The Two Doctors (TV story)

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The Two Doctors was the fourth story of Season 22 of Doctor Who. It marked the first appearance of the Sontarans since Season 15's The Invasion of Time, and the return of the Second Doctor, played by Patrick Troughton, and Jamie McCrimmon, played by Frazer Hines, who had last appeared in the twentieth anniversary special The Five Doctors. It was the first Sontaran story set on contemporary Earth. This story also marked Peter Moffatt's last contribution to the show and Robert Holmes' first Sixth Doctor script.

After the success of The Five Doctors, Nathan-Turner was keen to do another multi-Doctor story and quickly secured Troughton as the returning incarnation. It was suggested that the story be set in New Orleans, but Holmes found it to have little merit as a setting and the idea was quashed when funding was pulled. Venice was chosen by Nathan-Turner, but this was too expensive, leaving them with Seville, a Spanish town. Holmes reluctantly agreed to a rewrite, disappointed he would have to cut his jokes about the differences between British and American English. As a vegetarian, Holmes wrote The Two Doctors as an allegory of meat-eating, hunting and butchering.

Synopsis

The Sixth Doctor arrives at Space Station Chimera and bumps into an old friend, Jamie. The two incarnations of the Doctor join forces to stop Dastari and Chessene from performing dangerous experiments in time.

Plot

Part one

The Second Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon land the TARDIS on Space Station Chimera in the Third Zone, on a mission for the Time Lords, who have also installed a teleport control on the TARDIS that grants them dual control for the occasion. The Doctor explains to Jamie that the station is a research facility and they are here to have a discreet word with Dastari, the Head of Projects. The TARDIS materialises in the station kitchen, where they meet Shockeye, the station cook.

Shockeye berates the Second Doctor for landing in his kitchen.

Shockeye is an Androgum, a member of a primitive, emotionally and ethically bestial humanoid race which acts as the station's workforce. He is confrontational until the Doctor reveals he is a Time Lord. Suddenly deferential, Shockeye eyes Jamie hungrily and offers to buy him from the Doctor as the main ingredient for a meal. The Doctor, shocked, refuses, and takes Jamie away to see Dastari. As they leave, however, they hear the sound of the TARDIS dematerialising. This is observed by Chessene, an Androgum technologically augmented to mega-genius levels. Chessene has plans of her own, involving someone named Stike who will be arriving in force soon, once Shockeye's poisoned meal to the scientists takes effect. She has also taken possession of the Kartz-Reimer module.

The Doctor speaks to Dastari in his office, telling him that the Time Lords want the time experiments of Kartz and Reimer stopped. The Time Lords have an official policy of neutrality, and so have sent the exiled Doctor to maintain deniability. Dastari introduces Chessene, but the Doctor is sceptical as to whether such augmentation can change Chessene's essential Androgum nature, and he considers such tampering dangerous. Meanwhile, three Sontaran battlecruisers appear near the station, on an intercept course. Before the station's defences can be activated, Chessene incapacitates the technician on post and opens the docking bays. Back in the office, the Doctor warns that the distortions from the Kartz-Reimer experiments are on the verge of threatening the fabric of time, but Dastari refuses to order them to cease, accusing the Time Lords of not wanting another race to discover the secrets of time travel. As the argument grows more heated, Dastari grows faint and falls into a drugged stupor. Energy weapons fire begins to sound in the corridors and the Doctor orders Jamie to run as a Sontaran levels a gun at the Doctor.


Somewhere and somewhen else, the Sixth Doctor is fishing while Peri finishes dressing herself after swimming in the lake. The Doctor packs up his fishing pole, chair and umbrella and tells her its time to leave. After returning to the TARDIS for their next destination, Peri is startled as the Sixth Doctor sways and collapses — just as, back on the station, Jamie spies the Second Doctor in a glass chamber, writhing in agony as a Sontaran manipulates controls. In his TARDIS, the Sixth Doctor awakens, somehow having had a vision of himself in his second incarnation being put to death. He realise this is impossible, since he is still alive, but he is also concerned that he may have died in the past and only exists now as a temporal anomaly. He decides to go and consult his old friend Dastari to see if he can enlist his help.

