I’ve always said that, for me, the most traumatic regeneration in the history of Doctor Who was that of Patrick Troughton’s Doctor at the end of The War Games. Unlike other regenerations, we didn’t see one Doctor fall to the floor (or explode into a CGI firework display if you’re a younger viewer) only to sit up a moment later played by another actor. No, instead, my six year old self was left traumatised by the sight of a faceless Doctor spinning into the monochrome void. I then had to endure what, back then, seemed like a very long wait for the new Doctor to tumble out of the TARDIS the following year.

In the meantime, I kept up with the Doctor’s adventures in the pages of TV Comic, where, despite having been exiled to Earth in the 20th century, my hero still wore Patrick Troughton’s face. Well, that is until some scarecrows carted him off and gave him a Jon Pertwee makeover (don’t ask). Now, while I didn’t know about ‘canon’ in those days, I was sort of instinctively aware that the comic strips didn’t count (same with the stories in the annuals that I found under the Christmas tree each year). As far as I was concerned, the Time Lords had executed my Doctor and turned him into another fella. For me, there was no gap between Seasons 6 and 7. Some fans, however, didn’t feel the same way that I did, and Season 6B theory was born.

I was never attracted to the Season 6B theory as it seemed a lot of effort just to explain the fact that Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines looked older in The Two Doctors. Well, yes, of course they did – the actors WERE older! We, the audience, were meant to ignore that, surely? Not according to some Whovians, who decided that Troughton’s grey hair meant that the 2nd Doctor must have escaped his forced regeneration somehow and teamed up with Jamie again. I’m afraid that even when Terrance Dicks lent his support to the idea, I couldn’t take it seriously. So when Big Finish decided to fall down the Season 6B rabbit hole with Beyond War Games, I was initially resistant to follow them. While I normally snap up any 2nd Doctor adventure, Companion Chronicle or Short Trip that they produce, this time I decided to save my money. Okay, I’ll admit, I was curious, especially given that Michael Troughton would be stepping into his father’s shoes. If you’ve heard his narration of the Target novelisation of The Dominators, not to mention the audiobook of his own biography of his father, then you know that Michael does a spot on impression of his late dad (though, personally, I think David Troughton does a slightly better one). I tried to be strong, I really did, but then I received Beyond War Games as a Christmas present…and it would have been churlish of me not to give it a listen. (Please ignore any suggestions you might hear from my family that I was dropping hints left, right and centre that it would make a good gift.)

The box set contains two stories: ‘The Final Beginning’ and ‘Wrath of the Ice Warriors.’ In The Final Beginning, the 2nd Doctor materialises on a planet that is obviously not the Earth in the 20th century and is elated to find that his appearance hasn’t changed. At first he thinks it’s a Time Lord cock-up and he has escaped his sentence, however, he is haunted by strange snatches of dialogue that we, the audience, know comes from Pertwee’s first story, Spearhead in Space. I can’t tell you too much more about what follows because it would seriously spoil the story for anyone who wants to hear it. However, it is safe to say the story does follow the normal 6B speculation that it was the Celestial Intervention Agency that took a hand in pulling the 2nd Doctor from his own time stream and setting him up as a reluctant agent in their service. He’s also given a handler in the form of a particularly unpleasant Time Lady called Raven, to send him on his missions. Sad to say, rather than giving us someone interesting and mysterious in the mold of the Time Lords we saw in The War Games, Raven is a walking talking cliché of a character (think of her as a cut-price Servalan from Blake’s 7), and I quickly tired of her interventions. The story was…okay, but it suffered under the weight of trying to set up the framework for the 6B adventures.

What did I think of Wrath of the Ice Warriors then? To be continued...