The Two Doctors

If I could pick any Doctor to guest star for a story it would be Patrick Troughton’s. His original run is one I know very well at this point, despite many of the missing visuals, so to get a brand new, unfamiliar second Doctor story should be a treat. In part one, the returning Robert Holmes sensibly keeps the two Doctors apart so you can appreciate their performances separately before the big coming together. Part one is handled pretty well, but the further the story goes on, the less Troughton is treated like a returning hero. His character is ultimately misused.

I don’t see the point of getting a beloved doctor back just to have them lying down half the time and - even worse - being turned into a bad guy with irritating makeup. Troughton spends a sizable chunk of part three acting as a different character, taking Shockeye to dinner. Seeing our second doctor, in a different form, brushing off the death of an innocent bystander is particularly unfortunate, it doesn’t sit right. The story devolves into a gruesome, slapstick run around, which is unusually bland and bad taste for Holmes. I do wonder how much these are characteristics of the era from the script editor and producer rather than Holmes’ pen itself. The waiter being stabbed and killed in a comedy way is shockingly misjudged.

Jamie too is at points reduced to an insensible vegetable on the floor, which is not that fun. I would have liked him to be communicating with the 6th Doctor and Peri on better form.

It’s a shame as in the first third of the story Troughton’s Doctor and Jamie are written well. The dialogue does not play it safe and reveals something new about both characters. The Second Doctor is a little spikier here and talking no holds barred about his race, the Time Lords - so we feel on unfamiliar territory. Baker’s Doctor and Peri funnily enough have a similar dynamic.

The Sontarans are grating in this story and serve no purpose, other than to give the story a monster. They don’t talk like Sontarans - their straightforward, stoic attitude has been removed. “It is not easy being commander, the loneliness of responsibility”. Seeing them tower over the characters they talk to of course does not help - these two seem to be members of the clone race who come from an unusually tall batch.

There is a difficult to understand uneasy alliance between these sontarans, Dastari and Chesseme. Dastari is trying to steal the second doctor's time travel powers and give it to Chessene, who he is building up. The sontarans also hope to leverage these powers and need their allies in order to be able to obtain it. Unfortunately this does not give the sontarans much to do and means they just stand around being uncharacteristically placid. They are about as wasted as the overseas setting which adds little to the production.

Season 22, with the exception of Vengeance on Varos seems to be home to stories that start well but then go south somewhere in the middle of the run time.