June 21: Frontier in Space Episodes Five & Six

Earth Police Spaceship 2390 (aka the Doctor's ship) encounters
Earth Battlecruiser X29. (Frontier in Space Episode Five) ©BBC

Episode five begins with the Doctor, the Master, and Jo all being taken in front of the Draconian Emperor.  It seems the Doctor is an honorary Draconian noble, but other than that it's just more arguing -- that is, until the Master is rescued by ultrasonic-disguised Ogrons, one of whom is accidentally left behind.  This allows the Emperor and the prince to see that the Doctor has been speaking the truth.  Armed with this knowledge, the Emperor sends the Doctor and his son on an urgent mission to Earth, to warn them of this third party, and with the evidence of the Ogron to support their claims.  Alas, the Master manages to board their vessel and recapture the Ogron prisoner -- and take Jo Grant along too.  With the evidence gone, the Doctor and the Draconian prince head to Earth to try and tell their story to the President and General Williams.  Again.

In what might be one of the least motivated changes of heart ever on Doctor Who, General Williams learns that the first Earth-Draconian War started because of a misunderstanding; when Williams saw a Draconian battlecruiser approaching, one that wasn't responding to communication attempts, he opened fire, starting the war.  But apparently that's how Draconian nobles travel -- in battlecruisers; this one just wasn't armed.  And the lack of communication?  Neutron storm.  General Williams feels terrible about the whole thing (it was 20 years ago -- how is he only now just learning about this?) and agrees to take a ship to the Ogrons' planet to investigate.

And so Jo's been captured, right?  So the Master plans on using her as bait by hypnotizing her, but she recites nursery rhymes to foil his plans, making him unable to get a hold on her mind.  "You'll just have to give up all hope of hypnotising me, won't you?" she tells him.  "Once was quite enough, thank you," she adds, referring back to Terror of the Autons.  So Jo can hold out against the Master's hypnosis attempt.  But, the cliffhanger has us ask, can she hold out against his fear-generating machine?

The answer is yes, yes she can.  It appears to take an enormous amount of willpower, but she's able to overcome the Master's device.  "It doesn't work on me any more!" she cries.  Frustrated, the Master sends her to be locked up.  Meanwhile General Williams' ship encounters trouble from a Draconian ship -- mainly as an excuse to have Jon Pertwee do another spacewalk sequence.  And, sadly, the Kirby wires are as visible as ever.  But then it's off to the Ogrons' planet, where the Master lures them into a trap (apparently -- this part's a bit confusing, since the Master seems to be trying to lure the Doctor to his base, except isn't that what the Doctor would do anyway?).  The trap doesn't work though, because the Ogrons are scared off by their god, which is (and sorry about this, but there's really no other way to describe it) a large, orange, hairy scrotum.  (No wonder director Paul Bernard cut every shot of it bar that one from the finished show.)  But the Master has another trap laid, as it turns out he's been working for...the Daleks!  And in an appearance that the Radio Times didn't spoil!

The final shot⁷³ of Roger Delgado as the Master. (Frontier
in Space Episode Six) ©BBC

Yes, it turns out that the Daleks are behind the plot to set Earth and Draconia at each other's throats.  Once those two empires are gone, they'll swoop in and conquer the survivors.  The Master has the Doctor under lock and key, but fortunately the Doctor and company escape.  General Williams and the Draconian prince are sent to their respective homeworlds to warn them about the Dalek threat, and the Doctor manages to escape in the TARDIS -- although he appears to be grazed by the Master's gun before he escapes.  Yes, this part is rather famously garbled; the original intent was for the Doctor to use the Master's fear machine to make the Ogrons see their god, but as Bernard was deeply unhappy with those shots (because scrotum), they were all removed and what's left is the Ogrons fleeing in fear, taking the Master with them.

And what's this?  Another cliffhanger?  Yes, it seems that, even though this is the final installment of Frontier in Space, things have been left unresolved in favor of a full-blooded Dalek serial as the follow-up.  So we'll have to wait until the next story to find out what happens next.

