of Oscar Botcherby is completely unnecessary, and shocking. Maybe it's meant to be (and should be), but it serves no narrative purpose, and kills off the best character in the story for no discernible reason.

Unfortunately, Oscar's death is a bittersweet mix of pathos and bathos. Holmes tries to give his death scene a tenderness, but his attempt to make it moving is ruined by the fact Oscar seems almost glad to be dying, giving in too readily. "Botcherby's last curtain call" lacks the necessary tenderness because it's undercut by Oscar's essentially buffoonish demeanour. "Please take care of my beautiful moths," are his final words, but they're more comedic than emotive. All credit to Carmen Gomez for giving her all in reaction, as well as Nicola Bryant, who maintains Peri's upset in the next scene outside when she tells the Doctors to stop quarrelling. But when you see diners carrying on with their meals in the background, and realise that the Doctor and Jamie really don't give a fig about the fact their friend's just been murdered, it leaves me wondering why did any of it happen?

After reverting back to his proper self, the Second Doctor joins the Sixth in trying to stop Chessene controlling the Kartz-Reimer module. In the process they are chained up, in order to escape (and waste time), before the Sixth Doctor is pursued through the Spanish countryside by the cannibal Shockeye. It's a rehash of what happened to Peri in part 2, but the difference is the Doctor has been stabbed in the leg by Shockeye's very floppy knife, and limps for his life until he comes upon Oscar's abandoned moth-catching paraphernalia.

And this is where things get even grubbier, as the Doctor uses Oscar's cyanide to murder Shockeye. Yet again, the Sixth Doctor dispassionately ends someone's life. It might be in self-defence, but he doesn't have to kill Shockeye. What's wrong with a traditional chop to the neck to render him unconscious? What's even worse is the Doctor's parting witticism - "Your just desserts" - as well as his later quip that "he's been mothballed". These cold-hearted pay-offs are obviously influenced by James Bond (there was a similarly objectionable example in the acid bath scene in Vengeance on Varos) but have no place in Doctor Who. The Doctor should be better than this. He certainly used to be.

While all this nonsense and savagery is going on, the Sontarans - supposedly the monsters of the story - are dispatched rather cursorily by Chessene using acid bombs. The Sontarans suffer agonisingly, spewing green blood and goo. Stike's strung-out demise is particularly gruesome (although not quite as gruesome as we saw in A Fix with Sontarans!). I've no idea why the Sontarans are in this story, they serve very little purpose and the only time they really get to show the might of their species is off-camera during the raid on the space station in part 1. I believe Holmes had the Sontarans forced into his original script, and you can tell. You can also tell he wasn't very happy about this because he does nothing with them. I thought The Invasion of Time was the poorest Sontaran story, but not any longer...

Quickies:

• It's amazing how often the Doctor falls for the old "do it - or your companion dies!" routine, being forced to do something he doesn't want to do when the bad guy threatens an innocent life.
• When the Second Doctor goes Androgum, Patrick Troughton obviously relishes the opportunity to do something different, but it's quite awkward to watch. This is not the Second Doctor I want to remember.
• The Sixth Doctor says he is starting to feel the effects of the Androgum inheritance already, which means that the Third Doctor must be knocking back the cheese and wine like it's going out of fashion! The Fourth Doctor might be found gorging on jelly babies, and the Fifth lining up a feast of celery!
• What is the point of the scene where a grinning senorita throws a red rose down to Dastari from a balcony? Is it supposed to mean something?
• When everybody gets back to the hacienda after their jaunt to Seville, Shockeye completely forgets about Chessene's betrayal, as if nothing ever happened.

The story comes to a swift end when Chessene tries to escape in the Kartz-Reimer module, only to suffer from molecular disintegration, reverting back to her Androgum appearance in death (warts and all!). And that's that. There's a couple of insults flung between Doctors (Six calls Two an "old gentleman", even though he's younger, while Two makes the first reference to Six's waistline, even though it has yet to expand) before everyone says farewell without much fanfare or fondness. There's a nice moment when Jamie kisses Peri goodbye, and Peri looks stunned to have been shown some tenderness for once. That girl goes through so much travelling with the Doctor, it's a wonder she's not a complete basket case.

Everybody left alive leaves. No matter that the countryside is strewn with alien tech debris and corpses, including Chessene, Dastari, Shockeye, Stike and Varl (the graphic depiction of Stike's severed leg is another step too far). Oscar Botcherby has been brutally murdered, leaving Anita distraught and alone. The blind widow Dona Arana was also slain, leaving the hacienda abandoned. And an innocent hunky truck driver has been left dead in the dusty gutter. But that's Season 22 for you.

For me, The Two Doctors is the nadir of Season 22's distasteful preoccupation with death and violence. The programme has ironically become something akin to a video nasty. This material is beneath Doctor Who. I don't know what possessed producer John Nathan-Turner, script editor Eric Saward, the writers, directors and cast to go down this muddy path - boredom? apathy? frustration? - but it was certainly not good for Doctor Who, and no way to take the Doctor's character. It's a travesty that this was Patrick Troughton's swansong in the role; in fact, it's a travesty that he had to be involved with this grubby stain on Doctor Who's reputation at all.

First broadcast: March 2nd, 1985

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Nothing springs to mind.
The Bad: The Androgum Doctor. As well as being a pointless digression, it's an ignoble treatment of the character.
Overall score for episode: ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ (story average: 3.7 out of 10)

Word repetition: 5

NEXT TIME: Timelash...

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

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