| Episode: | 332 | | | Serial: | 65 | | | Writers: | Bob Baker and Dave Martin |
| | Director: | Lennie Mayne | | | Air Date: | 13-Jan-1973 |
Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's the third part of the The Three Doctors, the only serial in the entire series to feature 100% of the Doctors that had been introduced up to that point, all played by their original actors. Well, except for the entirety of the First Doctor's run, I suppose.
If you want to jump to PART ONE or PART TWO, click the appropriate link.
It looks weird if I don't pad this intro out with some trivia, so I'm going to talk about books for a moment. Each Doctor Who serial got its own novelisation, with the naming format often being "Doctor Who and [the name of the serial]". So you've got titles like Doctor Who and the Keys of Marinus and Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen etc. It's very Indiana Jones.
That title scheme didn't quite work with this story though, as you can't have 'Doctor Who and The Three Doctors', because then there'd be four Doctors and the story would be all messed up. So they just called it The Three Doctors.
SPOILER WARNING: I'm not going to spoil absolutely everything about this episode, but I feel like I could probably manage to give away at least 90% of it and I may mention one or two things that happened in previous stories as well.
Previously on Doctor Who:
In episode one the Third Doctor got told by his past self to surrender to a blob effect and get himself teleported through a black hole to a world made of antimatter, so he did. In episode two the Second Doctor told by his past self to surrender to a blob effect and get himself teleported through a black hole to a world made of antimatter, so he did. Now everyone's on this antimatter world and they've brought the whole UNIT HQ building with them. The Third Doctor is with Jo and Dr Tyler in the villain's sparkly lair, the Second Doctor is with the Brig and Benton in the TARDIS. And somewhere, in the rocky wilderness outside, Arthur Ollis lurks...
And now, the continuation:
Anyway, it turns out that this guy is a legendary Time Lord called Omega! I guess that's why he's dressed in similar robes to the other Time Lords in this story, though it doesn't explain the giant helmet or why he's taking his own life in his hands by walking down those stairs with it on.
There are a few ways to pronounce Omega and he's going with 'ohm-mega'. Which is different to Star Wars: The Bad Batch's 'oh-mee-ga'. I'm probably going to forget however and start calling him 'oh-may-ga'. The original idea was to call him OHM, which is WHO flipped over, but the producer wasn't keen on anything that implied that the protagonist was called Doctor Who, so they changed it.
The important thing is that he's out for revenge! But Dr Tyler and Jo have no part in his vengeance so they can go wait in a cell.
It's not really a door though, as once they're inside the cell the wall seals up as if the exit never existed. Something else that never existed here: a toilet. Hopefully their stay here is a short one.
It turns out that Omega is pissed off because he feels like the Time Lords sacrificed him and then abandoned him. He was the solar engineer, the man who set off a supernova to provide the power to make time travel possible, but he was lost in this black hole in the process.
He survived here due to sheer bloody-mindedness over antimatter. It's not that he's been given reality-warping superpowers, it's that reality in this place bends to the whims of whomever has the will. It's like that Star Trek episode where the ship entered a realm where crewmembers could play a concert or become a ballet dancer with a stray thought. Except Omega decided to give himself a TV.
To be fair, he also created this fortress, along with the blob creatures that hijacked UNIT HQ. In fact, while he's here he's powerful enough to defeat the Time Lords and destroy the universe all on his own... but he apparently has plans beyond that and for them he needs the assistance of a Time Lord. I guess he thought the Doctor would be a good candidate for an ally, seeing as he and the Time Lords don't get on.
He tries to explain to the Brig that they're not in London anymore, but the man's not exactly taking the weirdness in his stride today.
The Brig immediately assumes that the Doctor's teleported them to the beach (probably in Norfolk) and refuses to listen to Benton when he tries to explain where they are. He tells Benton to keep guard to make sure that the building's not overrun by holiday makers while he goes off to find a payphone.
In fact Benton seems to be the only one that's keeping it together, as the Doctor's become obsessed with finding his missing recorder.
