Doctor Who: The Two Doctors (1985)

Patrick Troughton is my favorite Doctor, yet even he can’t salvage the mess that is The Two Doctors. It’s extremely depressing to think that this rather ugly serial would be Troughton’s swan song as the Doctor.  To add insult to injury, Troughton’s Doctor is given little do it and is completely useless. 
The story gets off to a promising start, with The Second Doctor and Jamie in the TARDIS, getting ready to board a space station to see a scientist, Dastari.  There is even a nice stylistic choice by beginning the episode in black and white, to pay homage to Troughton’s tenure as the Doctor, and then gradually changing over into color.  It’s fun to see Troughton and Frazer Hines interact with each other, and these opening scenes are probably the best moments in the entire story. Sadly, once they board the space station things take a turn for the worst. 

The Colin Baker Era (seasons 22 and 23) is widely criticized, justifiably so, for the terrible writing and The Two Doctors is no exception.  The Second Doctor, “unofficially” representing the Time Lords, tells Dastari that he needs to put a stop to time travel experiments being done by two scientists named Kartz and Reimer. This offends Dastari, but before he can demand the Doctor to leave, he is knocked out by a drug, while the Doctor is taken prisoner by a Sontaran; Jamie manages to escape.  This exchange between the Doctor and Dastari perfectly sums up what is wrong with this episode: the two characters spend at least five minutes talking about the experiments of two scientists that we never see.  Why even bring up the names Kartz and Reimer if they don’t make an appearance?  It would have been much more effective, and simpler, if Dastari was the one doing the experiments and the Doctor demanded that he stop.  

The Colin Baker Era was often burdened with endless subplots that didn’t go any where. When the Sixth Doctor, through a series of contrivances, arrives at the space station, he is appalled to find that everyone aboard has been massacred and wonders aloud who could have done such a thing. A computer voice tells him that it was the Time Lords.  The Doctor doesn’t believe it and is certain that some one is trying to frame them. His deductions are correct when, by the description Jamie gives him, he concludes that it was the Sontarans.  This subplot could have been effective if it weren’t for the fact that the audience already knows that the Sontarans were responsible for the massacre.  This whole sequence confuses me:  are we supposed to believe it was the Time Lords? If so, then why show us the Sontarans in the early going? If not, then why treat it like a mystery? The Sixth Doctor spends a good chunk of the story trying to solve this “mystery”; it's not until the second episode that he concludes it was the Sontarans.  

Jamie is also adamant that he has seen the Second Doctor murdered by Dastari and company. The Sixth Doctor, naturally, dismisses this because if his earlier incarnation had been killed then couldn’t exist. However, the Sixth Doctor postulates that his earlier self could have died and the reason that he is still alive is because he is at the “epicenter” of the time experiments.  He then tells Peri that such a paradox could bring about the end of the universe and, in fact, the “collapse of the universe has started.”  A few seconds later, the Sixth Doctor stumbles across a hologram of the Second Doctor being killed. Yup! All that speculating about the end of the universe was just to eat up valuable running time. Again, what was the point of this scene? The reveal that the Second Doctor’s murder was just a hologram might have been surprising if it weren’t for the fact that, in the previous episode, we see him being carried to hacienda by Dastari and the Sontaran, Stike.  Why create a mystery when there isn’t one in the first place?  

I admit I find the plot of The Two Doctors to be rather confusing:  Dastari, through a series of operations, has transformed Chessense, an Androgum (a bestial alien species) into a beautiful, and brilliant, woman. They form an alliance with the Sontarans so they can unlock the secrets of Time Lord time travel; Kartz and Reimer have even built a prototype TARDIS.  They find out that the Time Lords have a symbiotic relationship with their TARDISes and hope to extract DNA from the Second Doctor, so they can get their TARDIS to work.  Meanwhile, Shockeye, a “pure” Androgrum (and chef), is solely interested in tasting human flesh as he has never tasted it before.  The Sixth Doctor, along with Peri and Jamie, must stop Chessene and the Sontarans before it’s too late.  This is essentially the storyline, but is riddled with inconsistencies:

1)      The whole reason for kidnapping the Second Doctor is so the Sontarans and Chessene can have access to time travel, but everyone seems to overlook the fact that the Sontarans, at least in previous episodes, already have access to time travel. Why would they align themselves with someone as duplicitous as Chessene?  