When you stop to think about it, Frontier in Space doesn't seem to be the most exciting story.  There's a lot going on, but we experience most of it from inside various prison cells.  And yet this doesn't seem to matter.  The sense of scope that Frontier in Space has -- that "space opera" feel, to coin a phrase -- goes a long way in making sure this is entertaining.  And make no mistake: this is definitely entertaining.  What's more, we get to see both Pertwee and Delgado at their best -- and Jo Grant, who can often be one of the more annoying assistants, also gets a chance to shine -- particularly in her cliffhanger confrontation with the Master.  The script isn't heavy-handed, and it's good to have such a wide variety of locations.  Perfunctory ending aside (and besides, it's relying on Planet of the Daleks to wrap up the major plot points), Frontier in Space is a joy from start to finish.

However, we sadly have to bid farewell at this point to Roger Delgado as the Master.  A planned final appearance next season (which would also have seen the end of Pertwee's Doctor) had to be dropped, due to Delgado's tragic death in June 1973 in an automobile accident in Turkey.  This makes that final scene in episode six even more frustrating than it would otherwise be, as you can't help but feel that he should have gotten a better farewell than that.  So goodbye to the original Master, Roger Delgado -- probably the best actor to play the role (as well as one of the best actors on the show period).  He will indeed be missed.







⁷³ Well, there is one additional shot of the Master fleeing, but a) it's only a fraction of a second, and b) it's both blurred and in shadow, so it's not obvious that it's the Master at all, given that there are also fleeing Ogrons in the shot.  In fact, the only way to tell it's the Master is that you can just make out his white cuffs sticking out, and even then only in slow motion.

June 20: Frontier in Space Episodes Three & Four

Well, that "rescue" didn't last long; apparently the Doctor and Jo have no desire to be rescued by Ogrons, and the result is to be recaptured by Earth security forces and locked up again.  Then the Doctor is subjected to the mind probe, which indicates that everything he's been telling them has been the truth (even when the mind probe is turned up to "break" the Doctor's non-existent conditioning by the Draconians).  General Williams's conclusion?  The Doctor must be lying and just really good at defeating mind probes.  It never occurs to them that, hey, maybe there actually is a third party trying to provoke a war; nope, they just pack the Doctor off to a penal colony on the Moon.

Of course, the nice thing about this is the change of scenery, as a reasonable lunar landscape is represented outside the large window inside the prison.  There's some screwing around with the Peace Party members already imprisoned (the lunar prison is apparently for political prisoners), as two of them play Star Trek-style three-dimensional chess (perhaps the first obvious influence of Star Trek on Doctor Who) while the Doctor and the Peace Party's leader Professor Dale work on escaping from the prison.

The most important part of this episode, however, is the appearance of the Commissioner from Sirius IV, revealed almost nonchalantly to be the Master.  He's here to take the Doctor and Jo back to Sirius IV for trial; yes, he's the one who's been hiring Ogrons to impersonate Draconians and humans in order to start a war, and he learned of the Doctor's presence after the Ogrons brought the TARDIS back, along with the stolen cargo, to their home planet, where the Master was scheming.  So after collecting Jo, it's off to the Moon to collect the Doctor -- except he might be too late, as the Doctor and Professor Dale are both trapped in a rapidly-depressurizing airlock with no oxygen (a result of a failed attempt at an escape)...

The Doctor and the Master are confronted by a Draconian
boarding party. (Frontier in Space Episode Four) ©BBC

Nope, no death for the Doctor today; the Master arrives to save them at the top of episode four, and he successfully convinces the prison governor to turn the Doctor over into his care.  It seems the Master's employers want the Doctor alive, so the Master's taking him and Jo back to the Ogrons' home planet.  Of course, this means that the Doctor and Jo are locked up yet again -- but this time the Doctor is able to escape (thanks to a steel file and a lot of extemporaneous talking from Jo -- "Thank you, Miss Grant, we'll let you know," the Master remarks drily upon uncovering the ruse) and head outside the spaceship to try and take control of the flight deck via an external hatch.  The spacewalk parts of this episode are rather good -- it's a shame that the Kirby wires holding the Doctor up are so visible (to the point of casting shadows on the hull of the spaceship).  The Master and the Doctor have a confrontation, but before this gets too far a Draconian ship arrives and takes everyone prisoner, piloting the ship back to Draconia.  The Doctor is looking forward to this, as he hopes he can explain the Master's actions to the Draconian emperor, but the Master has secretly sent a signal, which, in a shocking cliffhanger, is received by an Ogron.  With its back to us.  That'll get 'em tuning in next week.

