November 29: The Trial of a Time Lord Parts Three & Four

(The Mysterious Planet parts 3 & 4)

There are some more self-aware lines in the courtroom scenes ("Valeyard, are these unpleasant scenes necessary to your case?" the Inquisitor asks.  "I too find it repugnant to witness, my lady, but the Doctor has a well-known predilection for violence," the Valeyard replies), but these scenes do sometimes feel intrusive as well -- one is designed to point out why we're viewing events the Doctor wasn't present for (useful but presented rather tediously), two are because of sensitive material, and one seems designed just so that the Inquisitor and Valeyard have some screen time, even though the points being made feel rather irrelevant.

Dibber and Glitz enter Drathro's control room, where Drathro and
the Doctor are already present. (The Trial of a Time Lord Part
Four) ©BBC

But there seems to be a larger problem at stake here.  The Valeyard has presented this Ravalox material as proof that the Doctor interferes and leaves bodies in his wake, but we only really see three people die (Katryca, Broken Tooth, and Grell), and Grell was probably going to die by Merdeen's hand anyway.  The Doctor may be indirectly responsible for Katryca's and Broken Tooth's deaths, but that's really only because his presence caused Drathro to send a robot after him, which the Tribe of the Free mistook for Drathro himself.  It's not his fault that they charged into Drathro's base and then confronted the robot directly.  But more importantly, here's a situation where the Doctor definitely had a positive effect, if his claims about what would happen in a black light explosion are true -- and there's no reason to believe they're not.  (Even if they bear a worrying resemblance to the plot of Plan 9 from Outer Space...)  The Doctor resolved a situation that he wasn't responsible for (as he had nothing to do with blowing up the black light collection aerial) with minimal casualties.  Why does the Valeyard think this is a good example of the Doctor's meddlesome activities?¹⁴⁴

Moreover, the sequences we're shown not only demonstrate the good-hearted nature of the Doctor (the way he presents himself to the L1 robot so that Peri and the others can escape, the conversation he has with Peri -- "I can't let people die if there's a chance of saving them"), but also show that the Doctor has freed them from Drathro's influence -- no more forced cullings, it seems, and while life will probably be harder in some respects for the underground dwellers, there's no suggestion that this isn't a desirable thing -- Merdeen's been trying to free people for years, after all.  Even Humker and Tandrell, Drathro's lackeys, seem happier away from him.  So if this is meant to be an instance of the negative influence the Doctor's meddling has, it's not a very effective one, and it's not like the Doctor's history isn't littered with more damning examples (such as The Caves of Androzani, in which the Doctor's mere presence leads to a huge number of deaths and the destabilization of an entire society).  No, what we actually get in The Mysterious Planet is an entertaining little tale with ultimately a much more upbeat ending than we might have expected, given it's being used as evidence against the Doctor.  Of course, the Valeyard promises us that the best is yet to come...







¹⁴⁴ This choice of evidence is going to seem even stranger when we get to Parts 13 and 14, and the nature of the censored secrets is revealed -- but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

November 28: The Trial of a Time Lord Parts One & Two

(The Mysterious Planet parts 1 & 2)

And so here we are, eighteen months after Doctor Who was last on the air, and the show's undergone a bit of an overhaul in the meantime.  The focus of the hiatus had moved increasingly from being a purely financial decision to a creative one.  The show, according to the BBC's upper management, had become too violent, and that needed to change.  (There's a theory that the BBC wanted to be rid of the show entirely at this point, but that the public outcry when the hiatus was initially announced led them to rethink their plans.  This probably isn't true (as there's no indication in the initial announcement of a permanent cancellation), but it's no secret that BBC1 Controller Michael Grade and Head of Drama Jonathan Powell hated the show (and its producer, John Nathan-Turner, it seems) and wanted to be rid of it.)  In addition to less violence and more humor (so, a bit like what Graham Williams was told, it seems), a couple more radical changes were initiated: the show was to revert back to its 25-minute format (the 45-minute format having been deemed a failure -- nobody tell BBC Wales), and the season was to be shortened to a mere 14 episodes.