2)      In the episode three, Chessene says to hell with extracting the “symbotic nuclei,” let’s turn the Doctor into an Androgum.  She has Dastari implant the Doctor with Shockeye’s DNA. This plot really doesn’t go anywhere; the Second Doctor briefly turns into an Androgum and finds a kindred spirit in Shockeye. The two of them go to a local restaurant, managed by Oscar, and sample all of the food. However, the Doctor’s body eventually rejects the transfusion and he returns to his normal state. 

3)      Dastari has a change of heart when Chessene orders that the Sixth Doctor be killed. Dastari protests, fearing how the Time Lords will react when one of their own has been murdered.  Wouldn’t the operations Dastari performed on the Second Doctor upset the Time Lords, too? The Time Lords were already disturbed by the time travel experiments being performed by Kartz and Reimer, so certainly they would be equally upset at Dastari for using own of their own as a guinea pig. 

4)      It should also be noted that during Troughton’s tenure the Doctor was on the run from the Time Lords and it wasn't until his last story, The War Games, that they finally caught up with him.  Therefore, it is rather odd that he is on an “unofficial” mission from the Time Lords, when they technically shouldn't know his whereabouts.  Though, a similar error occurs in The Five Doctors, when the Second Doctor is able to remember events that occurred a few minutes before his supposed regeneration.  Of course, these inconsistencies have been retconned into the season 6b theory, which states the Time Lords didn’t force the Doctor to regenerate after his trial in The War Games, but, instead, used him as an agent to carry out their will. The fact that we never see the Second Doctor fully regenerate at the end of The War Games does lend this theory some credence. 

Oddly enough, while everything that I just described is, basically, the plot to The Two Doctors, it only constitutes about 50% of the actual story; a good portion of the screen time is devoted to the Sixth Doctor and companions wandering around. Hell, it isn’t until midway through the second part that the Sixth Doctor gets involved with the main action.  It’s even more shameful that Patrick Troughton spends most of his screen time strapped to an operating table.  The Two Doctors is the longest of all the multi-Doctor stories (roughly 135 minutes), yet the two Doctors have less than ten minutes of total screen time together.  There’s also a subplot involving the bumbling actor/restaurant manager and his girlfriend, Anita, as they go moth hunting.  There is a lot of filler, but very little suspense.

None of these inconsistencies would really matter if The Two Doctors was actually a fun story, but, sadly, despite the presence of Troughton and Hines, it is one joyless mess.  This, unfortunately, was the rule rather than the exception in the Colin Baker Era (and even for a good portion of the Peter Davison years). The Two Doctors is a mean-spirited and, shockingly, nihilistic story.  We are witness to such repugnant acts like: the murder of an old, blind woman; Shockeye killing a truck driver (this scene is extremely upsetting because the Second Doctor, in his Androgum state, is an accomplice to the crime); Oscar being stabbed in the heart by Shockeye; Chessene, unable to control her primitive urges, lapping up a puddle of the Sixth Doctor’s blood; the Sontarans being melted by coronic acid; Shockeye constantly drooling over Peri and Jamie; and the Docter killing Shockeye with cyanide. Doctor Who, at its best, not only elicits a sense of wonder, but can make you think as well.  The Two Doctors, on the other hand, is merely content with shocking its audience. The murder of Oscar, for example, doesn’t really have any narrative value; it merely exists to jolt the viewer. Even worse is that his death is treated as a joke; after he gets stabbed Oscar quips, “Dissatisfied customers usually just don’t leave a tip.” He recites a passage from Hamlet and tells his girlfriend, Anita, to look after his moth collection, and then he dies.

It’s also hampered by the some of the worst villains in Doctor Who history: Dastari and Chessene are boring; John Stratton chews the scenery as Shockeye and is more comical than scary; Shockeye is supposed to possess super strength, but his flabby physique suggests otherwise; and the Sontarans, Varl and Stike, are absolutely worthless.  They exist mainly to be given gruesome deaths. Why even include them in the story? They were supposedly added at the suggestion of producer John Nathan Turner, much to the chagrin of scriptwriter, Robert Holmes. It definitely shows, because they could have easily removed from the script and no one would be any the wiser. 