It might not sound exciting, but the thing Frontier in Space has going for it is the scope of things.  We've been on ships, Earth, the Moon, and it sounds like we're going to Draconia next.  There's a scale to the proceedings here that is incredibly welcome -- it's nice to see all the different things, rather than just hear about them as in Colony in Space or The Mutants.  Let's hope they can keep this going for the final two installments.

June 19: Frontier in Space Episodes One & Two

After a near collision with a passing spaceship, the TARDIS materializes on said ship, only to find that tensions are high.  It seems that Earth cargo vessels, like this one, have been raided recently by Draconian ships -- and sure enough, this ship is next.  Except things aren't what they seem, as Jo watches the ship outside appear to change shape, and then soon after one of the crew members perceives the Doctor as a Draconian, while Jo sees a Drashig (as seen last time) -- and each illusion is accompanied by a strange noise.  It seems that something is influencing the perceptions of the humans aboard, using ultrasonics to cause them to see whatever it is they fear.  All well and good, but try convincing the already paranoid crew of that.

This first episode concerns itself largely with setting up the situation.  We learn about the tensions between the humans and the Draconians (thanks to a scene between the Earth President and the Draconian Ambassador), about how there was a war before and it looks like there'll be a war again, as each side accuses the other of violating the previous peace treaty and raiding the other race's ships.  Clear care is going into making this seem futuristic; the fashion, obviously, with the huge collars and the frankly implausible padding on the shoulders and forearms, but also touches like the President being a woman and the newsreader being black (both progressive ideas in 1973) help define this as a "future" story (and, parallel timeline aside, the first look of futuristic Earth we've had (as opposed to simply hearing about it) since The Seeds of Death).  And we should also take a moment to acknowledge how genuinely impressive the Draconian makeup is, with an alien yet humanoid appearance, extremely expressive and lovingly crafted⁷², and with an attention to detail that extends to the similarly textured arms and hands.  It's fantastic work.

Then as the episode progresses we see that the attackers of the cargo vessel aren't Draconians but in fact Ogrons, as last seen in Day of the Daleks (well, and a brief cameo in Carnival of Monsters).  But of course the human crew see Draconians, and they can't be persuaded otherwise.  A shootout leaves the crew stunned but unharmed -- which means they can testify that they saw Draconians, and that the Doctor and Jo are Draconian spies...

So yes, episode two does see the Doctor and Jo spend the vast majority of the length locked up, but at least Malcolm Hulke has inserted some humor into the situation: "Right," Jo declares, once the guard has moved off; "we'll give it a few minutes, then I'll start groaning and pretending I'm ill.  When he comes in, you can use your Venusian karate...  Then, we'll take his gun, go to the flight deck and make somebody take us back to Earth."  "Jo," the Doctor replies reasonably, "this ship's already going back to Earth."  Then, once they arrive on Earth, they're held in a different cell, while the Doctor reassures Jo about mind probes: "As long as you tell them the truth, they can't do you any harm."  This leads to a story about a giant rabbit, a pink elephant, and a purple horse with yellow spots, who were all delegates at an intergalactic peace conference, it seems.  So when the Doctor was captured by the Medusoids ("a sort of hairy jellyfish with claws, teeth, and a leg"), the mind probes couldn't believe he was telling the truth, and so they burned themselves out.  It's a fun little story.

