The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon: The Two Doctors

The Two Doctors: Part One (16/02/25)

That was a somewhat odd episode but it started off rather nicely. As is clear from the title, this story features two Doctors and we were immediately shown which other Doctor features as the opening credits faded to a black and white shot of the Second Doctor and Jamie in the TARDIS which slowly changed to colour. It would seem this takes place (for them) somewhere during Season 5 since it was mentioned they'd just dropped Victoria off to study Graphology. This, however, didn't fit with how much older both look; yes, Season 5 did air seventeen years ago and I could forgive Jamie looking thirty-something but, unlike in The Five Doctors, the production team have chosen to fleck the Second Doctor's hair with streaks of grey indicating he's older even than in any of his previous stories. Not only that, but there's a device fitted to the TARDIS console allowing the Time Lords to navigate it wherever they like, and the Doctor is currently on a mission for them as a trade for his freedom - something completely at odds with what we know of his era! Add to that that they've dropped Victoria off and will collect her later, something Troughton's Doctor could never do, and it all seems to indicate that things are taking place after The War Games and before Spearhead From Space. Was the Doctor co-opted by the Time Lords, given Jamie and Victoria to help him and sent on missions before his exile? It might explain some of the comments made by the Fourth Doctor re the Celestial Intervention Agency! Inquiring minds need to know!

Of course, it may just be that Robert Holmes, who only wrote a couple of stories for Troughton's last season, is unaware of how the Doctor flew the TARDIS back then (ie - randomly) and thinks he had the amount of control he had when Holmes was Script Editor. It's odd, though, given how obsessively they've checked references to the past in recent stories, particularly in reference to 60s episodes, that nobody commented and bothered to correct the discrepancy. 

Speaking of discrepancies, I did notice that in the early location scenes of the Sixth Doctor and Peri on their fishing trip, Peri was wearing a pair of beige, low-heeled slip-ons, yet when they entered the TARDIS, and for all the subsequent studio work, she was wearing a pair of blue, open-toed kitten-heels. Given that all the location work has been done in Spain, where I imagine Colin and Nicola will be heading next week, I'll have to keep an eye out for Peri's chameleonic footwear!

Anyhow, the Second Doctor and Jamie have been sent to negotiate a cessation of the experiments of Kartz and Reimer on the space station Camera (pronounced Kam-eera) into time travel at the Time Lords behest. Their boss, Dastari (a man in a very 80s boilersuit, glasses borrowed from that bloke from Buggles, and a white-streaked bouffant hairdo), is unimpressed. Whether this is because he resents the Time Lords' interference or because he knows there's about to be a Sontaran attack on the station (how else can you explain his survival and complicity later when he's seen helping a Sontaran carry an unconscious/dead Second Doctor to the Spanish villa where they've set up base?) I don't know. Probably both!

Oh yes, and the Sontarans are back, albeit taller than their predecessors. For a clone race they come in a variety of guises! The Sontarans are in league with an augmented Androgum called Chessene, and they seem to have stolen the Kartz-Reimer module for their own use. They're accompanied by another Androgum called Shockeye, one of the campest grotesques I've seen on the series. He's played with the scene-chewing exuberance of a West End Luvvie by John Stratton, dressed as a pirate with warts all over his face. When we meet him he lasciviously coos over Jamie, describing his pale flesh and a desire to purchase the Scot in order to cook him - Androgums, apparently, will eat anything. His fascination with the Tellurian (Earthling), however, would make more sense if the other characters (bar the Sontarans) that we meet looked a bit more alien. As it stands, his comments about Jamie seem a little odd. 

The space station is attacked and everyone but Dastari, Chessene, Shockeye, Jamie (who escapes and hides) and the Second Doctor are killed; a bit odd since all the servitors were Androgums. If Chessene is so willing to allow every other Androgum to die, why does she permit Shockeye to live? The species seem to be family or tribally centred and they don't go by the same suffix so what makes him so special?

