Doctor Who: The Second Doctor Era (1966-1969)

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm still dealing with the horrifying consequences of my past decisions!

My first mistake was to watch (almost) all of classic Doctor Who over eight weeks during Twitch's marathon. Actually, I'm kind of not regretting that even though it was very much not the way these stories were intended to be watched. My second mistake came afterwards when I let my brain even entertain the possibility of writing a short review for each and every serial I'd watched. That's the kind of thing you really want to prepare for while you're watching them or better still never because that's a lot of words, man. But I figured it was either now or never, I ain't watching them all again.

So I've written down what I remember thinking about the Second Doctor's serials, the ones that Twitch showed anyway (plus a couple of bonus stories). That's 13 whole reviews in one article, some of them more than a couple of paragraphs long! In fact, I'll even throw in an extra opinion right now: I like the way the new title sequence tears apart to reveal the Doctor's face, it's a clever effect. Not sure the plain logo's much of an upgrade though, but I guess they needed to keep it simple to make the video effects work.

There's going to be SPOILERS all over the place, but my plan is to only spoil things that happened either during the episode I'm reviewing, or the ones that came before it. So if you're reading about Tomb of the Cybermen you'll get no spoilers for The War Games, but I might spoil something about The Tenth Planet.

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Oh also I'm doing ratings for a change, on a 1-9 scale, so here's how they're going work here:

10	Really it's a 1-9 scale, I just put this here so I can hand out 9s more comfortably.
9	I annoy my friends and family with clips from it because it's just so good.
8	I loved this episode, it was amazing.
7	There's something keeping it from greatness, but I really enjoyed it.
6	A step higher than watchable, a step below really good.
5	Kept my interest and I was fairly entertained.
4	Not terrible, but my attention started wandering.
3	I left the episode playing, but I had websites to check/other rooms to be in.
2	Maybe not actually that bad, I don't know, I turned it off.
1	Insect movement by ROSLYN DE WINTER.

I'm rating serials on how much I gave a damn while watching, giving bonus points for if they did something really impressive and subtracting them if they screwed something up. It's just a system to judge the stories in relation to each other, they're not getting uploaded to Metacritic, so don't worry about it too much.

The First Doctor managed to get mostly 3s, 4s and 5s from me, so the Second doesn't have far to go to beat him.