They shouldn't need to run very fast though, as the monster's only moving as quickly as an actor with a giant heavy plastic bag over their head.
I'm really feeling sorry for Ollis at this point, because he has no bloody idea what's going on. Everyone else has some idea of what's happened, even the Brig, but poor Ollis disappeared long before the exposition started. He was in a wildlife sanctuary, he walked over to investigate a weather balloon, and now he's here. That's all he knows.
This means his Bond Villain chat with Three is over and they're all getting sent to the cell.
The Doctors are pretty lost about what to do about this, seeing as they're trapped in a room sealed by willpower, until Jo comes up with the obvious solution: they use their own willpower to get out. No disrespect to Jo by the way, she's the one doing all the thinking here.
So the two Doctors do the 'contact' telepathic link again to sync up their minds, and then wish really hard.
It's still a yellow screen behind there, but that doesn't mean they can't sneak out into the maze of hallways.
The two Doctors believe that they can beat him with their will, and Omega would like to see them try! Though they'll be up against the dark side of his mind.
This unexpected trip into the mind wrestling dimension might actually work to the Third Doctor's advantage, as he's the action Doctor.
They struggle to get the fortress door open and find the Brig and Ollis on the other side struggling to get in. Fortunately no one gets shot by mistake, and the group makes a run for it through a gauntlet of artillery fire from the blobs' crab-arm cannons.
So they've successfully gotten away! Now the Brig and Ollis can pretend they achieved something, even though the prisoners basically rescued themselves.
They get in touch with the First Doctor and tell him to head into the black hole as it'll take all three Doctors to overpower Omega. I guess they're still watching the episode on the big screen in their HQ and are up to date on what's happening over there.
TO BE CONTINUED IN THE THREE DOCTORS, EPISODE FOUR
CONCLUSION
People say that the classic series is all about the heroes running away from monsters down corridors and across quarries, getting captured, and then escaping to run away again. Well, I say it anyway, mostly because I've seen a lot of episodes like this one.
Speaking of patterns forming, the villain has been revealed at last and it's an evil genius Time Lord.... just like in 37 of the previous 51 episodes. You can go back even further to Troughton's last serial and it's still over 50% of stories! But this time it's not the Master for once and Omega is a very different presence in the story. He wears a giant mask for one thing, which gives him a bit of a Darth Vader vibe (beating Star Wars by 4 years). In fact, this led to maybe the scariest part of the episode, where the actor tried to walk down stairs in it. At first, I didn't think he had the voice to pull it off, you typically need a performer as powerful as James Earl Jones or Brian Blessed to make a villain like this work, but then he yelled "WHAT?" louder than I thought my TV could go and I was sold on him.
I liked most of the episode, in fact, as it gave the good characters most of the lines and let them do their thing. The Second Doctor's a joy to watch as he gets to play with his UNIT buddies again and Three gets to be James Bond in the villain's lair. Also, Jo's the one coming up with the ideas this episode, while the Brig continues to struggle. His rejection of reality in favour of his own assumptions has me hoping this is all leading to a Brig vs Omega mind battle in the final part. Omega's indomitable will versus the Brig's sheer stubbornness would be an incredible fight. Well, it'd be more impressive than his adventure in this episode, where he goes to a door and then comes back.
Once again it's the production values that are the most obvious flaw in the episode, with the blobs back as baddies and the dialogue in Omega's lair writing all kinds of cheques despite the set construction budget being so small they had to add a hallway as a special effect. But it's classic Doctor Who, so I knew what I was in for.
Overall it's about as good as the last episode I reckon, and a lot less dull than the first chapter.
COMING SOON
Please feel welcome to leave a comment!
I wish the Brig had been able to find a working pay phone. I would have loved to hear that discussion.
ReplyDeleteHe wouldn't be able to afford a long-distance call to Geneva.
DeleteBut this time it's not the Master for once and Omega is a very different presence in the story. He wears a giant mask for one thing
ReplyDeleteI do wonder if there wasn't at least a little bit of an intention to suggest that maybe the Master was under the mask.