An Hour of Who a Day

May 13: Doctor Who and the Silurians Episode 7 / The Ambassadors of Death Episode 1

Episode 7 is a bit less morally complex than the other episodes. The cure has been found, the Doctor has been taken into the Silurians' base (merely incapacitated, not killed by the Silurians), and a scheme is hatched by the Silurians to destroy the part of the atmosphere that keeps things cool (Liz Shaw says they want to destroy the Van Allen belt, but we'll assume she misspoke and meant the ozone layer). The Silurians hope to kill off humanity and make the planet more habitable for them at the same time. This also leads to the wonderful juxtaposition of seeing the Silurians inside the Wenley Moor research facility, menacing the scientists and setting up their molecular disperser. But thanks to some quick thinking from the Doctor, the reactor goes into overload (fun fact: dropping all the fuel rods into the reactor at once will only lead to a slow-building overload rather than an instant catastrophic explosion -- well, maybe things are designed differently in the Doctor Who universe) and the Silurians decide to go back into hibernation before the whole place becomes radioactive. Fortunately, you can rewire a console to prevent a nuclear meltdown (fun fact #2), so the place is saved.

The Doctor watches as the Brigadier blows up the Silurians' base.
(Doctor Who and the Silurians Episode 7) ©BBC

But then the Doctor wants to go back and talk to the Silurians again: "One at a time, so that we can reason with them. There's a wealth of scientific knowledge down here, Brigadier, and I can't wait to get started on it." This alarms the Brigadier (and, presumably, the government as well), so as the Doctor leaves to gather equipment and scientists, the Brigadier wires the place with explosives and blows it up -- much to the appallment of the Doctor. "But that's murder. They were intelligent alien beings. A whole race of them. And he's just wiped them out."

Doctor Who and the Silurians is a pleasingly nuanced and complex story. Malcolm Hulke's aforementioned complaint about only having mad scientists and alien invasion stories available to the series has been sidestepped by Hulke himself with a lovely "what if?" serial about prior inhabitants of the planet. There are also some nice morally ambiguous puzzles: do the Silurians have any right to the planet still? Is there a way to coexist peacefully? Could humanity -- who aren't averse to killing each other over squabbles, never mind a completely different intelligent species -- actually accept the presence of Silurians? And then laid over this is an engaging story about reptile men and their effect on people; in other words, something for everyone to enjoy, not just those willing to engage with the philosophical questions. In this regard, Doctor Who and the Silurians is one of the most adult (in the positive sense of the word, as opposed to the Torchwood meaning) stories the series has yet produced. More like this, please.

But now we move on to another seven-part story with The Ambassadors of Death. This is the earliest episode of Doctor Who to exist on its original 2" Quad tape, rather than on a 16mm film telerecording -- so you can get some idea of what the picture quality of these episodes originally was.

This one opens a bit differently: we get the Doctor Who title sequence and then we start the episode, as the basic set-up is laid out (spaceship Recovery 7 is trying to link up with Mars Probe 7, because "something took off from Mars"), and, with the first use of the "sting", normally associated with the end credits, we get the title: "The Ambassadors", followed a beat later by "OF DEATH", appearing with a sproing.

Other than that what we have is the makings of a good thriller. There's trouble afoot with the two spacecrafts' link-up, and a strange message is transmitted to Earth -- only to have a reply sent back from somewhere in London. As the team at Space Control try to regain contact with Recovery 7, UNIT heads to an abandoned warehouse to find out who sent that signal. We get a really exciting fight scene as UNIT has a pitched gun battle with whoever is sending that reply. And great fun can be had spotting all the doubling-up of stuntmen: Derek Ware in particular shows up repeatedly on both sides, killed multiple times.

While that's going on, the Doctor is trying to translate the alien message. When he goes to use the computers, Space Control's computer expert Dr. Bruno Taltalian pulls a gun on the Doctor and Liz. And then finally, in its proper place, we get that glissando-like "sting" that will signify the start of the end credits for the rest of the show's run. Hard to believe we got through six seasons without that.