Obviously these changes mean that the original season 23 has had to be scrapped (although, based on the subsequent Big Finish adaptations of some of the planned stories, we had a lucky escape in not having Mission to Magnus made -- and one wonders if The Hollows of Time would have still been as worryingly convoluted (even with the framing narration out and the Master back in) as the audio version).  In its place, John Nathan-Turner and Eric Saward have come up with a new (and somewhat fate-tempting) plan: as the show is on trial in real life, why not have a season-long story where the Doctor is also on trial for his meddling (an update to the events seen back in 1969 at the end of The War Games)?  But rather than have one extra-long story, they decided to take three stories and have them be loosely connected to the trial theme, followed by a wrap-up for the overarching tale.  And so The Trial of a Time Lord was conceived...

That's the set-up then; what did they actually put on television?

The very first thing to notice about The Trial of a Time Lord is that they've revamped the theme tune.  Instead of the more triumphant version we've been used to, composer Dominic Glynn gives us a much more ethereal rendition, with lots of high pitches and little in the bass range.  I actually rather like it just because it's so different from anything we've heard before or since, though I understand it's not exactly a universal favorite.  At this point it doesn't really seem like it fits with the title sequence at all though.

It's a hell of an impressive opening shot, though, as the TARDIS is pulled into some sort of space station via a beam of light (I'm trying to avoid using the term "tractor beam", but as the phrase actually comes from E.E. "Doc" Smith rather than Star Trek, it's probably okay).  Clearly some motion control work went into this shot -- the stars moving along with the camera is proof of that.  It's a really nice shot.  That's then followed by some self-aware dialogue.  "Am I late for something?" the Doctor asks as he enters a darkened courtroom.  "I was beginning to fear you had lost yourself," the prosecutor, the Valeyard¹⁴³, replies.  It seems there is to be an inquiry into the Doctor's activities regarding interference in other cultures -- something, you may recall, expressly forbidden by Time Lord law.  "I intend to adumbrate two typical instances from separate epistopic interfaces of the spectrum," the Valeyard tells the court -- and yet this is a Robert Holmes script, not a Pip & Jane Baker one.  Why he can't just say that he's going to show two different examples of the Doctor's guilt is beyond me.

This leads into the (first) main story proper: that of the Doctor and Peri's investigations on a planet called Ravalox, some two million years in the future.  It's quickly clear that Ravalox is actually Earth, though as of now there's no clear reason why Ravalox and its "constellation" (er, does he mean "solar system"?) have moved a couple light years away from their typical location.  But look!  Everything's on video now, which does give the production a unified look (the real world reason having to do with the problems of developing film -- an incident involving a scratch on a film negative for The Two Doctors, necessitating a pricey reshoot of the footage, only to later discover that the scratch wasn't that bad, made Nathan-Turner decide film was more trouble than it was worth).  And the story is rather intriguing so far, with two "tribes" of people nearby -- one on the surface and one underground.  The surface dwellers look like a primitive tribe, while those underground appear to be locked into a dictatorship run by an L3 robot named Drathro.  Drathro is a suitably impressive costume -- it looks like a metal robot (instead of, say, a foam rubber costume) and it towers over everyone.

But the best part about these two episodes are the Holmes double-act of Sabalom Glitz and his partner Dibber.  In the tradition of characters like Jago and Litefoot from The Talons of Weng-Chiang, Glitz and Dibber engage in highly entertaining banter, with lots of dry wit.  Unlike Jago and Litefoot, Glitz and Dibber's conversations are significantly more sadistic:

GLITZ: You know, Dibber, I'm the product of a broken home.
DIBBER: You have mentioned it on occasions, Mister Glitz.
GLITZ: Which sort of unbalanced me.  Made me selfish to the point where I cannot stand competition.
DIBBER: Know the feeling only too well, Mister Glitz.
GLITZ: Whereas yours is a simple case of sociopathy, Dibber, my malaise is much more complex.  A deep-rooted maladjustment, my psychiatrist said.  Brought on by an infantile inability to come to terms with the more pertinent, concrete aspects of life.
DIBBER: That sounds more like an insult than a diagnosis, Mister Glitz.
GLITZ: You're right there, my lad.  Mind you, I had just attempted to kill him.  Oh, I do hate prison psychiatrists, don't you?  I mean, they do nothing for you.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Trial of a Time Lord - The Mysterious Planet)

Glitz and Dibber are less like villains (even though they want to kill the Doctor and Peri, though only to eliminate competition) and more like an amoral third party, come to cause extra problems.  But they're already significantly more entertaining than anything in The Two Doctors was.

