Day 169 — June 18th 2021
The Three Doctors Episodes Three and Four
The Three Doctors — Episode Three
I can’t decide if Omega is brilliant or rubbish. Oh, I know, the answer probably lies somewhere in between, but it’s such a strange sensation watching this episode and seeing him swinging wildly from one direction to the other. It’s the dialogue and performance which suffers the most, I think. One minute you’re getting brilliant lines with a truly powerful delivery;
Doctor Who: ‘All my life I’ve known of you and honoured you as
our greatest hero.’
Omega: ‘A hero? I should have been a god!’
And then a minute later he’s offered up Doctor Who a chair and they’ve sat down to have a chat about the early days of the Time Lords. Omega isn’t at all powerful in those scenes, and it sort of robs him of the booming energy on show elsewhere.
I sort of suspect that I may also be put off by the fact that we’re treated to lengthy descriptions of the way Time Lord society was formed, and I’ve said before that I’m not a big fan of much Time Lord stuff, so it doesn’t particularly do anything for me.
That said, it does feel right for this story. After more than 300 episodes you’d need something big to justify having the three Doctor Whos brought together, and the idea of an ancient foe from Gallifrey’s history coming back to seek revenge really fits the bill. It’s so much more interesting than just having them come together to fight any old monster, and so for once I’ll give them a pass on all the mythology stuff.
Heck, I don’t even mind it when we occasionally cut to the Time Lords bickering with each other about breaking laws while trying to cling on to the last of their energy. By rights it should rob them of the god-like powers they displayed in The War Games, but in the context of the story it sort of works. And hey, I quite like their costumes.
While we’re on the subject, that’s the one thing about Omega which totally works — the design of his costume is iconic. The mask, the collar, the robes… Ooh, I love it. Proper beautiful. You could bring that design back almost unchanged in New Testament Who and I think it would hold up fine. The brilliant Matthew Savage, who was a concept artist on the early years of modern Doctor Who, did his own redesign a few years ago which I think looks brilliant. I’m not gagging to see the character back, but I’d not mind seeing what the modern team could do with the design.
While we’re on the subject of Omega and his domain, I reckon our characters this week must all have gone blind. I spoke yesterday about the realisation of the palace being a bit naff and one of the few weak points in this story, but on being taken into the throne room in this episode, at least three people disagree with me;
Jo: ‘It’s fabulous!’
Doctor Who: ‘Yes, most impressive, I must admit that.’
Dr Tyler: ‘Almost worth the trip just to see this place.’
Still I suppose it’s better than having them wander in saying ‘you’ve been stuck here thousands of years and this is the best you could come up with?’.
This episode is home to one of Nick Courtney’s most famous lines as the Brigadier, when he speculates on where they could have ended up. It’s obviously brilliant — and having grown up not that far from Cromer gives me an extra chuckle — but I found myself really enjoying his whole attempt to come to terms with their situation;
The Brigadier: ‘Do you realise what you’ve done? You’ve stolen the whole of UNIT HQ. Now what am I going to tell Geneva? That the whole blessed building has been picked up and put down on some deserted beach? We’re probably miles from London!’
Second Doctor Who: ‘I’m afraid we’re a little bit further than that, Brigadier.’
The Brigadier: ‘You mean we’re not even in the same country? There’ll be international repercussions. This could be construed as an invasion.’
The interplay between Troughton and Courtney continues to be a highlight in this one, even though it’s not really the relationship they had during The Web of Fear or The Invasion. Indeed, I’m not entirely sure that Troughton is playing the same part here that he did in his own era, but it still works and still somehow feels totally right. If anything, it’s closer to his earlier portrayal in Season Four, when he was still working out what to do with the part. And it does lead to another belter of a line when Omega asks Pertwee’s Doctor Who ‘are you sure that you and he are of the same intelligence?’.
A 7/10.
The Three Doctors — Episode Four
Sticking with discussion of Troughton’s Doctor Who, just how satisfying is the resolution of this story hinging on his recorder? It’s been something of a running joke across the story — from his threatening to play it in Episode One and his constant whining about having lost it ever since — so when the climax comes it feels both earned and clever. I’ll confess to having forgotten how they brought the story to a close, so I let out a little cheer when I realised. Bob Baker and Dave Martin come in for some real flak in some quarters, but I reckon they’re some of the best writers on the series right now.
There’s other areas in which the narrative all comes together satisfyingly, too. I love that this is the point at which Doctor Who’s exile comes to an end. It feels totally right that they should give him back some freedom having single-handedly (well, technically…) saved Gallifrey. It also comes at just the right time, when the series feels ready for a bit of a change. Ironically UNIT appear in more episodes of Season Ten than they did of Season Nine when he was still officially exiled, but that’s neither here nor there.
The one thing I do miss from this final episode is the planned inclusion of Jamie. When it became apparent that Frazer Hines was going to be too busy on Emmerdale Farm to take part in the story fully there was hope that he could appear for the final scene, telling his Doctor Who to hurry up because he’s needed elsewhere. I haven’t missed Jamie from the story as a whole, but it would have been lovely to see him pop up for a quick cameo.
It’s also such a shame that Hartnell’s health prevented him from taking a bigger role in the narrative. Seeing him pop up for brief interludes has been brilliant, but I can’t help longing to see him arrive in the TARDIS for the final round of goodbyes. Or — even better — in Omega’s palace just in time to offer him the freedom his craves. There was a point in Episode Three where the Time Lords decide they have no choice and will have to send Hartnell in, and for a brief moment I hoped I’d entirely forgotten a full appearance.
While I’m (sort of) on the subject of the TARDIS, how much better is the new Control Room introduced in this story compared to the mess we had in The Time Monster? I believe I’m right in saying that the designer Roger Liminton was intending to create something closer to the original 1963 design, and this fits the bill perfectly. It manages to be clean and simple while also updating the design with some lovely touches. I love the back wall behind the scanner; all glass panels and lighting effects. This version of the room doesn’t show up all that many times in its full form (I don’t think), which is a shame, because it looks so much better than some of the tired Control Rooms we’ve had already in the 1970s, and certainly better than some of the ones that are still to come.
On the whole, The Three Doctors is a lot of fun. It’s probably not the strongest story in the world, and the resolution is perhaps a bit easy all things considered. But it’s clear that the team were having a lot of fun making it — that comes across far more here than in the oft-lauded The Dæmons. We hear about how Troughton and Pertwee rubbed each other up the wrong way due to differing approaches to the material, but none of that is evident on screen. These four episodes are just so much fun to watch — and that’s all I can really as of Doctor Who.
With another 7/10 for this episode the story averages an 8/10, which puts it just inside my top ten.