The problem with Earth, however (getting back to the main plot), is that no one will listen to their story of a third party attempting to start another war between Earth and Draconia.  General Williams is convinced that the Doctor and Jo are Draconian spies, and nothing the Doctor says can persuade him.  ("Allow me to congratulate you, sir," the Doctor says to Williams, exasperatedly.  "You have the most totally closed mind that I've ever encountered.")  The President seems slightly more inclined to listen, but she still has a hard time believing the story.  Meanwhile, the Draconians believe that the Doctor and Jo are in fact working for General Williams, trying to assign blame for the raids to the Draconians and thus incite a war.  We learned he started the last war between the two races, and the Draconians think he's trying to start another.  Stalemate, it would seem.  And then, to make matters worse, at the end of the episode the Ogrons (once again making the humans see them as Draconians) raid the prison where the Doctor and Jo are being kept.  "You, come," an Ogron says to the Doctor at the end of the episode.







⁷² Well, at least as far as the hero masks go.  The Draconian illusion that one of the crewmen sees the Doctor as is obviously a rough one-piece copy of the more detailed appliances.

June 18: Carnival of Monsters Episodes Three & Four

Ok, I guess the Drashigs haven't quite found the Doctor and Jo yet.  They hunt purely by smell so it's taking them a bit to track our heroes down.  But only a little bit, and the Doctor and Jo soon find themselves in trouble.  Detonating the marsh gas with the sonic screwdriver delays the Drashigs a bit, but it requires help from above, as Vorg sticks his hand in and waves the Drashigs away, giving the Doctor and Jo a chance to escape back into the circuitry.  Except, like the Mounties, the Drashigs always get their man, and they won't rest until they've eaten their prey.

It's after this that the Doctor works out that they're inside a Miniscope, which were banned by the Time Lords (thanks to the Doctor) due to their capturing of intelligent creatures.  However, it looks like this one was missed (and yes, everyone points out that maybe they've landed in a time before the ban -- but this is the Time Lords, so maybe the ban took place throughout time and space and there is no "before" time).  "And outside there are people and creatures just looking at us for kicks?...  They must be evil and horrible," Jo exclaims, and the joke isn't lost on the audience.  (Well, it's not lost on me, at least.)

But there are bigger problems at the moment, as the Drashigs have broken through into the circuitry in pursuit of the Doctor and Jo and are relentlessly hunting them down.  The Doctor finds the exit, but they'll need rope to get down to it; fortunately, there's plenty of rope on the SS Bernice.  But this means that the Drashigs also make their way on board, which leads to Lt. Andrews, Major Daly, and the rest of the crew frantically trying to fend off these huge, bizarre creatures -- though not until after they've captured Jo again as a stowaway.  But they are successful in their efforts (thanks to some dynamite which causes even more problems in the Miniscope's circuits), and the Doctor uses the opportunity to climb down and escape the Miniscope -- leading to the rather odd cliffhanger of Shirna screaming because the Doctor is free...

The Doctor holds the Inter Minorans responsible for the
Miniscope, as Shirna and Vorg look on. (Carnival of Monsters
Episode Four) ©BBC

Episode four has some great moments, such as the Doctor attempting to out-bureaucrat the bureaucrat aliens by holding them (not Vorg and Shirna) responsible for the Miniscope, and Vorg trying to get the Doctor to admit he's a carnival showman like Vorg is.  This is also the episode where Kalik, who's been quietly conspiring with fellow Tribunal member Orum for the last three episodes, starts to put his plan into action: he figures that by unleashing the Drashigs, a major incident will occur that will lead to the removal of his brother President Zarb from power, thus allowing Kalik to take over.  And so while the Doctor lashes up a machine to get himself back inside the Miniscope so that he can rescue Jo, Kalik lets the Drashigs out, only to be eaten by one (this isn't obvious from the broadcast version, but a deleted scene (as seen on the DVD) makes this clear).  Vorg's quick thinking has him use the Eradicator to destroy the Drashigs, and there's just enough power in the Doctor's lash-up to send everyone and everything inside the Scope back to their natural time and place.  Vorg is now hailed as a hero by the Inter Minorans, and the Doctor and Jo slip away in the TARDIS while Vorg demonstrates a variation of Three-card Monte/Find the Lady (delete according to nationality and/or preference) to Pletrac, taking his money in the process.