But then this first part of The Trial of a Time Lord (hereafter The Mysterious Planet, as that's what everyone calls these first four episodes) is already a lot more interesting and entertaining than Holmes's last script for the show.  The story is moving at a nice clip, and while it might not be the most original story, it at least has its charms (such as Katryca, the leader of the Tribe of the Free, already knowing what a spaceship is), and the interruptions of the actual trial aren't too bad.  Interesting how both cliffhangers end with a close-up on Colin Baker's face, though.







¹⁴³ It's occasionally stated that "Valeyard" is an old word for "prosecutor" or some such, but I've never been able to verify this -- the only thing that ever seems to come up when you do a search for "Valeyard" is Doctor Who.

November 27: Revelation of the Daleks Part Two

Jobel with Peri and the Doctor. (Revelation of the Daleks Part Two)
©BBC

So the point of the fake statue (complete with fake blood inside) was apparently entirely for the entertainment of Davros -- note the way he was laughing hysterically in part one as the Doctor was about to discover the statue.  Oh sure, there's some guff about using it as a lure, but given that Stengos's interment at Tranquil Repose was enough of a lure, it's hard to see why Davros bothered.  And why did he want the Doctor, the person who keeps ruining his plans, to come to Necros in the first place?

Of course, even though the Doctor and Peri are now involved in the events going on at Tranquil Repose, they still have little influence over them.  Orcini is already making his way through the complex at the behest of Eleanor Bron's character, while Takis and Lilt have already called for the other Daleks (the grey ones) to come get Davros, who has already manipulated Tasambeker into killing Jobel.  About the only thing that the Doctor and Peri do is get the DJ involved (and incidentally, here's another clear instance of Nicola Bryant getting the American accent slightly wrong -- Americans stress the "D", not the "J") -- although it looks like Davros was going to kill him anyway, so at least the DJ got to take out a couple Daleks before he went.

Now, it is a Saward script, so a lot of people do ultimately die on-screen, but at least this time most of them feel like they die for decent reasons rather than just because of cannon fodder.  Kara (Eleanor Bron's character) is killed by Orcini for betraying him, while Jobel is murdered by Tasambeker partly because Davros has been goading her on and partly because Jobel so thoroughly rejects her.  "Do you honestly think I could possibly be interested in you?" he tells her.  "I have the pick of the women!  I would rather run away with my mother than own a fawning little creep like you."  It's one of the most dramatic scenes in the piece, entirely there to give a sense of how Davros has been ruining lives while installed as the Great Healer.  (And I love the way Jobel's toupee falls off as he dies.)  Really, the only person whose death feels somewhat gratuitous is the DJ's, and that's only because of the way he steps out from behind his rock and roll gun to check his handiwork, even though there's a Dalek pushing its way in.

The Daleks arrive to take Davros back to Skaro for trial.
(Revelation of the Daleks Part Two) ©BBC

It's definitely a better script that Saward's last couple, and it's amply aided by Graeme Harper's direction -- which isn't quite as strikingly wonderful as The Caves of Androzani, but is nevertheless quite good.  Not everyone dies at the end (notably, Takis and Lilt survive, along with a number of extras), and there are a number of black comedic moments (the toupee falling off, the Doctor offering a handshake to Davros's shot-off hand) that work rather better than anything in The Two Doctors.  Not only that, but satisfyingly, Orcini gets to die a noble death -- something that's been denied most of the characters in Saward's scripts.  In many ways Revelation of the Daleks looks like Saward aping Robert Holmes, but if this is the result then that's not a bad thing.

And so that's the end of season 22.  It's been a bit of a rough ride this time around -- the accusations of increasing violence certainly didn't help (although I do think they're somewhat exaggerated -- again, this is likely a reaction to increased concern over "video nasties"), and those tuning in to The Two Doctors Part Three (easily one of the most casually violent episodes this season) probably went away with the wrong impression.¹⁴²  Making the sixth Doctor a deliberately unlikeable person was a risky move, and I'm not convinced it paid off -- the most successful stories in terms of the Doctor have been the ones that have shown his moral, more compassionate side, with bits of alienness thrown in.  The bright spot in this is that the production team seems to have realized this, and they've settled down on that alien nature while still maintaining the core of the character.  They haven't been the best set of stories (and the hit-to-miss ratio is worryingly lower than it's been in a very long time), but you do get the sense by the end of season 22 that the people making Doctor Who have worked out what they're going for, and if the ratings and appreciation figures are any indication, the audience is willing to go along for the ride.