1966-67 - Series 4
030	The Power of the Daleks	6 parts	6
Power of the Daleks was a pretty major event in Doctor Who history, as it was the introduction of a tradition that's carried on even into the modern series: giving Daleks stories a title ending in "of the Daleks". Before this serial, that "The Daleks" bit came at the beginning of the title. Sadly despite its historical importance, this is one of the serials that doesn't exist anymore, due to the BBC deciding to make what probably seemed a really smart decision at the time and taped over every episode. Fortunately, some folks took the audio and made a cartoon version, and judging by the look of it, they made it in a real hurry. It's a real step up from a few screencaps with narration though, even if it's no substitute for genuine live action Patrick Troughton. Oh, by the way, this also the very first regeneration story, though the Doctor didn't give the process a name in the episode. In fact, I'm not sure anyone even got him to admit that he was the Doctor, as it appears that one of his post-regeneration symptoms this time was being needlessly secretive and evasive. And wearing a dumb hat. It wasn't supposed to be a mystery to the viewer who he was, as we got to see William Hartnell's reflection looking back at him in a mirror, he was wearing the same clothes... well the same ring at least, and we saw him change, but Ben was immensely sceptical of the guy from the start and it took him a decent amount of the story to accept him. I guess Ben and Polly were acting as stand-ins for the audience here, with one being hard to win over and the other being on board with the new actor from the start. I don't know who Ben thought he was if he wasn't the Doctor though; did he think he just stole a guy's identity and pretended to be him in order to con his way inside and get their cooperation? Anyway, the main story began when the Doctor stole a dead guy's identity, pretended to be him, conned his way inside a colony and gained their cooperation. Then he tricked them into listing all the interesting things happening lately by getting them to speculate why he was called in to investigate! It's like the writer was trying to make me like this new Doctor or something. Plus the scene quickly set up the rebels and the mysterious capsule, and when you add them to the murder of the examiner he was impersonating there was more than enough going on to get the serial going. Especially when it turned out that the capsule contained Daleks, which I'm sure came as a big shock to the viewers at the time who'd blinked when "The Power of the Daleks" came up on screen at the start. I like how meaningful the title is, as it's both about the Daleks setting up a power supply around the colony (which eventually killed them) and everyone else trying to use the power of the Daleks for their own benefit (which eventually killed them). Plus the story's about power in general, with Bragen scheming to take over the colony, Lesterson feeling like he has the power to control the Daleks (and freaking out when he realises he doesn't), and the Doctor using the power of his tiny stolen badge to get access to anywhere he wanted to go. The moral of the story seems to be: be extremely careful who you choose to give power to, seeing as Bragen and the Daleks both betrayed their allies the very first chance they got. Bragen was especially stupid though as he started cleaning house while the rebellion had the Daleks as allies, because he was worried that the rebels would turn against him. But Janley was especiallystupid, because she knew that the Daleks were treacherous, helped cover it up, and then worked with them anyway because they were useful. Good characters though. Lesterson was also pretty good and I liked how his story took him on a real journey from blind enthusiasm for what his new robot slaves could do for him, to panic and insanity when he realised exactly what the Daleks were. He was so sure they were his early Christmas present that all of his theories were biased towards supporting his wishful thinking, and the Doctor had to point out to him that he'd only assumed that they were robots. It's hard to feel too much sympathy for him though, seeing as he found three giant pepper pots each equipped with a plunger, an eyestalk, and an immensely powerful gun on them, and thought "These would be great for mining!" instead of "These miniature tanks would be great for unblocking toilets and exterminating corridors full of screaming colonists." Plus the Dalek told him that they needed a few materials to make a computer and he gave them enough to build a Dalek army... I mean c'mon! The serial explored what would happen if a Dalek had to take a job as a waiter and the answer is, he did a pretty decent job at it! And then he went off to kill all humans during the surprisingly dark conclusion. People die in a lot Doctor Who, but once the Daleks got finally got started in part six the corridors were actually lined with corpses and they were just about to murder a baby before they were stopped. I haven't seen The Daleks' Master Plan, so I don't know if the Daleks still needed rehabilitating after The Chase turned them into jokes, but after this they definitely come