Let's make it clear: Carnival of Monsters is wonderful.  However, it's not flashily brilliant (like, say, The Caves of Androzani); it's quietly brilliant, which means that if you're not paying attention then this one might pass you by.  There are no obvious "splash" moments (to borrow a term from comics) and nothing that one can clearly point to and say, "That's why this works."  No, Carnival of Monsters works because it takes the most wonderful Doctor Who-ish idea, of taking radically different environments and mashing them together to see what comes out, and runs with it.  It's the sort of idea you won't get on almost any other show, and Robert Holmes makes it all fit together naturally.

It also gives us the full flowering of Holmes's talents, with lots of witty and knowing dialogue (to adapt a phrase from The DisContinuity Guide) on display and marvelous characterization.  One of the many brilliant things about Carnival of Monsters is that there's no real villain involved; the primary antagonist (other than the Drashigs, who are simply hunting by instinct) is bureaucracy, with a race of literal grey-faced bureaucratic aliens who want nothing more than to deport Vorg and Shirna and their Miniscope, but have to wait until they've filled in the proper forms and received the proper authorizations.  Even Kalik's plans to depose President Zarb come across more as inter-office politicking than any sort of evil intent.  Then Holmes contrasts the Inter Minor officials with the very colorful and free-spirited Lurmans, Vorg and Shirna, who have this magical machine but don't quite know how it works.

As I said before, it's not the most flashy Doctor Who tale, but it succeeds marvelously at what it sets out to do.  If you're not watching these stories in any particular order, then you might not realize the greatness that is Carnival of Monsters -- this is a story that benefits from being watched in context, because it makes its virtues stand out even more; it hardly puts a foot wrong.  One to cherish.

June 17: Carnival of Monsters Episodes One & Two

Standard and special edition DVDs

With a flash of wit and cleverness, Robert Holmes arrives.  Sure, his earlier stories have had flashes of brilliance, but Carnival of Monsters is where the Robert Holmes that fandom reveres truly begins.

It starts on an alien world, with grey-skinned beings moving cargo for a different kind of grey-skinned being when two carnival entertainers arrive via the luggage belt.  These two colorful characters, Vorg and his assistant Shirna, are immediately under suspicion by the xenophobic ruling class on this planet.

And then the scene completely changes as the Doctor and Jo arrive in the TARDIS (her first trip post-exile, it seems) on a cargo ship in the Indian Ocean, and not Metebelis III as the Doctor was shooting for.  We then move back and forth between these two disparate locations for a bit, unsure what's going on -- though Vorg gives a clue to those paying attention: "Roll up and see the monster show!  A carnival of monsters, all living in their natural habitat, wild in this little box of mine.  A miracle of intragalactic technology!  Roll up!  Roll up!"  And then to reinforce the point, the Doctor and Jo are hiding from the crew when a plesiosaurus rears up out of the Indian Ocean -- an impossibility if this really is 1926 Earth.  In addition to this there are other clues for the Doctor and Jo: a metal plate in the deck floor that only the Doctor and Jo can see, the fact that it's broad daylight outside when it should be pitch dark, and the strange jumping back of the clock in the cabin.  The Doctor also notes that they're on the SS Bernice, which, he says, vanished from the Indian Ocean on 4 June 1926 -- the date that the calendar in the cabin reads.

Meanwhile, Vorg and Shirna are trying to convince the official species (as Pletrac refers to his race) that they should be allowed to stay, and that their Scope is harmless.  "Our purpose is to amuse, simply to amuse," Vorg explains.  "Nothing serious, nothing political," he adds.  But a fault has developed inside their machine, and as the Doctor and Jo head back to the TARDIS, a giant hand reaches down and plucks the TARDIS up, thus providing a memorable cliffhanger.