The TARDIS materialises on the station, but everything is dark, and the smell of decay and death is everywhere. The station computer demands the Doctor leave, and when he refuses, tries to kill him and Peri by depressurising the passageway. The Doctor, however, opens a hatch and drags his unconscious companion through to another section. In Dastari's office, the Doctor discovers the scientist's day journal and the Time Lords' objections to the Kartz-Reimer experiments, but refuses to believe his people are responsible for the massacre. Peri suggests someone is trying to frame the Time Lords to drive a wedge between them and the Third Zone governments. They leave the office to enter the service ducts, work their way to the control centre and try to deactivate the computer before it kills them.

On Earth, Chessene, Shockeye and a Sontaran, Major Varl, take possession of a Spanish hacienda by killing its aged owner, Doña Arana. Varl sets up a homing beacon for the Sontaran ship, while Chessene absorbs the knowledge of the old woman's mind, discovering that they are in Andalucia, just outside the city of Seville. Varl announces that Group Marshal Stike of the Ninth Sontaran Battle Fleet is in descent orbit. Meanwhile, two people, Oscar Botcherby and Anita, are approaching the grounds. Oscar, an ex-English stage actor who is managing a restaurant in the city, is here to catch moths, armed with a net and a cyanide killing jar in his backpack. He and Anita see the Sontaran ship zoom overhead, and observe through binoculars Dastari and another Sontaran carrying an unconscious Second Doctor towards the hacienda. Anita pulls Oscar along, thinking they are victims of an aeroplane crash and need help.

Down in the bowels of the station, the Sixth Doctor tries to disconnect the main circuit. Suddenly, Peri is attacked by a humanoid in rags, and when her cries distract the Doctor, he is hit by a gas trap and falls unconscious, becoming entangled in the wires.

Part two

Peri knocks out her attacker and frees the Sixth Doctor, who saved himself by shutting off his respiratory passages. He disconnects the computer's main circuit, and the two find that Peri's attacker was a half-delirious Jamie, who has been hiding all the while. Jamie moans that "they" killed the Doctor, and under hypnosis, tells the Sixth Doctor what has transpired, giving a description that the Doctor recognises as the Sontarans. Returning to the office to examine the station records, the Doctor suddenly sees Peri in the glass tube, writhing in pain. As he frantically works the controls to free her, the person in the tube changes from Peri to Dastari to the Second Doctor and even to himself. When Jamie and Peri return to the office, the Sixth Doctor explains that what Jamie saw was an illusion designed to make people believe the Doctor was dead and not investigate further (the animator had been left on and captured Peri's image), which means the Second Doctor is being held captive somewhere. The Sixth Doctor theorises that the Sontarans kidnapped Dastari as well because Dastari is the only biogeneticist in the galaxy who could isolate the symbiotic nuclei of a Time Lord that gives them the molecular stability to travel through time. If given time travel, the Sontarans will be unstoppable. The Sixth Doctor decides to put himself into a telepathic trance to try and determine where his past incarnation is being held. He awakens having heard the sound of the Santa Maria, the largest of the twenty-five bells at the Great Cathedral of Seville.

Dastari beings his work on the Doctor.

In the cellar of the hacienda, Dastari and Chessene set up equipment, keeping the Second Doctor drugged and passive. Dastari asks why they have come to Earth, and Chessene explains it is conveniently situated for an attack Stike wishes to make on the Madillon Cluster against the Rutan Host and that Shockeye wanted to taste the flesh of humans. Dastari heaps scorn on Shockeye's primitive urges, and urges Chessene to remember that she is beyond those, now. The TARDIS materialises near the hacienda. Oscar approaches it as the TARDIS crew emerge, thinking it a real police box and the Doctor and his companions are plain-clothes police officers. Taking advantage of the mistake, the Doctor asks that Oscar lead him to the hacienda.

Dastari reveals his plan to dissect the Second Doctor's cell structure to isolate his symbiotic nuclei and give them to Chessene. The Second Doctor calls him mad. He protests that her barbaric Androgum nature coupled with the ability to time travel, will mean that there will be no limit to her evil. The Sixth Doctor asks Peri to create a distraction at the front door of the hacienda while he and Jamie make their way into the cellar via a passage in the nearby ice house. Peri calls out, interrupting Dastari's operation. She poses as a lost American student, but Chessene is suspicious, having read thoughts of the Doctor in her mind. Chessene gets Shockeye to bring the Second Doctor, strapped into a wheelchair, through the hall, to see if Peri reacts. She does not, as she has never seen the Second Doctor before. Peri makes her excuses and leaves, but Shockeye chases her anyway, eager for a meal.

