What's Wrong With... The War Games

 

As I've previously mentioned, critics of this story often describe it as nine episodes of running around waiting for the Time Lords to turn up. 

To some extent this is true. Even the writers and the director had criticisms of its pacing and structure. Terrance Dicks thought there was too much capture / escape - especially in the first half of the story, which is mostly set in the World War One zone. Director David Maloney admitted that they would just throw in another war zone to make things interesting when the story flagged. His son gave him some ideas of what periods of history to include.

The biggest problem with this story is the overall plan of the Aliens. How would Roman soldiers, or 18th Century Redcoats, fare against Daleks or Cybermen? The Aliens have set up these war zones and taken people from Earth's history to fight in them - the plan being that the survivors will make an invincible army. It might be an invincible army if it has to fight other humans, but how would this army cope against enemies armed with energy weapons, killer robots and space fighters?

The army would need to be given high tech weaponry, which would stretch and probably break the mental processing they have undergone. Remember that the Aliens only take people from 1917 or earlier as people from later, more technological ages, can't be processed as effectively.

At a pinch, the Alien plan might produce a few good tacticians who might make for competent leaders, but never a whole army.

There are twelve conflicts, but only eleven mentioned on the map.

Why does Smythe have a map? Surely he knows how to get between his war zone and the Alien HQ by now.

Private Moor comes from 1871, when the British army wasn't involved in any major conflict.

Several times throughout the story Jamie is said to come from 1745, when everyone - including the Doctor and himself, who both get it wrong - knows it was 1746.

The War Chief knows that his SIDRATs are going to pack in shortly, so why is he sticking around? If it's because he plans to take over the army then how does he hope to achieve this? He's an outsider,  with only time travel technology going for him - technology that's about to break down.

Actually, taking over the army must be the War Chief's only plan, otherwise he would soon be killed when he failed to deliver on-going time travel to the War Lord. It is a high risk plan, considering the best he can hope for is an army which is limited only to the current time period.

SIDRATS look like TARDISes from the outside but why are they so different inside?

Why does Von Weich have to cover two different time zones? Is there a shortage of Alien commanders?

Does Smythe also cover other zones - as he and Von Weich are the only two Alien commanders we ever see at HQ?

And why does Von Weich sound German even when he's at Alien HQ?

Why is Smythe so dismissive of the Doctor's claims to be a time traveller - when their whole plan came about because of a time traveller?

Why does the War Chief not regenerate when he's shot? Are the Alien weapons such that they wipe out the ability to regenerate? Why create a human army when you have weapons that can do that?

Why does it take the Doctor to flag this plan up to the Time Lords? The numbers of people lifted out of time in just the WWI zone alone would have a huge impact on Earth's history and surely alert the Time Lords that something big is going on.

The TARDIS lands underwater, but starts leaking when the Time Lords over-ride the defences. The Doctor responds by taking it into space instead...

At the end of Episode Nine, Carstairs asks to be sent back to the 1917 zone to look for Lady Jennifer, when the last time he saw her she was helping wounded rebels in the American Civil War zone?

And how did the Doctor's shoes turn into wellies and back again?

Finally, the monster menagerie seen on the Time Lord scanner represents a pretty ragged bunch. The Dalek has a bulb missing on its dome; the Cyberman has its helmet on over the collar rather than tucked inside it; the Yeti has no claws; and the Ice Warrior helmet is askew. It's unlikely that the Time Lords would be prompted to action for fear of the Quarks, but it might have been worse - they were going to include a Kroton as well but the costume was too badly damaged.