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| The Doctor (Colin Baker) tries to rescue his earlier self (Patrick Troughton). |
3 episodes. Approx. 133 minutes. Written by: Robert Holmes. Directed by: Peter Moffatt. Produced by: John Nathan Turner.
THE PLOT
The Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and his companion, Jamie (Frazer Hines), are on a mission for the Time Lords. It's a simple diplomatic affair. The Doctor is to meet with station head Dastari (Laurence Payne) to ask him to suspend some time experiments - something which doesn't please Dastari one bit. The negotiations are already going badly when the station suddenly comes under attack by Sontarans.
Feeling ripples of the attack on his earlier, the Sixth Doctor decides to visit the station. He and Peri arrive to discover the effects of the massacre. Everyone is dead - save for Jamie, who escaped into the station infrastructure. They learn that the Second Doctor was kidnapped by Dastari, and follow the trail to modern-day Spain, just outside Seville. That is when they discover the real architect of this plot: Chessene (Jacqueline Pearce), an Androgum - a race driven entirely by their drive for sensual pleasures. Chessene has been genetically engineered to genius level, and is now manipulating Dastari, the Sontarans, and her fellow Androgum, Shockeye (John Stratton) in an attempt to gain power over the whole of creation!
CHARACTERS
The Sixth Doctor: This script is a particularly good match for Colin Baker, with Robert Holmes' florid dialogue a perfect fit for the actor's theatrical tendencies. There's what seems to be a ham-fisted moment in Episode Two, in which the Doctor imparts exposition to Jamie just in time to overheard by Field Marshall Stike... which Episode Three then reveals was deliberate on the Doctor's part; he noticed Stike's approach, and so he decided to say what he did to push the Sontaran into action. Therefore, Holmes' script tailors this most theatrical of Doctors to actually give a performance for the benefit of his enemy.
The Second Doctor: The last of Patrick Troughton's three returns to the series and, in my opinion, the best. In the multi-Doctor anniversary specials during the Pertwee and Davison eras, Troughton was certainly fun to watch and gave his scenes a boost with his energy. But when I watch The Three Doctors or The Five Doctors, I can never escape the sense that Troughton is playing a caricature, a send-up of what people remember his Doctor being like. He was rarely as purely comical as the character we saw in those specials. The script to The Two Doctors does seem to have mixed up Doctors Two and Three a bit (the Second Doctor working for the Time Lords, for instance), but it is the only of Troughton's returns that allows him to play both his Doctor's comical and serious sides.
Peri: The Sixth Doctor/Peri partnership has settled in nicely by this time. The two bicker, but it seems clear to me while watching that the two characters are genuinely fond of each other. Even in the midst of arguing on the space station, the Doctor pauses to lay a comforting hand on Peri's shoulder, for example. Peri also shows a basic, person-to-person compassion both Doctors lack. After Oscar's murder, the two Doctors bundle out of the restaurant and start arguing about which way they should go. Peri lingers a moment to comfort Anita, then angrily quiets them.
Jamie: This story was made almost two decades after Frazer Hines' time as a regular, and the years definitely show. Still, Hines' performance is a good one. He and Troughton recapture their chemistry instantly, and the interplay between the Second Doctor and Jamie in the opening sequence is a joy to watch. He also plays well opposite Colin Baker, to the point that I think it's actually a shame Jamie doesn't stick around with the Sixth Doctor and Peri at the end of the story - The dynamic works among the three characters, and the way in which Jamie casually pokes at the Doctor's ego when he falls down a rickety ladder is a wonderfully relaxed counterpoint to the more strident Doctor/Peri bickering.
Shockeye: Of the many pleasures I find in this story, John Stratton's Shockeye is the greatest. Shockeye, the Androgum chef, may be the series' single greatest example of Douglas Adams' description of the perfect Doctor Who villain: He's initially hilarious because of the ridiculous things he says, then monstrous as you come to realize that he means every word he says. His desire to eat a human begins as a whim, then builds to an all-encompassing obsession. For the first two episodes, his antics are largely comical, albeit darkly. Then he turns frightening. The effective Episode Two cliffhanger sees him looming over Peri, hands outstretched, intoning, "Pretty, pretty," in eager anticipation of his next meal. He becomes progressively more violent from there, until he is finally chasing a wounded Sixth Doctor through the fields, determined to kill him and probably eat him when he's done.
THOUGHTS
The Two Doctors is an often criticized story, and not without reason. The 45-minute format of Season 22 required this story to be a 3-parter, which is at least half an episode too long. This results in some pacing issues, and some general structural messiness.
The worst of the padding is in the slow-paced opening episode, which sees far too much time devoted to the Sixth Doctor and Peri evading the space station's automated defenses while picking their way through the station infrastructure. These scenes really aren't bad. But given that this material is only peripherally related to the main action, it's ridiculous that the characters are still there for a good chunk of Episode Two. Peter Moffatt's direction is too stagy to make up for the lagging pace with atmosphere, and the Episode One cliffhanger is one of the limpest of the entire series.