However, the main problem with The Two Doctors, and all of the Colin Baker, is the often toxic relationship between the Sixth Doctor and his companion, Peri. Naturally, the first time we meet them in the story, they are bickering; The Sixth Doctor is fishing and Peri is bored.  This moment perfectly sums up their relationship: nonstop bickering.  These moments are supposed to be funny, but they extremely tiresome after awhile. Why would Peri want to travel with this Doctor? Why would the Doctor want a complete wet blanket like Peri as a companion?  The plan for the Sixth Doctor was that he was supposed to start off as a bad apple, but, as his travels progressed, his lighter side would eventually emerge. This isn’t necessarily a bad idea, after all, that is how the First Doctor (William Hartnell) started out; in An Unearthly Child the Doctor is, essentially, the villain of the piece.  However, there are two specific reasons why this worked so well in the Hartnell Era and why it fell flat under Colin Baker:

1)      The companions.  An Unearthly Child is told from the point of view of school teachers, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright. They are both likable characters and their concern over one of their students, Susan, leads them directly to the Doctor and the TARDIS.  The Doctor is initially hostile towards both of them, but, as the series progressed, he eventually warms up to them and this positive influence wears off on him.  They constantly challenged the Doctor and, as a result, this would force him to rethink his position on many things.  Peri, on the other hand, just complains the entire time. The writers should have spent time trying to develop the relationship of the Doctor and Peri, but it virtually remained the same. There was some attempt, mainly by the actors, to soften the relationship in The Mysterious Planet, but it was too little too late; in fact, the next serial, Mind Warp, would be Peri’s final story.  Also, poor Nicola Bryant, she spent most of her time on Doctor Who, running around in revealing, or tight outfits, and being leered at by grotesque alien monsters. There was never any real attempt to develop Peri into a competent companion, her sole function is to provide eye candy for the male viewers. 

2)      The Doctor’s good side is hinted at with the close bond he shares with his granddaughter, Susan. The Doctor always has her best interest at heart and we, rightfully, suspect underneath his grumpy exterior that he is really a good man; he just needs Ian and Barbara to remind him of this fact. Our suspicions are confirmed later on in the series when the Doctor takes the orphaned Vicki under his wing. It’s interesting that in Vicki’s first story, The Rescue, that it the Doctor she takes an immediate liking to, while being slightly suspicious of Ian and Barbara. There is not a hint of this in Season 22; instead we are constantly bombarded with unpleasant characters, gratuitous violence, and a very ineffectual Doctor.  Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant did their best with the material they were given, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the poor writing and the shoddy production values. 

It can be argued that is The Two Doctors is supposed to be unpleasant, as it is an anti-meat, anti-hunting, pro-vegetarian parable by Robert Holmes. The problem is that whatever message Holmes was trying to get across gets lost in the endless subplots, boring villains, and ridiculous moments (Shockeye and the Second Doctor eating twelve servings at a restaurant, Oscar’s cowardice, etc). It’s a script that is in desperate need of a rewrite.  Why over complicate such a straightforward message? If Holmes wanted to do anti-hunting story, then why not do a version of The Most Dangerous Game with the Doctor? The simplicity of that story is what makes it great. Why would you even want to shoe horn a message into a multi-Doctor story? It’s not exactly the ideal venue.  Holmes was one of the better writers on Classic Who, The Two Doctors is one of his few misfires.

There is little to recommend in The Two Doctors; because Patrick Troughton is given very little to do, the only bright spot in the story is the character of Anita (Carmen Gomez).  She is immensely likable character and is far more help to the Doctor than Peri ever was.  When the Sontaran spaceship lands, she, mistakenly, believes that an airplane has crashed and immediately wants to help; her character is brimming with compassion - a rarity in the Colin Baker Era.  

It’s a shame that the Sixth Doctor didn’t exchange Peri for her.  Or better yet, the Second Doctor should have invited her to come along traveling with him and Jamie in the TARDIS. That would have made for a fun adventure. 

Credits

Cast: Colin Baker (The Sixth Doctor), Patrick Troughton (The Second Doctor), Nicola Bryant (Peri), Frazer Hines (Jamie), John Stratton (Shockeye), Jacqueline Pearce (Chessene), Laurence Payne (Dastari), James Saxon (Oscar), Carmen Gomez (Anita), Tim Raynham (Varl), Clinton Greyn (Stike), Aimée Delamain (Doña Arana), Nicholas Fawcett (Technician).

Director: Peter Moffatt
Writer: Robert Holmes
Running Time: 135 min [3 Episodes]