What's Wrong With... The Two Doctors

If there's one thing that Robert Holmes disliked, it was being forced to adapt to the "shopping list" of story elements imposed by the producer / script editor. He struggled when asked to include the biggest monster ever seen in the show in The Power of Kroll, and he quickly pulled out of writing the 20th Anniversary story when he realised what JNT and Eric Saward wanted it to include - often at the last minute, as actors dropped in / out of the production.

He would later claim The Two Doctors as one of his least favourite stories. It's not just JNT's shopping list that's at fault, however - there are some narrative issues and some pretty unimaginative direction as well.

First of all, the shopping list. When called upon to provide the 20th Anniversary story, this had proven too much for Holmes and so he pulled out. What he would have given us, ironically, is partly what we see here. His 20th Anniversary story - "The Six Doctors" - would have seen the Cybermen trying to identify the genetic imprint which allowed safe time travel, and they would have kidnapped the First Doctor and replaced him with a robot double - hence the title and also to explain the change in actor's features.

Never one to let a good idea go to waste, Holmes uses the basic premise again here, but he had already been asked to come up with a multi-Doctor story, featuring an old companion of the earlier Doctor, and set overseas - originally New Orleans. It also had to be the equivalent of an old six-parter - a length he never liked.

With the setting handed to him, Holmes could only think of jazz music and cuisine as emblematic of the city and so opted for the latter - devising a race of aliens named Androgums, which was an anagram of gourmands.

When it became clear that Louisiana was way out of his budget, JNT decided on somewhere closer to home where he'd like a nice free holiday and Spain was chosen - the city of Seville to be exact. It has a lot of fine eateries, but is hardly best known for this, so Holmes found his new aliens quite redundant - but still had to fit them in.

Preferring his own new creations, another item on the shopping list was the return of the Sontarans, which he was not happy about out, even though it was he who had created them in the first place.

They are very poorly used here, so you can tell he begrudged including them. He is clearly far more interested in Chessene and Shockeye.

The manner in which the Sontarans are introduced is terrible - in a long shot, with no big iconic reveal despite their popularity and lengthy absence from the show.

The new masks look plasticky, the heads don't fit properly at the neck, and we have the problem of the obvious height disparity between Stike and Varl. Sontarans are supposed to be a clone species (even though no two consecutive previous stories had shown us identical specimens).

Attending far too many conventions, sometimes to the neglect of the programme itself, JNT had formed the silly idea that the Doctor actors never behaved themselves when they got put together, which is why he split them up for The Five Doctors until the very last sequence, and a single day in studio. The story was criticised for this, but JNT never learned - probably too busy thinking of the stage antics between Troughton and Pertwee at those events.

Here, we get very few scenes involving the two Doctors together, which is a real shame. Troughton gets shunted off into his own plot, whilst Baker takes an age to get to him.

Fans want to see the different incarnations interact - something which the new series does a lot better.

Holmes once again gets round the six-parter problem by having two of the episodes (or equivalent) in a different setting.

Here we get the opening episode set primarily on the space station.

The Time Lords once again this series aren't the only ones who can travel in time (all those other customers for Zeiton 7 ore). At least here we see them doing something about it - challenging Dastari's work.

This, however, leads us into one of the story's biggest issues. Just when does this take place in the time-stream of the Second Doctor and Jamie?

At no point could the Second Doctor control the TARDIS, and he was on the run from the Time Lords, clearly never having interacted with them since he ran away from Gallifrey.

But here we are expected to believe that he is carrying out jobs for them, and they have given him a remote control device. The TARDIS can go exactly where planned to go.

Troughton and Hines look a lot older than they did in The War Games, which can't be helped, but the story seems to be set at a time when the Doctor and Jamie are travelling with Victoria, and have been able to drop her off somewhere to do a course, fully expectant of successfully collecting her again.

All this smacks of what is known as "Season 6b", which Terrance Dicks was favourable towards as he set novels in the period. It is posited that after his trial he was not immediately despatched to Earth with a new face, but instead was used by the Time Lords for a period to carry out missions on their behalf. To help him in these, he was given Jamie and Victoria back as companions (though you would have expected it to have been Zoe - unless she declined the offer this time).

The other option is that the Doctor has been taken out of his timestream at a much later date, long after his capture - but this doesn't explain why they didn't use the Third incarnation, who they had working for them already anyway, or the Fourth, who also carried out some work for them.

Another obvious thing to say about this episode is the amount / nature of violence - something only to be expected from Holmes, especially if he has included "cannibalistic" aliens. The Doctor once again comes across badly as he indulges in humorous quips about the deaths of sentient beings.

The murder of Oscar is unnecessarily brutal - stabbed in the guts - especially after he has been set up as a funny, gentle man. 

We also have torture and the murder of an old woman, whose corpse is apparently eaten.

It's claimed that the old woman was reclusive - yet Shockeye somehow manages to learn all about the fancy eating places from her mind.

Chessene talks of killing "the other Time Lord" - despite never having met the Sixth Doctor at this point or having any way of knowing that he is a Time Lord.

Dastari balks at the thought of killing a Time Lord, due to the repercussions - after just spending two and half episodes planning to do just that to the Second Doctor...

And how exactly do you study someone chromosome by chromosome using a surgical saw? Just a few cell samples would have sufficed, surely.

How could the Doctor have been affected by the death of the Second if it never happened? It was just a holographic projection, so he should never have experienced anything.

If you want peace and quiet to carry out a sensitive medical procedure, why go anywhere even remotely close to a city on Earth that's popular with tourists. A lab set up on an uninhabited planet or moon would have made sense, but this is just daft. (Apparently Earth was selected to please Shockeye, but why would the wishes of a mere servant come under consideration for such an important mission?).

Why does Stike order their commodious and well-equipped spaceship to be self-destructed, when they're only going to be left with a tiny time capsule that they don't even know works properly yet? If they still draw their energy through their probic vent then they've just blown up their only lifeforce source.

Bottom line: with this set of ingredients it ought to have been a classic - Sontarans, the return of the Second Doctor and Jamie, an exotic foreign location... but it doesn't work, and even its author disliked it.