If the change in leading man had been a seismic change back in October 1966, then a much bigger change was laying in wait in the future. This would coincide with the next change of Doctor.
Newer fans, unfamiliar with the history of the show and knowing only the structure of Nu-Who, would be shocked to learn that the first ever regeneration passed by with such little fanfare.
The Tenth Planet wasn't a season finale. It wasn't even a season opener. It was the second story in Season 4, following the forgettable late historical The Smugglers. William Hartnell didn't even show up for his penultimate episode, though that was due to ill health rather than something planned.
Eight episodes into the season, Hartnell bowed out and we got our very first glimpse of Patrick Troughton. Just a glimpse - and he didn't get a mention in the end credits. None of your "And introducing X as the Doctor" those days.
If the first regeneration was marked at all, it was with a six part Dalek story to properly introduce the character - one of the best. There then followed another five stories in which Troughton got to test out the part. Things were complicated by the introduction straight after him of Frazer Hines as Jamie, who had to share lines written for Ben, or be conveniently hospitalised, until the writers caught up with him.
A character actor, fiercely defensive of his privacy (he refused to attend conventions until late in life and even then only in the US where he could distance his Doctor Who fan work from his day job - the only thing he cared about professionally), Troughton elected to quit after three years. He actually wanted to go sooner but needed regular income to pay for two households. During the making of The Enemy of the World he had outlined most of his grievances to his old friend Barry Letts, who was directing. The biggest problem was workload. He and the other regulars had to give up their days off to do pre-filming, leading to 7 day working weeks. They would be pulled out of rehearsals to pre-film as well. The seasons were too long, at 48 weeks. On top of this hard work, Troughton had also started to report chest pains. He mentioned these to Debbie Watling whilst making The Ice Warriors. (He would suffer a serious heart attack in the 1970's, and a second fatal one in 1987).
Letts would take note of these problems, and when he became Producer of the show a short time later he saw that all the changes Troughton wanted were introduced - but too late for him.
To see Troughton out of the series in 1969, the Script Editor was asked to fill the slot left by two stories collapsing - a 4-parter and a 6-parter, so 10 whole weeks. Terrance Dicks knew this was impossible for him to do himself, so he turned to his old writing mentor (and one-time landlord) Malcolm Hulke for help. They came up with The War Games. Dicks insists that it was Derrick Sherwin, Producer, who came up with the idea of the Time Lords being the Doctor's own people - he thought it was the writers.
The structure of the story allowed for it to be concertinaed out if necessary - prolonged with more war zones (cheap to achieve as the BBC had access to costumes covering just about every historical period ever recorded). Director David Maloney contributed to the scripting by asking his son what periods of military history interested him.
The story falls into two camps when it comes to its popularity. There are those who love it and see it as a classic - the best Troughton of all. Then there are those of us who think it nine weeks of capture and escape whilst you wait for the Time Lords to turn up...
It probably falls somewhere in between.
Whichever way you look at it, the tenth episode is a highlight. We finally find out where the Doctor comes from (though not the name of the planet) and how he came to be a wanderer in Space and Time in a "borrowed" TARDIS.
The Time Lords appear as a god-like race, capable of great mental as well as technical powers - willing to intervene despite the Doctor's claim to the contrary. How else did they respond to his call for help? Why else did they take action against the War Lord and his people?
Now that they have captured him, the Time Lords have to punish the Doctor. After he makes an impassioned plea for protection for the universe from the likes of Daleks, Cybermen, Yeti, Ice Warriors and, er, Quarks, they decide that he may have a point. (There was also supposed to be a Kroton, but the costume had already been badly damaged in storage). They claim to have spotted a liking the Doctor has for Earth - which kind of makes you wonder just how long they've known about where he was...
I suspect that they've known all about him for a very long time, but left him to his own devices so long as his meddling didn't cause too much damage to the timelines (and who knows how many of his earlier travels weren't the result of the odd prompt by the Time Lords?). It's only when he calls them in here that they are forced to finally take action against him and bring him to heel.
When criticised for making the Time Lords all too human in The Deadly Assassin, Robert Holmes pointed out the number of evil rogue Time Lords that were running around the universe, and the hypocrisy of them claiming never to interfere when they obviously did. Terrance Dicks would always say that the Holmes Time Lords were his favourites, and even though he helped create them he always used the Holmes version, capable of all the human vices as well as the virtues, in his later original novels.
Thing is, we didn't need to wait until The Deadly Assassin. The hypocrisy of the Time Lords is here on view in Part Ten of The War Games for all to see, if you just take the time to look...
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