The War Games in Colour (TV story)

The War Games in Colour
Adapted from:	The War Games
Doctor:	Second Doctor
Companion(s):	Jamie, Zoe
Featuring:	Carstairs, Jennifer, the War Chief, First Time Lord, Adelphi, Socra, Third Doctor
Main enemy:	The War Lord
Main setting:	War World, Gallifrey
Key crew
Writers:	Terrance Dicks, Malcolm Hulke
Director:	David Maloney
Producer:	Derrick Sherwin
Release details
Story number:	50
Number of parts:	1
Premiere broadcast:	23 December 2024
Premiere network:	BBC Four
Format:	1x90-minute episode
Doctor Who television stories
← Previous	Empire of Death
Doctor Who colourisations
← Previous	The Daleks in Colour

The War Games in Colour was a colourised 90-minute re-cut and updated omnibus edition of The War Games, the seventh and final serial of season 6 of Doctor Who, and the last one to be broadcast in monochrome black and white.

Synopsis

The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe land in what appears to be No Man's Land during World War I. They soon discover that they are not on Earth, and uncover a conspiracy by the War Lords to conquer the galaxy, using conditioned humans stolen from Earth's history as their soldiers. The Doctor soon realises that he can't return the human victims to their own times himself, and resorts to sending for his own people, the Time Lords, for aid.

Plot

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Cast

• The Doctor - Patrick Troughton
• Jamie - Frazer Hines
• Zoe - Wendy Padbury
• Lieutenant Carstairs - David Savile
• Lady Jennifer - Jane Sherwin
• The War Lord - Philip Madoc
• The War Chief - Edward Brayshaw
• The Security Chief - James Bree
• The Scientist - Vernon Dobtcheff
• General Smythe - Noel Coleman
• von Weich - David Garfield
• Major Barrington - Terence Bayler
• Commandant Gorton - Richard Steele
• Captain Ransom - Hubert Rees
• Sergeant Major Burns - Esmond Webb
• Sergeant Willis - Brian Forster
• Military Chauffeur - Peter Stanton
• German Soldier - John Livesey
• Redcoat - Tony McEwan
• Harper - Rudolph Walker
• Leroy - Leslie Schofield
• Captain Russell - Graham Weston
• Arturo Villar - Michael Napier-Brown
• Alien Guard - John Atterbury
• Alien Technician - Charles Pemberton
• First Time Lord - Bernard Horsfall
• Second Time Lord - Trevor Martin
• Third Time Lord - Clyde Pollitt
• Tanya - Clare Jenkins
• BBC Announcer - Peter Walters
• The Doctor - Jon Pertwee

Crew

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Worldbuilding

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Story notes

• The story was opened by the Whoniverse ident.

Deviations from the original serial

• Incidental music associated with the Master, specifically the Saxon Master played by John Simm and the Master played by Roger Delgado, accompanies the appearance of the War Chief. Though the Master made his official debut in Terror of the Autons ^[+]Loading...["Terror of the Autons (TV story)"], played by the aforementioned Delgado, a number of sources over the years have conflated the character with the renegade Time Lord played here by Edward Brayshaw.
• The War Chief's regenerative process audibly begins shortly after he is shot dead by the War Lords.
• The exterior of the Capitol of Gallifrey, as seen in Heaven Sent ^[+]Loading...["Heaven Sent (TV story)"] and Gallifrey War Room ^[+]Loading...["Gallifrey War Room (webcast)"], appears when the Doctor is returned to Gallifrey.
• The sequence in which the Doctor presents the evils he has fought to the Time Lords through a Thought Channel now features, in addition to the specially filmed footage from the original serial, archive footage from earlier serials in which they featured. This includes footage of Victoria Waterfield as well as Ben Jackson and Polly Wright, thus representing all of the Second Doctor's televised companions.
• When the Court brings up the Doctor's interest in Earth, a hologram of the planet appears much like that which was used by Rassilon in The End of Time ^[+]Loading...["The End of Time (TV story)"].
• During the Doctor's trial, the sketches of potential new appearances which the Court offers to the Doctor are replaced with the images of future incarnations of the Doctor, namely the Twelfth Doctor, who the Doctor deems "too old", the Tenth Doctor, who the Doctor deems "too thin", the Thirteenth Doctor, who the Doctor deems "too young", and the Eleventh Doctor, who the Doctor deems "[will not] do at all". The Doctor's reference to a potential face being "too fat" is omitted.
• Perhaps the most notable deviation, one which was teased in promotional material prior to broadcast, was the complete Second Doctor's regeneration into the Third Doctor, adapted from a fan video originally uploaded to YouTube by Jacob Booth, using archive footage of Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee. The original sequence in which the Second Doctor appears to spin and fade away is seemingly retconned as merely the process of transporting him from the courtroom to the TARDIS control room where he is seated. Flashbacks going back to The Power of the Daleks ^[+]Loading...["The Power of the Daleks (TV story)"] appear as the Doctor begins to regenerate, evoking the Fourth Doctor's regeneration in TV: Logopolis ^[+]Loading...["Logopolis (TV story)"]. The Doctor is sitting in a chair as he completes his fiery regeneration. The Third Doctor quickly finds that the TARDIS is on course to Oxley Woods on Earth in either 1970 or 1980. Finally, archive footage from Spearhead from Space ^[+]Loading...["Spearhead from Space (TV story)"] sees the Doctor stumble out of the TARDIS before passing out, leading directly into that serial. Whilst numerous stories had taken advantage of Pertwee's absence from The War Games to establish a timeframe in which the regeneration was delayed for some considerable time, the indication here is that the regeneration follows the trial with no interruption.
  • The Second Doctor completing his regeneration whilst seated notably defies the norm of both the classic series, in which the Doctor would regenerate whilst lying down, and the new series, in which the Doctor has regenerated whilst standing up. In this regard, it matches the sequence in the fanfilm Devious ^[+]Loading...["Devious (home video)"], in which Tony Garner's "Second-and-a-Half Doctor" completes the regeneration into the Third Doctor played by Jon Pertwee, who filmed the sequence in 1995.
  • Several labels appear on the TARDIS console, including "Gamma", the Fault Locator, and the Temporal Regulator.
  • The Yearometer shows the TARDIS moving through several years as it falls to Earth. In order, these years are 2143, 2207, 2272, 2337, 2402, 2467, 2424, 2381, 2337, 2294, 2251, 2208, 2165, 2121, 2078, 2035, 1992, 1949, 1906, 1862, 1819, 1776, 1733, 1690, 1646, 1603, 1560, 1586, 1612, 1637, 1663, 1689, 1715, 1740, 1766, 1792, 1818, 1843, 1869, 1895, 1921, 1947, 1972, 1998, 2024, 2050, 2075, 2101, 2127, 2153, 2178, 2204, 2230, 2256, 2281, 2307, 2333, 2296, 2259, 2222, 2180, 214-, 211-, 20--, and 19--.
  • When the TARDIS displays that the Doctor is simultaneously in 1970 and 1980, wording on the Yearometer says the spatial location is the Oxley Woods, UK, Earth and the section for the "temporal location" displays "-----ERROR----- 83-NYRDWAM-6F".
• The plastic meteors used by the Nestene Consciousness in Spearhead from Space ^[+]Loading...["Spearhead from Space (TV story)"] are seen landing on Earth.

Ratings

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Filming locations

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Production errors

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.

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Continuity

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Home video releases

DVD and Blu-ray releases

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Digital releases

Following its television premiere, The War Games in Colour was added to BBC iPlayer's Whoniverse catalog of Doctor Who content.