off as a threat again. These guys would've totally killed Morton Dill without hesitation. Which is interesting, considering that these were shown to be older Daleks from before The Daleks Invasion of Earth, with a weakness I thought had been brushed under the carpet forever. I mean their need for static electricity, not radiation; the need for radiation really has gone forever. They'd apparently gotten really good at wiring places up for power though, seeing as a Dalek had managed to get all the way out next to the Tardis and was still blown up by the blowback. None of the characters commented on him, but that guy had either just found the Tardis and was going over for a look, or he was deliberately waiting there to kill the Doctor when he came back. Maybe that was the reason the Doctor continually ignored Ben's suggestion that they go back to the Tardis and leave the colonists to it. Probably not though, as the guy was absolutely single-minded about stopping the Daleks here. The First Doctor had acted as more of a force for good in the universe by the end of his run, and the Second Doctor has taken that ball and ran with it here, with his companions just having to accept that evil's going to get fought here. It was a big change from The Tenth Planet, which the First Doctor pretty much slept through. In fact, the Second Doctor is pretty different from the First in general, as Troughton didn't try to imitate Hartnell's performance at all. Instead, the Doctor demonstrated to his companions (and the audience) that he was the same person through his actions, as he proved that he had the same cunning, the same knowledge, and was just as capable of getting locked up in the same cell twice in one story. Well, nearly anyway, as he used his immense Time Lord intelligence to avert his incarceration the second time around by punching the guard in the face. I liked how he used a sonic glass of water to unlock the door the first time though; surely the predecessor of the sonic screwdriver. But the story also showed that this new Doctor liked to play the fool while secretly observing, thinking, and smashing bugs hidden in the snacks. Who hides a listening device in fruit by the way? Put it below the bowl sure, but not inside the actual fruit people are eating! It's either going to get discovered or it's going to get swallowed and neither outcome is ideal. In conclusion: this was a pretty good story with a creepy atmosphere that retained most of my interest to the end, which is impressive for a six-parter. Plus it ended with Daleks slaughtering corridors full of people, which is always fun to watch, followed by corridors full of Daleks exploding, which is also fun. But it's really lost something by not having the live action performances. Plus I felt it was being a little too vague about the rebels, as I didn't quite get the need for a rebellion when they were working with Bragen and he was a step away from just taking over. Were his security people rebels, is that why he needed them? One thing I'm certain about though: this was way better than The Tenth Planet
031	The Highlanders	4 parts	-
[MISSING, DIDN'T WATCH]
032	The Underwater Menace	4 parts	-
[MISSING, DIDN'T WATCH]
033	The Moonbase	4 parts	4
This is another story where the missing episodes had been replaced by animation and it'd been done pretty well this time I thought. But just as I was getting used to the Second Doctor being the cartoon Doctor he suddenly turned into live action in episode two! Despite that, I still got to see surprisingly little of Patrick Troughton on screen. He was around just enough for me to tell that he was playing the Doctor as less eccentric and needlessly secretive now, except for the time he had a conversation out loud with his own thoughts. I wasn't surprised to find out that this had the same writer as The Tenth Planet, because it was very much Tenth Planet II: The Revenge. There was another multinational crew of experts working at another command centre full of monitors in another isolated inhospitable location, this time steering hurricanes instead of spaceships. Also, the bloody Cybermen showed up again! They did change their tactics this time though, as for the first couple of episodes they were just infecting the food and sneaking around like a slasher villain stealing bodies. One of them even did that 'the corpse is the one who did it' trick by lying under a sheet in the sickbay, even though there was no reason for them to hide at all as the episode had already shown them getting in and out through a hole. But by part three they'd gotten bored of playing around and just held everybody hostage again. The Cybermen had a gotten a redesign for this story to make the suits a lot less bulky and I think the new look worked better for them, especially considering that they had to creep around and carry bodies this time. The voice still annoyed me, but I did like how they kept calling people 'stupid'. It really demonstrated their advanced intelligence and complete lack of pettiness and emotion. Another thing this had in common with Tenth Planet was that it almost seemed more interested in what the Moonbase crew were up than it was in the Tardis crew, which would've worked better if any of them