Anyhow, having departed for Spain, along come the Sixth Doctor and Peri looking for Dastari. Having had a turn in the TARDIS, an unpleasantly familiar flashback to Colin's first story that would have made me incredibly nervous had I been Peri, where he saw his former self tortured and possibly killed on the space station, he's decided to consult a doctor, and as a brilliant geneticist, Dastari rather conveniently fits the bill. They arrive not long after the massacre and are soon informed that it was carried out by the Time Lords by the station's AI Security System. It then proceeds to try and kill Six and Peri, eventually driving them into the infrastructure of the station where the Doctor is gassed trying to turn the Security System off and Peri is attacked by a mysterious, gurgling figure who's been watching them since they arrived. I say 'mysterious' but it's obviously going to be Jamie, though why he's gurgling is anybody's guess!

On the whole, this episode was okay. It is, I'm afraid, somewhat garish and tonally all over the place - more so than any other story bar Colin's debut - with a lot of references to food and gastronomy. The level of camp is quite high, as is the level of violence; Shockeye kills the Spanish villa's aged occupant with a karate chop, then laments she's too old to eat, and local Anita and her ex-theatrical chum, Oscar, give off Renée and Renato vibes whilst talking about killing moths with cyanide! It all feels very peculiar and a world away from both Troughton's previous appearance and Season 5. Oh, and Peri is wearing a rather gaudy, vile top with a plunging neckline. Maybe the story is hoping to bring in the tabloid readers? But it was great to see Pat and Frazer back again, even if when they're meant to be from in the series' internal history seems unclear.

The Two Doctors: Part Two (23/02/25)

I'm really not sure what to make of this one. It continues to be a mix of interesting ideas buried under a heap of camp. There's Jacqueline Pearce's cool camp Chessene, John Stratton's lascivious grotesque, Laurence Payne's gaudy Disc Jockey, and the thespian theatricality and feeble foppery of James Saxon's Oscar. The dialogue often feels forced and unnatural - odd for Robert Holmes, especially after The Caves Of Androzani - and the makeup and costume designs leave a great deal to be desired, although Colin did at least get to dump the coat halfway through this week's episode.

Patrick Troughton, I'm afraid, spent the entire episode strapped to a gurney before being bundled, unconscious, into a wheelchair in the last few minutes. The plot itself is crawling along at a snail's pace with some very odd narrative decisions. The Doctor (Colin) worked out he (Patrick) was still alive and made telepathic contact with him on the 'Astral Plane'... then worked out he was being kept prisoner near Seville because the largest bell there, apparently, goes "BOING!". He, Peri and Jamie (it was Jamie who randomly attacked Peri last week) then got in the TARDIS and, having worked out from a pretty vague description by Jamie that the Sontarans were involved, and that a Sontaran Battle Cruiser would take about 12 days to get from the Space Station to Seville, and that it was about 12 days since the Sontaran attack, chose to go there without travelling through time as the Sontarans would have only just arrived. Why not get there earlier and keep a look out for them? They have a Time Machine!

It's lucky they bumped into Oscar and Anita (who seemed to take three people stepping out of a 1960s British Police Box in the baked countryside near Seville in their stride) who could inform them of the supposed plane crash they witnessed and lead them to the hacienda! Even luckier that Anita knew of a tunnel leading from the nearby Ice House into the hacienda's cellars. And speaking of Jamie, why after only 12 days living on a deserted space station had he seemingly devolved into a grunting proto-Human skulking about in the bowels of the station in some stolen (I imagine) overalls and covered in a blanket, ready to pounce of Peri for disturbing his nest? It all seems very unnecessary. 

I'm not overly impressed by the Sontarans, either. Commander Stike looks like they've put his head mask on wonky, and the general moulding of the head makes the Sontaran from The Invasion Of Time look like high art! They're also too tall, but I guess that could be explained away by them spending a lot of time in space or away from their home planet. I'm trying to think of some positives but, even though the episode wasn't truly awful, I'm struggling.

The location work is quite nice, especially the exterior of the hacienda, and it's nice to have a story where the current Doctor is trying to rescue his former self. It's just a massive shame we've seen so little of Pat, and that, after two episodes, Pat and Colin still haven't encountered each other. One of the best things about the previous multi-Doctor stories was seeing them work together. It's great that we're getting the equivalent of a six-parter - the first since Season 16 - but it would have been really nice for them to have teamed up already. I dunno. I'm just not loving this one.