Of course, Revelation of the Daleks ends on a freeze-frame ("All right, I'll take you to—") -- the original ending word "Blackpool", which was meant to be a lead-in for season 23's opener The Nightmare Fair by former Who producer Graham Williams, has been excised, as it's become clear that whatever plans John Nathan-Turner and Eric Saward had for season 23, they'll have to be scuppered in response to a series of new directives from above.  The knock-on effects of this will be felt all through next season...







¹⁴² If they did go away, that is -- the ratings have been steadily improving from their low point of 6.0 million for The Two Doctors Part Two back up to a very respectable 7.7 million for Revelation of the Daleks Part Two.

November 26: Revelation of the Daleks Part One

As season 22 began with a typographical anomaly, so it ends with one as well: the name of the story isn't in all caps, the way Attack of the Cybermen was, but ERIC SAWARD and PART ONE are.

In some ways this is a curious episode; while the Doctor and Peri are introduced immediately, having arrived on the planet Necros to pay their respects to one of the Doctor's now-deceased friends, they spend the entirety of the episode wandering around the complex that the Doctor's friend Arthur Stengos has been lain to rest in, unable to find a way to get in -- and other than an encounter with a mutant that's been hiding in a nearby lake¹⁴¹, they're completely dissociated from the action going on inside Tranquil Repose.  Still, it's a nice blue cloak that the Doctor wears for most of this, at least, and Peri gets to spot a Dalek, even if she doesn't know what it is.  But that's about it for them until the cliffhanger (which we'll get to).

Fortunately those interior sequences are interesting.  Eric Saward's flexing his writing muscles a bit here, choosing to write a story that, while still steeped in death, isn't one of his standard war/mercenary stories (fans of those styles needn't panic, though, as this episode still features a mercenary and his squire -- although Orcini seems so far to be far more noble and moral than Saward's usual mercenaries).  Instead (with an acknowledged debt to Evelyn Waugh's book The Loved One), Saward is interested in exploring a mortuary, with the sorts of characters who would be involved in such a job.

But this is still Doctor Who, so obviously this isn't going to be a straightforward retelling of that book.  Instead we're treated to the sight of Davros, in some sort of special tank and apparently in charge of everything that goes on at Tranquil Repose.  Pleasingly, we also get a shot of a white Dalek at the same time -- no waiting till the cliffhangers for the Daleks' appearance in this story.  No explanation yet as to how Davros survived the Movellan virus at the end of Resurrection of the Daleks though.  But this place is filled with people who are working for the "Great Healer", and they all seem more preoccupied with their jobs than with anything else going on around them (note how Takis and Lilt are slightly concerned, rather than terrified, by the presence of a Dalek).  Jobel and Tasambeker are great examples of this -- Jobel's entire job is about appearances, and that's all he cares about.  Tasambeker is obsessed with Jobel, who's completely uninterested in her ("This one thinks with her knuckles," Jobel says to Takis about her, early in the episode).

There are also some nice directorial choices from Graeme Harper, with lots of use of crane shots and close-ups (although the shot where he attempts to show the camera descending through the levels of Tranquil Repose looks more like the vertical hold has gone out of sync -- the main issue being that people's feet are cut off, which therefore doesn't make it look like a floor).  The whole thing looks great, and the different styles of design from place to place do give the sense that this is a planet that's been lived on.  The only thing that seems truly jarring is the presence of the DJ -- this isn't a slight against Alexei Sayle, who does a great job with it (the aside about Beck's Syndrome being a particular highlight), but his presence in the story is currently at odds with everything else tonally.  But maybe that's the point.  It's a strange idea in the first place, having a DJ for people in suspended animation, so Harper may be exploiting this in his direction, where Sayle delivers almost all of his lines to camera.  And a special mention to the glass Dalek, which is both fascinating to look at and grotesque; they've done an excellent job with Alec Linstead inside as the half-Dalek Stengos -- I'm still not sure how they got his teeth to look like that.  The scene where he begs his daughter to kill him is very effective.

