The Highlanders Episode 4

The one where the TARDIS gains a fourth crewmember...

Luckily, action man Ben has slipped free of his bonds and swam away from the Annabelle and back to shore, affording viewers (well, in 1967) the splendid sight of a dripping wet Michael Craze. The surviving telesnap makes him look like he's shivering with ecstasy, which is fine by me. Ben later reveals that he escaped his bonds by using an old Houdini trick, by flexing his muscles when he was tied up, and relaxing them afterwards... "that way, you were half the size you were". Blimey, how muscly is Ben under there?

Once at the quayside, Ben encounters a wounded Redcoat with a silly moustache and a gruff Cockney accent, but it's alright because it's only the Doctor in disguise. Again. There's no sense to him being dressed this way at all, and certainly no need. He claims it's to prevent the other soldiers bothering him, but where exactly did he get the clothes from (presumably he's stolen them from a wounded, or even dead, Redcoat)? Why is he out at night wandering the quayside? Is it just so that he can plunder the dressing-up box again, like a child? Oh dear, I'll be glad when this Doctor settles down and forgets the tiresome disguises.

The Highlanders Episode 3

The one where Polly masquerades as a prostitute...

Similar to episode 2 (the only Doctor Who episode shown on Christmas Eve to date), this third installment is the only edition of the show to go out on New Year's Eve, so it's fitting that it begins with the unmistakable cry of the bagpipes. Hogmanay! Incidentally, later the same evening, the TARDIS randomly materialises during New Year's Eve celebrations at Trafalgar Square. Well, according to The Daleks' Master Plan episode 8, anyway...!

Generally, everything's just as it has been for the previous two episodes, which is to say generally humdrum but diverting enough. I can't help wondering why writers Gerry Davis and Elwyn Jones didn't set the story just a few days earlier, during the actual Battle of Culloden, as it would have been far more exciting and interesting. As it is, everybody's just stumbling around getting locked up or escaping, which doesn't make for very engrossing drama. The most interesting part of the story is Solicitor Grey's plot to ship the Scottish rebels to the West Indies to become plantation slaves, but even that's taking it's time.

The Highlanders Episode 2

The one where the Doctor impersonates a German doctor and a Scottish washerwoman...

The Highlanders episode 2 is the first and (as of 2017) only time that Doctor Who has been shown on Christmas Eve, and perhaps fittingly, it all feels rather like a pantomime. I wrote in my review of episode 1 how I wasn't keen on Patrick Troughton's interpretation of his Doctor, and the silliness just continues here. This version of the Second Doctor feels so spectacularly unfamiliar that he barely feels like the Doctor at all.

In the scenes where the Doctor, Ben, Jamie and Colin are imprisoned in a waterlogged jail, our time-travelling hero is really rather irritating. He claims he is glad they are in the predicament they're in, as he's just beginning to enjoy himself (the predicament is that they're being sent overseas to become slaves in Barbados, so I suppose every cloud has a silver lining...). He also whips out his annoying recorder again and blows out a tune, rousing the other prisoners into a rowdy singalong, as well as yelling the somewhat controversial "Down with King George!" because he likes the echo.

The Highlanders Episode 1

The one where a future companion holds a knife to the Doctor's throat...

As with the previous historically-set story (The Smugglers), there's some lovely location filming in The Highlanders, particularly in this first episode. This serial is known for being the last purely historical until 1982's Black Orchid, which is a shame because the past provides rich pickings for adventure. After this, every time Doctor Who visited Earth's past, there was an alien force at work, whether it be Victorian London, Medieval England or 1950s Wales. When you actually look into it, Doctor Who didn't visit Earth's past as much as you think it did between 1967-89 (the Third Doctor just twice (and that's only if you count Atlantis!) and the Fourth Doctor only a handful of times in seven seasons!).

The episode opens with a battle raging in the distance - the Battle of Culloden in Scotland, in April 1746. Scottish highlanders have been fighting English and German regiments loyal to Hanoverian King George I. The Jacobites (so-called as they are loyal to King James VII of Scotland aka James II of England and Ireland) want a Roman Catholic back on the throne, so essentially it all boils down to religious schism, the canvas upon which almost all of British history is painted.