The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon: The War Games (Episodes 6-10)

The War Games - Episode Six (24/05/09)

This story continues to be very good. Jamie isn't dead and was taken for interrogation by the Security Chief who, having spoken with the Alien Scientist, believes that the War Chief is betraying the aliens to his own people, a race called the Time Lords. The War Chief interrupted the conversation before the Security Chief could find much out and they had an argument over how stupid the Security Chief

[Argh! Why don't they give these characters proper names??? From now on they're Time Lord and Spectacles!]

would look alleging Time Lord's betrayal with no proof when his master, the War Lord (who we haven't met yet) arrives.

Meanwhile, the Doctor, Zoe and Carstairs rescued Russell from the Scientist before he was reconditioned, rescued Jamie, got disguised as soldiers (WWI) and legged it to the transmat-thing bay. Russell and Zoe headed back to the American Civil War Zone where the guy guarding the Yankee/German General had been hypnotised. Russell and the guard (Moore, aka Patrick Troughton's son David!) fought, but Russell won only to have the General pull a gun on him. Fortunately, Moore took a knock to the head which cleared the conditioning and he shot the alien.

The Doctor, meanwhile, had gone back for the conditioning machine with Jamie and Carstairs. Stealing it, they managed to get into one of the Time Capsules, but Spectacles and Time Lord turned up and disabled it. The episode ended with Time Lord reducing the interior dimensions of the capsule in order to force the Doctor out or crush everyone inside! Looks like the Doctor's met another one of his people and they're called Time Lords!!! This story just gets better and better!

The War Games - Episode Seven (31/05/09)

So, the Doctor managed to get the Time Capsule free and they escaped to the Roman Zone, legged it to the 1917 Zone, but were caught by General Smythe who sent the Doctor before a firing squad (again).

At the Alien HQ, the War Lord finally arrived and took control by ordering the War Chef and the Security Chief to stop bickering and find the Doctor. The Doctor was rescued when Zoe led the resistance army (off screen - I think she's been picking up tactics from UNIT) on an ambush on the Chateau, and Smythe was shot dead by Russell (but not before someone very audibly said "Shit!" as he legged it to his quarters!).

The Doctor used machinery in Smythe's quarters to set up a Time Zone barrier around the Chateau to keep out all the conditioned forces the War Lord had sent to attack the Resistance holed up there (of course, the Resistance, having broken their conditioning, could come and go as they pleased), and tested the deconditioning unit on one of the soldiers who had infiltrated the Chateau (aka the brother of Michael 'Ben Jackson' Craze!).

However, they hadn't banked on the Security Chief turning up in a Travel Capsule, grabbing the Doctor, and legging it before anyone could do anything! Can't believe it's episode 8 next week! This story's so LONG! It's still good, though, despite this episode being slightly more wordy than usual.

The War Games - Episode Eight (07/06/09)

Things seem to be drawing to a climax this week. Captured by the War Lord, the Doctor was unsuccessfully interrogated by the Security Chief who then reluctantly let the War Chief talk to him. Both the Doctor and the War Chief are Time Lords who abandoned their people and are on the run! The Doctor apparently stole the TARDIS is order to escape!

The War Chief blackmailed the Doctor into helping the War Lord, who in turn has forced the Doctor to betray Jamie, Zoe and the rebel groups. Meanwhile, Russell and Carstairs went off to find the other Resistance leaders, and while they were away the Chateau was infiltrated by Arturo Villar, Resistance leader of the Mexican Civil War Zone. Jamie, who'd been left in charge (bless!) and Zoe persuaded him to join forces with everyone else and then formed a plan to destroy all the Travel Capsule arrival points except that in the American Civil War Zone where they could easily ambush a Capsule and mount an attack on the alien HQ. However, the Doctor contacted them on the screen there and persuaded them to send only a handful of the rebel leaders. Once at the alien HQ he betrayed them, and Jamie, Zoe and the rest were surrounded by guards.

It's all very interesting, especially the conversation between the Doctor and the War Chief. Having stolen a TARDIS and legged it, the Doctor can't alert the Time Lords to the War Chief's selling of Time Lord technology to the aliens because that would let them know where he was. So the Doctor's powerless! But everyone's at the alien HQ now. It'll be interesting to see how this story's resolved!

The War Games - Episode Nine (14/06/09)

Wow! That was pretty good!

The Doctor persuaded the War Lord that he could reprocess the rebels more efficiently than the Scientist and then conned the Security Chief into thinking it had worked by 'reconditioning' Jamie. This worked until he got to Arturo Villar who thought the conditioning had failed and tried to kill the Doctor. Jamie and Zoe stopped him.

Anyway, things were going okay until the Security Chief listened to the recordings he'd made of a conversation between the War Chief and the Doctor, where the War Chief revealed he planned to betray the Aliens as his Travel Capsules had only a limited life span. This got him arrested and taken to the conditioning room where the rebels overpowered his guards. They all then set about attacking the Aliens - during which time the War Chief killed the Security Chief, then was in turn shot down by the War Lord for his treachery as he tried to leg it.

By this point, the Doctor (unable to transport everyone back to Earth because only two of the capsules were still working) had called on the Time Lords for help. Then he, Jamie, Zoe and Carstairs hurried back to the 1917 Zone to try and reach the TARDIS/find Lady Jennifer before the Time Lords arrived.

BUT as they ran toward the TARDIS everything went slo-mo and the music went all dramatic. The episode ended with the Doctor struggling to reach the TARDIS key into the lock!

What a fantastic episode! Definitely one of the best Troughton episodes in terms of drama in one of his very best stories. Can't wait till next week!


The War Games - Episode Ten (21/06/09)

OH! MY! GOD! That has to be the best episode of Doctor Who EVER!

The story as a whole was good, if a little drawn out (at least it held the attention - something The Dominators and The Mind Robber failed to do more than half the time) but the final episode was fantastic!

The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe managed to get into the TARDIS and legged it, but the Time Lords wouldn't let up and eventually caught them.

This is where it got good.

They put both the War Lord and the Doctor on trial. The War Lord's guards turned up and tried to rescue him but the Time Lords 'dematerialised' them so it was "as if (they'd) never existed"! Jamie and Zoe tried to rescue the Doctor - the sets for the Doctor's home planet were wonderfully odd during this bit - but the Time Lords weren't having any of it and sent  Jamie and Zoe back to their own place and time with only the memories of their first adventure!

This was really sad - all those adventures and they won't remember any but the first! At least we got to see Tanya Lernov again, which was a nice touch.

Then the Time Lords found the Doctor guilty of meddling in the affairs of other planets. He defended himself by showing the Time Lords Yeti, Cybermen, Daleks, Ice Warriors and, er, Quarks (this is where I think he let himself down - he shouldn't've started with the Quarks. He'd've been better off mentioning the Seaweed Monster or Zaroff's octopus). In the end, they decided he was guilty, but there was still a place for him in the universe: exiled on Earth with a new face and no memory of how to operate the TARDIS!

The episode ended, quite creepily, with the Doctor spinning facelessly into a black void!

A very weird, very disturbing and very brave way to end the series. I wonder what the next series will be like. I have to admit, after taking a very long time to warm to this new version of the Doctor, I actually quite liked him. I think I'll quite miss his pratting around. Hope the new one isn't too serious. We'll just have to wait and see!