The cliffhanger is also effective, as the Doctor discovers a monument to himself, in his sixth incarnation, and worries that he's meant to die in this body -- a thought which seems to really unnerve him ("I never thought precognisance of my own death would be so disturbing," he remarks).  Although what he makes of the monument suddenly falling over on him, we'll have to wait till next time to learn.







¹⁴¹ A part originally offered to Lord Laurence Olivier, if you can believe such a thing -- Olivier was apparently amenable, but the scheduling didn't work out.

November 25: Timelash Part Two

Let's start with what works in this episode.  The explanation of the burning android that we saw in part one is rather nifty, even if that explanation is a bit labored in its efforts to ensure the audience understands what's happening.  The interior of the Timelash, with the crystals jutting out, is nicely done (tinsel notwithstanding).  The actual Borad, once he's fully revealed, is an impressive make-up job, and Robert Ashby does an excellent job with his performance -- no mean feat when the majority of his face is covered by a latex mask.  Herbert in general continues to charm, and while he may become irritating from time to time, he almost always recovers to be generally worth watching.  Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant are both up to their usual standards in this -- even if Timelash calls for a very generic Doctor, rather than something tailored to the sixth -- and Paul Darrow continues to be just about the best thing on screen, even if he's dead before the halfway point.

So those are the good bits; what about the rest?

The Doctor confronts Tekker and the Borad. (Timelash Part
Two) ©BBC

Far and away the biggest problem with Timelash Part Two (well, with all of Timelash, but it's even more of a problem here) is that it's really quite tediously dull.  There's hardly any action in it, and any momentum that the action scenes do happen to have is squandered by long drawn-out talking scenes.  Most of those involved in these talking scenes aren't worth watching, either -- most of the cast seems to be at a loss as to what they're really meant to be doing there.  And so there's lots of unnatural dialogue delivered unnaturally, punctuated with scenes that are supposed to look clever (the Doctor's fooling around with the Kontrol crystal device) but are immensely tedious instead.  And it doesn't help that the sets are boring too (by design, as it's a plot point, but it still doesn't help).

Then, to make matters worse, the natural climax of the episode (the death of the Borad) comes slightly past the halfway point, but as that still leaves almost twenty minutes to fill there's a lot of rushing around dealing with other problems that don't seem as consequential as the Borad was -- the Bandrils (Karfel's neighbors) are determined to attack the planet that they need to get their food from (um...) and are completely unwilling to call off the attack unless someone drags the body of the Borad in front of a camera to show them (um...), which leads to the Doctor doing some last-minute preparations in the TARDIS -- although this includes a scene of pure padding lasting over five minutes, mainly between the Doctor and Herbert, that somehow manages to be just about the most entertaining thing in the whole episode.  Then the Borad shows up again, somehow, because there's still time to kill.  Or maybe they just really wanted an excuse to smash that Pertwee painting, but then he's knocked into the Timelash to become the Loch Ness Monster.  Hilarious.  (And how did continuity adviser Ian Levine let this one through?)

There are moments where you can almost see how Timelash could have been worth doing, but more often than not those moments are overtaken by tedium and artificiality.  There seems to be a sense that no one here is sure what sort of show Timelash is supposed to be -- not Pennant Roberts, who appears to have decided to just shoot the thing and not worry about the result; not the majority of the cast, who frequently look like they're attending a camera rehearsal rather than the actual recording; and certainly not author Glen McCoy, who appears to be under the impression that a generic story with a few allusions here and there will work just fine.  The tag at the end, where we learn that Herbert is in fact H.G. Wells, is supposed to make us think this is all clever.  If they'd actually run with this idea and made things more overtly like Wells's stories, or if anyone had bothered to do some research into Wells himself, it might have actually been clever.  But they didn't, and so Timelash isn't.

November 24: Timelash Part One

"Most people depart with a scream," Maylin Tekker tells the Doctor at the end of part one, as the Doctor is faced with being thrown into the Timelash -- a special kind of time corridor.  It's just a line I can't get out of my head for some reason; I'm not sure why.

The introductory scene in the TARDIS starts well -- there is a sense of bantering going on between Peri and the Doctor.  Unfortunately, it goes on too long, and the bantering starts to look more like a genuine argument -- at least until the action gets going.  And the action on Karfel isn't too bad -- some nice setup, and the stuff with the Borad leaves us intrigued by what's going on.