were actual characters. Only the base commander seemed to have any depth and personality, so he often had the job of carrying the story during all the times when the regular characters were off-screen doing pretty much nothing. I mean it took the Doctor until episode two before he even started investigating the infection and most of his investigation involved silently pulling bits of hair off the Moonbase crew while they did their work. At least I got a few minutes of the Tardis crew hanging out at the start and being really enthusiastic about going out to play on the Moon in spacesuits with drink bottle air tanks. Plus it turned out that legendary companion Jamie had joined the crew during one of the missing stories, not that it made much difference to this story as he knocked himself out at the start and spent most of the rest of it in bed mumbling that the piper was after him. Ben wasn't much use either really. In fact, it was Polly who came up with the plan to take out the Cybermen in between making people coffee, as she used her knowledge of nail polish remover to create an anti-plastic solution. Then she ignored Ben's sexist instructions to stay behind and charged into the control room to kill them herself! I shouldn't mock her coffee making though, as it was the key to discovering that the sugar was infected (because even though the Doctor claimed to have tested the food he clearly hadn't). Plus her drinks tray was what saved them from decompression when the window was breached! She was definitely the MVP of this story. I was a bit worried though that the fumes from their homemade anti-plastic mixture were going to kill them all before they even made it out of the room (or at least dissolve the plastic spray bottles). Also, it seemed to me that it was maybe a bad idea to teach kids to stick every chemical in the house into a spray bottle and go play with it. On the plus side, the story did retcon The Ark by revealing that the Tardis does prevent passengers from carrying diseases across time and space. Well, to be precise the Doctor said that it's 'sterile' but I'm choosing to interpret that in the way that makes me happiest. Overall it was a pretty dull serial which picked up at the end, a lot like The Tenth Planet actually, but I do have to give it credit for featuring the line: "There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which act against everything that we believe in. They must be fought." Plus the serial's also notable for something it had that later stories didn't, as it's the final story to feature the original opening title sequence. The Second Doctor got his own titles after this, with his face in them.
034	The Macra Terror	4 parts	-
[MISSING, DIDN'T WATCH]
035	The Faceless Ones	6 parts	6
Most of this story is missing as well, fate wasn't kind to the Troughton era, and there was no animated reconstruction to watch this time, but I decided to watch it anyway. In fact, this is one of the few serials I'd already seen a few years ago, back when I'd decided to check out a couple of stories from each of the Doctors (the other Second Doctor story I watched being The War Games). It's been a while so I can't remember why I picked this over all the serials that still exist in their entirety, but I do remember that I didn't regret it. This one's a tale of people going to and from an airport hanger over and over, but somehow I enjoyed it anyway. I might have been a little generous with the rating, but four of the six episodes were just audio and screencaps with text explaining what I was missing, and I was still entertained, so it must have been doing something right. Though the main thing that sticks out in my memory when I think back to what I liked though is the frustrated airport commandant who had to deal with practical jokers putting a police box on his runway and had no interest in hearing about mysterious postcards and alien doppelgangers. I loved how the Doctor slowly brought him around from being an irritated sceptic, to a reluctant ally, to the guy leading the operation to save his kidnapped employees. I wasn't quite so keen on the hiding place the aliens chose to stash them though, that was a bit dumb. Also good was how the Doctor actually talked the Zygons Chameleons into coming around and releasing the kidnapped 'children' (aged 18 to 25), and then helped them solve their problem another way. It's so rare for (almost) everyone in a Doctor Who story to come away happy, even the sinister villains! It's not a great story to watch if you want to see Ben and Polly in action though as they were barely in it. It was almost like the actors had been dropped from the series halfway through the serial, which I later learned was actually what happened. Still, at least they got to say goodbye on camera at the end, which is more than poor Dodo got. Plus their screentime got reallocated to Jamie instead, so that he could properly demonstrate his utter confusion at everything in future stories. It's just a shame that the next episode's missing as well so I don't get to find out how they got the Tardis back without watching another telesnap recon. I don't want to watch another telesnap recon.
036	The Evil of the Daleks	7 parts	-
[MISSING, DIDN'T WATCH]