Meanwhile, the Sixth Doctor and Jamie are in the cellar, where the Doctor examines the Kartz-Reimer module, a prototype time machine modelled on Time Lord technology. He explains to Jamie that once the briode nebuliser of the module is primed with his symbiotic nuclei — the Rassilon Imprimatur — it will be safe for anyone to use. Unfortunately, the Sontarans have heard him. Outside, Shockeye also catches up to Peri. She trips and falls, and Shockeye quickly looms over her, muttering with delight...

Part three

Shockeye knocks Peri out and brings her back to the hacienda kitchen. In the cellar, Stike threatens to kill Jamie unless the Sixth Doctor gets into the module and primes it with his symbiotic print, and the Doctor does so. Stike is about to execute Jamie anyway, but Jamie stabs Stike's leg with a concealed knife. The Doctor and he run off upstairs, where they find the Second Doctor. Before they can release the Second Doctor and escape the hacienda, however, Shockeye shows up with the unconscious Peri. The Second Doctor feigns unconsciousness while the others hide.

While the Sixth Doctor and Jamie watch from their hiding place, they hear Chessene voice her concern that now that a second Time Lord is involved, the other Time Lords will be arriving as well. However, she has a contingency plan. She asks Dastari to implant the Second Doctor with some of Shockeye's genetic material, turning the Doctor into an Androgum under her thrall, following which they will eliminate the Sontarans. However, Dastari and Chessene are unaware that the module is now primed, and that, outside, Stike is preparing to leave in it once Sontaran High Command has been notified and leave no one alive when he does so. Stike orders Varl to set the Sontaran battlecraft's self-destruct mechanism.

Interrupting Shockeye as he is about to slaughter Peri, Chessene gets him to bring the Second Doctor to the cellar. Once there, she stuns Shockeye so Dastari can remove his genetic material. The Sixth Doctor revives Peri in the kitchen and ushers her and Jamie away. The Sixth Doctor tells them what he revealed about the Imprimatur in the cellar was not strictly true — he had heard Stike approaching and the speech was for the Sontaran's benefit. The machine worked for the Doctor, but will not for them because the Doctor has taken the briode nebuliser. Dastari has implanted the Second Doctor with a 50 percent Androgum inheritance, and when Shockeye wakes in a rage, he finds a kindred spirit in the transformed Doctor. They decide to go into the town to sample the local cuisine.

In the meantime, Dastari lures the Sontarans into the cellar, where Chessene attacks them with two canisters of coronic acid. Varl is killed, but Stike, though wounded, escapes. He tries to use the module, but without the nebuliser, it severely burns him. Stike staggers towards his battlecraft, forgetting about the self-destruct. The ship explodes, taking him with it.

Anita mourns Oscar's death.

The Sixth Doctor, Peri and Jamie follow the Second Doctor and Shockeye into Seville, hoping to cure him before the change becomes complete and affects the Sixth Doctor as well. Dastari and Chessene are also seeking the two of them, knowing that unless the Second Doctor undergoes a second, stabilizing operation, he will eventually reject the Androgum transfusion.

The Second Doctor and Shockeye go to Oscar's restaurant, ordering gargantuan amounts of food. When Oscar demands that they pay, Shockeye stabs and kills him, just as the Sixth Doctor and the others arrive. Shockeye leaves the Second Doctor behind, who slowly reverts to normal. As all of them leave the restaurant and the distraught Anita, however, Chessene and Dastari appear, taking them back to the hacienda at gunpoint.

Chessene and Dastari find the nebuliser missing. The Sixth Doctor tells them how he primed the machine for Stike. To test the Doctor's claim, they replace the nebuliser and send Peri on a trip with the module and she survives. Chessene gives permission for Shockeye to eat Jamie. The Androgum takes him up to the kitchen. Left alone for the moment, the Sixth Doctor smugly confirms the Second's suspicions — the nebuliser is sabotaged, with a thin interface layer so it would only work once for Peri. Flipping over the table on which the key to their chains rests, the Doctors retrieve the key. The Sixth Doctor frees himself first and runs to save Jamie. He encounters Shockeye in the kitchen. The Androgum wounds him with a knife. Shockeye pursues him through the grounds, but the Sixth Doctor finds Oscar's pack and his cyanide killing jar. The Doctor ambushes Shockeye, covering his head with Oscar's butterfly net and pressing the cyanide-soaked cotton wool to his face, killing him.

