User reviews

I've been fairly critical in the past about the episodes from the time of Doctor number six, but when they're good, they're very good.

There is no doubt that the appearance of Doctor number two and companion Jamie adds something special to this episode. As so many episodes from that era are miasing, it's great to get a glimpse into their on screen quality. None of the magic has gone, the humour is still there. Laughs galore.

The script is excellent, stronger then most from the time, an appearance from the Sontarans is always welcome, and the manner in which the Two Doctors cross over is cleverly done.

A special mention for Jacqueline Pearce, who brilliantly portrays Chessene, famous for playing Servalan in Blake's 7, she is excellent to watch, beautiful and charismatic. A role that had previously been intended for Elizabeth Springs, but I'm so glad Pearce did it, she'd get better and better as the story progresses.

Great music, which only adds to the pace and horror. The sets also look rather good. Baker and Bryant are a little overshadowed, but both would stand out more in subsequent parts.

Why is as Jamie living like a hamster?

This is in no way Robert Holmes' best work. He gets some of his great dialogue on but the plot is dreadful. Firstly this isn't a proper multi- Doctor story, by which I mean something which celebrates the show and past Doctors. It is a story which happens to have the Second Doctor in it. The Second Doctor gets a good start and Patrick Troughton is rather good as an Androgum but it is not the swansong he deserved.

This is not really a Sontaran story either as they barely appear and have little influence on the plot. The two Sontarans that appear here look pretty awful too. They should really have been the main villain as Chessene is frankly rather dull.

However, there are plenty of good things too. Shockeye is a terrible character for most of it but the idea of him eating humans is quite disturbing. Jamie fits in remarkably well with the Sixth Doctor and Peri (I would happily have had him join them full-time, maybe post mind- wipe). The Spanish setting also works rather well, even if it has no relevance to the plot.

I enjoyed The Two Doctors but there is little doubt that there are a lot of problems with it. Nice to have an old Doctor back but the show needed to leave them be and do something new, rather than keep thinking about former glories

Although Patrick Troughton's official reign as Doctor Who ended in 1969, he was to make three return appearances in "The Three Doctors", "The Five Doctors" and finally in "The Two Doctors" in 1985, two years before his death. The plot of "The Two Doctors" is a particularly complex one, taking place partly on a space station in a distant part of the Galaxy and partly in Spain, in the countryside just outside Seville, and I won't attempt to summarise it in any detail. Basically, it concerns the attempts of the Sontarans to gain control of the secrets of time travel. The Sontarans, the ones who look like Mr Potato Head's less handsome cousins, are one of a number of races, including the Daleks, the Cybermen and the Ice Warriors, who make regular appearances as the Doctor's enemies. All of these races have essentially the same personality traits, uppermost amongst them being complete and utter ruthlessness and a desire for domination of the Universe.

In this quest the Sontarans have an ally in the shape of the Androgum Chessene. The Androgums are a primitive, savage and brutal race whose main distinguishing feature is their enormous appetite, especially for meat, and their willingness to kill and eat any living creature, including humans, to satisfy that appetite. (Their name is an anagram of "gourmand", and the scriptwriter Robert Holmes appears to have invented them to make propaganda for his own vegetarian opinions. The serial ends with the Sixth Doctor telling Peri that from now on it will be a healthy vegetarian diet for both of them).

Most Androgums are ugly and stupid, but Chessene- her name is pronounced as three syllables- has been "augmented" by a process of genetic modification which has given her the appearance of a beautiful woman and an elevated level of intelligence. Opposing Chessene and the Sontarans are the Second and Sixth Doctors, together with their companions Jamie McCrimmon and Peri. (The laws of time and space do not, apparently, prevent two incarnations of a Time Lord from being present at the same time in the same place).

Another important character is the scientist Dastari. It would, perhaps, be wrong to describe him as a villain as, unlike Chessene and the Sontarans, he has no evil intentions. His function is a common one in "Doctor Who" serials, not so much a mad scientist as an irresponsible scientist who arrogantly turns a blind eye to the dangers and ethical implications of his work. (Professor Stahlman in "Inferno" is another example). It was Dastari who performed the "augmentation" on Chessene, something which both Doctors consider dangerous as they believe that Androgums are essentially violent and treacherous by nature. (They are to be proved right; even the Sontarans come to regret having trusted Chessene). Even worse, Dastari has been backing unauthorised time-travel experiments that the Time Lords fear could threaten the fabric of time itself.