Add in an irritating guest character (James Saxon's imbecilic Oscar Botcheby). Then mix in some structural issues, many of them the result of the producer-imposed presence of the Sontarans in a story that simply doesn't require them. It becomes easy to see why The Two Doctors comes in for criticism.
So why do I enjoy it so much?
I do enjoy this story a lot. Though not the best televised Sixth Doctor adventure, it is nevertheless my favorite one. It's also by far my favorite multi-Doctor story. And while the cast certainly deserve a share of the credit for that, the main reasons I enjoy it come back to the same source as the flaws: Robert Holmes' script.
OF POETRY AND PROSE
Robert Holmes has always been a writer who has enjoyed painting pictures with words. This is one reason, I think, why his scripts tend to stand out in classic Who. The show rarely had much money for visual splendor - but at his best, Holmes had a knack for creating that same feel with language.
The Two Doctors may be structurally flawed, but the language of its script is rich and resonant. Holmes stuffs his characters' mouths with words that evoke so much. Take the Sixth Doctor's musing about the scent of decay:
"That is the smell of death, Peri. Ancient musk, heavy in the air. Fruit-soft flesh peeling from white bones. The unholy, unburiable smell of Armageddon. Nothing quite so evocative as one's sense of smell, is there?"
Then there are Shockeye's many asides about the flavor and preparation of meat. Or the Second Doctor, in Androgum mode, describing for Shockeye the benefits of enjoying an appetizer before diving into the main course:
"One should begin with a light dish, something to bring relish to the appetite: Pate de foie gras de Strasbourg en croute, for instance, or a serving of Belon oysters. Even a light salad with artichoke hearts and country ham will suffice. It gets the digestive juices flowing!"
Only during Oscar's "definitive Hamlet" speech does the flowery language fall flat. Most of the poetic lines go to Colin Baker, Patrick Troughton, or John Stratton. And when these actors are embracing Robert Holmes at his most vivid, the plot ceases to matter - The language itself soars, creating something that's a genuine pleasure just to sit back and listen to.
THE OPENING SEQUENCE
Nor is all the plotting as bad as I've made out. I've already mentioned the structural flaws, most of them caused by overlength. So now let me praise the serial's opening scenes, whose structural tightness shows that Holmes still had all his storytelling instincts fully intact.
The script tidily sets the pieces on the board all within this sequence. The characters - Dastari, Shockeye, Chessene, and the Sontarans. Shockeye's overriding desire to eat human flesh, Jamie's in particular. The time experiments. Dastari's enhancing of Chessene, and Chessene's relationship with Shockeye. Virtually every piece of what follows is either seen or mentioned in these opening scenes, which also manage to find time for some amusing Troughton/Hines interplay.
THEME
A final word for the way the script plays with theme. Thematic resonance isn't something you find much of in classic Who, but Holmes' script is stuffed with it. It's fairly well-known that Holmes, a vegetarian, wanted to color his script as anti-meat, hence scenes such as Shockeye detailing the treatment of animals bred for slaughter or "tenderizing" a screaming Jamie while telling Dastari that primitive humans "don't feel pain the same way you or I do."
But, intentionally or not, the various characters are bound together by a theme of obsession. Every one of the villains is driven by an obsession. Dastari is obsessed with Chessene, and so has enhanced her to a genius intellect in order to "set her among the gods!" Chessene is obsessed with power, with making the Androgums the dominant species in the galaxy. Field Marshall Stike is obsessed with turning the tide of the Sontarans' war agains the Rutans by using time travel technology. Their obsessions bind them together to destroy the space station, to blame that on the Time Lords, and to kidnap the Doctor. But as their agendas start to conflict, the obsessive focus each places on his or her own goals leads to conflict and ultimately betrayal.
By contrast with the others, Shockeye's obsession with the purely sensual (specifically with eating, though it's clear that the sexual overtones in his menacing of both Peri and Jamie are not accidental) seems almost pure and simple. Which doesn't make it any less brutal. Even as the Sontarans literally self-destruct, even as Chessene turns on Dastari, Shockeye remains intent on sating his appetite for flesh. In this, he has other mirrors in the story: The Doctor's flirtation with fishing, Oscar's obsession with his moths which he kills in order to preserve and admire. Shockeye takes their actions to a new and horrifying level - one which puts the Doctor straight off meat at the story's end, as he agrees with Peri to embrace a "vegetarian diet for both of us."
OVERALL
This is one of those stories, much like Logopolis, where I'm very torn as to my final rating. As with that story, there are clear narrative flaws that keep this from being a "10," much as I might like it to be. The story is clearly overlong and is structurally sloppy. But it's so entertaining as it alternates from comedy to horror to horror that is blackly comedic. Holmes' script is among his most purely literate, and his language often soars above the messy plot and pedestrian direction.
My head says "7," my heart says "9." So I'm going to do the most reasonable thing and split the difference.
Rating: 8/10.
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