May 12: Doctor Who and the Silurians Episodes 5 & 6

So here we start to learn more about the Silurians, and how they were in fact the previous inhabitants of Earth.⁵⁵ It seems they all went into hibernation when the Moon came along and they feared it was going to smash into the planet; they weren't ready for the possibility that the Moon would stick around. So they believe they have a rightful claim to Earth and regard humanity as pests that have moved in while the real owners were away. And interestingly, the Doctor doesn't dispute this claim but instead tries to argue for peaceful coexistence -- a plan which the Silurian leader seems willing to at least consider, over the objections of the young Silurian (well, that's what they call him in the credits). And so we get a power struggle between the two Silurians, which makes for a much more interesting story than a unified block of creatures, and which also mirrors the struggle among the humans, with Liz Shaw arguing on behalf of the Doctor for a chance at peace, while Miss Dawson (presumably because of Dr. Quinn's death) is the strongest advocate for wiping them all out.

This debate is sidetracked a bit when the young Silurian decides to wipe out humanity by infecting Major Baker with a very virulent disease and releasing him back into the caves. The Silurian leader learns of this and gives the Doctor a sample of the disease to try and find a cure (an event which leads to the young Silurian taking over by killing the old Silurian leader with his third eye) -- at which point the drama shifts to a race against time to both find a cure for this disease and to stop it from spreading. Of course, that's a problem when infected people keep leaving the research facility.

The Doctor and the Brigadier find the body of Major Baker.
(Doctor Who and the Silurians Episode 6) ©BBC

Episode 6 is all about the disease, both finding a cure and watching as the disease spreads -- thanks primarily to Masters, who heads back to London and wanders around, infecting tons of people along the way. We even get some montages, both of the Doctor analyzing blood samples and drugs while the Brigadier monitors the situation, and of people succumbing to the disease all around London. This is the drama that drives this episode to the exclusion of anything else -- even Dr. Lawrence's death scene; as he finally snaps from the pressure of having his world collapse around him (the research facility's projects having ground to a halt) and attempts to throttle the Brigadier, he suddenly convulses and dies: another victim of the disease. Although, given that Dr. Lawrence hardly starts out as any sort of sympathetic character, it's a bit difficult to muster up any sympathy for him as he dies. Still, by the end the Doctor has found the cure -- only the Silurians break into the base and start to kill him before he can finish writing out the formula for that antidote...

(And I've gotten this far without mentioning the score by Carey Blyton, the most distinctive part of which is the crumhorn (the buzzing instrument) that signifies the Silurians. There are also a number of other older instruments, such as an ophicleide and a serpent (both similar to a tuba), which are designed to evoke an "older" sound in keeping with the story's themes. The score is quite distinctive and generally works quite well (although similar-sounding scores will be less successful when applied to Daleks and Cybermen).)

⁵⁵ Though not, it should be pointed out, during the Silurian era, which is far too early for complex forms of life like the Silurians to be around. To his credit, writer Malcolm Hulke figured this out and attempted to rectify the error in this story's sequel, The Sea Devils, which has the Doctor saying the Silurians should really be known as the Eocenes. Of course, that doesn't really work either, as that seems to be rather too late for large reptile people to be walking the planet. The books sidestepped the issue and settled for Earth Reptiles, while the BBC Wales series eventually went with Homo reptilia, when it can be bothered to remember.

May 11: Doctor Who and the Silurians Episodes 3 & 4

We continue on with episodes 3 and 4 of Doctor Who and the Silurians, and episode 3 gives us a really lovely comprehensive search across the moorland for the creature who found Liz in the barn before escaping. It's very well done, with helicopters sweeping across the countryside as a number of troops search on foot. This also gives us our best look yet at Captain Hawkins, being played by future Blake's 7 star Paul Darrow.

The other purpose this episode serves is to show us just how lousy Dr. Quinn is at keeping secrets. He does manage to rescue the wounded creature, but then he keeps it locked up in his cottage in order to use as a bargaining chip. And he's hardly subtle in his efforts, with the end result being that he throws a huge amount of suspicion on himself and ends up being killed by a Silurian. Still, as a side effect we get a lovely scene between the Doctor and Miss Dawson, as she catches the Doctor searching Quinn's office for evidence of his actions and he tries to convince her that he only wants to help Quinn. The way she seems about to tell the Doctor what she knows until the Brigadier enters the room is really quite nice.

