November 22: The Two Doctors Part Two

There continues to be a sense throughout this episode that nothing's really happening, and I'm not quite sure why.  Certainly things are actually happening, as the sixth Doctor and Peri pick up Jamie and head to Seville, while the second Doctor is strapped down to a makeshift operating table so that the villains can extract a special genetic component from him to let them time travel, but there never really feels like there's a serious or genuine threat at work here.

It's possible that this is because of the direction; there's definitely an unhurried sense to what we're shown, with lots of people pontificating in largely unchanging shots, rather than a number of quick cuts to provide energy or a sense of movement.  Some of the speeches are quite nice (Colin Baker's little soliloquy on the impending death of the universe being a nice highlight), while some are purely there for exposition (such as almost anything Dastari is involved with).  But this isn't really an action story, so that's not a criticism; no, the issue is that the two main opposing parties don't encounter each other until the cliffhanger, so there aren't any points-of-view being exchanged.  (Well, except for a handful of moments with the second Doctor, where he continues to be unpleasant toward the Androgums; the sixth Doctor also agrees, later in the episode, although he provides the fig leaf that the problem is that they have no emotional capacity.  If we assume that he's speaking scientifically, this miiiight get us away from the distastefully racist undertone running through this conversation, although even then it feels like a gross generalization.)

The sixth Doctor and Jamie discuss Kartz and Reimer's prototype
time machine behind them. (The Two Doctors Part Two) ©BBC

That in turn points at Robert Holmes's script -- Peter Moffat can't film scenes that aren't there, after all.  And while some of the interactions we get are entertaining -- particularly Jamie's relationship with both this new Doctor and with Peri -- there is a sense that we're missing the important ones.  We still haven't had any real discussion about what's going on, and the rationale behind the villains' plot seems a bit thin on the ground -- Dastari telling the second Doctor how they're going to slice him up to find the biological aspect of time travel doesn't really cut it.  Shockeye gets some on-the-nose scripting about how people treat animals bred for consumption that's not bad, but it's not really related to the main plot.  The Sontarans just stand around demanding things and being generally ignored by everyone around them, which does make them look rather impotent.  (And as long as we're talking about the Sontarans...Stike sure seems tall for a Sontaran, doesn't he?  He's even towering over Colin Baker (who's not exactly short at 6 feet).  There's also the problem that the masks don't look as mobile as they did in the past (particularly around the eyes and mouth), which means that they're less convincing.)  There's really no sense of urgency at all from anyone on screen.

But that I think gets at the larger problem this story has so far.  It's been an hour and a half, and while we're slowly learning about what's actually at stake here, all we're really getting is setup -- there haven't really been any complications thus far, beyond the little puzzles here and there (like defeating the homicidal computer).  The villains haven't suffered any sort of problems at all up to this point or are even aware that the sixth Doctor and his compatriots are out there.  It's almost like Holmes took one of this season's two-part stories and made the first part twice as long -- a move which doesn't do this story any favors.  Let's hope the last part is up to snuff -- particularly as real-life events are about to overtake the show in a dramatic way...

(And a side-note to say that (out of some misguided sense of completism) I did subsequently watch A Fix with Sontarans, which was broadcast later the same night as The Two Doctors Part Two.  It's rather meh though, as it's more a quick little sketch than anything else (and what's up with Janet Fielding's hair?), so don't bother -- although it's really creepy watching Jimmy Savile interact with Fielding, especially given what we now know.  (Fortunately, Gareth Jenkins has subsequently said that Jimmy Savile had no interest in him and thus he wasn't one of Savile's victims.))