Episode two makes it clear what's going on: the Scope is essentially a miniaturized zoo, with different creatures and habitats all in their own self-contained environments and conditioned to follow the same set of events over and over again.  Their personalities can be adjusted a bit, as Vorg demonstrates by increasing the aggression of the Tellurians (aka humans), leading to Lieutenant Andrews (as played by Ian Marter) declaring he's going to thrash the Doctor "within an inch of his life" before chasing after the two stowaways around the ship, trying to shoot them.  "I can't leave it for too long or the specimens start damaging each other," Vorg says, and turns the aggrometer back down, leaving the crew to cheerfully walk away from the bemused Doctor and Jo.  Still, now the Doctor and Jo can remove the metal plate, revealing a hole that leads to complex circuitry (in a rather lovely set design from Roger Liminton) that they can investigate.

Outside the Scope, the officials are making the lives of Vorg and Shirna miserable, finally announcing officiously that the Scope should be destroyed -- only the Eradicator that they use isn't successful: the Scope is damaged but not destroyed.  "Who's going to pay good credit bars to see a blob in a snowstorm?" Shirna complains afterwards.  Meanwhile the officials are growing even more paranoid, wondering if Vorg and Shirna are spies sent to destroy them.  When Orum investigates the machine, he finds nothing but a piece of a bric-a-brac: the TARDIS, which then grows to full size as the effects of the Scope's compression field wear off.  

But the Doctor and Jo have broken into a completely different part of the machine, consisting of flat marshland.  Shirna realizes from watching on the Scope's screen that they've entered the environment of the vicious Drashigs ("They're great favourites with the children, you know, with their gnashing and snapping and tearing at each other," Vorg notes happily) , who will stop at nothing to hunt down their prey once they get their scent.  And as the Doctor and Jo look, a giant Drashig head rears out of the water, its mouth gaping open, roaring at them...

June 16: The Three Doctors Episodes Three & Four

Omega warns the Doctors not to deceive him. (The Three
Doctors Episode Three) ©BBC

After two episodes of mystery (other than a brief look from behind), episode three finally introduces us to our host: a man named Omega, who was the solar engineer who turned a star into a black hole and gave the Time Lords the source of their power.  Omega was believed to be destroyed in the supernova, but it turns out he was sucked inside the black hole and survived.  And now Omega has decided to take his revenge against the Time Lords for abandoning him (as he perceives it) by draining away their power and then escaping from this world of antimatter.  But the catch is that the world is maintained by Omega's will, so he needs a fellow Time Lord to maintain it while he makes his escape.  And so that's why Omega needs the Doctor.

Then there's the infamous moment where the Brigadier, upon finding that UNIT HQ has been transported to some new location, believes they've been transported to Cromer (a coastal town in Norfolk), rather than a different universe as the Doctor says.  The Stupid Brigadier archetype really begins here, sadly -- although he still handles the rest of the situation well, as he watches the second Doctor and Benton get led away by Gell Guards and taken inside Omega's place and tries to figure out how to get inside.  (He doesn't, for instance, ask Mr. Ollis where the nearest phone is.)  Still, we're a far cry from the Brigadier of The Invasion or Spearhead from Space.

But the best parts of this episode are the Doctors' interactions with Omega, as he explains the plot and backstory to them (at exactly the right part in the story for the audience as well).  The oddest part is when Omega discovers them wandering around his place and examining Singularity (which is consistently treated as a proper noun rather than a thing) and declares that the Doctor must fight the dark side of his mind, which looks like a weird bloke in vaguely racist Oriental make-up exchanging judo throws with Jon Pertwee in an entirely black void.  Stranger still, this fight ends up being the cliffhanger, as the third Doctor starts to lose to Omega's dark side.

The first Doctor advises the other two from the TARDIS scanner.
(The Three Doctors Episode Four) ©BBC