But still, Quinn is killed and the Doctor finds the body when he goes to the cottage to check up on the man -- and then he finds himself face to face with a Silurian.

The Doctor encounters a Silurian. (Doctor Who and the
Silurians Episode 4) ©BBC

It's really a quite lovely cliffhanger, even if the effect is spoiled at the beginning of episode 4, as the Doctor pertly asks, "Hello, are you a Silurian?" But we should take a moment to appreciate the design of the Silurians, which are pleasingly reptilian yet not too much like humans (beyond the limitations of having to put a man in a suit). The face in particular is quite wonderful, with the strange eyes (the top third one in particular) and the recessed beak-like mouth giving it a nice unusual look.

And now that we've actually seen a Silurian, we can move on to seeing them in their base, rather than just having them hiding in the shadows. Thanks to Dr. Quinn's map, the Doctor and Liz get a chance to explore the caves -- though not before Major Baker wanders down there, looking for his saboteurs (and finding them, albeit by being captured by them). The Silurians' base looks a bit odd, with a lot of textured surfaces, but it also looks very spartan. But hey, we get our first use of colour-separation overlay (CSO)⁵⁴ in Doctor Who, as the Doctor and Liz see the dinosaur that was in earlier episodes.

And so the Doctor returns to Wenley Moor, where he finds the permanent undersecretary Masters (as played by British national treasure Geoffrey Palmer, in one of his earlier roles) waiting. It seems everyone but the Doctor wants to send troops into the caves to flush out the saboteurs/monsters (delete according to who's talking), and they refuse to listen to the Doctor's belief that these are sentient creatures that can be reasoned with. But when they won't listen, the Doctor decides to try and reason with the Silurians (which leads to the rather wonderful moment where the Doctor is standing in their control room while the Silurians all have their backs to him; "Ahem," the Doctor says, startling the lot of them). Except they seem just as unwilling to listen, and one of them decides to kill the Doctor with its third eye...

⁵⁴ Better known as chroma key or blue-/green-screen. CSO was the BBC term for this technique.

May 10: Doctor Who and the Silurians Episodes 1 & 2

This is Barry Letts's first story as the producer of Doctor Who. It's also the first (and only) story to have the words "Doctor Who and" in the episode title -- is this because he didn't realize the stories weren't normally called that? (Some stories would have that prefix during the scripting stage, but it would be dropped by the time production happened, so you can see why Letts might not have realized it wasn't typical.)

The other thing to note is that, although all of Pertwee exists on video, it's not all in the original format -- those tapes having been wiped and reused just like the black-and-white ones. So we get a hodgepodge of quality during the Pertwee years -- this particular story being a mix of a low-quality NTSC copy and a high-quality black-and-white film copy. It's a very good restoration, but you can still tell sometimes.

We're also introduced to that staple of the next few years: the isolated scientific research establishment. UNIT has been called in to investigate inexplicable power losses at Wenley Moor, which is running experiments on the nature of the atom. We're introduced to the head of the project, Dr. Lawrence, who seems pretty stressed out about the situation. We also meet the second-in-command, Dr. Quinn, who seems much happier -- but then it's soon clear, from his conversations with the perpetually unhappy-looking Miss Dawson, that he knows something about what's been happening at Wenley Moor. Major Baker, the chief of security, thinks it's internal sabotage, but UNIT doesn't seem so sure. The Doctor and Liz find enough to be concerned about things, but not enough to know what the nature of the problem is. But when they learn about a potholer named Spencer (who was attacked by a dinosaur in the opening shots of the episode), the Doctor decides to investigate the caves for himself, and is also attacked by a dinosaur for his pains.