1966-67 - Series 4
037	The Tomb of the Cybermen	4 parts	5
This one's considered to be a classic and it did start well I thought, with the Doctor and crew arriving at an isolated location, meeting a multinational team of scientists and finding themselves in some kind of control centre where they were harassed by Cybermen. It was a real 'oh, duh!' moment when I learned that it was written by the same guy who wrote The Tenth Planet and The Moonbase. But I was a bit disappointed with how it played out once they got the trapdoor open and found the Cybermen in the basement. People took turns aiming guns at each other, some stuff happened, the Cybermen went back to bed and the survivors left disappointed. I'm being vague because everything after the line "There is a distinct element of risk in what I'm asking you all to do, so if anyone wishes to leave they must do so at once. Not you, Jamie." is a fuzzy mess of betrayals and secret agendas in my brain at this point. Though I do remember the American accents being terrible, the one black actor in the cast having no lines, and Victoria being fairly unimpressive as a companion. I mean I'm obviously not talking about her looks, she was as beautiful as any companion, perhaps even more so! But to my recollection, she was just there in the story and didn't seem to really want to be. Though Second Doctor continued to be more proactive and likeable than the First, and he was awesome. Still barely did anything though.
038	The Abominable Snowmen	6 parts	-
[MISSING, DIDN'T WATCH]
039	The Ice Warriors	6 parts	5
This one had a couple of missing episodes as well, but thankfully they'd been reconstructed with animation like Power of the Daleks and The Moonbase so I didn't have to look at a slideshow this time. The story's set during the second ice age where most of Europe is covered by a glacier and it's getting worse, but perhaps the biggest problem facing humanity at this time is that they're being led by computers with terrible voices. I mean seriously, this had maybe the worst and most indecipherable computer voice I've ever heard, and I've heard the Mechonoids in The Chase. Also there was an ancient alien ship in the ice and it was full of assholes, so that was another problem facing humanity, but the serial was really about the conflict between the administrator who couldn't make decisions without the computer's advice, and the rogue scientist who was so annoyed with it all that he'd decided he'd rather live out in the snow with the guy who says "It's" at the start of Monty Python episodes. I thought it was an interesting, enjoyable story overall, and the animation did its job just fine, but man I did not like the sound in this serial. Most of that was due to the voices, as there was high pitched wailing over the titles, the computer voice was terrible, the Ice Warriors' voices were obnoxiously hissy and the rogue scientist's friend sounded ridiculous. In fact, the audio was bad enough for me to knock the story down to a 5.
040	The Enemy of the World	6 parts	5
This one was lost for years and then discovered in time for the series 50th anniversary, which is good because it would've been a shame to skip a serial set in the distant future of 2018. This serial's about the Doctor having to imitate his Mexican doppelganger who happened to be a Bond villain. Seriously, the guy had an evil masterplan involving triggering natural disasters! Plus he was called Salamander, which sounds enough like Scaramanga that I had to check to see when The Man was the Golden Gun was published (two years earlier if you're curious). Not that it was a particularly 'James Bond' story (I don't remember the Doctor having a Martini or seducing a single Bond girl), though on the other hand, it did have a hovercraft and a helicopter, and a secret base where Salamander's henchmen were set to wait out the post-apocalypse. Not that they knew they were his henchmen. The serial did take some interesting turns, but I wasn't entirely engaged by it and I wasn't paying enough attention to really know which bit lost me. It probably didn't help though that the Doctor was sidelined for a lot of it due to his own hesitance to play along and all of Salamander's scenes eating into his screen time. Troughton was great in the dual role (turns out he was a pretty good actor, big shock), but even he couldn't play two characters at once. Except for the scenes the end that is, where the two of them finally met thanks to some surprisingly decent split screen. On the plus side, Jamie's officially the new Ian now, as the way he schemed his way onto Salamander's security staff was great. And I'm pretty sure Victoria was in the story too.
041	The Web of Fear	6 parts	5
I've finally reached the serial that introduced Brigadier Colonel Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart to Doctor Who! But it turns out that Patrick Troughton took a holiday that week so the historic first meeting between the two legends of Doctor Who happened entirely off-screen. I can't say I was completely engrossed by the rest of this tale of soldiers finding themselves surrounded by webs and robot owl-bears in the London Underground, I can't even say that I remember much about it, but I can mention that the tunnels looked incredibly realistic. I don't know how much of that was due to well-made sets and how much was good lighting, but if someone had told me that they'd filmed in the actual rail tunnels I would've believed them. Then I would've been really mad afterwards that they lied to me. This was the other classic story that was recovered in time for Doctor's Who's 50th anniversary, and I guess Steven Moffat had known it was coming for a while as he brought the Great Intelligence back to the modern series at the same time. I think he made the right choice, tying his own story in with The Web of Fear instead of The Enemy of the World. Not because the Great Intelligence was a better villain than Salamander, but because he was much easier to recast. Though Matt Smith vs. Patrick Troughton would've been awesome.
042	Fury from the Deep	6 parts	-
[MISSING, DIDN'T WATCH]
043	The Wheel in Space	6 parts	-
[MISSING, DIDN'T WATCH]