Troughton and Colin Baker combine well to bring out the contrast in their characters' personalities. Paradoxically, although Troughton was a generation older than Baker, it is the now-elderly Second Doctor, mischievous with an impish sense of humour, who in some ways seems younger than the rather pompous, conceited Sixth. (We learn here that the Sixth Doctor is a keen fisherman, just as his predecessor was a cricket enthusiast). Nicola Bryant is as lovely as ever as Peri and Frazer Hines as Jamie looks hardly any older than he did sixteen years earlier.

Special mention needs to be made of some of those in supporting roles, especially Jacqueline Pearce (best remembered today for her role as the main villainess in another BBC sci-fi programme, Servalan in "Blake's Seven") as Chessene. The previous "Doctor Who" serial, "The Mark of the Rani", had also introduced another glamorous female villain, Kate O'Mara's Rani, who combines Chessene's malevolence with Dastari's scientific irresponsibility.

Several characters come to untimely ends, contributing to the complaints about excessive violence in the programme during this period of its history. This serial, however, also contains a good deal of humour, much of it centred upon two subsidiary characters. There is a gleefully brilliant comic performance from John Stratton as the cook Shockeye, an unaugmented Androgum who displays all the brutality and gluttony of his race and is forever in search of something or someone to eat. (Preferably either Jamie or Peri). The other is James Saxon's Oscar, a vain and conceited out-of-work actor who, while waiting to be offered his next great role, is forced to moonlight as a restaurant manager in Seville.

I must admit that at the time Colin Baker was not my favourite Doctor, although I changed my opinion somewhat when I realised how much better he was than his successor Sylvester McCoy. Looking back, I think that I probably misjudged him; he certainly featured in some very enjoyable serials, of which this is one. It was while "The Two Doctors" was being broadcast that the news that the series would be put on hiatus for a year was announced. Baker was eventually to return in "The Trial of a Time Lord" some eighteen months later, but from this point onwards the writing seemed to be on the wall for the programme, largely because the programme-makers received little support from the BBC top brass, notably Michael Grade, the Controller of BBC One. And yet, with serials as good as this one, one wonders why.

The Two Doctors should had been the highlight of Season 22. The return of Patrick Troughton as the second Doctor along with Frazer Hines as his companion Jamie.

Robert Holmes on writing duties. Jacqueline Pearce as the guest villainess and location shooting in Seville.

Unfortunately Peter Moffatt was not regarded as one of Doctor Who's best director especially in the Colin Baker era. He hardly uses Seville as a backdrop.

Holmes story has grotesque villains but very little by way of plot or a coherent story. It was too talky when it needed action. The first episode keeps both Doctors apart when the audience would want them to interact.

The second Doctor is sent by the timelords to stop a renowned scientist to do research on time travel. Meanwhile the Sontarans are hanging about wanting to get their hands on time travel.

The sixth Doctor later follows by which time the Sontarans have taken over the station. It looks like the timelords might have destroyed it instead.

The first point to make to a viewer contemplating diving in to watch "The Two Doctors" hoping to relive some of the whimsy of the black and white Patrick Troughton years of Doctor Who... is to say that this is not a family story.

Almost none of the essence of Troughton's Doctor is permitted to shine through the dirge and nastiness that afflicted the program through too much of the 1980s.

Momentary glimpses of Troughton and companion Jamie's true worth do peek through between dark themes of cannibalism, knife fights, and Colin Baker's bullying and erratic performance of The Sixth Doctor.

Inexplicably, the Sontarans also appear. Don't ask me why. Their connection to the story is tenuous at best. As is the setting in Spain.

In place of witty repartee, Troughton's Doctor (tied down for much of the story) engages in a series of shouting matches with one-dimensional villains.

And the only moral of this story? Apparently we should all be vegetarians.

For the un-initiated, it should be explained that all these things were not what the Classic Series had been built on through its long heyday in the 60s and 70s (and brief renaissance in the late 1980s with Sylvester McCoy's first stories).

After putting the plane together whilst flying it through the First Doctor's wobbly-setted reign, the strength of witty scripts, good stories, and strong character-acting always overwhelmed the weakness of wobbly sets, outlandish costumes, and frequently implausible plots for most of its first two decades. Within the implausible plots, the characters behaved - for the most part - plausibly.

But by the Colin Baker era, the show was overly-lit in set design, and overly-dark in story theme. The costumes were garish, the violence too graphic for children, and the central casting pretty woeful. And in this story from 1985, we have Patrick Troughton and Jamie McCrimmon - two of the great characters of the program's Heroic Age - returning for a mostly unworthy swansong.

Ah well. What can a fan do except... watch.

As for the rest of you... I doubt any of it will make much sense.