Of course, as we see in episode 2, the dinosaur is called off before it can do any serious damage, and the Doctor returns to Wenley Moor to inform the Brigadier, who decides to take a party into the caves to investigate. Major Baker fires at a shadowy figure before being attacked by the dinosaur. Whatever Baker shot at, it's wounded. We get some nice first-person shots, with a reptilian claw visible and, intriguingly, a red filter over the top center third -- one can only guess at what the people with black-and-white televisions thought of that.

And we learn that Dr. Quinn is in fact working with these strange figures, who have a base in the caves and instruct Quinn to recover their wounded comrade. That comrade has, meanwhile, taken refuge in a barn, only to be discovered by the farmer. It kills the farmer and terrifies the wife, who eventually manages to tell the Doctor and the Brigadier that it's still in the barn -- the barn which Liz Shaw is currently investigating on her own...

So far it's been a slow burn, but these two episodes are paced very well, meaning that they remain highly watchable. There are quite a few questions being raised (What's causing the power losses? Who are the people in the caves? Why do they have a dinosaur? Why do they strike terror into humans? What's Quinn's relationship with them?), which are compelling enough to maintain interest for the next episodes. So far so good then.

May 9: Spearhead from Space Episodes 3 & 4

Episode 3 is largely a delaying action, as apparently the meteor that Sam Seeley has is the swarm leader for the alien Autons, and is thus vital to their plans of conquest and without it their plans can't advance. Nevertheless it's still entertaining. Plus this allows us to see our first real look at an Auton in action, as one shoots at Ransome, the fired plastics factory employee, as he flees said factory, while another one ransacks the Seeleys' cottage looking for that swarm leader, taking a shotgun blast to the chest with no ill effect.

And then we also have Ransome's still-panicked discussion with UNIT about what's going on at his old workplace, and some guff about the Doctor trying to leave in the middle of the crisis⁵³, just to prove that the TARDIS isn't going anywhere for some time. So all in all, not a lot of actual story advancement here: UNIT learns about the factory, sees an Auton in action, and finds the swarm leader and that's about it. But it's all so well written, directed, and acted that the time never drags.

Episode 4 gives us the recovery of the swarm leader by the Autons, which means their plan can now proceed and they can unleash the Autons on the public. The scenes of the mannequins in the storefront windows coming to life and smashing through the glass to kill the populace at large are justly famous (even if we never see any glass actually break), endowing a familiar object with deadly menace. There's something chilling about those blank plastic faces walking toward you, with their fingers hinging down to produce a strange gun. It's eerie in concept and, brought to life in such a memorable way by the production team, highly effective.

The Autons begin their attack. (Spearhead from Space
Episode 4) ©BBC

This is the high point of the episode, coming roughly at the midpoint; before that we get the Doctor and Liz investigating Madame Tussauds for strange goings-on and Ransome being obliterated by an Auton. Afterwards it's a race against time to stop the Autons and their controllers, the Nestenes, from taking over the planet. This does mean we get a rather nifty battle between UNIT forces and the Autons (at the same location as the battle between UNIT forces and the Cybermen in The Invasion, I notice), but it also means that, as the Doctor and Liz sneak off to fight the problem at its source, we get an awfully long stretch of the Doctor struggling with the Nestene manifestation (which is some sort of squid) while Liz struggles to work out what's wrong with the Doctor's Nestene-killing device. And maybe it's because I've seen it before, but it takes an awfully long time for Liz to figure out that the reason the device isn't working is that the magic wand attachment isn't plugged into it. All while Pertwee pulls faces and struggles with tentacles wrapped around his neck and slapping him in the face. (And consider that this version was actually a remount for a take from an earlier day that was deemed even worse, and ponder what that must have looked like...) But in the end Liz plugs the cable in and the Doctor saves the day, causing the Nestene to explode in the process.