1968-69 - Series 6
044	The Dominators	5 parts	6
Doctor Who Magazine's 50th anniversary poll put this serial down in their bottom 10, of both classic and modern stories, and I don't mean 'bottom 10%'. It's the second lowest ranked of all the Second Doctor stories, missing or not, putting it just above The Space Pirates. But this is clearly wrong because the story is actually great! Well, it's alright. Partly because they edited it down from six to five episodes and tightened up the pacing. I loved the relationship between the two Dominators, with the boss completely shutting the other guy down whenever he tried to do anything; mostly because all he ever wanted to do was use their Quark robots to kill everyone. It felt like every conversation between the two went like this: "They're interfering with our plan, we must use the Quarks to kill them!" "No, we can't do that, we really need to conserve the power," over and over again. Not once did it occur to either of them to use any other method of killing helpless pacifists, such as that working laser gun inexplicably sitting on display inside the ruins of a nuclear test house on an irradiated island. After a point it seemed like they were taking the Doctor and Jamie's feigned stupidity as a challenge. Speaking of the Doctor and Jamie, they were great in this story, with the Doctor munching on jelly babies and taking a plane apart mid-flight, and Jamie blowing up Quarks with bombs. New companion Zoe had her moments too, like when the Doctor got distracted by explaining that the live explosive in his hand must be thrown within 10 seconds, and she started counting. Even one of the Dominators got a chance to shine, when he fixed the rocket plane, flew to the council chambers and then killed one of the bureaucrats with a Quark after they absolutely insisted that he follow the correct procedure and make an appointment before talking with them. For a series with a pacifist hero, the series was surprisingly harsh to pacifists at times (like when Ian gave a lecture to the Thals back in The Daleks). I think I just typed Quark more times here than I do in the average Deep Space Nine review. I loved those little things, especially because they were designed to sell toys and, well, look at them! If the producers had ambitions to make these guys the next Daleks they probably shouldn't have made them boxes with spiky spheres on top that speak in inexplicably childish voices. They're so adorably rubbish that I was almost sad whenever one got destroyed. Almost, but not quite, because they exploded so good. Plus it ended with the famous scene of the Doctor reassuring Jamie that only the island would be destroyed and Jamie reminding him that they were on the island. Honestly, this might be my favourite story of the classic series so far.
045	The Mind Robber	5 parts	6
I was all ready to hate this one due to its insane premise featuring the Tardis crew being trapped in a land of fiction outside of reality, I am very much not into sci-fi going full fantasy like this, but it managed to win me over. Somehow the photo-fit Jamie, the random Gulliver appearances, the Rapunzel cameo, the supervillain fight and the D'Artagnan vs. Cyrano vs. Blackbeard vs. Lancelot tag team battle all worked in its mad context without it seeming overly childish and ridiculous to me. Maybe it's because the lair that the Master (not that Master) was hanging out in had computers in it; if computers were involved then it must all make logical scientific sense! Plus I figured out one of the riddles before the Doctor did, so I got to feel smug about that. The Dominators getting shortened to five parts meant that this four-parter got an extra-cheap extra episode bolted onto it, which should've been a recipe for disaster, but somehow wasn't. Mostly because what they came up with was surreal, creepy and had an incredible cliffhanger of the Tardis exploding, with Jamie and Zoe hanging onto the console as it drifted off into the void. That's one way to make sure people tune in for part two. It also helped that the episodes are really short, with the last one being the shortest episode of Doctor Who ever at just 18 minutes; you can't really get away with dragging things out when you've lost a quarter of your runtime. Sorry The Dominators, your reign as my favourite classic Doctor Who story so far just ended. It had a good run though.
046	The Invasion	8 parts	5
You'd think that an eight-parter would start to drag a little and in The Invasion's case you'd be right. It's got a good story, with the Doctor reuniting with Colonel Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart and working with UNIT for the first time to take on a cyborg Bond villain betraying humanity to alien invaders, but no Bond film should be over 3 hours long. I can't write about what happened because I can't even remember most of what happened! It just kept going and going. On the plus side, it had some nice iconic visuals of the Cybermen walking around deserted London landmarks. It also featured a daring helicopter rescue with Jamie hanging off a rope ladder, Zoe talking a computer receptionist to death just because it was unhelpful, an invisible Tardis, and the first appearance of UNIT and Benton! Plus I'm giving it an extra point because of the way the villain said his henchman's name. "Packer"... nah, it doesn't really work the same in text.
047	The Krotons	4 parts	4
This was the very first story for the series by Robert Holmes, a contender for being the greatest of all Doctor Who writers, and it was a bit rubbish really. But only a bit. It was another story about funny looking robots with weird voices trying to get power for their ship, only this time they had spinning heads, they were the ones running the show and they were more about maths tests than annihilation... at first. There was a bit of drama going on with the local power struggles and all three of the Tardis crew had to escape the Kroton ship and avoid the deadly smoke spray at the exit before it was over, but I found it all a bit dull really. Though it did have a scene where Zoe couldn't resist taking the intelligence test, like an idiot, and ended up selected by the Krotons for her extreme genius. So the Doctor had to pass the test himself to follow her into their lair and ended up screwing up some of the answers. As a modern fan I'm not 100% keen about the guy who can practically pause time and do advanced maths in a heartbeat while also falling out of a window getting beaten in a test by a human, even a really really smart human, but I'll give them a pass because this Doctor wasn't so good at calming his mind under pressure and said as much. Oh right, this was also the story that introduced the Tardis's HADS feature that causes it to teleport out of trouble when it comes under attack, which is an interesting feature for an indestructible time capsule to have. So interesting, in fact, that it wouldn't be seen again for decades.