The problems set in, though, when we get to the main Karfelon council, and Karfel becomes a place where a handful of actors awkwardly insert exposition into all their conversations.  "We are under imminent threat of invasion from our former allies, the Bandrils"; "I hope you're taking great care of my only daughter."  "Of course.  As my future wife, I could hardly do anything else"; "If we don't get the amulet back, he will destroy every Karfelon in the Citadel."  "All five hundred of us?"; and many more examples like this.  It's not the most graceful writing, and for the most part the actors involved don't do much to convince us that this is how they might normally talk to each other -- they're just words on a page to get through.  And it's also early on in one of these scenes that we get the moment where Maylin Renis pulls a control off the board he's playing with and has to gracelessly put it back -- a feat he manages just subtly enough to not have Pennant Roberts call for a retake.

Things get marginally better when the Doctor and Peri arrive (and while the idea of control console harnesses to stop them flying around the console room when the TARDIS experiences turbulence is a rather nice idea, the actual straps look long enough that there's still a good deal of potential for injury as they're buffeted about), having traveled up the Kontron corridor (aka the time corridor).  Somewhat unexpectedly, the Karfelons treat the Doctor as something of an old friend, since the third Doctor visited Karfel before and helped them out with some things.  (But don't bother looking back at your Pertwee DVDs to work out when this was -- Timelash is a sequel to an unseen adventure.  An admittedly interesting idea, although it does mean that the audience spends a lot of time wondering what happened the first time around.)  "Only the two of you?" the new Maylin, Tekker, asks the Doctor as he arrives, which makes you wonder who exactly was traveling with the third Doctor during his last visit.  (The Virgin Missing Adventure Speed of Flight suggests it was Jo and Mike Yates -- although no one seems to want to actually chronicle the third Doctor's visit to Karfel...)  And thank goodness for Paul Darrow as Tekker (who not long ago in contemporary terms completed his time as Avon on Blake's 7) -- he may be acting somewhat over the top, but he's a hell of a lot more watchable than anyone else inhabiting this planet.  Everyone else is just delivering unnatural dialogue in the most unexciting way imaginable, which does make watching this episode a bit of a chore at times.

It's not all bad, though; I actually rather like the androids (well, android, as they're all played by Dean Hollingsworth).  It's a striking design and while the singsong voice is a bit irritating, it shows that at least someone is trying with this story.  The android suddenly on fire in the caves is also a good moment, even if it's not explained.  And there are some moments on 1885 Earth that are rather charming: Herbert may be somewhat unenlightened but he is rather likeable, even if he's intended to be comic relief.  Plus Nicola Bryant gets to remark that "all these corridors look the same to me" on her guided tour of Karfel.

But despite nice moments here and there, Timelash has so far been a rather unengaging story, filled with unrealistic characters and dialogue.  Maybe things will pick up in part two.

November 23: The Two Doctors Part Three

51 years ago today An Unearthly Child premiered.  Happy birthday, Doctor Who!  And at least the way I'm watching things, The Two Doctors gets to be part of an anniversary, even if it wasn't anything special at the time.

But in contemporary terms, a lot has happened between parts two and three of this story.  The Tuesday following the broadcast of part two (so 26 February 1985), it was announced that the BBC was temporarily suspending production of Doctor Who for monetary reasons -- they had a lot of expensive shows in the pipeline, and they needed to make up the money somewhere (About Time submits that Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective was the primary destination for the BBC's money, while The Handbook: The Sixth Doctor speculates that needing to produce 104 episodes (aka two episodes a week) of the BBC's new soap opera EastEnders was the culprit).  However, this was portrayed in the papers as the first step toward dropping Doctor Who completely, a situation which the BBC (initially) denied, citing the monetary reasons -- Doctor Who had essentially been delayed from a spring 1986 premiere to an autumn '86 one.