Spearhead from Space is, it must be said, a triumph from start to finish. The decision to go to an all-film production (thanks to a scene-shifters strike at the BBC) is a real benefit, as it allows Derek Martinus to be much more mobile with his cameras than he would have been if he'd had to do studio work. This gives everything a much more dynamic feeling, and the sense of coherency by having everything look the same visually with no switching between film (25 frames per second) and video (50 half-frames (aka fields) per second, which are interlaced to provide a "smoother" motion -- this is putting it very crudely, mind) also adds to the effectiveness of the finished product. To be honest, this isn't a story about the Doctor, and by the end we still don't have a firm grasp on who this new Doctor is, other than that he's definitely the Doctor -- but in terms of setting up the show's new Earthbound format, Spearhead from Space works marvelously well. Robert Holmes's script knows exactly what it wants to do, and it has no problems doing it.

And as this is the last story to be produced by Derrick Sherwin (who only really became the producer for the last couple stories, but who's really just carrying on the style that Peter Bryant had, since Sherwin was Bryant's script editor), we can take a moment to evaluate his and Bryant's impact on the show. A lot of their shows were made in moments of crisis, but there's definitely an effort to move away from simple monster stories and back to moments of human drama, of personalities reacting to one another rather than a generic alien race trying to take over everything (which isn't to say that those stories go away, but there's still noticeably less of them than during Innes Lloyd's tenure). But their ultimate impact was probably in setting the stage for the next couple years of stories, limiting the Doctor to one time and place in an effort to create a more familiar setting for viewers (even if, as Malcolm Hulke famously complained, this meant that the only stories now available were mad scientists and alien invasions -- fortunately this turned out to be a somewhat cynical viewpoint). But whatever their overall merits, you can't deny that they go out on a high note.

⁵³ Well, we call it a crisis, but to be fair all he's really got to go on at the moment he decides to try and take off is a piece of plastic that defies analysis. He doesn't even know about the plastic factory shenanigans yet. So from his point of view it's hardly the abandonment of his friends in a time of need that it's sometimes made out to be.

May 8: Spearhead from Space Episodes 1 & 2

A new title sequence! In color! With a new Doctor! And with the name of the story zooming right toward you!

Standard and special edition DVDs

It's not just the beginning that seems different. It's partly because the whole thing has been shot on 16mm film, rather than the mix of film and video that's been standard for the last few years, but Spearhead from Space feels like a fresh start and a new way of doing things. The all-film look gives it an advantage of coherency, and it's definitely helped along by Derek Martinus's excellent direction (in what would prove to be his final directorial role on Doctor Who), but there's also the matter of the script. Episode 1 opens with a strange swarm of meteors landing in the countryside (and which, we learn in episode 2, are hollow and appear to contain an alien lifeform, while people who seem human-but-not-quite are dedicated to finding the meteors -- so, not at all like Quatermass II then) and the efforts of UNIT (as seen in The Invasion) to find them and work out what's going on.

But the main point of this first episode is really the newly-changed Doctor (now played by comedy actor Jon Pertwee), even though he spends most of the episode unconscious. Yet by sidelining him, the episode snaps into focus around him, as the people of Ashbridge Cottage Hospital try to work out what's wrong with their new patient: he seems to have two hearts, his blood isn't human, and his pulse rate is 10 a minute -- in other words, he appears to be completely alien (even though Dr. Gemma Corwyn made no comment on any of this after her thorough examination of the Doctor in The Wheel in Space). Remarkably, Dr. Henderson, the attending physician, starts to take all of this in his stride rather than refusing to believe the mounting evidence, and just tries to do the best he can for the Doctor. There's also some stuff with the Brigadier and his new scientific adviser Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (in an astonishing jacket -- brown with white vinyl panels on the front that appear to represent plastic fur) visiting the Doctor and failing to recognize him for obvious reasons. Though he recognizes the Brigadier, in a short scene which it's honestly all too easy to imagine Patrick Troughton playing. Whether this is a deliberate attempt to introduce a bit of continuity between the two actors or just a coincidence, either way it's there.