Maybe it's the constant reference to food, something I'm not a fan of, and Shockeye really is repugnant in the worst ways be it his costume, makeup, fruity voice or flowery language, the way he bit into the most unconvincing rat prop I've ever seen or the arse-clenchingly creepy way he licked his lips when he first saw Peri, and towered over her at the cliffhanger. I know it's because his character wants to eat her - literally - but it all felt horribly rapey. 

So far this season has been fairly underwhelming. I'm not much of a fan of the over-theatricality of the new era which feels at odds with some of the more violent/horrific aspects of the stories. This week it was implied that, after killing the Doña Arana, Shockeye butchered her and ate some of her but found she was mostly bone and gristle. I want to enjoy this. I want to like the new Doctor and the new era. But on the whole, the writing and direction is pretty poor.

The Two Doctors: Part Three (02/03/25)

Well, that was almost very good, despite some very obvious padding. It was, however, the better type of padding in that it had the main cast gallivanting about in some interesting locations, namely Seville and environs. 

After last week's rather putrid cliffhanger of Shockeye salivating over the prone Peri, things got off to a decent start with Doctor Six being forced to prime the Kartz-Reimer Module by the Sontarans after which Jamie stabbed Commander Stike in the leg so that they could escape. This in turn led to them (finally!) encountering Doctor Two. Alas, this wasn't as epic as previous meetings such as Two, Three and Jo, or Five encountering One, and was fumbled by Colin and Pat being unable to say "Snap!" at the same time. If the Director couldn't get a perfect take, then maybe they should have scrapped the idea in favour of something less embarrassingly awkward. Frustratingly, the pairing wasn't to last long as they were interrupted by Dastari and Chessene who decided to take Two off and convert him into an Androgum so he could be Chessene's consort. 

This was the basis of the remainder of the episode which padded things out with the Androgum Doctor taking Shockeye off to sample the cuisine of Seville. There were some really nice locations which, I'm afraid, echoed the trip to Amsterdam rather than those to Paris and Lanzarote by sticking to backstreets and avoiding panoramic shots of the city's historic architecture - there was even a low shot of Six, Peri and Jamie stood in front of a close-cropped building which may have been the Catedral de Sevilla but lacked enough detail for me to be sure! At least these backstreets were very pretty! 

There was also a scene of Two and Shockeye hijacking a truck with the latter hitting the driver over the back with a log, followed by Jamie making the arbitrary assumption that the driver was dead without anyone actually going anywhere near him to check! And then there was Las Cadenas. By pure coincidence, Two and Shockeye ended up in the restaurant run by Oscar and Anita. This gave James Saxon yet another chance to deliver Oscar's florid and fruity dialogue before being stabbed by a disgruntled Shockeye and delivering the most hilariously bad death scene I've ever witnessed! I think we were meant to find it all incredibly sad and emotional, but it was all just a little bit pointless.

Anyhow, having eaten most of the restaurant's food, Shockeye buggered off and Two regressed back to being a Time Lord, the hour in which the second operation in order to stabilise the procedure needed to be done having passed. Well, wasn't that a bit of luck! Leaving Las Cadenas (Anita kneeling by Oscar's gormless corpse awaiting an ambulance with a selection of extras no doubt put off their dinners), our heroes were caught by Chessene and Dastari and returned to the villa. By this point, Chessene had betrayed the Sontarans and had them killed, Stike making it to his shuttle in time to vaporise it for...reasons.

Shockeye took Jamie off to be butchered while Dastari chained the others up but left the keys to the padlocks within reach, so Six escaped and lured Shockeye off to be killed using Oscar's abandoned moth-killing kit's cyanide bottle. Chessene killed Dastari, then got blown up in the Kartz-Reimer Module which Six had set up for one trip only, which was used up when Chessene made Peri take it for a test drive. 

To be honest, the episode could have done with a lot more interaction between the two Doctors than it got, and their farewell, as with their meeting, was both brief and underwhelming. The Three Doctors this was not, which is a terrible shame because I'm starting to warm to Colin's portrayal now, and Pat deserved much better as the returning Doctor. There could have been banter like what we got with Two and Three, but Two and Six barely had any scenes together and a joining of forces to defeat the bad guys just didn't happen.

It's a shame because this story, featuring not just the return of the Second Doctor and Jamie but also the Sontarans for the first time in seven years, could should have been pretty epic. Instead, it looked rather nice but missed all the beats it should have hit whilst only delivering a fraction of its potential.