As time went on, though, there began to be rumblings that this wasn't a purely financial decision -- by 6 March, the first hint that this was also a creative decision on the part of the BBC's upper management surfaced (and as an aside, anyone interested in this period of the show's history would do well to check out Chapter 7 -- "Cancellation Crisis" -- of The Handbook: The Sixth Doctor by Howe-Stammers-Walker).  Certainly by the end of March BBC1 Controller Michael Grade started making noises that the decision was more about the content of the show than because of money.  (About Time suggests that this may have in part been an act of revenge by Grade, whose reputation as TV's miracle worker was allegedly tarnished when his revamping of ITV's Saturday night schedule almost completely failed to make a dent in Doctor Who's ratings in 1978 -- there's no real evidence for this, but it might help explain why Grade was so antagonistic toward the show.)  This also led to discussion about how Doctor Who was becoming too violent -- a discussion almost certainly informed by Mary Whitehouse's attacks on what were termed "video nasties" (excessively violent footage being sold on this newfangled video tape format) that were roughly concurrent with season 22.

But the content-based reasons for the 18-Month Suspension are still in the future (which really began shortly after transmission of season 22 concluded); at this point in time, all the British public know is that the show is taking a longer-than-usual break, and many (almost a million, in fact, if the ratings jump between parts two and three can be attributed to this) are curious as to what they've missed in the interim.  And so Part Three of The Two Doctors is what they saw.

The second and sixth Doctors look as Dastari taunts them with
the keys to their manacles. (The Two Doctors Part Three) ©BBC

It's certainly the most incident-packed episode of the three.  Now that the villains know about another Time Lord's presence that could potentially mess up their plans, they start making their own plans to counter this.  Plus there are a number of double-crosses between Chessene/Dastari and the Sontarans that add to the entertainment value. But there are a couple oddities as well; it's not really clear why Chessene wants to turn the second Doctor into an Androgum -- will that mean he'll be willing to just give the biological secret of time travel to Chessene?  Or it will make it easier to isolate the symbiotic nuclei?  Because as is, it just looks like an excuse for the second Doctor and Shockeye to play hookey and have fun in Seville rather than for any real reason.

This story is occasionally referred to as a black comedy, and it's probably the second Doctor/Shockeye scenes that are the most obviously intended to be comedic.  It's certainly a bleak form of humor though -- the scenes where the Androgumized Doctor is explaining human customs and cuisine are probably the most successful, but Oscar's death, which seems to also be played for laughs, is wide of the mark.  This is partly because James Saxon does such a good job that Oscar is probably the most likeable character in the entire production, but also because the actual murder of Oscar is quite shocking, particularly as it comes right after a moment of comedy regarding the bill -- and then they immediately try to follow it up with a laugh (to put it generously -- it could also just be a poorly acted and directed moment).  The whole sequence is misjudged as a result.

And, because this is a script edited by Eric Saward, basically everyone ends up dead by the end.  The Sontarans are betrayed by Chessene -- which leads to a lot of green gunge as some sort of acid kills them.  (The severed Sontaran leg that Shockeye finds is probably the most successful blackly comic moment in the whole piece.)  Dastari is killed by Chessene, who dies when their time travel capsule fails.  The most controversial moment is probably Shockeye's death at the hands of the sixth Doctor; the Doctor is admittedly in a fight for his life, basically, as Shockeye intends to butcher him with a knife, but it does look a tad planned.  But like Vengeance on Varos, the real issue is the Doctor's subsequent "bad taste" remarks: "Your just desserts" is awkward enough, but the later remark of how Shockeye has been "mothballed" is in particularly poor taste, and it does leave a bad taste in the mouth.

But the problems with The Two Doctors began long before Shockeye was killed.  The underlying central concern with the story is how intolerant it is -- the problems start because Chessene has been elevated above her station, and this is a bad thing because it's just in the nature of Androgums, as a species, to be savage and cruel.  There's never a suggestion that not all Androgums are like that, and in fact the script goes out of its way, near the end of part three, to show that even though Chessene has been augmented, she'll still revert to those base instincts that Dastari attempted to suppress/overwhelm.  The takeaway message is, "you just can't change those people", which is just about the worst message the show has ever produced.

Now combine that with an overlong story that's been stretched to almost breaking, rather than padded with extra incidents, and one that's squandered its actors.  It's admittedly fun to see Frazer Hines effortlessly slip back into the role of Jamie and interact with Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant, but what's the point of putting Patrick Troughton in a story where he's unconscious or restrained for two-thirds of it?  And Nicola Bryant doesn't even get to include her usual joke.  The most successful part might be the vegetarian message, and even that feels squandered in a rather distasteful way.  The Two Doctors somehow manages to be both unpleasant and rather dull -- no mean feat.