The third Doctor is only saved at the top of episode four by the second Doctor pointing out that Omega still needs him in order to escape.  This leads to the best part of the episode, as Omega instructs them to remove his mask in order to prepare for his escape, only to discover that there's nothing of Omega's body left: he exists purely as a force of will, the rest having been eroded by countless centuries of exposure to the "light stream".  The moment where he lifts the whole helmet off, revealing nothing but the sight of the second and third Doctors standing behind him, is a marvelously memorable scene. This revelation drives Omega mad(der) though, as he vows to destroy "all things".  It does give the Doctors a chance to escape and regroup, however, which means we get to see William Hartnell again, and even though he's still confined to the screen, flashes of his Doctor still come through.  They come up with a plan, but we don't really find out what that is, as a better opportunity presents itself: the second Doctor's recorder fell into the TARDIS's forcefield generator and thus wasn't converted into antimatter when it was brought into Omega's realm (just go with it).  So after a lengthy scene where each of the other characters transported into the black hole are sent back to Earth by passing through Singularity (which, you may be surprised to learn, is a column of white smoke), the second and third Doctors offer Omega his freedom by handing him the recorder.  Omega is angered by this, though, and knocks it aside, thus causing the matter of the recorder to come into contact with the antimatter of everything else, creating a massive explosion that results in a(nother) supernova.  The Time Lords and the rest of the universe are saved.

And at the very end, in gratitude for saving the Time Lords, the Doctor's exile is revoked: he receives a new dematerialization circuit and the memory of how to properly travel in time.  The Doctor is no longer stuck in one time and place (thus making official what had basically been the situation last season anyway, only without needing to constantly refer to the Time Lords interfering with the TARDIS).

The Three Doctors is a story that gets a bit of a rough ride from fans, but it's frankly hard to see why.  It's sometimes derided as cheap and gaudy, but it's not noticeably any cheaper or gaudier than any other "space" story from this era, and in fact the striking Glam rock design is one of this story's charms.  There's also the fun interplay between Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee, and it's nice to see William Hartnell, even if he's not as strong as he was when he was the star.  Add to all this the sense of scale that the Bristol Boys have given us with their script, and the result is a highly entertaining adventure.  And it's got a great ending, too, as Mrs. Ollis demands to know where her husband has been all this time.  Mr. Ollis pauses, trying to come up with an explanation, before simply saying, "You'd never believe me, woman.  Supper ready?"  Season 10 is off to a strong start.

June 15: The Three Doctors Episodes One & Two

Standard and special edition DVDs

Well, today's my birthday, and what better way to celebrate than with Doctor Who's own tenth anniversary celebration⁷¹, The Three Doctors?  And we've reached another sort of milestone: with two exceptions, every episode in the archives now exists in their original PAL video format.

It's an understated beginning, with a weather balloon wafting gently in the breeze and a gamekeeper waving at a scientist in a jeep before suddenly disappearing.  There are also some nice little moments in the subsequent laboratory scene with the Doctor, Jo, the Brigadier, and Dr. Tyler (the scientist from the beginning), such as the Brigadier asking what he can do to help.  "Yes," the Doctor replies.  "Pass me a silicon rod, will you?"  The Brigadier does so, only for the Doctor to use it to stir his tea, much to Lethbridge-Stewart's exasperation.  There's also the Brigadier's oft-quoted, somewhat bizarre fit of pique at the tail of the scene, as he chastises Dr. Tyler for treating his top-secret facility like any old lab: "Liberty Hall, Dr. Tyler, Liberty Hall."  Even the DVD subtitles are at a loss to explain this, but the best explanation I've seen is that it's a reference to Oliver Goldsmith's 18th-century comedy She Stoops to Conquer, which has a Liberty Hall that's inadvertently believed by the characters to be an inn -- and which had just been adapted by the BBC in 1971, so it would have been fresh in the memory.

But the danger soon reveals itself, with a nifty electronic effect that looks like a red, black, and blue amorphous jelly (and which they've done a fabulous job of making it look like it's going in and out of drains and such), which causes things and people to vanish in an off-white flash.  And it seems that the beam of light that sent the jelly to Earth in the first place is also draining the Time Lords of all their power, since it emanates from the black hole that provides the Time Lords with said power.  This gives the story the feel of an epic tale without really even trying.  And coming on the heels of The Time Monster, this is both a revelation and a relief.  With things on the Time Lords' home planet just as dire as the situation on Earth, which escalates from an electronic effect to blobby red jellies attacking UNIT HQ (all of UNIT HQ!  How much more exciting than anything in The Time Monster) and UNIT soldiers helpless to stop them (even after Corporal Palmer's legendary response to his first sight of the Gell [sic] Guards (as the script calls them) of "Holy Moses, what's that?!"), the Time Lords are forced to transgress the First Law of Time and send the Doctor back to help himself.  And that's how Patrick Troughton enters the scene, sent by the Time Lords to help Jon Pertwee's Doctor.  Except it's quickly clear that these two aren't going to get along.  Troughton starts prickly ("I can see you've been doing the TARDIS up a bit.  Hmm.  I don't like it." -- he should have seen it last story), and Pertwee responds in kind, and it's clear that these two (rather wonderfully) aren't going to get along.  It's also nice to see how effortlessly Troughton slips back into the role, even if it's not quite the same second Doctor as we're used to (his obsession with his recorder, for instance, feels more like the original characterization of the second Doctor than the one we had by the end of the '60s).