But what's particularly clever about Spearhead from Space is how it deals with the question of "is this really still the Doctor?" Unlike The Power of the Daleks, which goes out of its way to have the audience question whether that strange little man is still the Doctor, here Robert Holmes gets the audience firmly on the side of the Doctor from the outset, as we see this new man in the Doctor's old baggy clothes fall out of the TARDIS in such a way as to suggest that this definitely is the same person (even though it looks like Derek Martinus is trying to avoid showing the new Doctor's face for as long as possible -- this effect is, however, slightly spoiled by the fact that Pertwee's face is in the new title sequence). And then he recognizes the Brigadier and greets him like an old friend, followed up by a discussion of his new looks. Here the question isn't "is he the Doctor?" but instead "how long will it take the Brigadier to decide this man is the Doctor, which he clearly is?" It's a nice touch that also allows us to get to the main storyline with a minimum of fuss, without having the Doctor's friends constantly mistrusting him.

And then for some completely inexplicable reason the sinister-looking Channing, who's been lurking in the background of the hospital scenes, decides to kidnap the Doctor with the help of some oddly plastic-looking henchmen...⁵²

If episode 1 was about the Doctor, episode 2 shifts the focus to this apparently alien menace that Channing is a part of. We see him at work in a plastics factory that has apparently fired a whole bunch of employees and is now working on a completely new and secretive operation. Clearly something sinister is going on, and those special meteors are needed. UNIT's found one, and a poacher named Sam Seeley has another. And so there's a mannequin wandering the woods, homing in on the signals these flashing spheres are emitting so that it can collect them.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has recovered enough to escape from the hospital, enjoying a nice shower (Pertwee's nude scene!), stealing some clothes hanging about the place, and driving away in a vintage car to UNIT's HQ, where the TARDIS has been moved to. He seems to be recovering nicely, although, as he tells the Brigadier, "It's no earthly good asking me a lot of questions. I've lost my memory, you see." This scene marks the point where the lines seem more designed for the new Doctor than the previous one -- it's hard to imagine Patrick Troughton doing the Delphon bit, but Pertwee makes it seem like a natural part of his personality. He also has a charming bit with Liz Shaw ("Look, do I really have to call you Miss Shaw?") that he plays with a happy laugh in a manner that neither Troughton nor Hartnell would have done, and this also helps him distinguish himself from his predecessors.

So it looks fabulous, it has an exciting script from Robert Holmes, and the actors are giving it their all. The color era of Doctor Who has begun with considerable style.

⁵² Actually, why does Channing try to kidnap the Doctor? Even if we assume that Channing's worked out from all the reporters and (possibly, though we don't see it) by listening to the hospital staff that the Doctor isn't human, that doesn't alone seem to be a very good reason to kidnap him. It's not like he's hiding one of the special meteors or anything, and there doesn't seem to be an inherent need for them to have an alien for themselves. It looks more like they needed a cliffhanger and forgot to give a reason why it happened.

May 7: The War Games Episodes Nine & Ten

So the Doctor has turned against his friends, choosing to side with the aliens over the resistance, and the leaders of that resistance are led away to be processed. But things aren't quite as they seem; it turns out the Doctor was simply trying to prevent everyone from being killed by the neutron bomb that the Security Chief suggested using last episode. Still, the resistance leaders didn't seem too happy about things, and it was only Jamie that stopped them from tearing him apart with their bare hands. And then the Doctor has to process his former friends and turn them into slaves again. Well, so it seems. When the Doctor "processes" Arturo Villar, Villar proclaims triumphantly that the machine doesn't work on him and begins to attack the Doctor, which leads all of the other "processed" leaders to have to overpower the guards and restrain Villar. "Can you not pretend like the rest of us, you great loon?" Jamie says exasperatedly.

And this is the episode where the conflict between the War Chief and the Security Chief comes to a head. It turns out the Security Chief was recording all the conversations between the War Chief and the Doctor and now has evidence of the War Chief's treachery. The War Chief is stripped of his power and taken away, and only an encounter with the Doctor and his friends saves him. They're off to capture the War Room, and they succeed in doing so, with the War Chief in tow -- but not before the War Chief guns down the Security Chief. "It was a personal debt I had to settle," he says. The Doctor gets the War Chief to end all the fighting in the zones, but there's a problem: the machines used to bring all the soldiers here are breaking down, and they won't be able to return all the soldiers home. So the Doctor decides he has no alternative: he has to call his own people, the Time Lords, for help, even though that'll mean giving away his location to them. The War Chief tries to escape, but he's shot dead by the War Lord. But it's too late anyway as the sound of wind fills the room: "They're coming," the War Lord says.