The sight of the Time Lord's blood on the ground is too much for Chessene, who falls to her knees and starts licking it, to Dastari's disgust. He realises that no matter how augmented she may be, Chessene will always be an Androgum. He decides to free the Second Doctor and his companions. When Chessene sees this, she shoots and kills Dastari. She tries to shoot the Second Doctor and Peri as well, but Jamie throws a knife at her wrist, making her drop the gun. Chessene goes into the module, hoping to escape, but the module explodes, molecularly disintegrating her and turning her back into a common Androgum in death.

The Second Doctor uses a Stattenheim remote control — which the Sixth Doctor covets — to summon his TARDIS. He and Jamie say their goodbyes and leave. As the Sixth Doctor and Peri make their way back to their own TARDIS, the Doctor tells her that from now on, it will be a healthy vegetarian diet for both of them.

Cast

Crew

References

Time travel

  • The Doctor states that much of what he said about time travel was for Stike's benefit and consequently not true. Therefore the following 'statements' could be taken with a pinch of salt:
  • That the biological make up of Time Lords features symbiotic nuclei, affording protection from molecular break up and symbiotic control of the TARDIS.
  • This protection is extended to other travellers in the TARDIS.

Story notes

  • This story had working titles of The Kraalon Inheritance, The Kraglon Inheritance, The Androgum Inheritance, Parallax, The Seventh Augmentment, Creation.
  • The story opens in black and white, with a scene featuring the Second Doctor and Jamie, which then gradually transitions to being in colour.
  • This story features Patrick Troughton's final performance as the Doctor.
  • This story, like many of Season 22 was produced in forty-five minute episodes. However when sold to other countries such as Australia and America, the episodes were edited into six twenty-five-minute episodes with new cliff-hangers added, including Peri's collapse on the space station, Anita leading the Doctor to Chessene's hideout and the Doctor struggling against the Androgum genes infecting his timeline.
  • Jacqueline Pearce, better known as Servalan in Blake's 7, appears here as Chessene.
  • The space station's computer is voiced uncredited by Laurence Payne.
  • This is the last serial of the 1963-89 series to be filmed on the European continent, ending a semi-annual tradition that had begun with City of Death, and continued in Arc of Infinity and Planet of Fire.
  • This is one of the most violent stories in the series' history, featuring multiple stabbings and knife wounds, blood spillage (human, Time Lord and Sontaran), the attempted cooking and eating of humans, and the killing of Shockeye by the Doctor by cyanide poisoning. This is also reflected in the serial's mortality rate: Anita is the sole non-Doctor/non-companion character to survive its conclusion.
  • The idea of the Second Doctor being operated on with the intent of removing a unique Time Lord genetic trait was part of Holmes' aborted script for The Six Doctors. In the script, the Cybermen planned to extract a unique organic mechanism from the Doctor and place it in themselves, becoming "Cyberlords".
  • Originally, this story was set in New Orleans, and the Androgums, with their obsession with cooking and eating, were created with the city's culinary reputation in mind.
  • Laurence Payne (Dastari) also supplies the voice of the Space Station Chimera computer but is uncredited for doing so. He had previously played Johnny Ringo in DW: The Gunfighters, a role for which Troughton had been considered, and Morix in DW: The Leisure Hive.
  • Clinton Greyn (Stike) previously played Ivo in DW: State of Decay.