048	The Seeds of Death	6 parts	4
Not to be confused with the Fourth Doctor episode The Seeds of Doom, which had a lot less foam in it, sadly. This is the story where the world was flung into utter chaos because the global teleportation network went down and they couldn't get food into the shops for a few hours. The crisis was so bad that they called in the only person on Earth who understood the T-Mat technology to assist, but they couldn't get her to the teleportation control centre on the Moon because the world didn't use conventional space travel anymore. At all. This story was very dumb. And I haven't even mentioned yet how the Ice Warriors, who can't stand heat, tried to conquer sunny Earth, the Blue Marble, with a fungus that dies when exposed to water. Still, the serial had its moments. I liked how the traitor on the moonbase was continually struggling to find a way to save his own neck while causing as little damage as he could, and how in the end he chose to save the day instead. I liked the scenes where the Tardis crew headed to the Moon in an old rocket, even if it was like watching them record an audio drama where nothing happened. And I liked that it gave the whole Tardis crew their moments to shine, even if the Doctor ruined his dual-wield heat ray killing spree by letting his guard down once he'd returned to the moonbase. Plus foam! So much foam! Also, the Ice Warriors killed Osgood! But it was a different Osgood to the one from the modern series, so it was okay.
049	The Space Pirates	6 parts	-
[MISSING, DIDN'T WATCH]
050	The War Games	10 parts	7
With ten parts this should've really been unbearable, especially as I watched it all in one go right after The Seeds of Death, but against all logic and sense I actually enjoyed it all the way through to the end. In my opinion, it's not just one the best serials of the Troughton era, it's one of the best Doctor Who stories of the entire classic run. And this was one of the two Second Doctor serials I'd already seen once before so there were no surprises or mystery left in it for me; the story kept my interest on the quality of its script, production and performances alone. I can see why that author was inspired to write the Outlander novels after watching it now. But I do have one major complaint with it: fridge magnets are really not a suitable human interface device for a computer! Every time those fridge magnet computers were on screen I suddenly wished I was watching something with better production values, like Babylon 5. Though that's not really being fair to the story, as the sets around the magnets looked very good and the sets without magnets looked great as well. I guess the advantage of revisiting the same rooms for ten episodes was that they could splash out a bit on the decor. Anyway, at first the plot seemed to be that the Doctor and crew had ended up in an episode of Blackadder Goes Forth guest starring the cat priest from Red Dwarf, but the situation quickly became more complicated and interesting than that. Well, quicker than you'd expect for a ten-parter anyway. Soon officers with mind control glasses had shown up, there were mysterious goings-on in a mysterious control room somewhere, and a trip through a wall of fog took the Tardis crew (and friends) on a tour of other interesting historical wars, full of interesting people who wanted them dead. Sure this all led to episode after episode where the Doctor had to escape captivity only to find a group of soldiers waiting outside the door to catch him again, but it worked for me. Because it was actually funny. It also helped that after nine episodes all about the war games, the final episode suddenly took a surprise detour to Gallifrey to tell us more about the Time Lords in 25 minutes than the show had revealed in six seasons, including their name at last! They never quite got around to mentioning what their planet's called, but I imagine that viewers at the time at least came away with a good idea of why the Doctor chose to leave it, once they saw what the other Time Lords were like. I already knew about the Time Lords though so my reaction was mostly 'Hey it's Gulliver from The Mind Robber again!' It's just a shame that the story had so many characters with names like the 'War Chief', the 'Security Chief', and the 'War Lord', because the Doctor being the 'Time Lord' fit the pattern too well. The serial also revealed that the Time Lords are like Star Trek's Federation, in that they don't typically interfere with the affairs of other worlds, but when they do they interfere hardcore. They erased the War Lord and his team from existence and sealed off his entire planet with a forcefield! Then, for a hypocrisy bonus, they accused the Doctor of interfering with other planets! Meaning that the serial both started and ended with the Doctor in a trial for his life that he could've never won. He did give escaping a try to make Jamie and Zoe happy, but he knew that it was futile and decided to settle for whining a lot in the courtroom instead. So the Time Lords ultimately exiled him to Earth with a new face and his understanding of Tardis time travel removed from his mind, which became a much darker ending in retrospect when later stories revealed that his facelift was a full regeneration and his regenerations were extremely finite. So I guess that means I can now add 'Time Lords' on the list of his causes of death, right after 'old age/Cybermen energy drain'. The jerks. That was mean enough on its own, but Zoe and Jamie getting their memories removed and being sent back to where the Doctor found them made the punishment even worse! Especially because so many other companions had left to get on with their lives with their memories intact at this point; there was nothing inevitable or expected about this outcome. Doctor Who hasn't always ended every season on a happy note, but I can't think of many seasons, classic or modern, that have ended with as big of a gut punch as the Second Doctor's final year.