This episode effectively ends the story we've been experiencing for the past nine episodes: episode nine ends with Lt. Carstairs fading away as he (and presumably all the other soldiers) are returned to their rightful time and place by the Time Lords. The aliens have been defeated, the war games have been ended, and the humans sent back home. There's only the Time Lords and the fate of the War Lord to deal with (as well as the Doctor trying to escape from them). And so if episode nine is about ending The War Games, episode ten is about ending the series as a whole. Well, not really, but that's sort of how it feels at times: after six years, we finally learn about the Doctor's backstory, about his people and about why he left his home planet all those years ago:

JAMIE: Why did you run away from them in the first place?
DOCTOR: What? Well, I was bored.
ZOE: What do you mean, you were bored?
DOCTOR: Well, the Time Lords are an immensely civilised race. We can control our own environment, we can live forever, barring accidents, and we have the secret of space time travel.
JAMIE: Well what's so wrong in all that?
DOCTOR: Well, we hardly ever use our great powers. We consent simply to observe and to gather knowledge.
ZOE: And that wasn't enough for you?
DOCTOR: No, of course not. With a whole galaxy to explore? Millions of planets, eons of time, countless civilisations to meet?
JAMIE: Well, why do they object to you doing all that?
DOCTOR: Well, it is a fact, Jamie, that I do tend to get involved with things.
JAMIE: Aye, you can say that again. Whenever there's any trouble, he's in it right up to his neck.
ZOE: But you've helped people, Doctor.
DOCTOR: Yes, yes, but that's no excuse in their eyes.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The War Games)

And now it's time for the Doctor to face up to the Time Lords. Of course, there are attempts to run away from the Time Lords (and note the reusing of footage from Fury from the Deep and The Web of Fear -- with the downside being that you can start to see the web forming on the TARDIS as it's hovering in deep space), but they're futile: now that they know where the Doctor is, he can't escape from them. It's interesting the way the Time Lords are presented: as godlike beings with seemingly limitless power (although not, it should be pointed out, with the ability to regenerate just yet -- note the way in which not just the War Chief but two hapless technicians are gunned down by the alien guns), who watch over things but don't intervene unless there's a great need to. And their punishment of the War Lord is quite severe: "A force field has been placed around you, and around your planet, so that your warlike people will remain prisoners forever. You have been found guilty of all charges, and you and your murderous associates will be dematerialised. It will be as though you had never existed." And once they've dealt with the War Lord, it's time to deal with the Doctor. It's really sad, watching him say goodbye to Jamie and Zoe, as all but their first memory of the Doctor is removed -- which isn't to say that their travels didn't happen, just that they don't remember it.

And then it's time for the Doctor to face judgment. He is to be exiled to 20th-century Earth in a new body. Troughton, it must be said, doesn't go out with dignity, as he gurns his way onto a screen before being sent spiraling toward his fate, yelling "No no no no no no no no no no no no no!" as he does so. And that's the end of Troughton's time as the Doctor; his exile to Earth has begun.⁵⁰

So The War Games is an epic tale that hangs together remarkably well. The length might have been a worry (particularly as it was more or less decided on after the two initial stories planned for the end of season 6 fell through⁵¹ -- Terrance Dicks has commented that they basically gave him and Malcolm Hulke a week to write the thing, which is an exaggeration but not by much), but Dicks and Hulke give us a story that rarely feels like it's just spinning its wheels. The slow pullout, from the World War I setting in episode one to additional time zones to the control center for the whole affair, is a real benefit -- and there's something wonderful about seeing soldiers from different time periods interacting with each other. It's never boring and it's frequently very clever indeed. Fan opinion has tended to suggest that The War Games is a whole lot of time-wasting before we get to the Time Lords. This is nonsense: it's a triumph from start to finish, and one of the best stories of the season.