Ratings

  • Part One - 6.6 million viewers
  • Part Two - 6.0 million viewers
  • Part Three - 6.9 million viewers

Myths

  • Shockeye is a cannibal. This is unproven as Shockeye, who had wanted to kill, cook, then eat both Jamie and Peri, is not human. For him to be a cannibal, he would have to eat Androgums. However, Chessene makes a statement that not all creatures eat their own kind, implying that Androgums do.
  • According to tv.com, this story was originally written for Susan and Richard Hurndall's version of the First Doctor. When Hurndall died, the show had to be rewritten to accommodate the Second Doctor and Jamie. It's unclear what sources tv.com used as the basis of this assertion, so their claim cannot be completely ruled out as false. However, Hurndall is not typically associated with this serial, even at the earliest conceptual stages. Other sources indicate that Patrick Troughton was indeed the Doctor originally in mind to bring back for this story.
  • This story is the reason for the Season 6B theory. Though this was the first potential implication of such on-screen, the idea of a gap between The War Games and Spearhead from Space was seen much earlier in Doctor Who fiction. The first proponents of the basic outlines of the Season 6B theory were the artists working on the Second Doctor's TV Comic run. The basic idea that the Second Doctor didn't immediately regenerate at the end of The War Games owes its existence to TVC: Action in Exile, more than it does The Two or The Five Doctors. It does add a great deal to the Season 6B concept, however. The Two Doctors contains the innovation that the Doctor was, at least on one occasion, sent on a special mission by the Time Lords. It also could be interpreted to imply that the Doctor might have been able to have gotten Jamie's memories restored, and then somehow convinced an older Victoria to start travelling with him again. Decades later, the mini-episode DW: Time Crash provided a rationale for the Fifth Doctor having aged; the rationale could be extended to suggest why the Second Doctor appears aged here, and therefore imply that this story could have taken place much earlier in his incarnation - e.g., before War Games.

Filming locations

  • Dehera Boyar (hacienda), Gerena/El Garrobo, Spain
  • Country Road, Gerena/El Garrobo, Spain
  • Seville, Spain
  • Rio Guadiamar (lake), Gerena/Aznalcollar, Spain
  • BBC Television Centre (TC6 & TC1), Shepherd's Bush, London

Production errors

  • In some scenes you can see Clinton Greyn's lips moving independently of his Sontaran mask's lips.
  • In some scenes when Varl speaks, his mask's mouth remains closed.

Continuity

  • The Sontarans previously appeared in The Time Warrior, The Sontaran Experiment, and The Invasion of Time. This was to be their final appearance for twenty-three years, until The Sontaran Stratagem.
  • This is chronologically the earliest point in the Doctor's personal timestream that he has been seen to encounter the Sontarans. The Third Doctor demonstrated prior knowledge of the Sontarans when he encountered Jingo Linx in The Time Warrior.
  • The Second Doctor is working for the Time Lords, in seeming contrast to his being on the run from them during his second incarnation. This suggests that he was taken out of time by the Time Lords at some later point, which may or may not have been connected to the Season 6B hypothesis.
  • Victoria Waterfield is mentioned to be off studying graphology, but the Doctor and Jamie will return to her after their mission is complete.
  • In the opening sequence, the Doctor and Jamie are standing in the 'old' console room, not seen since The Five Doctors.
  • The scene where the Sixth Doctor poisons Shockeye is one of the few times that the Doctor has deliberately taken a life face-to-face. Other examples have included the killing of Mehendri Solon (also using cyanide) in DW: The Brain of Morbius, shooting several Sontarans with the De-mat Gun in The Invasion of Time and the shooting of the Cyber-Leader in Earthshock. In all cases, these were in self-defence; the First Doctor once mentioned that he only took life when his own was sufficiently threatened. (DW: The Dalek Invasion of Earth)
  • The Doctor has previously mentioned going fishing. (DW: The Talons of Weng-Chiang)

Timeline

For the Second Doctor:

For the Sixth Doctor:

Home video and audio releases

DVD release

Released as Doctor Who: The Two Doctors in a two disc set. Released:

PAL - BBC DVD BBCDVD1213
NTSC - Warner Video E1994

Contents:

Notes:

  • The-two-doctors big.jpg

    Region 2 cover

  • Region 4 cover

    Region 4 cover

  • Region 1 cover

    Region 1 cover

VHS release

Released as Doctor Who: The Two Doctors.

Released:

PAL - BBC Video BBCV5148
  • UK VHS cover

    UK VHS cover

  • AUS VHS cover

    AUS VHS cover

  • US VHS cover

    US VHS cover

    • Boxset release

    • This story was released in the Bred for War DVD boxset on the 5 May alongside all the classic series Sontaran stories. The DVD is the same as the one sold separately. Released 8 July in Australia.
    • Region 2 cover

      Region 2 cover

    • Region 4 cover

      Region 4 cover

    See also

    External links

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