Friday 12 August 2022

What's Wrong With... The Three Doctors


The Tenth Anniversary story - yet it starts in December 1972 and is over and done with 10 months before the proper birthday. (Basically, the 23rd November date didn't mean the same thing then as it does now, and this is simply the opening story of the Tenth season).
The opening episode has the BBC copyright date of 1973 at the end, despite being broadcast in 1972.

Time Lords only appear to have black & white telly - but then they are watching old Hartnell and Troughton adventures...
It's a little confusing working out who is supposed to be in charge on Gallifrey - the President or the Chancellor. The former sounds as if he's deferring to the latter, and even seeking his permission, yet forges ahead doing what he wants to do anyway, against the latter's advice.
In the latetr part of the story, how do they suddenly know so much about what is going on beyond the Black Hole - such as that Omega is behind it all? The First Doctor hasn't turned up yet to feed back to them. And how does the First Doctor get to travel there in the first place? He seems to be able to pop back and forth like it was a shuttle service.
A supernova is just a big explosion. Immensely powerful - but once it's over, it's over. A Black Hole the size of our sun could last 10 to the 67th power years. Yet the Time Lords seem to think that swapping the power of a Black Hole for one of a supernova is a good thing.

What exactly is Omega's plan? He is busy draining Gallifrey of its energy and is about to bring the Time Lords to their knees when... he suddenly decides it's more important to leave. He is about to abandon the means of subjugating the Time Lords, leaving the job half-done. Once he leaves the Black Hole he will no longer have access to the Singularity etc. so will be just another Gallifreyan when he gets there. The Time Lords can simply lock him up, whilst the Doctor(s) can undo all the damage he's done since he's now given all his powers to them.
Omega knows that the environment on his world has a corrosive effect on his body, so he must have seen himself to notice this. You would think someone subject to a condition like this would check on it regularly, yet Omega doesn't seem to have noticed his lack of physicality for centuries.
Why does Omega seem to need the Doctor's help in lifting his mask, when he can take the whole helmet off himself a few seconds later?
Mind you, there are a couple of occasions when you can see Stephen Thorne under Omega's helmet, such as a glimpse of his hair when his mask is opened up - despite the fact that he is not supposed to have any body.

If Omega can send the Gellguards to Earth, why did he not send for help from Gallifrey a long time ago? He has singled out the Doctor to be his successor, and seems to know a lot about him (despite being stuck in the anti-matter universe), yet he takes ages to twig that the little dark haired man is another incarnation of the tall white-haired one.
If both Doctors stay that would surely mean that Troughton can never regenerate into Pertwee, so how will that work out?

The TV monitor representing the TARDIS scanner on which the First Doctor is seen also shows up the whole camera crew in the background.
Close-ups of the Gellguards firing their weapons always show a white chalky ground surface, even when they're moving across the lawns at UNIT HQ. (This is because all the close-ups were filmed together at the quarry location).
The lab doors are locked when found on Omega's world, despite having been open when they were sent there.
Omega seems to have been joyriding "Bessie", as she has chalk dust all over her wheels, despite having been transported here.
There is grass growing where UNIT HQ used to be, when it should simply be a big hole in the ground. There's no water shooting up from disconnected plumbing.
Top secret organisation UNIT not only has a big sign telling everybody what it is and where it is, but gives the name of its boss while it's at it.
According to another sign, Mr Ollis works at a "Wild Life Sanctuary", when it ought to be a "Wildlife" one.

If the scene with the Doctor, Jo and Dr. Tyler hanging around in the corridor looks like a script that's marking time, it is. The episode was under-running so this sequence was added. There is no plot reason why Omega would keep his prisoners standing around in the corridor. Tyler himself actually says "That was a bit of a waste of time, wasn't it?" - and the audience is forced to agree.
It was tidied up for the DVD release, but on broadcast you could hear the footsteps of the characters after they were supposed to have vanished through the Singularity.
How can the TARDIS show its own exterior on its scanner? 
Very little effort seems to have gone into disguising the fact that the Police Box prop has no back, and is just an empty shell. None at all, actually.

Everyone loves the Brigadier in this story, because he's funny, but the fact of the matter is that the character is being very badly redrawn in front of our eyes. The idea that he has never once set foot in the TARDIS in several years seems bizarre. He also seems to be responding to aliens and the notion of alien planets as though he has never encountered such concepts before. He refuses to accept things which he has already come to accept - several times - before. It's as if the last few years have been wiped from his memory.
Troughton isn't playing the Second Doctor as he used to either. It's as if he is also being played for laughs, with only certain aspects of the character being carried over. The problem is that people will now come to see this and the comedy Brigadier as the way they have always been, and they'll be written this way from now on. The Second Doctor is no longer the arch manipulator, and the Brigadier a soldier who kills for his country. 
Neither character should be this cuddly. They've been undermined.

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