Day 126 — May 6th 2021
The War Games Episodes Five and Six
The War Games — Episode Five
In my head I had The War Games down as four or five episodes in the past, a few episodes in the future, and then the big finale you-know-where. But it’s not that delineated at all. All the elements are mixed in together (I could make a naff comparison to the War Zones here, but I don’t), and it works so much better than I recalled.
I also thought that I really liked all the historical stuff but that the futuristic bits weren’t as much to my taste, and I’m totally wrong about that too. The stuff in the Central Control Zone is magnificent, and if anything it’s even scarier than all the fighting and guns out on the battlefields.
Zoe’s interrogation might be the single scariest thing we’ve had in Doctor Who so far. It feels surprisingly adult, and I’d love to know what kids watching at the time thought about it. The Security Chief wearing that headset could look ridiculous, but it’s played so well by James Bree that I totally buy it and I’m un-nerved as a man in his thirties! The interrogation itself is unusually forceful;
Security Chief: ‘My name is…’
Zoe: ‘Zoe Heriot.’
Security Chief: ‘To which resistance group do you belong? When did you join the resistance?’
Zoe: ‘I did not join the resistance.’
Security Chief: ‘I joined the resistance. What time do you come from?’
Zoe: ‘The twenty first century.’
Security Chief: ‘Impossible. There is no twenty first century Time Zone. I was born in…’
Zoe: ‘I was born in the twenty first century.’
Security Chief: ‘Try again. I was born in…’
Zoe: ‘I was born in the twenty first century!’
I think one of the things that makes it all the more successful is that it’s basically the scene from The Wheel in Space where the Cybermen make a crew member from the Wheel look at pictures of the other guest characters. There it was slow as anything and a bit dull, while here it’s twisted into something with a bit of pace and terror.
And it’s made all the scarier by the fact that later on, when Doctor Who arrives to rescue his friend, she’s slumped in the chair almost lifeless. I’ve not always taken to Zoe as a character during Season Six, but there’s no denying that Wendy Padbury has been brilliant in her performance, and her pain during these scenes has been one of her best moments. Utterly gripping.
I’m also impressed by how willing this story is now to start bumping people off. When Harper was introduced in the last episode you get the sense that he’s going to be with our regulars until the end. He’s presented as being one of the leaders of the Resistance, and so his death here genuinely shocked me. That it’s achieved via another interesting weapon effect (complete with a prop gun which flashes!) makes it all the more effective.
If I’m going to take anything away from Season Six, I think it’s going to be the attention given to making each of the weapons used by aliens distinctive and visually interesting. It’s perhaps an odd thing to pick out, but I love it.
And then we get a full-on massacre in the closing moments! Jamie has managed to commandeer one of the enemy time machines and lead an attack on Central Command… only for a squad of guards to be waiting for them on arrival. It’s fair to say that this story doesn’t give you a lot of hope for the survival of our heroes, which coupled with the knowledge that they’re all off in a few episodes’ time makes it all the more effective.
A solid 8/10.
The War Games — Episode Six
This episode is momentous for a couple of contrasting reasons.
The big one that everyone knows is that it’s the first time that the Time Lords are namechecked in the series. They’re not said at this point to be Doctor Who’s own people, that’s a revelation for tomorrow or the day after, but it’s the first time those two words have been put together to name a race in the Doctor Who universe. I knew happened in this episode, but I don’t think I realised just how throwaway it was;
Security Chief: ‘The War Chief. His people have the secret of time travel.’
Scientist: ‘Are you suggesting he’s bringing in his own people? The Time Lords?’
I wonder if viewers at the time put two and two together to work out that Doctor Who himself was one of these beings? On the one hand we’ve had five and a half years of mystery about who he really is, with only vague nods towards his past and his home, but on the other this episode is full of the Security Chief suggesting that he might be the same species as the War Chief. With hindsight it’s easy to spot, but I suspect it would have been harder at the time.
And that’s if anyone was really paying attention anyway, because that brings us to the other momentous thing about this episode; it’s the first time the ratings have slipped below 5 million since the very first episode way back in 1963. They’ve risked doing it a couple of times recently (both Episodes Three and Five of this story were seen by 5.1 million people), but this is the week it finally dipped under, all the way down to 4.2 million, which is 0.2 million fewer people than watched the first episode of An Unearthly Child.
This episode won’t hold the record for long, as Episode Eight takes over with 3.5 million just a couple of weeks later.
There’s something almost typically Doctor Who about that, isn’t there? They finally do something game changing, introducing a concept that will stick with the series forever more, and it ends up happening in some of the lowest-watched episodes ever.
While I’ve enjoyed this one well enough, I feel like it’s the one episode of the story so far that you could afford to miss. I’ll still be giving it a 6/10 — it’s not a bad episode at all — but you can certainly feel the sag in the middle of the story here. Despite that there’s a couple of really nice moments, including the slightly morbid follow-up to the cliffhanger;
Zoe: ‘Doctor? What about Jamie? Have they killed him?’
Doctor: ‘I don’t know!’
I think I’m ready for a change of scenery now. We’ve been in the Civil War barn and the Central Control area for too long, let’s get moving again!