CONCLUSION

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At first the First Doctor's main job was to pull the lever on the Tardis slot machine and bring the crew to a new combination of obstacles, but at the end of his run he'd come to realise that he could use his vast Gallifreyan intelligence, education and experience to leave the places he visited a little better off instead of just surviving them. He'd grown from a mischievous misanthropic Time Lord into a mischievious heroic adventurer, and the Second Doctor was born feeling that to his core. He was still a bit anxious and childish at times, probably even more so, but he'd got it into his head that evil must be fought, and was out to get things done... assuming his Tardis took him somewhere interesting that is, because he still couldn't steer the thing right.

By the way, I keep writing things like 'the First Doctor died' or 'the Second Doctor was born', but I don't really see them as separate people. It's just hard to write about a person who gets a new appearance and has a dramatic personality change without thinking of it in those terms. But the Doctor has tended to change personality between regenerations as well and I definitely noticed this with the Second Doctor, as he became far friendlier and less mysterious after his introduction in Power of the Daleks. He stopped communicating by playing his recorder as well, possibly because he knew it was only a matter of time before Ben finally snapped and found a more painful use for it.

But Patrick Troughton was always fun as the Doctor, whether he was being secretive, grumpy, childish, clever, or just joking around with Jamie. He wasn't quite as indignant and authoritative as the Third Doctor, or as friendly and passive as the Fifth, he wasn't always as deceptive as the Seventh Doctor and he didn't quite dominate scenes like the Fourth, but he had a bit of all of that in him and in a lot of ways he set the template for others to follow. I never had any doubt that this guy was the Doctor and right now I think he's actually my second favourite of the classic Doctors.

It's hard for me to have a real opinion about his era though because I only saw two-thirds of it. I've heard that it was bogged down with a lot of base under siege stories in a row, but I apparently skipped most of them, so it wasn't for me! Though I've done a bit of maths on my scores and I've worked out that the Second Doctor era is technically my favourite by a tiny margin. I think it's more accurate to say that it was just more consistently alright than the others, without any dips into true despair. Plus there's The War Games sitting there at the end, being abnormally great and throwing off the results.

I do have some opinions on the Second Doctor's companions though, of which he only had five (two of them borrowed from the First Doctor):

Ben and Polly: These two are another pair of companions, like Ian and Barbara, that I can't imagine being separated. I haven't got a vivid mental image of them at all really, due to how few stories I saw them in, but I do remember that Ben was always getting in people's faces and speaking his mind, and Polly made the tea. She occasionally made the coffee as well and was the Tardis' designated screamer. They were likeable enough I thought but they'd be in no danger of making my top 10 companions list.

Jamie: Basically Robin to the Second Doctor's Batman, as he only missed his earliest serial and was his loyal sidekick ever after. The guy was in more episodes than any another companion and it's not even close, so it's a shame that so many of them are missing now. Especially as he had a great comedy double act going on with Troughton's Doctor and played off Zoe pretty well too. If I was going to make a top 10 companions list I'm sure he'd end up near the top.

Victoria: Wikipedia assures me that she was in several of the episodes I watched.

Zoe: Good at maths, martial arts and catsuits. It did bother me slightly as a modern fan that she was portrayed as being smarter than the Doctor at times despite her human brain, and after The Mind Robber I wanted to see her do more judo, but she was a pretty good companion I thought. She was only in the series for about one season but she still managed to rack up an impressive 50 episodes, putting her in the top quarter of all companions ever (ranked by screen time). 

And no one continued on travelling with the Third Doctor, which is actually the only time that happened in the classic series.

My top three Second Doctor serials:

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1. The War Games (7)
2. The Mind Robber (6)
3. The Dominators (6)

The Dominators often ends up ranked even lower than The Space Museum on polls, so please disregard my terrible opinions.


Bottom three Second Doctor serials:

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1. The Moonbase (4)
2. The Krotons (4)
3. The Seeds of Death (4)

Not a single episode rated 3! Either I'm going soft or all of the really bad stories are missing.

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COMING SOON

Next on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'll be reviewing the Pertwee era, in colour! Thrill at my half-remembered opinions about his first 14 exciting action science adventures.

Comments are extremely welcome, so if you've got opinions about a Second Doctor story or what I'm doing here you should stick them in the box below.