On the second day of ‘Our Year with the Doctor’ we sat down to watch the 1972 season 10 episode ‘The Three Doctors’. This was a great episode and is a fan-favourite because not only was it released to mark the Doctor’s tenth year of television but it was also the first Doctor Who episode to feature a previous incarnation of the Doctor returning to our screen, alongside the current Doctor. In fact, as the name suggests, this episode featured all three of the early Doctors, William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and the current Doctor Jon Pertwee.
This episode, much like most episodes of the period, was
made up of 4 segments each with a 25 minute duration and was originally aired
on 30th December 1972 and for the following 3 weeks after. This
episode introduced a legendary Time Lord known as ‘Omega’, he was initially introduced
as an alternative to the Master following the death of Roger Delgado. The intention
was to fill the need for a rogue Time Lord character. Omega has often been
revered through Time Lord history as one of the founding fathers and the
Gallifrey’s ‘greatest hero’, he was a stellar engineer who was working on
developing time travel until he was lost and believed dead when his experiments
created a supernova and he fell into the resulting black hole.
Our story begins with a mysterious orange box that been
brought the attention of Dr Taylor of UNIT. While investigating the item with
the local bird warden who found it. The box cracks open and a gel-like substance
leaks out and absorbs the poor unsuspecting Mr Ollis in a flash of light. Dr Taylor immediately asks
Jo and the Doctor for their help.
When Bessie and Dr Taylor are also absorbed by the organism it becomes apparent that the strange blob like substance and the gelatinous orange monsters that have joined it at UNIT HQ are there to capture the Doctor. Despite his best efforts he is unable to escape with the Brigadier, Sergeant Benton and Jo because the organism is not only swallowing people and large chunks of HQ it is also absorbing the energy from the Tardis stopping it from taking off. It is then that the Doctor decides to contact the time lords to ask for their help.
Unfortunately the Time Lords are not able to step in and help the Doctor because they’re in trouble themselves. Their homeland is under siege from an anti-matter planet on the other side of a black hole which is absorbing all of the cosmic energy their people need to survive. They decide that in order to help the Doctor to help them they will allow him to cross his own timeline breaking the Time Lord laws.
Enter Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor. He appears
along with his recorder literally out of thin air and explains that he has been
plucked out of his own part of their time line and placed into his own future
so as he can help the Doctor when the Time Lords can’t. Now there is something
very endearing and charming about the second doctor, he’s playful and stubborn
and he plays the recorder, cue a hilarious and fan-serving exchange between the
Doctors as three is forced to come to terms with why two has been sent to his aid.
I don’t need to imagine how exciting this must have been for fans at the time.
I know that when I watched the 50th anniversary special at the
cinema I was literally elated by seeing the Doctor interact with himself, it is
so wonderful to see him confronted with someone just as clever, stubborn and
self-assured.
There are some great moments during this first scene with the two doctors including Two’s exclamation of ‘Oh, you’ve decorated… I don’t like it’ and Three’s ‘Now Jo, it’s all quite simple. I am he and he is me’ but the best part is the bickering. They both played it perfectly and were so true to character while maintaining the illusion of a man arguing with the voice in his head.
However the Time Lords can see from afar that the Doctors will not get anywhere if they can’t focus and stop bickering so they decide to make just one more exception to the laws of time by calling upon the aid of yet another Doctor.
During the time this was filmed, though elated by the prospect
of being involved in the filming, William Hartnell was very unwell, he was
suffering from arteriosclerosis which made it difficult for
him to remember lines and he was not well enough to do anything too action
packed. With this in mind the producers and Hartnell made the decision that so
as Hartnell could still be included he would be sitting throughout the film and
would be able to read his lines from cue cards. They worked this into the story
by saying that though he was able to help the other doctors via video link he
would not be able to come to their location because he was trapped in a time
eddy.
William Hartnell’s doctor is stern and grandfatherly much
like he was during his time on the show and he soon gets the other Doctors in
check referring to them as ‘A dandy and a clown’. After a psychic conference
they have decided on a plan and set the wheels in action.
Jon Pertwee leaves the Tardis with Jo hot on his heels
but Patrick Troughton tells Sergeant Benton not to follow as the Doctor ‘knows
what he is doing’ when Three and Jo are absorbed by the organism, Two lets
down the shields on the tardis. The Doctors have correctly deduced that the blob is
infact a bridge through the middle of a black hole and on the other side they find
themselves on a anti-matter universe where they are taken prisoner by Omega who
has created the world around him simply by willing it to be so.
Omega wears a tribal looking creepy expressionless tribal mask which is designed to fight off the corrosive effects of the black hole. The mask gives Omega a sinister look about him and makes him seem less human (or less Time Lord) more monster. He has been looking to pull a Time Lord through the black hole into his universe so as he can force them to take over the mental maintenance of the anti-matter universe so that he can escape his long exile and be free. However he has been driven mad by the centuries alone and is pushed over the edge when he discovers that the years of exposure have left him completely destroyed and that he is held together by will power alone, deranged by grief he insists that the Doctors stay with him and share his burden as he can never go home.
The Doctors run away and manage to escape temporarily by
getting back to the Tardis but they are unable to get back to their own
universe just yet. They return to Omega and offer him a proposition, if he
returns their companions along with Mr Ollis and Dr Taylor back to Earth
unharmed they will remain in the anti-matter with him. Omega obliges but as
ever the Doctors have a trick up their sleeve and this time there are two of
them so it is particularly good.
The Doctors retrieve from the Tardis the shield
generator, when Patrick Troughton lowered the field he lost his recorder, it
turns out it has fallen into the field generator and therefore has not been
converted to anti-matter. The Doctors present the generator to Omega who gets
so angry he knocks it from Patrick Troughton’s hands. The moment the recorder
touches the anti-matter ground the positive-matter wipes out the anti-matter
destroying Omega’s will and returning the Doctors safely to the tardis back on
Earth, where they belong.
Though it may not seem very like the Doctor to trick
someone and annihilate what’s left of them, Jon Pertwee explains that the only
way for Omega to truly find peace and be set free was to allow him to die. Though Omega is sinister and determined and as
intelligent as any Time Lord he is very different from the Master. Omega has a
really tragic backstory and even as he tries to force the doctors to join him
in his exile you get the feeling that this may be out of loneliness just as
much as it is about revenge. One of the beauties of Doctor Who and the Doctor
himself is his compassion for others, and you really feel it in the outcome of
this episode.
If I have one
comment about seeing the Doctors altogether, apart from just being in awe of
their fluidity and enterprise, it is that Jon Pertwee is so much more
understated in comparison with Patrick Troughton that I almost felt he got a
little overshadowed but in the end it was still his episode and he brought it
to a close with his usual calm and comforting manner. I can’t believe I am
saying this already only on day two, but this may be one of my favourites.
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