Day 329 — November 25th 2021
The Two Doctors Part Three
The Two Doctors — Part Three
It’s been so long since we did a six-parter that I’d forgotten just how hard it is to stretch the story out over that running time. Robert Holmes was better than most at making it work, but even he’s not immune, as this episode clearly shows. There’s a lot in here which feels like padding and doesn’t add very much to the story. The main one is Troughton’s Doctor Who being transformed into an Androgum.
It happens at Chessene’s request, although her sudden desire to have someone to court comes out of nowhere and feels more than a little out of character — base instincts like companionship have felt beneath her lofty ideas up to now. The actual process of transforming him from Time Lord to another species feels bizarrely simple, and then off he sets into town so we can do the traditional sightseeing chase that Doctor Who likes to do when they venture overseas.
As with Arc of Infinity, this feels like a poor relation to the brilliant City of Death chase. There’s zero energy to any of these events, as our heroes wander the streets at a leisurely pace. When we cut to Chessene and Dastari having a ride in a horse-drawn carriage it feels like we’ve hit a new low — I genuinely laughed out loud because it was such a bizarre and terrible choice. I like it when the show does ‘so bad it’s sort of good’ nonsense, but this just falls into the realm of being bad.
If there’s a saving grace for the whole sub plot it’s Troughton himself, who’s clearly having a great time playing up the characteristics of the Androgums. He and Shockeye are having a right laugh together, and while I’d much rather spend more time with him as Doctor Who, it’s hard not to enjoy seeing him having a good time. The other thing which ends up feeling like padding — not just in this episode, but across the story as a whole — is the inclusion of the Sontarans. They’re instrumental in attacking the space station in Part One (although it almost entirely happens off-screen), but after that their entire purpose is to wander around on the veranda and make vague threats. It reaches a nadir in this episode, when they manage to pretty much wipe themselves out, with only minimal input from Chessene.
It also doesn’t help that the Sontarans in this one look so awful. I wasn’t a fan of the design when they popped up in The Invasion of Time complete with heavy eye shadow, but at least those masks looked a little more like someone was trying to make them work. These look so plastic and static, and they fit the actors so poorly that you can see their real lips moving around behind the mouth of the mask. Add to that the neck rings which aren’t even attached to the costume and just swing around loosely and the whole thing has a real air of a production team who just can’t be bothered. This feels like such a step down in production values from the effort which went into the space station in Part One or the realisation of Sil only a few episodes ago.
There’s one other slapdash bit in this episode which really annoys me, and always sticks out as so rubbish that I hope they try and fix it for the Blu-ray. When the two incarnations of Doctor Who finally come face to face they shout ‘snap’ at each other… but while it’s clearly intended to be done in unison, Colin misses his cue and comes in a second too late, which spoils the whole effect. I know they were up against things in the studio, time-wise, but surely they could have found the time to re-do that? At the very least tweak it in post-production! Colin’s got his back to the camera, so it’s not as though you’d have to do more than shift the sound a little.
We get a return to violence in this one which feels like it’s taking us back to Vengeance on Varos, and after Mark of the Rani had done a good job of having Doctor Who describe violence as something alien to a Time Lord and refusing a gun when offered. Here, he polishes off Shockeye with some cyanide, and it sits just as uncomfortably as the acid bath scene did the other day. You could argue that he’s doing it here in self defence — he’s being chased at the time, and Shockeye has already injured him — but when he makes not just one but two quips about the man’s death (‘your just desserts’ and ‘he’s been mothballed’) it rather gives the impression that it’s the most fun he’s had all day.
I’m dropping to a 4/10 for this one, but that’s still enough to make it my highest-rated Colin story so far.