Season 6 itself has been one of the more uneven seasons the show has had. Of course, given the behind-the-scenes problems that have plagued this season, that's perhaps not surprising. But what is noticeable is how producer Peter Bryant has chosen to try some new things. Only three of the stories -- The Invasion, The Krotons, and The Seeds of Death -- can really be considered "monster" stories in the way almost all of season 5 was. There's instead a return to more human-based drama, such as we had in, say, season 3. Of course, the lack of forays back into Earth's past means that we get a fair amount of "space" drama instead, but this isn't a huge issue. The main problem with season 6 is that, because of the production problems, stories are being stretched out more and more (and now recall the fact that The Dominators was shortened from six episodes to five, and therefore ponder just how awful those two episodes must have been). They get away with it, just, but the knock-on effect is that we get fewer chances to explore new times and environments. Still, the interplay among Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines, and Wendy Padbury is still wonderfully strong, and they make the proceedings thoroughly enjoyable, so that even in something like The Dominators they're still worth watching. It will be sad to see them go.

So let's take a moment to reflect on Patrick Troughton's time as the Doctor. In many respects he had the hardest time of any actor coming to play the Doctor, as he had to replace the lead actor in a very popular television show. The fact that he not only did so with ease but also made the part his own is a testament to his talent: if audiences hadn't bought the idea that this scruffy little man was the same character as William Hartnell had been playing for three years, then the show would have ended then and there. Patrick Troughton was a distinguished character actor both before and after his time on Doctor Who, and these three seasons are really just a continuation of that legacy. He took on someone else's part and he did it in such a way as to make the audience willing to believe that not only was changing the lead actor an acceptable part of Doctor Who, but that the new man would be just as compelling to watch in his own distinctive way. If Troughton had tried to play the part as William Hartnell had, the changeover probably wouldn't have worked. By making the role distinct, yet still recognizably the same character, Patrick Troughton ensured that the show would continue. And then, as if that weren't enough, he had to go and be so good in the role, fighting Daleks and Cybermen and Yeti and War Lords with such courage and charm and joy that you can't help but be both entertained and drawn into the stories. Patrick Troughton is the Doctor. He will be missed.

But we've come to the end of not just Patrick Troughton's time as the Doctor, but also of the black and white era. There was a feeling in the BBC that, with Troughton leaving, maybe it was time to end the series as well, and Derrick Sherwin (who was producer by this point -- it's a bit complicated, the changeover between him and Peter Bryant, and in many ways it can be considered as the same producership) has said that they only renewed it because they couldn't come up with anything better to replace it. But this isn't exactly true; they did come up with something to replace it, it just happens to be the case that it's also called Doctor Who and is ostensibly the same show as they had in the '60s. But the format will be different: restricted to one time and place, with a new lead actor, shorter seasons (one of the reasons Troughton left the show was because of the crippling demands of a show that made 44 episodes a year -- from now on they'll drop to around 25-26 episodes a season until 1986), and, most noticeably, in color. In some respects the Doctor Who of the '70s is a vastly different beast from the '60s version. The next five years will see an increasing reliance on the action-adventure aspect of the show, and even when we move on to Tom Baker and beyond, that sense of exploration and discovery that characterizes so many of the black-and-white episodes will largely be lost. Of course, what we get instead will be just as entertaining, but in a different way. Doctor Who is leaving the '60s, and it won't be the same again.

⁵⁰ It should be noted that there's no regeneration sequence between Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee. That said, I have a distinct memory of the beginning of Spearhead from Space, with Pertwee falling out of the TARDIS and into the weeds, being tacked onto the end of the version of The War Games shown on PBS. Perhaps Lionheart (who distributed the series in the US at that time) felt the changeover should be more obvious. Assuming, of course, that this actually happened; I haven't been able to confirm it yet.
⁵¹ These were a 6-parter called "The Impersonators" by Malcolm Hulke, and an untitled 4-parter by Derrick Sherwin which would conclude the second Doctor's tenure. Nothing is known about them beyond that they both apparently hit insurmountable problems. So, classic season 6 then.