The Two Doctors
Story 140, Episodes 633-635, Season 22 Episodes 7-8
Doctor: Second Doctor, Sixth Doctor
Companions: Jamie McCrimmon, Peri Brown
The Two Doctors consists of a nearly nothing plot, but is strangely watchable to the charms of the performance and great Robert Holmes dialogue.
The Review
For the first time, the 45-minute episodes weren’t boring despite a lack of plot. Interestingly, it starts out with the Second Doctor and Jamie on a mission from the Time Lords (which really doesn’t square with The War Games spawning a whole fan theory but I digress). The two Doctors don’t end up interacting much until the end, and treat it as no big deal, like it’s just a coincidence the Sixth Doctor happened to run into himself. Troughton even spends a lot of time turned into an Androgum, which really shows off his comedic acting chops. The villains of the story are Androgums, an anagram of gourmand, one, Chessene has been augmented with intelligence while Shockeye is obsessed with eating, especially eating humans. It’s a weird storyline, but I don’t hate it as the plot essentially turns on Chessene never being able to move past her voracious true nature.
A big sufferer are the companions here, Jamie is back but gets to do next to nothing. Peri is dressed ridiculously, and also gets to contribute little in the third act. The guest performers steal a lot of the show, Dastari the cool space scientist is played well by Laurence Payne. James Saxon does great work as Oscar, an aspiring actor/moth hunter who amusingly turns up in part three running a restaurant and gets stabbed. The Sontarans also return for their only appearance between 1978 and 2008 but are bizarrely disposable, they’re nothing more than patsies used by the main villain. Despite a lot of these issues, there’s just a good energy in this story that’s been missing from Season 22 previously. The Sixth Doctor isn’t completely awful to Peri, and we get a bit more sense of where Baker would like to go with his Doctor.
For its bizarre watchability, I have to give this story props. I can’t quite give an 8 for the plot being a mess and underutilizing a lot of people, but I kind of enjoyed it.
7.9/10 A very low-key multi-Doctor story gets a boost thanks to Robert Holmes writing.
Reviewing Doctor Who from Start to Finish 