The Time Lords try again with the first Doctor, William Hartnell, but he gets stuck in a time eddy and can only advise from the TARDIS scanner (this is because Hartnell was so ill at this point that he could only do a few short pre-filmed segments -- sadly, he's noticeably ill in these scenes and is transparently reading off cue cards, although a few flashes of the old Doctor still come through (e.g., "So stop dilly-dallying...and cross it!") -- but it's still rather nice to have him there).  And to Bob Baker and Dave Martin's credit, they don't waste time getting all the Doctors involved in the action (they don't, for instance, save their appearance for the first cliffhanger) but have them interacting and bickering right away.  No, the first cliffhanger sees the third Doctor and Jo made to vanish by the antimatter effect.  (Well, right after the Brigadier and Corporal Palmer spot it, leading Palmer to say, "Good grief, sir, what's that?!"  Palmer doesn't come off the best in this episode, does he?)

Episode two continues the fun, with the Brigadier in disbelief at the sight of the second Doctor instead of the third.  Troughton is trying to work out how to contain the antimatter creature ("What are we going to do now?" Benton asks.  "Keep it confused," the second Doctor replies.  "Feed it with useless information.  I wonder if I have a television set handy?"), while the third Doctor and Jo find themselves not dead, as Jo initially believes (just as she did at the end of The Time Monster), but in a bleak and desolate place -- "at the other end of that light streak of yours," the Doctor tells Tyler, who's also been transported here.  "That's in the black hole," Tyler replies in disbelief.  "Yes, exactly...  On a stable world in a universe of antimatter.  An anomaly within an impossibility," the Doctor responds -- and it's clear that their host wants them to join him, as the Doctor, Jo, and Tyler are all surrounded by Gell Guards.

The second Doctor prepares to turn off the TARDIS's forcefield.
(The Three Doctors Episode Two) ©BBC

Back on Earth, the second Doctor's attempts to restrain the antimatter creature only serve to antagonize it ("Of course, you fool," he berates himself,  "it's antimatter!  The opposite effect!  Instead of quietening down, I've stimulated it!"), forcing the Brigadier and Benton to take refuge with Troughton in the TARDIS (thus allowing Lethbridge-Stewart to have a go at marveling at the interior dimensions (Benton had his go last episode)).  And (important, this) the second Doctor offers a jelly baby to the Brigadier while they're trapped in the TARDIS -- the first time any Doctor has done so.

It's not all perfect, though; there's a noticeable bit of padding as Tyler, while waiting inside their host's blobby palace (the decor looking an awful lot like the Gell Guards), decides to make a run for it, which leads to him dashing down some corridors to fill the time before ending up right back where he started.  "That was a bit of a waste of time, wasn't it?" he says ruefully.  But fortunately there's not much of this, and the episode does end strikingly: after being told by the first Doctor to switch off the TARDIS's forcefield, the second Doctor does so ("Because he told me to, and I've always had a great respect for his advice," Troughton explains to the Brigadier and Benton), which leads to the entirety of UNIT HQ vanishing, disappearing down the light stream into the black hole...







⁷¹ Yes, yes, Steven Moffat, I see you in the back there pointing out that this was broadcast a lot closer to the ninth anniversary than the tenth, but the point of this story is clearly to celebrate ten years of Doctor Who and you know it.