The War Games
Story 50, Episodes 245-254, Season 6 Episodes 35-44
Doctor: The Second Doctor
Companions: Jamie McCrimmon, Zoe Heriot
The War Games is one of the most crucial and momentous stories in the 55-year history of Doctor Who. It mostly lives up to its billing by providing a problem that the Doctor finally can’t solve on his own.
The Review
In the 50th anniversary promo, Matt Smith says “I’ve been running all my lives.” This isn’t entirely true. Until Hell Bent, this is when the Doctor stops truly and totally from his people. (Tellingly perhaps, the Doctor’s reason for running, boredom, is not challenged until Heaven Sent.) The War Games starts out like any other story might, though World War I is the most viscerally brutal setting we have seen on the show. As it spirals, it stops being a standard classic Who serial and becomes one of the first stories to fully immerse itself in building the lore of Doctor Who. My biggest revelation about Troughton’s Doctor is how truly young and inexperienced he plays him, which makes perfect sense in universe. The Doctor really has just been winging it all this time. At the end of episode nine, his luck has ran out.
Rather quickly we learn that is not World War I, and that something sinister is going on. That takes place in the personage of Smythe, the first of the mysterious aliens we meet (they are only ever referred to as aliens). With sinister music and glasses that can alter the memories of the British soldiers he controls, he plans to have the whole crew shot. The Doctor, Zoe, and Jamie manage to gain allies in the nurse Jennifer and lieutenant Carstairs, and as they try to escape find themselves attacked by Romans. Slowly the plot is unveiled. The growing mystery is handled well, and a bulk of the story is navigating the interpersonal relationships between all the characters with often shifting allegiances. We meet Von Weich, Smythe’s German counterpart with a snide accent and a monocle to manipulate his soldiers. The first glimpse we get of headquarters is Smythe and a lackey in the bizarre sci-fi glasses staring down the Doctor through their video chat portals.
The sets are elaborate, as they should be for the 60s finale. Smythe’s, and later the resistance’s, headquarters is a dilapidated chateau. Headquarters is a sprawling sci-fi base of operations. Unfortunately we lose Jennifer early on in the story, it is a shame too as I really liked her character and interplay with Carstairs. Carstairs is captured, so the Doctor and Jamie ride in one of the remote-controlled TARDIS-like devices to headquarters and disguise themselves in a lecture. The school aspect of the games is not touched on much more, but the Doctor is soon recognized immediately by the satanic-looking War Chief rocking the Hunger Games beard 45 years early. Meanwhile, Jamie meets a resistance group in the American Civil War: the aliens have been ‘processing’ human soldiers stolen out of battle. 5% are able to resist the conditioning and have been living on the edges of existence. We also meet the Security Chief, a cold and quite disturbing man.
The story is ten episodes long, and didn’t have to be. There is certainly some padding, but incredibly I never felt like the story was dull as I did in some of the predictable stories throughout Troughton’s run. There is a real sense of unpredictably, as we continually meet larger and large foes. Smythe seems imposing, when we encounter him again he’s scarcely worth thinking about and is killed (Von Weich too). The Security Chief reveals that the War Chief is a Time Lord, one of the Doctor’s people and is certain they’re in league with each other. He says as much when the Big Bad, the War Lord arrives. Playing a sadistic dictatorial Steve Jobs, the War Lord is as brutal as you think he might be. The Doctor is eventually captured, and the War Chief gives him an offer: join him in a coup to overthrow the War Lord. The Doctor does not, but is forced to get the resistance leaders (now including a non-subtle Mexican revolutionary general) to HQ or the War Lord would neutron bomb them to hell.
I’ve seen The War Games described as a situation continually spiraling further further out of control, and it’s true. The final layer is the reveal that the War Lord is stealing human soldiers with the War Chief’s rudimentary time travel technology to breed a fighting force capable of conquering the galaxy. The Security Chief records the War Chief’s conversation and tries to arrest him, forcing the War Chief onto to the Doctor’s side in trying to shut down the War Games. With his help, the take over headquarters after drawing away guards to all the timezones, the War Chief viciously killing the Security Chief. The Doctor then plans to use the War Chief’s machines to return all the soldiers home, but there’s a crucial issue: they’re almost completely drained (the War Chief not truly solving TARDIS mechanics). As the War Lord kills the War Chief, the Doctor knows only one thing can solve this horrific mess: the Time Lords. Jamie and Zoe don’t understand why the Doctor is so afraid of his own people, and the three run back to the TARDIS as the world slows down, the Doctor clawing at the door.
He does actually manage to get into the TARDIS, but the Doctor just cannot escape and is recalled to his home world. We see the War Lord’s trial presided over by the calmly powerful Time Lords. (One apparently causes excruciating blinding light with but a thought.) The War Lord almost gets away, but does not and is hauntingly dematerialized. At the Doctor’s trial, he vigorously defends his interference in the outer world. He told Jamie and Zoe he was bored of not exploring the universe, and tells the Time Lords of the despicable evils (most of all, the Daleks) he has fought. The First Doctor was unsure of the man he wanted to me, the Second Doctor has become convinced. We get one final goodbye with Jamie and Zoe until they’re mind-wiped and sent away. It is a sad ending, but we’re assured their lives will continue to live on well enough. In New Who with Donna, this will be much more painful.
Throughout the past six seasons and this decade of Doctor Who, the show has evolved rapidly. It was an edutainment show at first, showing science and history. The writers and fans started to find that the true interest lay with the old man taking us on this journey. Who was he? How did get this machine? Will he find home again? We meet the Monk, we have the Doctor telling a petrified Victoria that he can remember his family when he closes his eyes, and now the Doctor loudly defends himself. His plea is accepted: there is evil, and it must be fought. However, the Doctor’s transgressions cannot be ignored, and he will be stranded on 20th century Earth, the place and time most familiar to him on his journeys. We never see the regeneration, just Troughton yelling and protesting as he fades slowly to black. It isn’t an uplifting ending, but we were warned it wouldn’t be. The Doctor risked his freedom to save the lives of thousands of soldiers he didn’t even know: and barely thought twice. Compared to the pitiful machinations of the War Chief and the aliens, the Doctor is ready to be the hero the universe needs him to be.
It’s hard to judge The War Games here in 2019, fifty years after its 1969 airdate. I feel like it deserves a 9, but I must also remember the context. This was a march to one of the most dramatic conclusions in the show’s history, that remarkably doesn’t drag at all. Peppered with game-changing reveals, and irrevocably changing the show, there is no alternative. Full marks. Troughton, I will miss your enthusiasm and mischievousness. On to Pertwee!
10/10. Above all, the Doctor is a hero. With one faithful decision, he sealed that truth for all time.
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